Mastodawn

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

If there is even a single gram of truth to this…

Any instance that goes along with such a thing will be lost to surveillance capitalism. I don’t care how large they are or who they are, any instance that becomes Meta’s bitch should be defederated immediately by all others. Let the largest few get swallowed up whole by Silicon Valley if they’re dumb enough to do it. The rest of us will rebuild.

I really hope no one is stupid enough to take Meta up on this if it’s true. https://beach.city/@vantablack/110594120842443355

🖤fedipact.online #FediPact🖤 (@[email protected])

Attached: 2 images oh, here's some JUICY rumored details about meta's plans for the fediverse tl;dr "Meta will only federate with select larger instances from the beginning. There will be contracts which also provide for financial compensation for the instance owners." can't entirely verify their validity but it's still worth posting just in case #FediPact #barcelona #project92 #p92 #meta #facebook #fediverse #fediblockmeta #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin #threads

Beach City

EdB Jun 24, 2023

I started on the Fediverse with Mastodon about seven years ago when I had ~42K followers on Twitter and zero here.

Personally, I don’t care how many followers I lose. My tiny, ineffectual, instance of one will defederate with any instance, no matter how large, if this rumour is true.

If this comes to pass, I’d urge those of you on the instances that become Meta’s lackeys to move to instances that are not if you’d like us to stay in touch.

Remember, it’s about quality not quantity. Always.

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

I’ve been shouting with my whole chest about the danger of large instances for as long as I can remember.

Even if this rumour is not true today or even if the large instance admins decide to act intelligently and with backbone and refuse such an offer if it is true, the danger remains.

You don’t have to wait for the ship to sink before taking action. If you’re on a huge instance, move to a smaller one. Spread yourselves thin. Make each instance a smaller target. Make the fediverse stronger.

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

(And maybe some of you will now see why I’m designing the Small Web as a peer-to-peer web. Why ensuring that every node – every instance – is equal is essential to any system that wants to resist centralisation and corporate capture. Why if these places are extensions of ourselves, we must own and control them ourselves. It’s the difference between being a person and not a person in the digital age. It’s high time we understood this.)

https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

#SmallWeb #humanRights #personhood

What is the Small Web?

Updated June 19th, 2023 Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #23 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. Small Is Beautiful (Oct, 2022): What is the Small Web and why do we need it? Today, I want to introduce you to a concept – and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age – that I’ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about:

Aral Balkan

Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 24, 2023

@aral This is awesome.

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

@ubiquity75 Thank you. More than anything, I think it’s necessary.

PS. I’d love to be able to present this to academia more but not sure, short of doing a PhD on it or something, how to go about that. Any ideas?

João Tiago Rebelo Jun 24, 2023

@aral @ubiquity75 collaborate on a paper and make presentations (a tour). I bet privacy-minded associations and organisations would love to have you in events organised together with Universities. @d3 would you like to have Aral Balkan in Portugal explaining it?

Belasco Jun 24, 2023

@aral @ubiquity75 propose workshops or seminars or teaching formats? As someone who currently organises such stuff at a university in Berlin (last semester, unfortunately), I know it is something that students, at least, would totally benefit from and some be enthused by.

Natanael ⚠️Jun 24, 2023

@aral @ubiquity75 look at similar projects by academics if you want that.

It reminds me of stuff @axz works on

Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.Jun 26, 2023

@aral Well, that’s something that would be interesting to discuss!

Aral Balkan Jun 26, 2023

@ubiquity75 Anytime :) [email protected]

jonny (good kind)Jun 26, 2023

@aral
@ubiquity75
I would be interested in setting something up. I've talked about your work a few times and I think it might be interesting to pitch similarly for academic infra together. I am bb in academia but I know some web infra ppl around here :)

Aral Balkan Jun 26, 2023

@jonny Happy to chat :) [email protected]

Not a Spring Onion Jun 24, 2023

@aral
I keep wondering where we went wrong.

We had something like the Small Web 30-40 years ago.
(Although I find the word a bit weird. For me, a web is a network, that only exists because there are nodes that communicate.)

Sure, you likely didn't have your own server in the 80s. But our "organization" had (university, research institute, military thing).

The whole idea of "having your own website" was something that could have naturally evolved into "having your own server".

And yes, it is high time we fix that "it actually belongs to someone else" thing.

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

@wakame But it only looked like the Small Web. In essence it was the Big Web we have today. Only it hadn’t been injected with capital yet and the centres hadn’t grown.

Any system that can scale vertically, will scale vertically.

qwazix Jun 24, 2023

@aral how do you propose handling moderation in a theoretical peer to peer social space? Shared blocklists? Even then, if it's fast to create new single tenant instances won't spam be an issue?

This is not criticism, it's a genuine question. Feel free to redirect me elsewhere to read if you wrote about this before.

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

@qwazix The same way you moderate in real life as a person. By deciding who gets to follow you and disassociating yourself from the people you don’t want in your life.

The system merely models the human being as we know it in physical space.

qwazix Jun 24, 2023

@aral in physical space you do have multi tenant instances. You go to a party, you know the host. The other guests have a social obligation to the host to behave. You can also have reasonable trust to the host to have not invited nazis.

The same goes for the dance school, the university and whatnot.

Also online the friction is minimal so a lot of nazis can pile on you from everywhere. If you have to screen every one of your followers you might as well join an instance with *no* moderation.

We must find a way imo for the small web tenants to collaborate on creating safe spaces.

*edit: "with no moderation", not "with moderation"

Natanael ⚠️Jun 24, 2023

@aral @qwazix this doesn't scale against brigades, at some point you have to outsource trust to gatekeepers (but of course revocable and even granular trust delegation could be done in such networks)

Robin Jun 24, 2023

@aral I had joined .world with the idea of having a well populated home feed :/

Liz Ellis She/Her🌳Jun 24, 2023

@Chimaera @aral
That's why I joined .social as well and because it was so big and was clearly struggling with the initial huge influx, I set up a monthly donation to them. It seems that was an error on my part. The problem is if someone moves to a different instance, how do you know the new one won't federate with Meta? I've put off moving due to energy, it's not something I can keep doing.

Robin Jun 24, 2023

@LizEllisPhD @aral yes, I’m going to wait a bit to see exactly how this play out. I’m not sure if I mentioned but I left .social and moved to .world just after I joined in late October because of complaints from others of poor moderation and a lack of safety for marginalized people. Luckily I was able to figure out how to keep my followers but I lost whatever I had posted.

Liz Ellis She/Her🌳Jun 24, 2023

@Chimaera @aral
I mean, I mostly post shite, so a loss of posts is no big deal, it;s just finding the energy to do it. I looked at setting up an individual instance (I'm trying to get my HoD to set up an academic one for the department so figured it would be good practice) but my brain fog just screams at me so bad I stop. Someone needs to do a set-up-your-own-instance but for folks with an intellectual impairment, with pictures and maybe video.

Robin Jun 24, 2023

@LizEllisPhD @aral I deal with chronic Lyme so I 100% hear you

Liz Ellis She/Her🌳Jun 24, 2023

@Chimaera @aral
Solidarity from Long Covid central.

Dan Veditz Jun 24, 2023

@LizEllisPhD @Chimaera @aral

That's the service https://masto.host provides: you pay them and they run your personal server. I have not tried it, but I'm intrigued. There may be other folks offering the same service.

I would recommend getting your own domain name rather than using their free myname.masto.host subdomains. Will make it easier to move elsewhere later if you need to (but not strictly necessary if it's too complicated).

Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

Masto.host was built from the ground up to make running a Mastodon instance easy.

Masto.host

Liz Ellis She/Her🌳Jun 24, 2023

@dveditz @Chimaera @aral I mean thank you, but my poor fucked up brain didn’t really understand any of that! I’ll try and find a teenager or something.

ij Jun 24, 2023

@aral I'm running cleanup scripts on Friendica and Mastodon for years now to not grow too big. I was once the largest Friendica node out there and then reduced the (inactive) user count to below 1000 users.

Mastodon was an exemption with its large influx of new users where I grew to >25000 users.

In the past weeks 6.000 users were removed on nerdculture.de because they were not be used in the last 7 months.

But yes, Meta is a threat we must resist.

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

@ij Thank you 💕

Cam Jun 24, 2023

@aral I think the trap I fell into, which caused me to join a large general purpose instance, was the thought process "I want to leave Twitter; I should find another Twitter like experience" without considering if I actually wanted another Twitter like experience.

I've got no actual complaints about this instance, it seems well run, but I think the general concept of the/a #Fediverse has more to offer than emulating the Twitter/Facebook/Reddit UX.

Jon Plummer Jun 24, 2023

@aral How do I learn how large the instance I am on is? (not an expert)

Aral Balkan Jun 24, 2023

@jplummer Yours apparently has ~160,000 accounts but not all of those will be active (You can search on https://instances.social/list#lang=&allowed=&prohibited=&min-users=&max-users=)

Mastodon instances

Jon Plummer Jun 24, 2023

@aral It seems there is some tension between “keep fedi small and distributed” (join a small instance, spread out, etc.) and “adopt fedi over monoplatforms” (join a big instance with lots to read and follow and where it is more straightforward to gain exposure, etc.)

Probably Paul Jun 24, 2023

@aral Apparently I've missed some news. What's this rumour of which you speak?

Aral Balkan Jun 25, 2023

@BarrenPlanet Is the thread not showing up for you? Here’s the head of it: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/110598855375585873

Aral Balkan (@[email protected])

If there is even a single gram of truth to this… Any instance that goes along with such a thing will be lost to surveillance capitalism. I don’t care how large they are or who they are, any instance that becomes Meta’s bitch should be defederated immediately by all others. Let the largest few get swallowed up whole by Silicon Valley if they’re dumb enough to do it. The rest of us will rebuild. I really hope no one is stupid enough to take Meta up on this if it’s true. https://beach.city/@vantablack/110594120842443355

Aral’s Mastodon

chriszanf Jun 26, 2023

@aral This doesnt instil confidence:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384784

That's the point: we just don't know what Facebook/Meta is planning. However, we... | Hacker News

xs4me2 Jun 24, 2023

@aral Exactly this, truth is about truth, not about numbers...

Robin Jun 24, 2023

@aral does anyone know where mastodon.world stands in all of this? I left .social just after joining last October and I’m not looking forward to moving again.

localzuk Jun 24, 2023

@aral this seems like Meta is going to try the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" model to effectively kill Mastodon as an independent federated network.

Wingy Jun 24, 2023

@aral What’s the risk of federating with Meta here? Meta becomes the largest instance then defederates all of the small instances and becomes like gmail?

rootfake Jun 26, 2023

@Wingy @aral That's definitely one of the concerns, the others are that any Facebook product will bring data collection and ads, because its their whole business model, and that Facebook is a known malicious actor, with content moderation that is barely existent, a platform that is full of Nazis, and an algorithm that has caused actual genocides.

Alon Jun 24, 2023

@aral Yeah, it is about quality. The ongoing civil war in Russia is about the first time there are breaking news that I can follow on Fedi, and even then the depth of information is greater on Birdsite with its larger ecosystem of Ukraine and Russia watchers.