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.