Mastodawn

The current fediverse is an evolutionary dead-end for 2 reasons:

1. It has painted itself in a small niche of decentralizing typical social media use cases, by means of post-facto interop and the introduction of protocol decay.

2. Lacking a proper grassroots standardization process, and with the primary mechanism for fediverse extension being only post-facto interoperability, there is no way out.

Congratulations to the early adopters, who managed to "cross the chasm" with their own app platforms. It took true grit to become deep #ActivityPub experts, and plug holes needed for your app, but you have made it. Post-facto interop works in your favor now. You are unrestrained to productively add more features in your app, and put them on the fedi wire for others to deal with.

To avoid fedi to become less and less attractive to newcomers, we must now consider:

“Why do we want to grow the open social web, and for whom?” -- @ben

http://coding.social/blog/shared-ownership/

Shared responsible social web ownership

We strive for an inclusive social web that is by the people and for the people. But how do we guarantee equity and shared ownership?

Social coding commons

100% agree.

I sometimes feel that I must be crazy, and totally off the mark, as I - and luckily others with me - are saying these things for 7 years now. But it somehow hits a wall of inertia.

It is this inertia in itself, that has started fascinating me the last 2 years, and it is the reason why https://coding.social exists. We have to figure out how to deal with the grassroots social dynamics such that healthy long-term sustainable standards, ecosystems, and online environments emerge and further evolve.

Long ago I took notes on some major challenges that in my opinion hold back the fediverse from becoming The Future of Social Networking. These are all mostly social in nature, and are as relevant today as they were then. But this is also just imho. 😬

https://discuss.coding.social/t/major-challenges-for-the-fediverse/67

Joyful creation for the Social web

We reimagine the social web and cocreate a peopleverse.

Social coding commons

Show thread

Emelia Feb 21

@[email protected] oh definitely, and like, I think part of that is down to the fact that W3C received the first version of each of the specs and went "that's good enough for 10 years", when there were so many unaddressed and incomplete aspects of these specs. The fact that there wasn't actually authn/authz in the original specs should have kept the WG open until that was resolved. Without it, half the spec was basically pointless.

I really hope the activitypub ecosystem can escape the inertia of the existing network and architecture that is widely deployed today. I've said a few times that Mastodon's threat isn't Bluesky, no, it's the next generation ActivityPub app that does microblogging well but built with C2S. That's what will unseat Mastodon from it's dominant position, not a social app on a different protocol that has different features.

Show thread

🫧 socialcoding..Feb 21

@thisismissem

And this time I am the one responding that I 100% wholeheartedly agree with that. Thank you.

(PS. I wouldn't describe it as "unseating" where it comes to the position of Mastodon. This would bring Mastodon in a better position too.. "uplifting"?)

Show thread

Emelia Feb 21

@[email protected] I say unseating, as in, this sort of significant shift in architecture would like be appealing to people who want to use multiple social apps. The cracks would immediately be visible to everyone with the current social app vertical architecture of the fediverse.

Sure, it'd be more microblogging, which is good for Mastodon, but people on Mastodon wanting to use other apps would feel annoyed and want to migrate to gain access to more applications in the ecosystem — where as right now the choice is to migrate from one vertical platform to another vertical platform, which isn't really beneficial to most people.

I think @[email protected] will likely be the person to build the first "killer" C2S app.

Show thread

🫧 socialcoding..Feb 21

@thisismissem @cheeaun

Yes, I agree.

I think the important thing is that we get in a position where the ecosystem as a whole is able to make rational technology decisions that make the most sense and which fulfill clear objectives. But in order to be able to do that we first have to have a clear picture of where we are today, what we have established, where pain points are, and where we want to be tomorrow. Then work strategically along a shared (technnology) vision on ecosystem level, top-down. While individual developers drive experiment and introduce technology innnovations to be incorporated, bottom up.

Who dares imagine the fediverse of 5 years in the future. Or 10. Or ...

Who dares to #ReimagineSocialNetworking?

Show thread

Emelia Feb 21

@[email protected] I think something that is going to be really interesting to explore is that with ActivityPub C2S, it may make sense for there to be aggregator services, which fulfil a role much like "relays" in AT Protocol — essentially a big fat pipe for applications to aggregate data from all their accounts from many individual data servers.

There may even be a need to have a way to have an application when writing an activity to the data server, to be able to say "also deliver this to the relay as a bcc/bto" (a relay could just be an inbox/outbox setup).

Show thread

🫧 socialcoding..Feb 21

@thisismissem

Yes, a whole range of new architecture patterns come within reach. The whole notion of services (and I don't mean as:Service actors) leads into new territories. A service-oriented fedi, or the fediverse of apps & services to not exclude anyone. Services that compose, orchestrate, and choreograph into solutions that serve people's needs. Consumed as social experiences that are entwined into the social web.

That is what Social experience design (SX) is targeting. The combination of:

1. Sustainable free software development
2. Of the future of the social web
3. Taking into account grassroots environment

And where the commons gradually build the foundation upon which it stands, and each of the 3 points above are continually improved.

The old book "SOA Design Patterns" from the good old XML days, still has a completely up-to-date pattern library to guide us along..

https://dzone.com/refcardz/soa-patterns

SOA Patterns - DZone Refcards

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) patterns describe common architectures, implementations, and their areas of application to help in the planning, implementation, deployment, operation, and ongoing management and maintenance of complex systems. The patterns in this DZone Refcard are classified into four major groups, and listed in alphabetical order within each group. Each pattern includes a Pattern name, Icon, Summary, Problem, Solution, Application, Diagram, Results, and Examples. This Refcard also covers SOA Fundamentals, Pattern Language, Basic Service Patterns, Architectural Patterns, Compound Patterns, and more.

dzone.com

Show thread

Chao-c'Feb 24

@smallcircles "grassroots social dynamics" may be actually digital NIMBY movement against targeted advertising and AI... :-)
@thisismissem

Show thread

🫧 socialcoding..Feb 24

@xChaos @thisismissem

I've been a long-time advocate for #HumaneTechnology. Social coding commons adds something to that to become "humane and harmonious technology". Humane by default. #Humanity is an intrinsic value of the movement. And harmonious by #SocialCoding. Coding is social, and first of all deals with people coordinating to find solutions that align with and satisfy stakeholder needs. Coding happens somewhere in the process, an impl detail.

A core principle of Social experience design is Sustainability, which is holistic in nature via the (adapted) Circles of Sustainability model. https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#circles-of-sustainability

With this in place a #SX software solution will cycle through its Free software development lifecycle i.e. #FSDL, which drives a tailored development based on needs and lifecycle phase. https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#free-software-development-lifecycle

Together this completely avoids a pure technology-driven development, ensuring Needs-driven development, and a natural NIMBY of inhumane technology and practices.

How We Reimagine the Social Web

We find novel ways to collaborate and create value together.

Social coding commons

Show thread

Chao-c'Feb 24

@smallcircles well, but what are "human needs"? I definitely like to avoid advertisements, but at the same time I am curious and I seek new things. And humans must be motivated to share news things... applause is great motivation, but is it enough? And we need real audience, not AI bot audience....

Maybe nerd needs are not exactly human needs, in the first place...

Also, some people tend to do thing just because they want to show they can.

And also you can optimize for as little technology as possible, or for as "optimal" technology as possible.

Currently, I am not so much concerned about future of ActivityPub, which is currently adequate, as it seems.

Running my own small instance is challenging, because resources are limited and I immediately see, that focusing on fundraising and controlling more resources is not the way.

I run state-of-the art Mastodon, maintained and updated by someone who is better admin, but I rather focus on tuning it. I play with tootctl statuses, found some undocumented features (this is not very human focused, to not document useful features).

Currently I would like to fine-tune lifetime of statuses in federated cache, which are without any interactions. Algorithm may be needed, because some accounts are automated and hyper active and flood the cache with tons of content (and someone on your instance is always going to follow them).

Domain-wide bans may or may not be the solution. What I am thinking about is domain-specific or even-account specific lifetime of statuses without interaction. This would save resources. Saving resources is in the end eco-centric.

Is my approach technology-centric or human-centric? Well, I want to compete for attention of humans with machines, designed to entertain them....

@thisismissem

Show thread

🫧 socialcoding..Feb 24

@xChaos @thisismissem

Beyond basic needs, saying 'human needs' is a generalization. It's better to go from personal needs. #SX starts from individual needs and builds from there to take needs of all relevant stakeholders into account as they are identified during the lifecycle and evolution of a solution. Along the way there are perspective shifts, e.g. from personal needs to inter-personal relationships. See: https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#pyramid-of-perspective

If you start a software project, it is perfectly fine to consider yourself the only stakeholder. E.g. if you code just for you, as a hobby, and for the joy of coding.

If you make it #FOSS and publish to a code forge, you make a certain commitment to a new stakeholder, the FOSS developer, concering software freedoms. But not more than that, unless you explicitly commit yourself, and to the extent in which there is a mutual understanding what people can expect from you.

Then yes its human-centric. More importantly it aligns with needs, offers a solution.

How We Reimagine the Social Web

We find novel ways to collaborate and create value together.

Social coding commons