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I think there could be some useful purposes for everyone outside of social media: unifying those people, helping them find each other, mobilizing them to take c

I think there could be some useful purposes for everyone outside of social media: unifying those people, helping them find each other, mobilizing them to take community measures. I think it's safe to say that at this point we're not looking for another social network to replace Facebook or another search engine to replace Google - we need to start finding ways to work decentralized but still come together -this is going to come out sounding silly, but - on the Internet's behalf. This could be good. Stuff like #deletefacebook was interesting, but it didn't help people find alternatives. I like that a 'strike' implies group action together toward some kind of progress.

Nextgrid 7y ago
One big issue is that there’s nothing decentralised that currently exists that can rival the quality & user experience of mainstream social networks, and decentralisation comes with its own problems (I personally think the problem with mainstream social media is its ad-based business model and not centralisation). Mastodon (which seems to be the biggest alternative being proposed) is still a joke, even the name and branding sounds awful IMO. And who in their right mind thought calling a post a “toot” (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot) was a good idea. Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable. There are solutions (more like hacks) around this where instance admins can choose not to federate with instances they don’t like the policies of, but it then causes problems for end-users where they can’t communicate with their peers on those banned instances despite all of them being on Mastodon. Good luck explaining to a non-technical person why they can’t talk to/see the posts of certain people despite them all being on Mastodon, and the solution is to spend time choosing an instance with policies you agree with and making sure your friends are on it or on a similar instance that’s not banned by yours, and then hoping the instances stay online without any kind of funding (there’s also no knowledge of whether they would scale to the size of mainstream social networks). The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media. The solution would be to vote with your wallets and fund a better Facebook alternative - it could even show the current social networks that there’s profit to be made treating their users with respect and make the situation better for everyone else too.
- doute 7y ago
  > The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media. That is certainly a problem and something should be addressed. But I don't think it is the root cause. The real tragedy is the lack of understanding that reality happens between the mainstream and the fringe. Most of the technology we like was created in the second half of the 20th century. We have been standing on the shoulders of giant and eventually the giants got old and were replaced by self-serving large tech companies. But since most people are making money, or get things for free, we don't want to recognize that we are their servants. There is no longer any urgency to create something different, because being different means missing out. The reason you have to go to esoteric solutions when talking about something like decentralization is because the Internet is no longer built for it. From authentication, to networks and even the state of ip addresses is less than great. That you can avoid these problem by going to the fringe likely comes from the idea that hackers still have influence. We think that if something doesn't work it can't be our own fault, it most be some conspiracy or inherent limitation, rather a lack in our own understanding and ability to organize. > Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable. Decentralization built on individualism rarely works. Because it leaves the unorganized powerless. It has to be built upon common features used by different cliques were the participants have choice. Maybe most importantly there has to be separation between the platform and the activity.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    > because the Internet is no longer built for it I’d say the Internet is no longer optimised for it because the use-case is no longer possible for the majority of people. You can’t run a server on a phone due to power constraints and yet more and more people are using phones as their only computing device.
    - doute 7y ago
      That is part of it. But the important point is that it is not inherent. There nothing saying that you can't be protocols for that. It is just beyond what the Internet was design for many years ago, and the de facto Internet today include proprietary infrastructure run by large tech companies. But it is generally even worse then that because today smart phone don't have external ip addresses so you can't connect to them even after the initial centralized wake up. So it is an absolute regression as well.
preommr 7y ago
> unifying those people, helping them find each other, So a social media platform for people that don't like current social media platforms?
- kickscondor 7y ago
  Not at all - I participate in the Indieweb and TiddlyWiki communities (and others) outside of social media. Plain old WWW works well - just need to continue building tools to expand it.

Nextgrid 7y ago

One big issue is that there’s nothing decentralised that currently exists that can rival the quality & user experience of mainstream social networks, and decentralisation comes with its own problems (I personally think the problem with mainstream social media is its ad-based business model and not centralisation). Mastodon (which seems to be the biggest alternative being proposed) is still a joke, even the name and branding sounds awful IMO. And who in their right mind thought calling a post a “toot” (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot) was a good idea. Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable. There are solutions (more like hacks) around this where instance admins can choose not to federate with instances they don’t like the policies of, but it then causes problems for end-users where they can’t communicate with their peers on those banned instances despite all of them being on Mastodon. Good luck explaining to a non-technical person why they can’t talk to/see the posts of certain people despite them all being on Mastodon, and the solution is to spend time choosing an instance with policies you agree with and making sure your friends are on it or on a similar instance that’s not banned by yours, and then hoping the instances stay online without any kind of funding (there’s also no knowledge of whether they would scale to the size of mainstream social networks). The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media. The solution would be to vote with your wallets and fund a better Facebook alternative - it could even show the current social networks that there’s profit to be made treating their users with respect and make the situation better for everyone else too.

doute 7y ago
> The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media. That is certainly a problem and something should be addressed. But I don't think it is the root cause. The real tragedy is the lack of understanding that reality happens between the mainstream and the fringe. Most of the technology we like was created in the second half of the 20th century. We have been standing on the shoulders of giant and eventually the giants got old and were replaced by self-serving large tech companies. But since most people are making money, or get things for free, we don't want to recognize that we are their servants. There is no longer any urgency to create something different, because being different means missing out. The reason you have to go to esoteric solutions when talking about something like decentralization is because the Internet is no longer built for it. From authentication, to networks and even the state of ip addresses is less than great. That you can avoid these problem by going to the fringe likely comes from the idea that hackers still have influence. We think that if something doesn't work it can't be our own fault, it most be some conspiracy or inherent limitation, rather a lack in our own understanding and ability to organize. > Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable. Decentralization built on individualism rarely works. Because it leaves the unorganized powerless. It has to be built upon common features used by different cliques were the participants have choice. Maybe most importantly there has to be separation between the platform and the activity.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  > because the Internet is no longer built for it I’d say the Internet is no longer optimised for it because the use-case is no longer possible for the majority of people. You can’t run a server on a phone due to power constraints and yet more and more people are using phones as their only computing device.
  - doute 7y ago
    That is part of it. But the important point is that it is not inherent. There nothing saying that you can't be protocols for that. It is just beyond what the Internet was design for many years ago, and the de facto Internet today include proprietary infrastructure run by large tech companies. But it is generally even worse then that because today smart phone don't have external ip addresses so you can't connect to them even after the initial centralized wake up. So it is an absolute regression as well.

preommr 7y ago

> unifying those people, helping them find each other, So a social media platform for people that don't like current social media platforms?

kickscondor 7y ago
Not at all - I participate in the Indieweb and TiddlyWiki communities (and others) outside of social media. Plain old WWW works well - just need to continue building tools to expand it.