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Why not Federation (diaspora, friendica, hubzilla) or Fediverse (mastodon, pleroma)? This seems like an rss feed subscription rather than social network attem

Why not Federation (diaspora, friendica, hubzilla) or Fediverse (mastodon, pleroma)? This seems like an rss feed subscription rather than social network attempt. Personally I love diaspora as it's designed around discoverability - following tags, people define themselves with tags etc. While Fediverse, activity pub etc. are great they are full of holes when it comes to discovery an actual social content. Comments are difficult and non native and navigating tags is nigh on impossible.

alexchamberlain 8y ago
Playing devil's advocate: why not centralisation? Or - better IMHO - why federation?
- drngdds 8y ago
  Twitter and Facebook have shown that giving some huge corporation arbitrary power over a social network is not a good idea. Centralization creates network effects, which make it so that the owners can basically do whatever they want without losing users. Federation largely avoids this problem. If the owner of my Mastodon instance starts doing stuff I don't like, I can switch to a different one or start my own and still interact with all the same people. (Hell, if the developers start doing stuff I don't like, I can even fork it or switch to an alternative program like Pleroma that uses the same protocol.)
lukasLansky 8y ago
Mastodon is perfectly usable for microblogging, and, moreover, it's currently the best usecase for the tool. You can't find partners for conversation as easily as with established platforms with network effects, but you can use it to publish. With Mastodon, you can quickly create account you can send notes, links or images into. This account lives on the open web without registration required. You get Atom feed you can use to re-display the content in any way you want at other sites, or to share the content with people who don't use ActivityPub yet. You get "comments" for free for users willing to get ActivityPub account.

alexchamberlain 8y ago

Playing devil's advocate: why not centralisation? Or - better IMHO - why federation?

drngdds 8y ago
Twitter and Facebook have shown that giving some huge corporation arbitrary power over a social network is not a good idea. Centralization creates network effects, which make it so that the owners can basically do whatever they want without losing users. Federation largely avoids this problem. If the owner of my Mastodon instance starts doing stuff I don't like, I can switch to a different one or start my own and still interact with all the same people. (Hell, if the developers start doing stuff I don't like, I can even fork it or switch to an alternative program like Pleroma that uses the same protocol.)

lukasLansky 8y ago

Mastodon is perfectly usable for microblogging, and, moreover, it's currently the best usecase for the tool. You can't find partners for conversation as easily as with established platforms with network effects, but you can use it to publish. With Mastodon, you can quickly create account you can send notes, links or images into. This account lives on the open web without registration required. You get Atom feed you can use to re-display the content in any way you want at other sites, or to share the content with people who don't use ActivityPub yet. You get "comments" for free for users willing to get ActivityPub account.