- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Recent moves by Eugen Rochko (known as Gargron on fedi), the CEO of Mastodon-the-non-profit and lead developer of Mastodon-the-software, got some people worried about the outsized influence Mastodon (the software project and the non-profit) has on the rest of the Fediverse.
Good. We should be worried.
Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole Fediverse, on a single instance. Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software.
This has poor consequences now, and it might have worse consequences later. What also really bothers me is that I have seen some of this before.
I go on to dive a bit into the history of StatusNet (the software), OStatus (the protocol), and identi.ca (the biggest instance) on a decentralized social network “grandparent” of the Fediverse.
And draw an analogy to show why mastodon.social’s size, and Mastodon-the-software-project’s influence on broader fedi is a serious risk we need to do something about.
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the issue of “too big to block” is an interesting problem for federation that i’ve seen no particularly good answers to yet (probably because it hasn’t really been an issue up until recently). feels like there’s a tightrope act nobody’s mastered yet of balancing the desire to be where everyone is with the need to keep the whole system decentralized, while simultaneously ensuring everything can both interoperate as needed and moderate as needed without tearing the system apart.
My understanding is that mastodon.social is actually blocked by a fair few instances. Sometimes for the sole reason that it’s simply too big for effective moderation to occur.
It seems natural that the fediverse evolves toward a big centre with lot’s of small instances on the fringe that are more bubbly/fragmented in their connectivity … just like cities.
@rysiek Maybe we could suggest server alternatives to people that complain about stuff.
e.g.: when someone says “hey, Mastodon is cool but I wish I could have quote-toots etc.” we could say “hey, come to libranet.de, we have this, but also that&this&etc. And you can get to keep your followers and follows”
Yup. The problem is that these users will have trouble understanding how can it be “Mastodon” without being Mastodon, if you get my drift. Plus, ideally this would also be done by Mastodon-the-software project — “if you want functionality X, check out instances of this compatible-but-different software project.”
But absolutely, doing so yourself in such cases makes perfect sense.
If it is about minimal differences like quotes, Calckey might be a closer alternative than Friendica. I get your point though.
@Peter1986C or a calckey server for that matter. Doesn’t really matter 😁
@rysiek Yeah, people on Mastodon don’t do enough to advertise other Fediverse platforms. I’ve had an account for years and I didn’t even realize that stuff like Pixelfed exists until recently and I definitely didn’t know that these platforms could interop.
I agree with the OP but I think to say:
people on Mastodon don’t do enough to advertise other Fediverse platforms
is the equivalent of saying, “people on reddit don’t do enough to advertise lemmy.” It’s an illogical jump. People on mastodon aren’t there to talk about mastodon or the fediverse (although some do). It would be best to say other fediverse platforms need to work on their marketing and spreading awareness. Every chance I get I’m posting on reddit about lemmy, without trying to look like shill/spammer, because I want this platform to grow.
I wouldn’t blame redditors for not mentioning lemmy in an attempt to spread awareness.
Good points. Refreshing to have some good critical thinking skills on display.
people on Mastodon don’t do enough to advertise other Fediverse platforms
is the equivalent of saying, “people on reddit don’t do enough to advertise lemmy.” It’s an illogical jump.
But… it is not. Reddit cannot talk to Lemmy, they are not part of the same network, they do not federate.
A better analogy would be “people on GMail don’t do enough to advertise other e-mail providers”, and while the rest of your argument might hold somewhat, it’s quite a different ballgame.
One of the important differences is that at least some people using GMail must be aware that it would make sense to keep the broader ecosystem — e-mail — healthy, and an important step towards this is having a plurality of e-mail providers.
No such consideration even makes sense in the Reddit/Lemmy case.
One of the important differences is that at least some people using GMail must be aware that it would make sense to keep the broader ecosystem — e-mail — healthy, and an important step towards this is having a plurality of e-mail providers.
federation is also broader in this case than email, and has services that can emulate basically all of the major social media platforms of today—presumably it would be advantageous for there to be other active federated platforms, because then people can substitute more of their social media presence out
A better analogy would be “people on GMail don’t do enough to advertise other e-mail providers”
100% agree with you.
But to continue with the email analogy, it still wouldn’t make sense to ask gmail users to spread awareness of ProtonMail if they’re unaware of its benefits or that it even exists.
I would say it’s up to the other ActivityPub clients to promote and spread awareness - by whatever means are accessible to them (the devs and its users) - to ensure the message gets out.
@rysiek @KLISHDFSDF I’m also confused as to how marketing would work here, considering that there’s no algorithm and I’m probably not following any of the hashtags they’d be using. It’d pretty much have to be a grass roots effort by Mastodon users, would it not? Or the platform itself would have to inform users that these other platforms both exist and can interop with Mastodon.
One simple way to start is for UIs (Web UIs, mobile apps, etc) to display information (a simple icon woud suffice) on what instance type a given account is on when displaying posts. That already would show the diversity.
Some instance software projects do that already, I believe Friendica does for example.
Calckey does that, too!
🥳
@rysiek Hm, I do like that idea. A well-placed icon that links to the platform could intrigue people and entice them to check it out.
Exactly. And at the same time would not be obstructive nor “in-your-face”.
…display information (a simple icon woud suffice) on what instance type a given account is on…
By “instance type” do you mean Lemmy, Mastodon, Friendica, etc?
Awesome post! Another thing I might add is if you’re able and wanting you should make your own fedi server. It’s always better to add a little more capacity to this machine. If you were to do it with less used software (like lemmy) I feel like that would help the fediverse out a ton.
Yeah. I’ve also seen a lot of people point out that he’s kind of hijacking the whole networks branding with “mastodon” too. Because it’s not mastodon, it’s activitypub, the protocol and the network is activitypub, which one can use via an array of apps and clents and servers. But he acts like the whole is just his mastodon, mastodon, and mastodon.
