snappyhomeI keep having nostalgic early Twitter feelings about the #forkiverse, and I think it's because of the smallness and smarts of the people here - nobody listens to Hard/Engine who doesn't have two brain cells to rub together. But if the goal is to (in @pj 's words) "take control of social media out of the hands of the Musks and Zuckerbergs," (7:08) can something that stays small and insular manage to do that?
olliestudio45@snappyhome so although the forkiverse is small, Mastodon itself is bigger, with some 4 million accounts and maybe 1 or 2 million active users. But in any case it is the decentralisation and fragmentation that makes it so difficult for somebody to walk in and buy up... or control. So the network needs to improve the connections between Mastodon servers (though things like the 'followed hashtags' are Mastodon-wide) and related functionalities. Ditto the Fediverse but on an even bigger scale.
@olliestudio45 Point well taken: lots of small, connected ponds making one big overall network might be able to retain the small, exclusive feeling of early Twitter while allowing the scale of late Twitter (maybe - peak Twitter was 401M users - I'm unclear on how the Fediverse works at that kind of scale or whether it can achieve that kind of scale at all).
@snappyhome My impression of the fedi is that it is a collection of platforms and apps that have shared characteristics like being decentralised (different servers that share software but are self hosted and have their own rules), typically the software is FOSS and most the platforms share a protocol that allows a certain degree of compatibility or at least communication between them. This last point seems more aspiration than general rule though.
SupermoosieWith the Fediverse, you, with the help of the admin gets to choose your experience.
The experience on a large busy instance, is totally different from a tiny or self hosted one, which is slower and generally more personal.
What you see on one instance, might not appear on another, as the admins decide to block certain other instances for various reasons.
Then you have user tools to filter, mute and block. Which can be permanently or down to a hour.
Don't like US politics, filter relevant political words out.
Just want to play in the Forkiverse? Just look in the local feed only.
In many ways it is better and different from Twitter and its algorithm that only showed what it wanted to you.
Tim Chambers@snappyhome @pj Let’s find out.
pj@snappyhome this is the question my mind circles, too.
Gordon TaylorHumans evolved our social skills over ages in small tribes.
Social emotions like shame and embarrassment are for small groups, not big ones. Humans aren’t really designed to interact with a billion strangers, which is why the social media experiment has proven super depressing for almost everybody…
I wonder if this is actually the way? Small federated tribes with access to/awareness of other tribes...
it sure is nice so far! #forkiverse #fediverse
@goodgord you make a good point. The question that remains is: can a federation of little cozy communities displace the power and capability that comes with massive scale? New York City has something like 8 and a half million people. All the US cities with populations between 90k and 400k together have six times that. But NYC makes more interesting culture than all those little cities put together because scale creates advantages along with its problems.
@pj
@pj
@snappyhome @pj fascinating! I wonder if it says something about the nature of relationships between tribes - or the proximal distance/availability/appropriation between them.
(Sometimes I wonder if this is all just complex math - hey it worked for LLMs… )
Ben Woo@goodgord @snappyhome @pj every big city is really a system of neighborhoods. Chicago is famous for it, LA is mocked for it, and NYC has every kind
spoonman@snappyhome @goodgord @pj what I never got about social media: I might have something to say about topic X (say Pearl Jam in my case) but I would keep that convo to its audience. I would never stand in front of a large crowd of strangers and hold court about a Pearl Jam show I went to, unless they were all PJ people (& even then maybe not!). Yet online this is normal…? People can block me, but how do I keep myself out of unrelated convos? Then I might be game b/c it’s how I would be offline
Alex Unger@goodgord @snappyhome @pj for the sake of the argument, aren't small tribes prome to siloism? That alone would make the fediverse much more versatile than a centralized social media.
"You're home, but can go and take a walk around th neighborhood and listen to other siloes"
Needless to say here at the forkiverse I feel home :)
Spoon@snappyhome @pj I read this as "no one listens to @hardengine" and I'm like, "damn straight no one listen to that guy! Oh..." :D
Hardengine
The Tattooed Nonna 🧙♀️@snappyhome you know you are just one of many servers in the fediverse though?
I agree it's like early twitter but I think that's more because of the lack of algorithms and advertising
I agree it's like early twitter but I think that's more because of the lack of algorithms and advertising
SteveZ@snappyhome @pj probably not. The problem is regression to the mean. The mean is a pretty ugly place. I think the promise of the fediverse is that instead of their being one big blob, there are lots of cul -de-sacs where communities don’t regress. Vigilant moderation will be key
gmoore@snappyhome @pj "can something that stays small and insular manage to do that?"
If the goal is profit, probably not.
@snappyhome @pj I guess it is the model. Pseudo-patronage? I'm on an instance where we just chip in from time to time.
UpOrDownItsUpToYou@snappyhome @pj seems to me that focusing on the lofty goal will make it harder to reach. When a hippy commune supercedes the mainstream government it becomes the mainstream government. The power available in being mainstream will inevitably poison the ideals that made it work to begin with.
Or not, who fucking knows? I'm just a college dropout with a library card.
@Upordownitsuptoyou @pj That's interesting - like maybe unseating the big players doesn't need to be the goal at all. Maybe just having a self-organizing community available for folks who want it outside of the mainstream is enough. And maybe for a counterculture to remain relevant it has to stay a counterculture - being mainstream kills the thing that makes it good.
FifiSch@snappyhome @pj Just the forkiverse will never do that. But if the experiment is successful, it can inspire others to start their own little, insular servers. Not just tech podcasts but streamers, sports teams, pop stars., companies, townhalls.
And while Swiftienet might have a vastly different vibe than Dodgersphere, a daughter on swiftienet can still stay connected to her dad on dodgersphere.