Christina WarrenSo the new Instagram text thing is reported to have ActivityPub support and instead of being happy at all the new labor that could potentially be coming to the standard, Mastodon people are now actively encouraging instances to not federate with any of that stuff. K.
Look, instance admins can block whatever they want for any reason they want. It hurts your users but do you. And I'm not trying to argue that Facebook isn't a fucked up company. But actively working to discourage extremely skilled participants (and love them for hate them, FB engineers are VERY good) from contributing or associating with your open source protocol or community is just peak stupidity for people who claim in the same breath to want to remake and reset the social web.
Thom Holwerda@film_girl Facebook: *enables Trump, Rohingya genocide, etc.*
Mastodon admins: "Some of us would like to not associate with this company."
US tech media: "Won't someone think of the poor Facebook engineers!"
I fucking hate this timeline.
@thomholwerda so don't federate them if you want -- fine! But then don't bitch and moan that no one uses your protocol or services.
@film_girl I think the point that a lot of - especially Americans, for some reason - don't seem to get is that a lot of people would rather have a smaller social network but with fewer horrible people than a bigger social network but with way more horrible people.
We let the corporations try social media, and they all fucked up. Every single one of them. Why are so many of you so desperate to keep repeating the same mistakes?
@thomholwerda I think that is completely and totally fine. But then don't call it an open standard, one, if you're going to gatekeep and pitch fits over anyone who uses it (and this goes for all OSS btw, it's open or it isn’t, things. Things like the ethical source movement are not open and I wish they'd at least lean into that), and two, if you want it small, don't complain when it is small.
@thomholwerda I have zero problem with any administrator or user choosing who they want to federate with or not. I have zero problem with anyone wanting to have smaller, more controlled, more moderated social networks. But I do have a problem with preaching the virtues of openness (but then controlling who can use something and how) and bitching that the rest of the world won't come over to your worldview, when you're deliberately trying to keep people out.
@thomholwerda And yes, Americans absolutely tend to be more about growth and laissez-faire and small “l” libertarianism. It's part of our young country's culture and is embedded in many of us, even if we have our own issues with capitalism an the republic. The same way the strong social safety net of their culture has led many Europeans to being very pro-government regulation, even if they their own issues with bureaucracy and cronyism.
Jorge Caballero, MD
censored for “transphobia”@film_girl
There are multiple virtues in play here. Consider that I boycott #Microsoft for 50+ reasons. Let’s say MS wants to do something good & they make changes so 5 of the reasons I boycott them go away. Well I’m still boycotting MS for 45+ other reasons. FB, #Cloudflare, MS, #Amazon, Twitter, etc, are socially detrimental & abuse the data they get their hands on to the full extent possible.
@koherecoWatchdog @thomholwerda and that’s perfectly fine, imho. Your money, your time, your attention. My friend Kashmir tried to do those boycotts and it is sadly impossible for most of us no matter what we want to do, but that’s a position that I find reasonable. What I don’t find reasonable is complaining that no one will come to your party but then denying entry to every guest who shows up. Esp. if you threw a tantrum last week when learning someone else was having a party on the same day
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog Again, I have yet to see people complain that Mastodon is too small - except for media personalities who fled Twitter. Your premise here seems flawed.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog I don’t think that’s a fair framing of a lot of users (and to be clear, I’m not talking about former-blue checks and media personalities like myself, I’m talking about regular users) complaints about Mastodon. It isn’t about size as in user number, it’s about the diversity of types of people on the platform and finding people. For a certain type of user, myself included, there’s a ton of people here for us. But that isn’t universal at all.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog Look, I have ~15,000 followers here. That’s 1/7 of what I have on Twitter but I have more engagement here and I def don’t feel like this is too small for me. Arguably, the smallness works in my favor b/c big fish in a small pond. But I’m a nerd and an early adopter. But Black Twitter isn’t here. Memes aren’t here. Sports talk isn’t here. Now, maybe that doesn’t matter to you, and that’s fine, but it’s a problem for a lot of normie users.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog Yeah I don't miss the vapid sides of Twitter (black Twitter was *not* vapid, though, and is the major exception here), and I'm sure having Mastodon look more like a Facebook meme feed would draw in more people. It seems the majority of Mastodon simply does not want that to happen, though.
That being said, there are counterparts here. EuroVision blew up. Local European issues blow up. It's not the SuperBowl or whatever, but welcome to an EU social network, I guess.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog Yeah, the lack of PoC is problematic.
Aside from racism, which of course exists on Mastodon as it does anywhere else, there is also the fact that Mastodon is European, and the number of black folks in Europe is only a fraction of that of the US (and 50% of black Europeans are French). This must have some sort of influence. I would love to be able to see if Mastodon represents EU population quite well, but not the US one.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog it probably does represent Europe more than the US or the global number, but that’s just a gut feeling since there is no way to check that by design.You say Mastodon is European, but it’s Mastodon GmbH that is European, the software is supposed to be global, right? If the fire team wants to project that it is a Euro-driven project and that that is the world view that shapes it, that’s fine. But they should probably make that really clear.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog but I don’t think the Euro-centrism, if that is what it even is (I don’t think it is) what drives away then non-technical users and the PoC. What I think does that are when attempts to broaden the demographics to other cultures /languages are met with resistance. For people that don’t look like your or I, this can be a hostile place. And telling people they are holding it wrong or dismissing any critique doesn’t help win people over & reinforces the echo chamber
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog Yeah 100%. I'm glad the devs listened to the criticism and are bringing e.g. quotes now, even if I personally don't like it. It's gonna take time though. European racism has different primary targets (ever wonder where all the Muslim Mastodon users are?) and it will take time for the experiences of black Americans to make their way into the code and the culture.
But yes I wish it went faster.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog No I just mean because it's European it's going to have a more European user base. I would love for Mastodon to draw in more Americans (I fucking love Americans, and we Europeans could learn a lot from American openness and friendliness), but it seems unreasonable to demand an open source social network to acquiesce to American sensibilities overnight.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog oh, for sure and to be clear, I’m not trying to say that it should. I just think that it isn’t so much an American presence that might be lacking (I see plenty of America on my feed) but a lacking of anything that isn’t white western world (that is largely English speaking).
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog At least we can agree Mastodon is very, very gay. So many LGBTQ people here who feel very safe and happy to express themselves. This makes me think there isn't an aversion to diversity here, just a lack of understanding among Europeans of the kind of deep-rooted, more institutional racism black Americans face (as evidenced by white people calling for trigger warnings on stories about racism, which is just dumb).
But man is Mastodon gay. Warms my straight cis heart.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog yes, absolutely. That’s been the best part to me about both Mastodon and Bluesky. Extremely, extremely gay. And that’s fantastic. Because if you start out with those voices represented, that becomes part of the culture and attempts to criticize that or denigrate that isn’t going to work. Because all of us will fight back.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog Anyway, it’s almost 2am here so I’m off to bed. Thanks for the nice chat.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog An interesting data point about Bluesky was that one of their earliest blocks of users were Brazilian (many of them also Taylor Swift fans) and that then led to an influx of Japanese users and then a lot of Black Twitter came. Then a lot to the blue check crowd came (FTR, I was there in March when it was dead and so I saw the waves of users) and now it’s very much Tumblr for 35 year olds (so, Tumblr), but for whatever reason, 75k users, lots of cultures
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog I’m not comparing the two as it were, but I do think it is interesting to observe how Bluesky onboarded different groups, so to speak and I think there is a lesson there that individual instances could learn from, perhaps.
@film_girl
This is how social contracts work. There are rules of engagement. Those rules are designed to create & maintain an open free world. If I design a party under the framework of a social contract, I want as many party goers to join the cause as possible.
But strings attached: the guests must follow the rules or get bounced. If we allow them to break the rules of the social contract then we weaken & facilitate acts against our own movement.
@thomholwerda
@thomholwerda @film_girl I’m assume you are correct in saying node admins complain about low patronage… not saying I’ve seen it. But it would be valid. Activists need recruits who are fully invested in their vision for the future. We don’t want to recruit ppl who are playing both sides. If recruiting is slow or hindered, there is merit to complaining.. to discover why the vision is off-putting.
@film_girl @thomholwerda I think this idea is analogoous to what @Vincarsi says¹ about tolerating the intolerant. This might be another case where a #socialContract is being mistaken for a #moralStandard.
① https://freeradical.zone/@Vincarsi@mastodon.social/110357410508810531
Jude (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] I saw someone make a good point about that actually. If instead of considering tolerance a moral standard, we considered it as a social contract, the paradox disappears. Because then, when someone is intolerant, they are breaking the terms of the social contract and therefore are no longer protected by it. So being intolerant of intolerance is the logical course rather than a conundrum
@film_girl Seems like the people who complain the loudest about Mastodon being "small" are ex-Twitter folk who used to have massive followings there. 🤷♀️
And part of the AP standard is the ability to defederate. There's nothing non-open about not tolerating intolerance.
@thomholwerda You're right. It is absolutely in the spec and as I've said repeatedly, administrators can do what they want, even if it is to the detriment or against the wishes of their users. Sure would be nice if the spec made actually moving instances and maintaining user posts and having *real* data portability a goal and didn't actively antagonize anyone who actually wanted to contribute those kinds of features.
Ralph Waldo Pickle Chips@film_girl @thomholwerda the spec itself does make moving instance entirely possible, the problem is that mastodon is not designed in such a way that that's possible 🙃
https://shadowfacts.net/2023/activitypub-portable-identity/
https://shadowfacts.net/2023/activitypub-portable-identity/
@film_girl
With you 100% on this. Data portability is a problem. I’m not sure how much of the blame for that is attributable to the ActivityPub protocol vs. implementations like Mastodon.
I’ve been on nodes that spontaneously lock users out, after which there is no way for users to reach their data. They just pull the plug & walk away. Or they join the gian oppressive #walledGarden of Cloudflare (e.g. social. #privacytools.io) w/out notice.
@koherecoWatchdog @thomholwerda it’s both I think. Part of it is more a Mastodon problem b/c others have figured out their own hacks around the idea (@atomicpoet for instance has import posts in Calckey) but the underlying AP spec doesn’t really approach how this would work, leaving a lot of the decisions to the various implementations. In my opinion, it is clear that it hasn’t been a priority and that genuinely troubles me.
@film_girl
After getting burnt a couple times, the lesson I learned was to download my Mastodon archive periodically so I can recover from spontaneous unannounced shenanigans. It’s still messy & laborious, but almost insignificant in the big scheme of things. It’s also avoidable by anyone willing to run their own instance (which is impossible under techno feudalism).
@film_girl @thomholwerda Small is not the goal. It’s a side-effect of ethical infra free from #technoFeudalists. The side-effect can only be lessened by getting more ppl to prioritize the community over techno feudalism’s giant #walledGardens.
The masses will always be unethical. Poaching bits of the beast is our best move.
(pic below swiped from @riley¹)
① https://freeradical.zone/@riley@social.audiovalentine.com/110352758495629075
@riley @thomholwerda @film_girl #ActivityPub is an open standard b/c the protocol is transparent & everyone is welcome to use it. It does not mean /open borders/ of content intersecting all communities.
@koherecoWatchdog @riley @thomholwerda I never argued otherwise. I’ve seen a lot of commentary from people trying to figure out how to preemptively prevent companies they don’t like from using the protocol at all, however (and didn’t we already do this years ago?), and that that is absolutely antithetical to open source.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley It really isn't, though. The ability to control who your instance federates with is a core tenant of Mastodon and AP. That has nothing to do with open source. Hell, tons of open source software has the ability to limit who uses it, from forum software to blogging platforms. Are you going to argue that a blog blocking people from commenting is antithetical to open source?
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog @riley not in the slightest! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying people who are actively trying to prevent people they don’t like from using the protocol at all (of course they don’t have to federate) is antithetical to license. There are two different things here. One is reasonable: choose who you want to federate with. One is not: dictate who is allowed to use the software at all.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley But they're not doing that? Anybody is free to express they don't want instances federating with Facebook. That's not preventing anyone from doing anything. Nobody has the power to stop Facebook from using AP.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog @riley of course they don’t! That doesn’t stop people that should be smart enough to know better from bitching about it and trying to come up with Trojan horses anyway!
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley I mean, Facebook employing a Trojan horse/EEE isn't exactly far-fetched. I think it is entirely reasonable to be wary and thus call for not cooperating with their servers?
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog @riley I think it’s reasonable to look at what they do and be cautious. I think it is unreasonable to lobby for every server admin to defederate before we even see what this looks like. But honestly, this is so dumb b/c it is very unlikely Instatext or whatever will even gain traction. My problem is the instant knee-jerk reaction to any attempt of a non-ideologically driven entity joining the Fedi while also complaining about competing protocols stealing attention
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley Oh for sure! I personally haven't seen much complaining though - just a lot of puzzlement about why the short BlueSky flurry happened. It seemed... Staged and planned as hell, and that surely had people wonder.
Especially since nobody is talking about BlueSky anymore now and we're all on with our lives as if it didn't even happen.