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i realize this might be swinging at the hornet's nest, but i have a genuine question about the Fediverse
cohost.orgsomething that sort of confuses me about the fediverse, conceptually, is the idea that these disparate apps are cross-compatible in some way. like obvs there's mastodon-compatible platforms (pleroma, akkoma, etc) but in general other fediverse (pixelfed, kbin) are either only partially compatible1 or not compatible at all2.
some of this can be easily chalked up to very different modes of interaction3 but if that's the case, why advertise as being part of the fediverse when that's only somewhat true? is it just for Buzzword points?
even some sort of shared identity system4 would do a lot to mitigate this! but if i want to use pixelfed, i need a pixelfed account in addition to my mastodon account. how, other than the general "free software" shit, is this better UX than having an instagram account and a twitter account? if anything, it's maybe kinda worse because twitter and instagram at least don't pretend that they're compatible, and i don't have to pick a Twitter or an Instagram, there's just one and i know that it'll be the same one my friends are on.
i guess a lot of this comes down to: "no one has done an especially good job explaining why the fediverse is better than centralized solutions." i realize i am somewhat biased as someone who runs a centralized solution, but this has been a problem at least since i first made a mastodon account in 2017, and i sure as shit didn't run a centralized platform then.
many of the problems that exist on centralized platforms (content can disappear at any moment, you are at the whims of the admins, etc etc) exist on the fediverse too5, and there aren't a ton of benefits beyond "you can host your own."6
this is not an especially coherent set of thoughts, and it's mostly prompted by me seeing kbin, seeing that it's On The Fediverse, and then learning that it holds zero compatibility with THE primary fediverse application. what's the point of building this beautiful, platform-agnostic platform that's the future of the internet if everything is dependent on their own non-compatible extensions to actually function.
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1. pixelfed posts can be viewed and boosted on mastodon but won't display past the first four images
2. afaict, despite kbin being activitypub based, there is no connection between it and any other activitypub software
3. reddit and twitter are not the same, so platforms cloning one are not going to be especially compatible with others
4. hold on while i reinvent openid
5. first person who says "you can move your account to a different instance!" gets to be the first block on this account. you can't. it's a fiction invented by the mastodon project. "you can export your follower list and force everyone to follow you on a new account" is not account migration. until there is any story for migrating content7, claiming that account migration exists is misguided at best and actively deceitful at worst.
6. i used to disparagingly joke when people were being shitheads "ok bud, go make your own website then. it's easy. [https://runyourown.social] however, now that i've done this for over a year, i can not in good faith suggest anyone else do this. i would only wish "running a social media platform" on my worst enemy, and my worst enemies aren't here for me to clown on them.
7. "but i don't care about migrating content," you might say. that's great for you! you are not the only person who exists and many people do care about that.
The core phrase of the blog post: “no one has done an especially good job explaining why the fediverse is better than centralized solutions”.
Feels to me that it’s all growing pains, we WOULD benefit for a federated auth system instead of an account on every service, and we need lots of bug fixing, i just wish all these social media shitstorms had happened a couple years later and not at this point…
To be precise, this happens for posts between Mastodon and Pleroma too, and it’s how improbability or standards simply is. Take W3C for example, some web sites work on Chromium, some on Firefox, and most on both. Or ProtonMail has its own E2EE scheme but still can communicate with other providers. Or a cars and horses both runs on asphalt and dirt roads, but some configurations do better than the others.
Not sure about Kbin, perhaps due to its immaturity, but group are known to work across implementations specialized for it (count Lemmy in as well), and those focus on microblogging, or both, e.g. Frendica.
The ability to access to the same infrastructure (i.e. fedi or all interconnected roads) even if less efficiently regardless of what one has is important for a society where people are truly free to choose where to live and who to do business with.
Seconded, it would be ideal if implementations are views of the network from the same endpoint. It would require an overspecifying protocol like Matrix instead of underspecifying like ActivityPub or XMPP for a backend to get hold of all necessary data, but that comes with the cost of making optimizations (which require context) incredibly difficult, e.g. in case of PeerTube. IMHO it’s not something reasonably achievable, but technology is just part of the equation:
(As an outsider I don’t see any functional difference between Twitter and Instagram, but let’s say it’s Facebook vs Spotify), as stated you won’t have to choose between the N friends on X and M friends on Y. Though it might be harder to communicate with those on Y if you’re on X, it’s better than abandoning them. It’s better, yet entirely optional, to be on both.
More importantly, improbability is future proof. New and presumably doper shits come along and share the same large user base. Old shits can stick around and people their can still connect. No more reliance on network effect and oligopolistic power to force feed ads, mass surveil, manipulate or roll out predatory pricing. Sure, not everyone can make use of the same features, even if that has any significance, socializing ranks higher in the priority list.
Ditto, although it’s beneficial to view it in a different angle. Self-hostable isn’t just about everyone can just spawn up a server. That’s just P2P communication when it comes to social networking. Federation is more than that: though fediblock is a thing, being able to choose your alliance means you can have an admin respecting you and being able to connect with people with different associations, all while minimizing maintenance effort.
Decentralized system also means socially decentralized redundancy, which allows for data preservation even when intentionally removed (by a third party; right to be forgotten is another issue which requires cooperation on data handling;-)
Agreed. Just let’s not make perfect be the enemy of good. Not saying there’ll every be practical data migration across service providers, given the immense amount of moderation backlog when lack of personal trust from the admin; only wanna point out no centralized service even allow migrating one’s network.