Here we go!
Since FediCon last year I try to do a livestream of the fedi events I go to. This is the start of the FediMTL livestream.
Let's see how well I can keep this up 😅
FediMTL streaming tickets still available! 50% off for fedi friends with code SWF50 😊
For the latest updates about FediMTL, follow @[email protected]
For all the chatter on all things FediMTL beyond what I post here in-thread, follow @fedimtl which automatically boosts anything with the #FediMTL hashtag!
Met up with @[email protected] for a mini Longformers reunion ✍️
Lots of discussion about Writefreely, NodeBB, WordPress, Ghost, contexts, group federation, and much more.
The venue, Le Ministère, is an intimate concert venue housed in a former bank.
Super cool! The closest thing we have to that at home is a former bank turned shawarma joint. Still neat, but not the same 😏
@[email protected] starting off with hard truths about how Canada sucks at regulating American tech
@[email protected] answering a question about Threads defederation, noting that it is "reactionary", and that the ones you hurt are the users, the "normie friends" you want to talk to.
The act of defederating from threads assumes that the people on Threads are the problem, not the fact that it's owned by Meta. (says Cory)
Q: How can/should Canadian technologists sell escape hatches to other companies?
A: Cory reminding us about John Deere DRM'd tractors. John Deere bricked hundreds of tractors taken from the Ukraine by the Russians to Chechnya.
Cool from a cyberpunk POV but absolutely chilling when you realize that Trump tomorrow could order John Deere to trigger kill switches on every one of their tractors operating in Canada. (says Cory)
Q: is it better to pick a fight with big tech, or is it better to build open alternatives?
Cory:
Reflecting on her article about How Decentralized Bluesky is, and asking introspectively whether ActivityPub can win big in the wake of ATProto's surging popularity.
Drawing parallels to Lisp vs UNIX.
"The fediverse has a lot of people who care about the ethics of the technology — we need to run with that."
@[email protected] on Age Verification
@[email protected] is doing another live stream in parallel here:
https://mastodon.social/@box464/116125983228506874
I won't be able to talk about my own talk in real time, so check out that stream too!
Q: how should we grow the fediverse?
A: we should worry less about growth, and more about empowerment of the end user
@[email protected] "I am pro fediverse but I am more pro empowerment... The majority of people on the fediverse were somewhere else first. Then something bad happened."
A breakdown into how content creation is funded.
(The secret funding source is Patreon btw)
@[email protected] discussing how Canadian Civil is using Ghost to build their own Patreon alternative.
Back from lunch I regret to inform that I am not able to provide a good commentary on @[email protected]'s presentation as I only barely passed Grade 9 French. 🥲
Next up, @[email protected] talking about building community on the social web!
Fun fact, this was also the original title of my talk, but Saskia beat me to it!
@[email protected] about to lay on some hard truths about what normies think of the fediverse
@[email protected] going through many of the apps they've built for projects, institutions, papers, etc.
They all share a common thread, none of them talk about the fediverse, ActivityPub, Mastodon, Bonfire, etc.
They all also have split DMs away from the public feed. Heh 😏
After travel delays, @[email protected] has made it to FediMTL!
Wait, this presentation isn't about the fête d'hiver?
@[email protected] asks for a show of hands of people who have quit a social network and later gone back.
More than a few hands go up.
"And this is in a room of people who are really good at quitting social networks... and making their own"
Oh hey look!
Evan reporting 43k+ independent servers operating as of today.
These open source projects get those larger organizations on to the fediverse.
Oh here's a hot take.
"To a large extent, media still thinks corporate social media matters, even if they were kicked off of X or Facebook" (paraphrased)
@[email protected] being asked what types of fediverse apps he's excited about, considering that there is a lot of "this is xyz but federated"
Shoutouts to @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] (Emissary!)
Forums and threadiverse apps got shoutouts ad well.
A quick reflection over the realization that @[email protected]'s channels are made up of the very same building blocks that power categorisation efforts on ActivityPub.Space » collecting and curating hashtagged content
What's the term for that again, convergent evolution?
2.19K Posts, 210 Following, 3.73K Followers · We're the Newsmast Foundation, the UK’s top decentralised social focused charity. We’re a group of former media people, scientists and technologists supporting open social media for the growth of knowledge 🔭 Say hi 👋 Our small team is here for the 09:00-17:00, Monday to Friday GMT
Everything on the table:
I should do this, but have been waiting because I *really* want to self-host the main #Emissary and #Bandwagon accounts on my own software.
Right now, Emissary is a great PUBLISHER and READER, but it does a poor job with DMs. So I couldn’t really use Emissary to support questions like this one.
It’s been on my roadmap for a while, and it’s why I’m excited to build #e2ee DMs, too.
But I do plan to launch these as soon as I have a good solution for DMs.
fwiw @[email protected] I had the same thoughts go through my head. I literally had no concept of reduced visibility content in NodeBB, so trying to find a parallel was hard.
In the end I launched without support for non-public content and I'll always wonder what I missed out on 😅
Then one night randomly I had a brainwave that reduced visibility content mapped more or less to NodeBB chats, and that was that.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. In my case think of Emissaey as a super charged RSS reader and you’re half way there.
So DMs work great if you’re someone I already follow (like an RSS news source). But it actively discards messages from unknown senders. That’s great for limiting spam and trolls, but a non-starter for supporting real DMs.
Right now, I’m👌🏻 this close to making it work correctly, so I need to see it through.
If Emissary becomes the platform for publishers (music, art, blogs) then DMs will need to work differently - almost like a CRM, where publishers can field questions and keep track of which “tickets” are still open.
I have some designs for this already, and will be working that into a unified messenger.
I just need a little more time 😭
@julian Some great thoughts to chew on there.
Particularly with my current paper-in-progress being all about crafting your message for the audience.
Now churning away on how to choose the words in the vocabulary of municipal governance. Neither "fediverse" nor "open web" is a hook for them ... but they are coming to understand what "Open Data" means. They also have a view of what "social media" is, but WE don't want to use that, as we're trying to differentiate. What, then?
julian
davidro
wakest likes your bugs ⁂
Ben Pate 🤘🏻
Johanna, CanCon variety
The Void ザ・ヴォイド