ludrol
Ruth MottramBoy I was wrong about the Fediverse https://matduggan.com/boy-i-was-wrong-about-the-fediverse/
Jeppe Bundsgaard på Mastodon@Ruth_Mottram hold da op det var sjovt og sandt. Vi lever lige nu i genopkomsten af alt det smukke almindelige mennesker skaber sammen hvis ikke de smadres af rige, amoralske umennesker.
Jill ☁️@Ruth_Mottram I've got goosebumps at the end.👏
(Don't get the picture of the building though, is there a caption for it that I might be missing?)
Søren Have@jill The building is the official residence of the Danish prime minister. Most prime ministers live in their normal homes though, but it is used for official meetings.
Ulrike Hahn@Ruth_Mottram @everton137 the only bit I’d take issue with in the article is the comment about the brokenness of search - I think that’s actually functionally connected to what has made the fediverse what it is (I’m aware that’s a controversial position)
everton137@UlrikeHahn I'm going to read it, but I see an issue with the title.
Strypey@UlrikeHahn
> search - I think that’s actually functionally connected to what has made the fediverse what it is
100%, see my reply to @jbenjamint elsewhere in the thread. That said, I think search here could be better, and has actually improved somewhat since Eternal November began. Eg I'd love to be able to do granular search for posts with both #hashtag + #OtherHashtag, or only my posts with #hashtag, or only @robin's posts with #hastag.
Morten@Ruth_Mottram .
> Now you can be wildly sickeningly successful with morals but you cannot reach that absolute zenith of shareholder value. Either you accept a lower share price and don’t commit atrocities or you become evil. There is no third option.
I need an emoji with a much wider grin
Primož 🌳> To thrive in capitalism one must be amoral.
That! Sums up exactly the mess we're in.
@PrimozR @Ruth_Mottram Mat is also right about search. I can't find them on Mastodon.
🐕@Ruth_Mottram thanks for sharing. It made me think of Steve Bannon's saying "the real opposition is the media, and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit".
I don't know if the fediverse is entirely shit-flood resistant, but fingers crossed it is better designed for that battle than other media.
Edit: typo
@jbenjamint
> I don't know if the fediverse is entirely shit-flood resistant, but fingers crossed it is better designed for that battle than other media
It certainly is, see my comments elsewhere in the thread about the contrast between the fediverse (ActivityPub) and BlueSky (ATProto). There's no shady recommendation algorithms, but also no global firehose, so if something "goes viral", it's because loads of human beings decided together that it's important enough to share.
Kaare Mikkelsen@Ruth_Mottram i would like to follow mat in here. Anyone know how?
Christo. London, EnglandMe too does anyone know his mastodon name?
Guido
7heo@guido @Christo_459 @matdevdug @miturian @Ruth_Mottram
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you search for users on mastodon. 😂
GunChleoc@7heo Human algorithm 😁
Ciara@Ruth_Mottram Great piece. Thanks for sharing it.
Niclas Overby ⓃThis is plain wrong: "There's no actual plan to self-host Bluesky. Their protocol makes it easier to scale their service. That's why it was written and that's what it does."
Atproto is built for self‑hosting and it isn't limited to PDSs as it also supports self‑hosted relays and app‑views.
Writing this from @[email protected]
@overby.me It is only just now that we are getting black sky and euro sky has followed. No one was successful in creating a new instance before that. And black sky got a bunch of help from blue sky because there was too much not documented about how it worked 🤷
(1/2)
@overby.me
> Atproto is built for self‑hosting and it isn't limited to PDSs as it also supports self‑hosted relays and app‑views
Have you tried hosting a Relay? One that could theoretically replace BlueSky's if they died or went EvilCorp?
Great, now try it when there are a billion people with a PDS trying to squeeze posts through it, from whatever AppView. It can't scale. As @matdevdug says, the protocol just isn't designed for that, see;
(2/2)
ActivityPub solves this by not trying to maintain a global firehose. Your view of the network is your local view of the network, just like in your body, your view of the world is your view of the world.
The only way to get a global firehose POV from a body is to take heroic doses of entheogenic drugs, and while that can be insightful, it's not something you want to do too often. So it is online.
JackThere's a lot of independent relays now:
see pulsar.feeds.blue for a detailed list
firehose.network
there are multiple implementations of it if you don't want to even touch Bluesky's code, see github.com/blacksky-alg... (Rust)
I just saw a relay written in zig 🙃
zlay.waow.tech by @[email protected]
@jackvalinsky.com
> There's a lot of independent relays now
I'm aware. See the second part of the post you're replying to. AFAIK this only started to happen after BS wrote a new Relay implementation, which doesn't provide the full global firehose, so it doesn't require VC money or corporate-scale capital to afford hosting. But it also doesn't fully replace the BS Relay. I presume the zig Relay implementation does the same.
(1/2)
As @matdevdug said, this helps BS scale their platform, like the self-hosting of PDS does, but it doesn't make them any less central to the infrastructure of the network. Although it certainly helps them with their openwashing.
(2/2)
0xDECAFBAD@overby.me Was just waiting for the Bluesky white knights to ride to the rescue, and right by the whole point of the article lol
Don Hawkins - W7DAH@overby.me Is bluesky managed by a crypto exec? Will bluesky offer a “subscription” option eventually? These are not traits I seek in a social network, myself. I’m gravitating back to a blog & a newsreader, I think. That & my Seattle Times subscription. Beyond that a total “ignore” of the “inter-webs”. Fukital. It was a good ride while it lasted.
Albert CardonaI'm so glad someone put this into words:
"Bluesky had a bunch of “stuff” but they’re trying to capture that 2008 Twitter lightning in a bottle which is a giant waste of time. We’re never going to go back to pretending that tweeting at politicians does anything and everyone there is desperately trying to build a “brand” as the funny one or whatever. I want news I don’t want your endless meta commentary on the news."
The description of Threads got a good chuckle:
"Threads was worthless because it’s the most boring social media website ever imagined. It’s a social media network designed by brands for brands, like if someone made a cable channel that was just advertisements and meta commentary about the advertisements you just saw. Billions of dollars at their disposal and Meta made a hot new social media network with the appeal of junk mail."
The #fediverse, and hence Mastodon, as the real deal:
"Actual human beings were able to find each other and ask direct questions without this giant mountain of bullshit engagement piled on top of it."
I'm all for it.
On the #fediverse :
"I never expected to find my news from strangers on a federated social network that half the internet has never heard of. I never expected a lot of things. But there's something quietly beautiful about a place where people just... share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, no algorithm nudging you toward rage. Just someone who spent twenty years studying Arctic policy posting a thread at 2 AM because they think you should understand what's happening. It's the internet I was promised in 1996. It only took thirty years and the complete collapse of American journalism to get here."
I did, because I was part of that early internet. So glad it's back, and made by us, again, and not corporations.
Christine Johnson“that half the internet has never heard of”.
Unbelievable.
I’m sure WAY more than half the internet has never heard of the #fediverse.
@christinkallama @Ruth_Mottram
Perhaps thankfully.
Eggs now in different baskets.@albertcardona @Ruth_Mottram "Here" reminds me of IRC and newsgroups plus the websites of the early 1990s.
@albertcardona
> I'm so glad someone put this into words
I like these ones even better;
"There's no actual plan to self-host Bluesky. Their protocol makes it easier to scale their service. That's why it was written and that's what it does. End of story."
@matdevdug, 2026
https://matduggan.com/boy-i-was-wrong-about-the-fediverse/
Exactly! Titter's motive for funding BS was like corporate participation in Open Source, it's about externalising their costs to the community not participating in a commons.
Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂@Ruth_Mottram what a fantastic post, wow!!! I got goosebumps at the end... and I was so happy to see my Fedi photo in use ❤️
Sap@Ruth_Mottram
'I prefer my narcissism farm to table' 😆
'I prefer my narcissism farm to table' 😆
groxx@Ruth_Mottram source looks like: https://c.im/@matdevdug/116183052079063047
matdevdug (@[email protected])
I wrote about the #fediverse and how I was wrong about its value in 2026 https://matduggan.com/boy-i-was-wrong-about-the-fediverse/
"Musty Bits" McGee@Ruth_Mottram @matdevdug Mat on fire again! Great post!
Thank you for sharing this article. It was a pleasure to read.
Leander Lindahl 🇪🇺@Ruth_Mottram its really weird that DR (Danmarks Radio) still aren't in the Fediverse.
@leanderlindahl @Ruth_Mottram how do we make it happen?
@elena @Ruth_Mottram I have no idea. Maybe @jeppe or @SuneAuken has an idea? Or at least an idea of who else from Denmark could be tagged. Surely someone must know people at DR.
@leanderlindahl @elena @Ruth_Mottram @SuneAuken
Tak for tilliden :-). Vi har jo prøvet både med læserbreve og henvenelser, og #DanmarkSkifter kom igennem bolværket med nedenstående nyhed. Men næste skridt - at de tager ansvar som den grundlæggende demokratiske institution de er, ser det ud til vi må vente længe på. Men bedste bud er nok at @metteh og #Danmarkskifter lykkes med at få sagen så langt op på mediedagsordnen, at DR tænker at de måske skal gå forrest :-).
@jeppe
Tack för svaret. Jag tänker att det borde vara i DRs intresse att finnas på en tjänst de själva kontrollerar (förutom webbsidan) för att kunna fullgöra sin uppgift att informera allmänheten i händelse av kris eller krig.
Sune Auken
Fedo ¶@elena @leanderlindahl @Ruth_Mottram maybe nothing? I mean, as we are used to see official accounts of companies and brands online because that is somehow rewarding for them, we should jus accept a messy network like the Fediverse just isn’t the place for that, and maybe for the better
Open Risk"no algorithm nudging you toward rage"
Umm, not so sure about that part.
The fediverse is full of "rage", some of it reflecting what is happening in the world but a lot of it performative, I suspect simply nudged on by the *implicit* algorithm of posting, boosting, see and be seen etc. To the point that mastodon had to introduce the "think before you comment" UI.
But it is indeed from this base that we need to think forward towards more meaningful social media.
@openrisk
> The fediverse is full of "rage", some of it reflecting what is happening in the world but a lot of it performative
... and mostly imported from Titter or other DataFarms. I've been here long enough to have seen at least 5-6 distinct waves of arrivals from those shores (at least 3 from Titter itself, Eternal November being only the last) and the pattern is always the same. Once they're been here for a while they either calm down, or bugger off someone more ragebaity.
Toni Aittoniemi@Ruth_Mottram Ain’t that the truth.
Capitalism pretends to be for the everyman only as long as the growth gives them more than us.
But as soon as that growth stops, they start the squeeze but keep pretending they’re still for what they bought our trust with to start with.
Schlaf ist unterbewertet@Ruth_Mottram Great text by @matdevdug!
Zack@Ruth_Mottram
Boy your post is sharp!
It's not a manifesto, not a strategic conversion, not an "aha moment" before adopting the Fedi you're sharing - it's a post-hoc realization. Like when you're in the water and suddenly notice it's the perfect temperature : embodied knowledge!
The argument for the Fediverse might never come from protocol debates or ideological manifestos, but from these accumulated moments where people realize something just works.
Thanks for sharing, it gave me chills !
dotmavriq@Ruth_Mottram Enjoyed the Saturday read. Thank you!