12 ms·

Fediverse in 2020

168 points by buovjaga 6y ago

sdfjkl 6y ago
> 502 Bad Gateway https://web.archive.org/web/20210102052512/https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-in-2020/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210102052512/https://fediverse...
- lawrencevillain 6y ago
  How do things like this make it to the top of HN? I know it's unrelated, but I'm curious, is it due to the users post history? I mean within 15 minutes of posting it was down, and it already had 50 upvotes?
  - berkes 6y ago
    Why do think it should not make it to the top? (Edit: parent comment sounded as if it didn't think the article deserves to be on frontpage HN. re-reading, I see that I might have misread it: sorry in that case)
    - cool_dude85 6y ago
      Probably cause you can't click on the article and read it.
      - berkes 6y ago
        In that case, cause-effect is turned around: it went down because it hit the frontpage. --- I've had some of my blogpost hit FP of HN: the traffic spike then is huge; HN feed is widely spread over internet. Hours after FP I started getting referers RSS readers, intranets, reposters etc. Running a static file blog, my €5.00/month shared vps hardly missed a beat with the traffic spike; but it's so big that "going down" is pretty normal for anything "dynamic" I presume.
    - asutekku 6y ago
      Why should a link that does not function go to the top?
      - atoav 6y ago
        Because often the HN-Hug-of-Death means that a link only stops to function after having reached the top?
  - sbierwagen 6y ago
    People upvoting based on the title, without clicking on the link.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  it's back up
cccc4all 6y ago
The technical implementations seem interesting. But, who scrubs the toilets in this social network? Who does the boring, dirty jobs required to clean up after users?
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  I host a single user instance, so I do the clean up which is none at all.
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    Same. I've got a couple thousand users, and on average get a moderation request every other month or so.
    - ibeckermayer 6y ago
      Are you liable for illicit content being cached on your server? Like say a user on a server you’re federated with posts child porn, can you be criminally liable if it’s unknowingly downloaded onto the instance you host?
      - kstrauser 6y ago
        I'd say that varies by country, but section 230 of the CDA [0] would seem to say that Americans are generally OK: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Wikipedia expounds to say: "The statute in Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith." My understanding is that you (if you're American) would be OK as long as you're not the source of it and that it's incidental to your operations, like your intent is to make a message board for normal conversational stuff and it's not called "Totally Not Child Porn Wink Wink.com". One nice feature of Mastodon in particular is that you can configure it not to cache content from specific servers. I use that to avoid hosting images from particular servers that specialize in stuff with a high "ick factor". If a use really wants to follow users on those servers, they can, but then that server is the one serving images to my user, not me. I like that setup. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
fsflover 6y ago
See also the statistics here: https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/.
- eitland 6y ago
  Users do. And since this isn't an attempt to squeeze out money from users there is little need to let users that mods find toxic stick around and it is also OK to slightly raise the bar (some instances ask you questions to verify that you are local or know the local language or something, something Facebook and Twitter could never do.) Also users that are kicked can either create their own instance or find anlther were they are welcome.
  - warkdarrior 6y ago
    > some instances ask you questions to verify that you are local or know the local language or something, something Facebook and Twitter could never do Some neighborhood groups on Facebook do ask you hyperlocal questions before you can join. It's up to the moderators to decide the joining criteria.
    - eitland 6y ago
      Wow, I try to avoid Facebook so I didn't know. Thanks!
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    The facebook groups I was in were pretty well moderated, and also asked questions before allowing you to join. I would even say that I had better experience asking for help with things on my facebook groups than Reddit.
bob29 6y ago
The Fediverse is an interesting social experiment testing the hypothesis of whether the ad revenue/profit motive of twitter, and the subsequent algorithms that maximize engagement, are the primary source of toxicity and other negative qualities of social media that have been documented recently (social dilemma et al) Interestingly, the* (see edit) Fediverse data point seems to show that really none of Twitter's problems are solved when its the user's paying and admining the servers themselves. EDIT: only my conclusion based on personal experience and expectations, encourage anyone to look for themselves
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Interestingly, the Fediverse data point seems to show that really none of Twitter's problems are solved when its the user's paying and admining the servers themselves. It doesn't really tell you that until it becomes a more dominant form of social media. Otherwise most of the users there are also users of Twitter and Facebook, where they go to get radicalized and pick up nonsense conspiracy theories and vitriol which they then bring everywhere they go. Also, you're wrong and most parts of the Fediverse are already much less toxic than most of Twitter. And notice that you would otherwise expect the opposite of this if the major platforms are booting off any significant number of actual asshats for legitimate reasons, who then move to invade any alternatives. The relative success with which most decentralized alternatives have fended off this onslaught is a very good sign.
- kixiQu 6y ago
  Plenty of problems are solved. They may not be ones you care about, but they're not "really none". Anecdotally, the instances I know of take a much harder line on moderation of transphobic content than does mainstream social media, which is something desired by some communities and made possible by heterogeneous moderation policies; "no ads" is a problem solved in of itself; no QTs gets rid of about 70% of the "dunking on this bad take" posts relative to Twitter; lower stakes discoverability means people express themselves differently; content warnings make your feed more manageable; etc. etc.
  - young_unixer 6y ago
riffic 6y ago
The secret sauce of the Fediverse is that you really don't need crazy software like Mastodon or Pleroma to participate in it. Have a WordPress site? Throw this plugin on it and you've entered the Fediverse: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ Cancel that!
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Any Fediverse/ActivityPub plugins for traditional server-hosted forums/message boards? Support in Wordpress is nice but that's purely a single-user thing; it's not much of a "social" platform.
  - TheJoYo 6y ago
    I host a single user instance that's purely social. I'm not sure what your point is.
  - dnzm 6y ago
    I believe Discourse was planning things but decided to scrap them. The person behind PixelFed (a federated Instagram-like platform) hinted at a [forum platform](https://mastodon.social/@dansup/105425592966902917 https://mastodon.social/@dansup/105425592966902917), but I have no idea if there's any progress on that. And of course, there's [Lemmy](https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/), which is kinda like Reddit, but federated.
- benibela 6y ago
  What if you only have a static website, HTML files only?
  - tedunangst 6y ago
    You can publish activitypub objects statically, but fundamentally it's a push model. You receive follow requests, then push new posts.
    - 6y ago
russdpale 6y ago
honestly, I find the fediverse a bit too distributed and fractured to have any relevance. Creating an account for each new instance is a pain in the ass, and franky, no one really wants to do that. I pretty stopped posting on all my fediverse accounts because what is the point? No one I personally know wants to switch over and the instances have little user interaction.
- msoucy 6y ago
  The whole point of federation is that you don't need an accout on each instance, you can interact (respond, boost, favorite) with posts from one instance from the comfort of another.
  - Brendinooo 6y ago
    Yeah, but this is a bit weird, conceptually.
    - icy 6y ago
      How so? It's essentially like email.
      - Brendinooo 6y ago
        I joined Fosstodon, a community oriented around FOSS. So when I signed up, I got a sense that I was joining a community. I don't get that sense when I sign up for an email provider. Mastodon servers have rules and themes and therefore attract certain kinds of people. Protonmail might do this too, but it's not a social network, so I never meet those people through the service. Also, ducking into other communities to grab and share content feels a bit weird. I didn't join radical.town or whatever, so I don't really feel like I'm a part of that community. Does that make sense? I don't think I've fully processed this stuff yet, so it might not be a great answer.
        icy 6y ago
        Ah, yes I suppose. I meant the email analogy in the sense that you can communicate with people who aren't on your instance. > I didn't join radical.town or whatever, so I don't really feel like I'm a part of that community. That's fine, and you aren't required to feel so anyway. They're just other people on another instance, who are also in your timeline. > Does that make sense? I don't think I've fully processed this stuff yet, so it might not be a great answer. It's alright! I understand it can be slightly jarring at first. I run a single-user instance so it's truly quite like Twitter -- there's no "community" that I'm a part of, and the feed I see is something I've curated for myself by following people across the fediverse.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Open-Sourcery 6y ago
The link is 502ing. Here is the archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210120190550/https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-in-2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20210120190550/https://fediverse...
IndySun 6y ago
Unless decentralized networks are vigorously policed by users and nodes alike, for, what has been called here, stuff with an unacceptably high ick factor (child porn and worse), then it will continue be a magnet for such material. And if it is policed vigorously can it still be considered 'decentralized'?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- makeworld 6y ago
  I think you are missing the point. The fediverse is a network of servers that can host content and communicate with each other. Each server is moderated individually. Some are "policed vigorously" and some are not, some have issues with illegal content and some do not. The decentralization is inherent in the system, no matter each individual server is moderated.
  - IndySun 6y ago
    Makeworld. you seem to have rewritten my point, added your name, but omitted my final question.
- clacke2 6y ago
  Of course. The vigorous policing is decentralized, so you can choose which community standards you would like your interactions to be guided by. There are safe spaces, there are crazy freezepeach places, and there are many places in between. A US server may have content that is illegal in Germany, a Japanese server may have content that is illegal in the US, and an LGBTQ-friendly server may not allow subscribers from a server full of "gendercritical" people. You can pick where you feel at home, don't get ick thrown in our face, and don't get accused of ick for things that seem harmless to you.

Fediverse in 2020

168 points by buovjaga 6y ago

> 502 Bad Gateway https://web.archive.org/web/20210102052512/https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-in-2020/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210102052512/https://fediverse...

lawrencevillain 6y ago
How do things like this make it to the top of HN? I know it's unrelated, but I'm curious, is it due to the users post history? I mean within 15 minutes of posting it was down, and it already had 50 upvotes?
- berkes 6y ago
  Why do think it should not make it to the top? (Edit: parent comment sounded as if it didn't think the article deserves to be on frontpage HN. re-reading, I see that I might have misread it: sorry in that case)
  - cool_dude85 6y ago
    Probably cause you can't click on the article and read it.
    - berkes 6y ago
      In that case, cause-effect is turned around: it went down because it hit the frontpage. --- I've had some of my blogpost hit FP of HN: the traffic spike then is huge; HN feed is widely spread over internet. Hours after FP I started getting referers RSS readers, intranets, reposters etc. Running a static file blog, my €5.00/month shared vps hardly missed a beat with the traffic spike; but it's so big that "going down" is pretty normal for anything "dynamic" I presume.
  - asutekku 6y ago
    Why should a link that does not function go to the top?
    - atoav 6y ago
      Because often the HN-Hug-of-Death means that a link only stops to function after having reached the top?
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  People upvoting based on the title, without clicking on the link.
TheJoYo 6y ago
it's back up

cccc4all 6y ago

The technical implementations seem interesting. But, who scrubs the toilets in this social network? Who does the boring, dirty jobs required to clean up after users?

TheJoYo 6y ago
I host a single user instance, so I do the clean up which is none at all.
- kstrauser 6y ago
  Same. I've got a couple thousand users, and on average get a moderation request every other month or so.
  - ibeckermayer 6y ago
    Are you liable for illicit content being cached on your server? Like say a user on a server you’re federated with posts child porn, can you be criminally liable if it’s unknowingly downloaded onto the instance you host?
    - kstrauser 6y ago
      I'd say that varies by country, but section 230 of the CDA [0] would seem to say that Americans are generally OK: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Wikipedia expounds to say: "The statute in Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith." My understanding is that you (if you're American) would be OK as long as you're not the source of it and that it's incidental to your operations, like your intent is to make a message board for normal conversational stuff and it's not called "Totally Not Child Porn Wink Wink.com". One nice feature of Mastodon in particular is that you can configure it not to cache content from specific servers. I use that to avoid hosting images from particular servers that specialize in stuff with a high "ick factor". If a use really wants to follow users on those servers, they can, but then that server is the one serving images to my user, not me. I like that setup. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

fsflover 6y ago

See also the statistics here: https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/.

eitland 6y ago
Users do. And since this isn't an attempt to squeeze out money from users there is little need to let users that mods find toxic stick around and it is also OK to slightly raise the bar (some instances ask you questions to verify that you are local or know the local language or something, something Facebook and Twitter could never do.) Also users that are kicked can either create their own instance or find anlther were they are welcome.
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  > some instances ask you questions to verify that you are local or know the local language or something, something Facebook and Twitter could never do Some neighborhood groups on Facebook do ask you hyperlocal questions before you can join. It's up to the moderators to decide the joining criteria.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Wow, I try to avoid Facebook so I didn't know. Thanks!
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  The facebook groups I was in were pretty well moderated, and also asked questions before allowing you to join. I would even say that I had better experience asking for help with things on my facebook groups than Reddit.

bob29 6y ago

The Fediverse is an interesting social experiment testing the hypothesis of whether the ad revenue/profit motive of twitter, and the subsequent algorithms that maximize engagement, are the primary source of toxicity and other negative qualities of social media that have been documented recently (social dilemma et al) Interestingly, the* (see edit) Fediverse data point seems to show that really none of Twitter's problems are solved when its the user's paying and admining the servers themselves. EDIT: only my conclusion based on personal experience and expectations, encourage anyone to look for themselves

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Interestingly, the Fediverse data point seems to show that really none of Twitter's problems are solved when its the user's paying and admining the servers themselves. It doesn't really tell you that until it becomes a more dominant form of social media. Otherwise most of the users there are also users of Twitter and Facebook, where they go to get radicalized and pick up nonsense conspiracy theories and vitriol which they then bring everywhere they go. Also, you're wrong and most parts of the Fediverse are already much less toxic than most of Twitter. And notice that you would otherwise expect the opposite of this if the major platforms are booting off any significant number of actual asshats for legitimate reasons, who then move to invade any alternatives. The relative success with which most decentralized alternatives have fended off this onslaught is a very good sign.
kixiQu 6y ago
Plenty of problems are solved. They may not be ones you care about, but they're not "really none". Anecdotally, the instances I know of take a much harder line on moderation of transphobic content than does mainstream social media, which is something desired by some communities and made possible by heterogeneous moderation policies; "no ads" is a problem solved in of itself; no QTs gets rid of about 70% of the "dunking on this bad take" posts relative to Twitter; lower stakes discoverability means people express themselves differently; content warnings make your feed more manageable; etc. etc.
- young_unixer 6y ago

riffic 6y ago

The secret sauce of the Fediverse is that you really don't need crazy software like Mastodon or Pleroma to participate in it. Have a WordPress site? Throw this plugin on it and you've entered the Fediverse: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ Cancel that!

zozbot234 6y ago
Any Fediverse/ActivityPub plugins for traditional server-hosted forums/message boards? Support in Wordpress is nice but that's purely a single-user thing; it's not much of a "social" platform.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  I host a single user instance that's purely social. I'm not sure what your point is.
- dnzm 6y ago
  I believe Discourse was planning things but decided to scrap them. The person behind PixelFed (a federated Instagram-like platform) hinted at a [forum platform](https://mastodon.social/@dansup/105425592966902917 https://mastodon.social/@dansup/105425592966902917), but I have no idea if there's any progress on that. And of course, there's [Lemmy](https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/), which is kinda like Reddit, but federated.
benibela 6y ago
What if you only have a static website, HTML files only?
- tedunangst 6y ago
  You can publish activitypub objects statically, but fundamentally it's a push model. You receive follow requests, then push new posts.
  - 6y ago

russdpale 6y ago

honestly, I find the fediverse a bit too distributed and fractured to have any relevance. Creating an account for each new instance is a pain in the ass, and franky, no one really wants to do that. I pretty stopped posting on all my fediverse accounts because what is the point? No one I personally know wants to switch over and the instances have little user interaction.

msoucy 6y ago
The whole point of federation is that you don't need an accout on each instance, you can interact (respond, boost, favorite) with posts from one instance from the comfort of another.
- Brendinooo 6y ago
  Yeah, but this is a bit weird, conceptually.
  - icy 6y ago
    How so? It's essentially like email.
    - Brendinooo 6y ago
      I joined Fosstodon, a community oriented around FOSS. So when I signed up, I got a sense that I was joining a community. I don't get that sense when I sign up for an email provider. Mastodon servers have rules and themes and therefore attract certain kinds of people. Protonmail might do this too, but it's not a social network, so I never meet those people through the service. Also, ducking into other communities to grab and share content feels a bit weird. I didn't join radical.town or whatever, so I don't really feel like I'm a part of that community. Does that make sense? I don't think I've fully processed this stuff yet, so it might not be a great answer.
      - icy 6y ago
        Ah, yes I suppose. I meant the email analogy in the sense that you can communicate with people who aren't on your instance. > I didn't join radical.town or whatever, so I don't really feel like I'm a part of that community. That's fine, and you aren't required to feel so anyway. They're just other people on another instance, who are also in your timeline. > Does that make sense? I don't think I've fully processed this stuff yet, so it might not be a great answer. It's alright! I understand it can be slightly jarring at first. I run a single-user instance so it's truly quite like Twitter -- there's no "community" that I'm a part of, and the feed I see is something I've curated for myself by following people across the fediverse.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Open-Sourcery 6y ago

The link is 502ing. Here is the archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210120190550/https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-in-2020 https://web.archive.org/web/20210120190550/https://fediverse...

IndySun 6y ago

Unless decentralized networks are vigorously policed by users and nodes alike, for, what has been called here, stuff with an unacceptably high ick factor (child porn and worse), then it will continue be a magnet for such material. And if it is policed vigorously can it still be considered 'decentralized'?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
makeworld 6y ago
I think you are missing the point. The fediverse is a network of servers that can host content and communicate with each other. Each server is moderated individually. Some are "policed vigorously" and some are not, some have issues with illegal content and some do not. The decentralization is inherent in the system, no matter each individual server is moderated.
- IndySun 6y ago
  Makeworld. you seem to have rewritten my point, added your name, but omitted my final question.
clacke2 6y ago
Of course. The vigorous policing is decentralized, so you can choose which community standards you would like your interactions to be guided by. There are safe spaces, there are crazy freezepeach places, and there are many places in between. A US server may have content that is illegal in Germany, a Japanese server may have content that is illegal in the US, and an LGBTQ-friendly server may not allow subscribers from a server full of "gendercritical" people. You can pick where you feel at home, don't get ick thrown in our face, and don't get accused of ick for things that seem harmless to you.