20 ms·

Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

213 points by dsego 6y ago

riffic 6y ago
This article doesn't discuss why the organization in question didn't just self-host their own fediverse presence, perhaps using a CMS plugin like one available for WordPress. I'm not familiar at all with this "InfoSec Handbook" group but what I'd like to see at some point is a software platform that allows organizations to spin up fedi presences at their own domain (Write.as does this, but it'd be nice to have other players in the ecosystem), or even if traditional SaaS vendors would just adopt the underlying W3C protocols to allow for that.
- proc0 6y ago
  yeah I thought that was the point of it. Sounds like the article authors don't get the Fediverse, and use it interchangeably with Mastodon. It's like saying Linux sucks because it's so complicated, having only tried one distro (i.e. Arch)
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    Absolutely. “People are asking for money to host our timeline!” Well, run your own server and don’t charge yourself.
- rakoo 6y ago
  That would solve the migration problem, but not the others which are definitely social problems and not technical problems
- calibas 6y ago
  I've been curious about how to do this, I assume you install an ActivityPub plugin and connect it to an existing platform like Mastodon or Pleroma?
  - riffic 6y ago
    With the ActivityPub plugin (this one to be specific: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/), your WordPress site implements the underlying ActivityPub protocols and becomes an Actor that can be subscribed to by other ActivityPub installations. Other CMS plugins may be worth looking into, or it may be worth looking into having your favorite CMS implement these protocols directly.
kowlo 6y ago
> The “I read headlines only” problem This remains true for most platforms, not just those in the fediverse. HN is one example! I am reading this article with great interest. I've recently started exploring fediverse platforms with much excitement. I'm more interested in building a community at the moment, and although this can be achieved with a classic bulletin board system, the fediverse had me curious.
- xwdv 6y ago
  This actually wouldn’t be a problem as long as headlines are descriptive and accurately summarize the content of the article.
  - kowlo 6y ago
    That is quite a challenge... some people struggle to summarise an article into 5-6 sentences for an abstract.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    If a headline could convey everything in an article why write the whole article? There's always more than could possibly fit in a headline; "yes, buts", etc.
- trhway 6y ago
  > HN is one example! actually i think HN - ie. the comments, especially TLDR - is an example of, at least partial, solution, and this is why me like many other people usually go straight for the comments instead of the original article/post.
  - kowlo 6y ago
    I do exactly the same! What I mean is, there are those that will vote or even comment without reading the article - I don't believe it's a problem unique to fediverse platforms.
  - wrycoder 6y ago
    I think that is due to the quality of the commenters here and to the subtle, but effective, moderation provided by dang and the other mods. And the latter is at least partially responsible for the former. The voting system is also crucial, imho.
sschueller 6y ago
They joined mastadon not the "fediverse". Like saying you used the internet but then only visited Facebook. Point 2 and 3 are identical on Twitter BTW.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  That analogy is a bit too harsh. How about like saying you went to Texas but then only visited Austin?
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    No, it's not too harsh. A Mastodon instance doesn't even give you access to Diaspora* users.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      And Austin isn't Houston.
    - gargron 6y ago
      Diaspora is not part of the fediverse and never has been. Diaspora is federated but has always used their own, separate protocol.
      - wizzwizz4 6y ago
        There are three main sections of the Fediverse: OStatus, Diaspora* and ActivityPub. Most OStatus systems have migrated to ActivityPub, but Diaspora*'s still separate. https://friendi.ca https://friendi.ca gives you access to all three.
- riffic 6y ago
  People who don't fully understand certain emerging technologies are free to spread FUD about that technology to their hearts content. Nevermind that the Fediverse is not an emerging technology, having been in operation for almost 13 years* at this point. * https://web.archive.org/web/20201028234912if_/https://mastodon.xyz/@lightone/104188129431867733 https://web.archive.org/web/20201028234912if_/https://mastod... * https://web.archive.org/web/20210124192004/https://social.diekershoff.de/display/f3ad7b1c-145c-e10f-1e74-b7b177306491 https://web.archive.org/web/20210124192004/https://social.di...
ruined 6y ago
so you didn't like a particular implementation of activitypub designed for a specific ux not aligned with you, and some people you didn't like tried to argue with you on the internet. these are problems you will have in any social media. open source and federation give you the chance to find or design an implementation you do like. people are much harder but at least you're not beholden to dictated rules from a large american corporation, and you aren't waiting on some unknown entity to moderate. issues you raise with privacy are generally understood. public things are of course public. but there is also a lot of fediverse happening in places you can't see, and users in that space can satisfy themselves knowing those conversations aren't likely to live forever. publishing and consuming rss is a good conclusion since you're oriented to longform content and less casual discussion.
tylerchilds 6y ago
As a regular fediverse user, the main detail I'd be curious about is: Which server was the experiment done on and which servers were federated with? I don't have anything against this article per se, but it's worth noting every fediverse encounter is different. My main take on this article is that it's like walking into a McDonald's and being upset they don't serve pizza and then condemning all fast-food as being terrible because it's not all pizza.
- riffic 6y ago
  > Which server was the experiment done on and which servers were federated with? They discuss this in their earlier post (https://infosec-handbook.eu/news/2020-05-31-monthly-review/#fediverse https://infosec-handbook.eu/news/2020-05-31-monthly-review/#...): "We experienced the shutdown of our Mastodon instance twice. So, we migrated from securitymastod.one to mastodon.at, and then to chaos.social. Each time, we lost all of our posts, leaving behind a considerable number of dead links." IMO organizations should self-host (same as with email, if you have a domain name that you are commonly associated with). If you aren't doing this, you don't fully understand the mechanics of the Fediverse or the underlying W3C ActivityPub protocols. edit: by self-host, I mean either run your own infra or subcontract that out to a competent vendor. I don't literally mean self-host in the strictest sense.
  - tylerchilds 6y ago
    Thanks for digging that up! Absolutely agreed about self-hosting and treating it like email. I've seen quite a few instances shut down in the ~6 months I've been around. It's a pretty rough experience for people that are coming from the mainstream, since it's probably hard to imagine a social network powered by a rag-tag few people behind each instance and not multi-billion dollar tech behemoths.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  I'm going to take this opportunity to repost the article about the McDonald's Pizza: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65467/short-strange-life-mcdonalds-pizza https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65467/short-strange-life...
centimeter 6y ago
As someone who’s never used any fediverse software, I found this post entirely uninteresting and irrelevant. It sounds like the author had some beef with random people they found online and want to portray this as a systemic issue.
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  The title starts with "Our experience with the Fediverse", so your criticism seems misplaced. They are describing their experience, and don't seem to claim that this will be everyone's experience.
  - TheJoYo 6y ago
    They make some systemic criticisms about the security of decentralization on top of making recommendations to potential users: - Use RSS feeds generated by mastodon / pleroma. - Contribute to stackexchange and hacker news. If it wasn't for those recommendations the title could better represent the content.
k__ 6y ago
"The toxic “us vs. them” ideology" Very good point. On the one hand, Twitter is full of shit and people need to protect themselves from it. On the other hand, people tend to protect themselves too much and end up in a bubble that can be toxic too.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  I'm fine with people filtering information going towards them, its when they try to filter the information at the source that's problematic. inter-nodal moderation works great for this, I'm sure there are many Mastodon instances that de-federate with my instance for some asinine reason.
INTPenis 6y ago
I've hosted a mastodon instance since 2017 and I see one general misunderstanding over and over, on mastodon or on fediverse related subreddits. People think it's a completely new concept. People seem to have forgotten, or not been part of, all the message boards we used to have during the late 90s and all throughout the 2000s. The ONLY thing Mastodon brings to this is federation. You used to have accounts on over a dozen message boards, sometimes with different avatar names. Most were special interest groups. All of those boards were hosted by someone. Having lived through that I view Mastodon as a different kind of PunBB software with federation. Because I view it from the perspective of the hoster.
- kowlo 6y ago
  I thought Mastodon was closer to Twitter than it is to the classic BBS. How is your instance going - did you build a community around it?
  - INTPenis 6y ago
    It's close to twitter in features but it's important to understand the hosting aspect. Facebook and Twitter have been hosting our social media for years, in a centralized way. Federation makes this possible for every person, denctralized. So essentially we're back to 12-15 years ago when private people were still hosting message boards for each other. All that changes is that those message boards can now federate content. And everyone who remembers those days know that hosting a message board that became popular was a struggle. Which is why I've opted to keep my instance small through various steps I won't say here but they aren't ground breaking or secret. I just don't want to give away my identity because this is my secret account on HN. After 4 years on the fediverse, listening to issues, reading threads, my opinion is that we should focus on many smaller instance rather than a few huge ones.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Mastodon and the Fediverse have often been advertised as "microblogging" tools, and the post length is mainly around the same as one would see on Twitter. That is a big difference from old-time message boards, where longform text was welcome and normal. (Even if the Fediverse does support long post lengths, that matters little if the community has not embraced it.)
malwarebytess 6y ago
There's subtext here, right? Is this related to Gab and the rest? From their earlier post about Fediverse: >Some parties in the Fediverse demand “self-censorship.” Especially when we talk about particular services or products, individuals contact us and demand that we delete our posts. “We shouldn’t talk about the topic,” so other people don’t start to use these “evil” services and products. In our opinion, such demands contradict the claim of being an “open-minded community.”
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kstrauser 6y ago
  I’m not sure, but even if not I still feel like that’s a silly complaint. Party A says something on the Internet that offends party B. Party B says something on the Internet that offends party A. Party A complains that they’re being asked to self-censor. I see it as both parties using the service as designed to speak their minds. Party A also has the tools to mute Party B if they don’t like what they have to say.
  - curtainsforus 6y ago
    I mean, it's Party A says something on the Internet that offends party B. Party B asks party A to self-censor/tells them to shut up, which offends party A. Party A complains that they’re being asked to self-censor. When party B is asking A to self-censor, there's nothing wrong with A complaining about what B is saying. If A's lying or being dishonest, oh well.
    - kstrauser 6y ago
      I do get that, but really, B doesn’t have any special sway. They’re just some randos saying that they don’t like A’s posting. While annoying, that’s going to happen on every social network. If I went on Gab and started posting a lot of pro-Biden content, I’m certain plenty of people would tell me to knock it off. So sure, it’s alright for A to be annoyed by it. That’s definitely not a unique feature of the fediverse, though.
rjkershner 6y ago
I've lurked on Mastodon for a while and honestly your experience will be only as good as your instance you subscribed to. Fosstodon is a very focused instance with like minded people, and the local feed there is pretty top notch. My experience on more "general" focus instances was a lot worse and borderline spammy. Hoping they put effort in making your activity pub profile more portable as move accounts to new servers is still kludgey at best.
- benibela 6y ago
  I thought it does not matter which instance one choosen, since you see posts from all the other instances?
  - input_sh 6y ago
    That's accurate. But there's also a local feed you can consume (all the people on your instance), which is kind of a workaround if you can't be bothered with finding a fair amount of people to follow for your own timeline to be interesting.
dleslie 6y ago
My experience with the fediverse was that enjoying the benefits of federation encountered the same issues with content and user behaviour that can be found in silo'd services. That is to say, fediverse sites increased their likelihood of replicating/serving hate, pornography and illegal content in correlation to the number of external sites they were connected to and the size of their user base. It left me wondering why even bother? It's no better than using Discourse for a private group and Twitter/Facebook for public groups. Perhaps worse.
- seany 6y ago
  Being able to pick where that line is, and who gets to decide it is a big part of the draw.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  There's no algorithmic advertising, no universal tracking, and your instance's mod team is known to you instead of a faceless automation farm.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    That's all true of hosting a private Discourse instance, as well.
    - librexpr 6y ago
      You said in your original comment: > using Discourse for a private group and Twitter/Facebook for public groups Even if what freeone3000 said about Mastodon is also all true about Discourse (I know nothing about Discourse, but I'll take your word for it), it's not true about Twitter/Facebook. And since Mastodon is aimed more at the public group use case, Mastodon is a useful replacement of Twitter/Facebook even by your own logic.
      - dleslie 6y ago
        Not quite: Twitter and Facebook have _armies_ of community moderation employees at their disposal; the fediverse has volunteers.
S-E-P 6y ago
I would argue that what is described in this post is inherent in all social networks. The wonderful thing about the Fediverse is that depending on the node you connect to, or the people you choose to federate with (in the event that you have your own instance) that your experience will be vastly different. It’s given me some of the most enjoyable interactions I’ve ever had online in the last ten years. You need to have a thick skin, take the time to use filters, block certain keywords. And use Pleroma, Mastadon is crap, Pleroma let’s you type for DAYS, “limited character cap” is really only a mastadon thing and it’s crap.
- josteink 6y ago
  Pleroma-link for those too lazy to search: https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/
- kowlo 6y ago
  Is that the only benefit of Pleroma over Mastodon? Have you checked Misskey before https://join.misskey.page/en/ https://join.misskey.page/en/? It looks interesting too...
- cbozeman 6y ago
  > You need to have a thick skin Actually we need the rest of social media to have this, and then we don't need these alternative platforms. There are simply too many people who have grown up without having any meaningful opposition in their lives - without having someone challenge their ideas and values and making them defend said ideas and values, and they simply do. not. know. how to cope with it.
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    Is this purely a US phenomenon? I don't see this much at all from people who live here t(the UK), but we're really starting to feel the effects of social media censorship hit hard, and I know a lot of people are really angry about Big Tech pushing their own moralistic world view on our country.
    - 6y ago
eznzt 6y ago
This seems a list of things that are wrong with people, not with the fediverse.
einpoklum 6y ago
Can someone contextualize this post somewhat, for readers who have been living under a rock and don't know about the Fediverse nor who is "we" at "infosec-handbook"?
- riffic 6y ago
  Wikipedia has an article on the Fediverse, to sum it up it's a community of communities based on open web standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse I don't know anything about this "infosec-handbook" group.
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    I actually went and read that, but it's wholly unclear what place the fediverse actually has in online culture today, what "kind" of people use it, or parts of it; what it replaces for them; etc.
kowlo 6y ago
Besides Pleroma mentioned elsewhere in this thread, has anyone checked our Misskey (https://join.misskey.page/en/ https://join.misskey.page/en/)? It has some interesting features, like arranging your own virtual room and sharing it with others. I've not seen much of it yet.
Jkvngt 6y ago
None of the issues they bring up are any better on big tech's social media. And of course we should all work to "other" big tech and its employees.
TheJoYo 6y ago
I also want to leave the internet because there are bad opinions on it.
olah_1 6y ago
I’ve had critiques about the fediverse for a long time. I’ve also had critiques about urbit for a long time. It seems to me that Zot improves pleroma/mastodon to solve their problems (server extinction, account migration). It also seems to me that Urbit improves Zot to solve their problems (user experience, global naming).
wizzwizz4 6y ago
I'm upset that they're painting these social issues as Mastodon-specific ones, and that they're painting the Fediverse as just Mastodon, but they do have a point about RSS.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  I don't see how RSS fixes anything they complained about. They also recommended people use stackexchange over federated networks.
teh_klev 6y ago
> Many people read the headlines of a post and then guess what is written in the remaining article This isn't just endemic to the Fediverse, it's endemic everywhere. Bites tongue.
ankit219 6y ago
Part of the things that you mentioned in your experience, "us v them" ideology, reverse burden of proof are all a defining characteristic of any forum that thrives. And, arguably, its not a bug it's a feature. Typically, a forum has a lot of registered users, but very few who are active daily. (Reddit reported 52M MAU in Oct 2020, an increase by 44% post pandemic. Their MAUs in Dec 19 were 430M. So, about 7-10% users are very active, others are lurkers). The most frequent users (power users) gain kind of an influence which is suited to their experience the most (not talking about HN per se, not as frequent here) and they come to define the rules of the forum. It's not specific to mastodon, and forum moderators allow it because they are the users (and many a times mods themselves) and it does not really break a rule. The us v them mentality in particular is key for the forums since it invokes an emotional response in using that forum. Many lurkers stick to the forum if they cant find a better alternate to stay in touch with the topic, and they leave when they do. The other problems you highlighted may not be a platform problem but a human problem which will happen on almost every other platform. I don't think there is a solution to this except finding other smart people who are more self aware, though that is easier said than done.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
I think that the author of this and I can just agree to disagree, which is OK with me. I am on mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson and I get a lot of value from it. re: “I’m privacy-friendly; please donate”: I donate but don't mind identifying myself. If you want anonymity then don't donate to whoever runs the server that you use. You are free to follow and un-follow (if you see toxic material) as you wish. I hope that I don't sound like I am lecturing or otherwise being obnoxious, but if you don't think that the large Internet platform companies have too much power then I recommend reading "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" and "privacy is Power." The great thing about the Internet is that anyone can get a domain, get creative, share their stuff, meet people, make business acquaintances, etc. I see the Fediverse as another tool to use.
lrvick 6y ago
I am one of the people that got a lot of shares on Mastodon for being critical of Signal. I think this article greatly misrepresents the main arguments going around the Fediverse about Signal, and the arguments for alternatives. 1. Signal holds the only set of signing keys to the only published binaries allowed on the network, compiled by them, that in turn control all signing keys. If pressured they could push a malicious update with unpublished code. The published server code has not been updated since April last year, so either they have made no changes since then or they are already comfortable pushing updates without matching public source code. 2. The bulk of metadata protection on Signal comes down to trust in SGX, which indeed is an entirely broken technology and keys can be extracted from it via a number of side channels if there is sufficient motivation, such as a government trying to track down dissenting views, or a future owner of Signal that secretly is willing to cooperate with a state actor. Intel also could, if ordered, also issue a microcode update intentionally compromising the RNG used for keys, etc. Signal places a huge centralized target on its back so I think these risks are plausible and worth being aware of. 3. Signal forces all TCP/IP metadata to one stack, which if combined with heuristical analysis, I strongly suspect it would be possible to work out which IPs communicate with which other IPs even without aid of SGX contained metadata. 4. Signal is actively hostile to any third parties that compile and sign signal network compatible binaries and release them via open source app stores, and vows to fight them and get them removed from the network. Moxie repeatedly says he prefers the install base tracking proprietary stores like Google and Apple afford. 5. Signal has built their entire social graph on phone numbers which require ID to buy and are actively tracked in 200 countries, and many carriers will sell out their customers to bounty hunters etc. This is directly at odds with their stated goals of furthering privacy. When asked what alternative I suggest, I say Matrix. Those that really need privacy can use a pseudonym via Tor on a server of their choice hosted by people they trust and avoid revealing PII to the messenger at all, unlike Signal. The most private metadata is that which you are not required to reveal in the first place. The server and remaining metadata that must exist, like sensitive channel memberships, easily be hosted in a server you own on property you own. Sensitive channels could stay on that server and not reveal any metadata or group participation to the wider network giving you granular control of your own metadata and where it lives. If you really wanted to you could even use generic tools that exist for SGX to do FDE on the database disk with the key in SGX and in turn also run a lean binary like Dendrite in SGX. I don't think this is worth it, and I think SGX is largely security theatre at this point but this is what freedom looks like. You can run your own server and maintain it according to your own threat profile, instead of using a one size-fits-all threat profile a centralized walled garden forces on you. If you still think all the arguments above are totally unreasonable and you don't like hearing a lot of opinions critical of popular centralized services like Telegram, Signal, and Whatsapp... then indeed the Fediverse may not be for you. Most users care a lot about keeping digital sovereignty which is why they joined the Fediverse in the first place.
jessehattabaugh 6y ago
I've been banned from two mastodon servers; one for saying "Neil Degrasse Tyson is my spirit animal" and the other for simply disagreeing with somebody. The tribalism is strong on Mastodon and of you don't make effort to conform you won't last long.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  I haven't had this issue on my instance but I do cross-post onto Mastodon instances that focus on infosec. The only complaints I've gotten have been from Mastodon mods that want some specific content warning or some such that I can't be bothered with. I just delete those posts, fuckem if they don't want it.
cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
I was looking to find an insightful article about the problems with Fediverse. But I only found an article that rants about the toxic humanity. This article has nothing to do with so called "Fediverse". It's so unrelated that the title almost reads like a click bait.
kelnos 6y ago
This just reminds me that the problem with discourse isn't centralization, control, lack of privacy or security, or any other thing. The problem is that people act in bad faith online, a lot. Give a bunch of people a platform to broadcast their thoughts, and a lot of people will be lazy about those thoughts. A lot of people will turn it into a competition and be more concerned about creating a following rather than spreading truth and fostering healthy discussion. Sure, I'd take a Fediverse over a Facebook or a Twitter any day; lack of corporate control and the ability to run your own instance and federate are just plain better from a "health of the internet" perspective. But that doesn't solve the social problems inherent in any community where people most don't know each other personally and don't have to interact face-to-face.
- sneak 6y ago
  Decentralized, opt-in publishing requires decentralized, opt-in moderation. I have designed some solutions around this, but haven't found the right product/ecosystem in which to implement it yet. The basic idea is that you need multiple independent publishers of append-only "credit rating" feeds, publishing their own views/opinions of the reputations of different servers, users, or hashtags across the whole of the network. Services can aggregate all of these moderation/rating feeds in realtime, and provide to their users a list of all of the different "social credit rating agencies", or moderation feed publishers. You as a user could then choose your moderators from across the internet, then their own moderation decisions are applied to your feeds. It's sort of like outsourcing the management of your block/mute list. You could, of course, disable all of the moderation feeds and see the firehose of slurs and spam, or switch to different ones. We solved this with email (poorly, and over a long period of time), and RBLs were part of that process. We'll eventually see the same for federated/p2p systems as well.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    I don't think this is the point. You are trying to solve a social problem via technical means, and that generally does not work. Spam/scam email isn't a great parallel: that sort of thing is a more-or-less anonymous party intruding into someone else's life in order to try to sell them something or steal something from them. Blocking that kind of communication is the correct solution, and that's what success looks like. Getting people to have nuanced, respectful conversations online is a completely different thing. If you get to the point where your best option is to block the other person, or moderate/delete their posts, that's a failure, not a success.
erik_kemp 6y ago
Thanks for sharing your considerations. It's good that people care and think carefully about which services to use and not to use, and also share it. I think the main problem is that the idea and implications of decentralisation are hard to fully grasp. It does not imply privacy or security. It does imply decentralisation of power, decentralisation of rules & code of conduct and decentralisation of financing. My own experience: Mastodon has provided me a first step in more digital sovereignty. It is very refreshing to have a timeline that you can fully control. Moving to Mastodon felt like moving into a new village. You start with an empty timeline, and you have to actively work on your first connections. After some initial effort, you are rewarded with meeting interesting people. They welcome you in their communities, and you can keep on discovering amazing people through the messages they boost! Feel free to interact via erik@mastodon.utwente.nl :-)
PointyFluff 6y ago
Literally just an article that highlights the problems with social media in general. Total click-bait; I sure thankful for ublock.
Zoo3y 6y ago
Most of the points they elaborated on are People problems, not Mastodon problems. The genuine critiques of Mastodon they listed are migration issues, updating posts (it makes sense 'edited' posts lose their clout), and character limit (already way bigger than twitter's). Also, aren't they falling into their own "Us vs. Them" argument by complaining about general Mastodon users?
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  I'm sure they've never made lazy statements about information security, like recommending stackexchange over a federated platform.
- josephg 6y ago
  People problems and technical problems aren’t so cleanly separated. People speak in pithy soundbites on Twitter in part because of who they are, and in part because of ergonomics of the platform (limited character counts, etc). Mastodon is a place as much as a product. The technology affects how we interact, and how we interact in turn influences design choices.
cblconfederate 6y ago
RSS needs to add a <reply_to> field to replace the fediverse. There's really no need for a unified community; metadata can be provided separately by other systems.
aasasd 6y ago
> Their messenger doesn’t offer any server-side protection. In their case, a server-side party can directly access your data in cleartext—this is trivial. I'm gonna need names.
arendtio 6y ago
I expected something more technical, but instead the points are mainly based on culture (which seems to be a problem for most social networks). In addition, I find it weird that there are several parts where they argue against decentralization. I mean, those are just examples for specific situations, but putting all examples together tells a story of itself.
FalconSensei 6y ago
> Many Fediverse users claim to be the “better and open-minded alternative to Twitter.” We think that this doesn’t reflect reality, as explained below. I also had my problems with Mastodon and Pleroma users. Unfortunately, there are idiots everywhere and, while federation helps to some degree, separating left/right extremists, trans people and transphobic people, you can still be in an instance focused on anime, and get attacked because you use Mac/Windows instead of linux.
WClayFerguson 6y ago
I'm not finished with the platform I'm developing, but it does solve all the issues mentioned in this article. https://quanta.wiki/n/screencast https://quanta.wiki/n/screencast
kevincox 6y ago
I think that some of their points are good. I think the major one is that unless you run your own instance you have no ownership over your identity (save the mastodon migration tools). I think it is weird that if I want to use Mastodon to post short messages and PeerTube to post videos I need two different identities. I think it would have been better if I could have a shared identity that could be used across multiple fediverse apps, or used to move my identity from a "shared" provide to a new one, or a self-hosted one. I also think that length-limited posts are not a great basis for a social network, but that is not mastodon specific.

213 points by dsego 6y ago

This article doesn't discuss why the organization in question didn't just self-host their own fediverse presence, perhaps using a CMS plugin like one available for WordPress. I'm not familiar at all with this "InfoSec Handbook" group but what I'd like to see at some point is a software platform that allows organizations to spin up fedi presences at their own domain (Write.as does this, but it'd be nice to have other players in the ecosystem), or even if traditional SaaS vendors would just adopt the underlying W3C protocols to allow for that.

proc0 6y ago
yeah I thought that was the point of it. Sounds like the article authors don't get the Fediverse, and use it interchangeably with Mastodon. It's like saying Linux sucks because it's so complicated, having only tried one distro (i.e. Arch)
- kstrauser 6y ago
  Absolutely. “People are asking for money to host our timeline!” Well, run your own server and don’t charge yourself.
rakoo 6y ago
That would solve the migration problem, but not the others which are definitely social problems and not technical problems
calibas 6y ago
I've been curious about how to do this, I assume you install an ActivityPub plugin and connect it to an existing platform like Mastodon or Pleroma?
- riffic 6y ago
  With the ActivityPub plugin (this one to be specific: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/), your WordPress site implements the underlying ActivityPub protocols and becomes an Actor that can be subscribed to by other ActivityPub installations. Other CMS plugins may be worth looking into, or it may be worth looking into having your favorite CMS implement these protocols directly.

kowlo 6y ago

> The “I read headlines only” problem This remains true for most platforms, not just those in the fediverse. HN is one example! I am reading this article with great interest. I've recently started exploring fediverse platforms with much excitement. I'm more interested in building a community at the moment, and although this can be achieved with a classic bulletin board system, the fediverse had me curious.

xwdv 6y ago
This actually wouldn’t be a problem as long as headlines are descriptive and accurately summarize the content of the article.
- kowlo 6y ago
  That is quite a challenge... some people struggle to summarise an article into 5-6 sentences for an abstract.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  If a headline could convey everything in an article why write the whole article? There's always more than could possibly fit in a headline; "yes, buts", etc.
trhway 6y ago
> HN is one example! actually i think HN - ie. the comments, especially TLDR - is an example of, at least partial, solution, and this is why me like many other people usually go straight for the comments instead of the original article/post.
- kowlo 6y ago
  I do exactly the same! What I mean is, there are those that will vote or even comment without reading the article - I don't believe it's a problem unique to fediverse platforms.
- wrycoder 6y ago
  I think that is due to the quality of the commenters here and to the subtle, but effective, moderation provided by dang and the other mods. And the latter is at least partially responsible for the former. The voting system is also crucial, imho.

sschueller 6y ago

They joined mastadon not the "fediverse". Like saying you used the internet but then only visited Facebook. Point 2 and 3 are identical on Twitter BTW.

Ericson2314 6y ago
That analogy is a bit too harsh. How about like saying you went to Texas but then only visited Austin?
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  No, it's not too harsh. A Mastodon instance doesn't even give you access to Diaspora* users.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    And Austin isn't Houston.
  - gargron 6y ago
    Diaspora is not part of the fediverse and never has been. Diaspora is federated but has always used their own, separate protocol.
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      There are three main sections of the Fediverse: OStatus, Diaspora* and ActivityPub. Most OStatus systems have migrated to ActivityPub, but Diaspora*'s still separate. https://friendi.ca https://friendi.ca gives you access to all three.
riffic 6y ago
People who don't fully understand certain emerging technologies are free to spread FUD about that technology to their hearts content. Nevermind that the Fediverse is not an emerging technology, having been in operation for almost 13 years* at this point. * https://web.archive.org/web/20201028234912if_/https://mastodon.xyz/@lightone/104188129431867733 https://web.archive.org/web/20201028234912if_/https://mastod... * https://web.archive.org/web/20210124192004/https://social.diekershoff.de/display/f3ad7b1c-145c-e10f-1e74-b7b177306491 https://web.archive.org/web/20210124192004/https://social.di...

ruined 6y ago

so you didn't like a particular implementation of activitypub designed for a specific ux not aligned with you, and some people you didn't like tried to argue with you on the internet. these are problems you will have in any social media. open source and federation give you the chance to find or design an implementation you do like. people are much harder but at least you're not beholden to dictated rules from a large american corporation, and you aren't waiting on some unknown entity to moderate. issues you raise with privacy are generally understood. public things are of course public. but there is also a lot of fediverse happening in places you can't see, and users in that space can satisfy themselves knowing those conversations aren't likely to live forever. publishing and consuming rss is a good conclusion since you're oriented to longform content and less casual discussion.

tylerchilds 6y ago

As a regular fediverse user, the main detail I'd be curious about is: Which server was the experiment done on and which servers were federated with? I don't have anything against this article per se, but it's worth noting every fediverse encounter is different. My main take on this article is that it's like walking into a McDonald's and being upset they don't serve pizza and then condemning all fast-food as being terrible because it's not all pizza.

riffic 6y ago
> Which server was the experiment done on and which servers were federated with? They discuss this in their earlier post (https://infosec-handbook.eu/news/2020-05-31-monthly-review/#fediverse https://infosec-handbook.eu/news/2020-05-31-monthly-review/#...): "We experienced the shutdown of our Mastodon instance twice. So, we migrated from securitymastod.one to mastodon.at, and then to chaos.social. Each time, we lost all of our posts, leaving behind a considerable number of dead links." IMO organizations should self-host (same as with email, if you have a domain name that you are commonly associated with). If you aren't doing this, you don't fully understand the mechanics of the Fediverse or the underlying W3C ActivityPub protocols. edit: by self-host, I mean either run your own infra or subcontract that out to a competent vendor. I don't literally mean self-host in the strictest sense.
- tylerchilds 6y ago
  Thanks for digging that up! Absolutely agreed about self-hosting and treating it like email. I've seen quite a few instances shut down in the ~6 months I've been around. It's a pretty rough experience for people that are coming from the mainstream, since it's probably hard to imagine a social network powered by a rag-tag few people behind each instance and not multi-billion dollar tech behemoths.
freeone3000 6y ago
I'm going to take this opportunity to repost the article about the McDonald's Pizza: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65467/short-strange-life-mcdonalds-pizza https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65467/short-strange-life...

centimeter 6y ago

As someone who’s never used any fediverse software, I found this post entirely uninteresting and irrelevant. It sounds like the author had some beef with random people they found online and want to portray this as a systemic issue.

tasty_freeze 6y ago
The title starts with "Our experience with the Fediverse", so your criticism seems misplaced. They are describing their experience, and don't seem to claim that this will be everyone's experience.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  They make some systemic criticisms about the security of decentralization on top of making recommendations to potential users: - Use RSS feeds generated by mastodon / pleroma. - Contribute to stackexchange and hacker news. If it wasn't for those recommendations the title could better represent the content.

k__ 6y ago

"The toxic “us vs. them” ideology" Very good point. On the one hand, Twitter is full of shit and people need to protect themselves from it. On the other hand, people tend to protect themselves too much and end up in a bubble that can be toxic too.

TheJoYo 6y ago
I'm fine with people filtering information going towards them, its when they try to filter the information at the source that's problematic. inter-nodal moderation works great for this, I'm sure there are many Mastodon instances that de-federate with my instance for some asinine reason.

INTPenis 6y ago

I've hosted a mastodon instance since 2017 and I see one general misunderstanding over and over, on mastodon or on fediverse related subreddits. People think it's a completely new concept. People seem to have forgotten, or not been part of, all the message boards we used to have during the late 90s and all throughout the 2000s. The ONLY thing Mastodon brings to this is federation. You used to have accounts on over a dozen message boards, sometimes with different avatar names. Most were special interest groups. All of those boards were hosted by someone. Having lived through that I view Mastodon as a different kind of PunBB software with federation. Because I view it from the perspective of the hoster.

kowlo 6y ago
I thought Mastodon was closer to Twitter than it is to the classic BBS. How is your instance going - did you build a community around it?
- INTPenis 6y ago
  It's close to twitter in features but it's important to understand the hosting aspect. Facebook and Twitter have been hosting our social media for years, in a centralized way. Federation makes this possible for every person, denctralized. So essentially we're back to 12-15 years ago when private people were still hosting message boards for each other. All that changes is that those message boards can now federate content. And everyone who remembers those days know that hosting a message board that became popular was a struggle. Which is why I've opted to keep my instance small through various steps I won't say here but they aren't ground breaking or secret. I just don't want to give away my identity because this is my secret account on HN. After 4 years on the fediverse, listening to issues, reading threads, my opinion is that we should focus on many smaller instance rather than a few huge ones.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Mastodon and the Fediverse have often been advertised as "microblogging" tools, and the post length is mainly around the same as one would see on Twitter. That is a big difference from old-time message boards, where longform text was welcome and normal. (Even if the Fediverse does support long post lengths, that matters little if the community has not embraced it.)

malwarebytess 6y ago

There's subtext here, right? Is this related to Gab and the rest? From their earlier post about Fediverse: >Some parties in the Fediverse demand “self-censorship.” Especially when we talk about particular services or products, individuals contact us and demand that we delete our posts. “We shouldn’t talk about the topic,” so other people don’t start to use these “evil” services and products. In our opinion, such demands contradict the claim of being an “open-minded community.”

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kstrauser 6y ago
I’m not sure, but even if not I still feel like that’s a silly complaint. Party A says something on the Internet that offends party B. Party B says something on the Internet that offends party A. Party A complains that they’re being asked to self-censor. I see it as both parties using the service as designed to speak their minds. Party A also has the tools to mute Party B if they don’t like what they have to say.
- curtainsforus 6y ago
  I mean, it's Party A says something on the Internet that offends party B. Party B asks party A to self-censor/tells them to shut up, which offends party A. Party A complains that they’re being asked to self-censor. When party B is asking A to self-censor, there's nothing wrong with A complaining about what B is saying. If A's lying or being dishonest, oh well.
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    I do get that, but really, B doesn’t have any special sway. They’re just some randos saying that they don’t like A’s posting. While annoying, that’s going to happen on every social network. If I went on Gab and started posting a lot of pro-Biden content, I’m certain plenty of people would tell me to knock it off. So sure, it’s alright for A to be annoyed by it. That’s definitely not a unique feature of the fediverse, though.

rjkershner 6y ago

I've lurked on Mastodon for a while and honestly your experience will be only as good as your instance you subscribed to. Fosstodon is a very focused instance with like minded people, and the local feed there is pretty top notch. My experience on more "general" focus instances was a lot worse and borderline spammy. Hoping they put effort in making your activity pub profile more portable as move accounts to new servers is still kludgey at best.

benibela 6y ago
I thought it does not matter which instance one choosen, since you see posts from all the other instances?
- input_sh 6y ago
  That's accurate. But there's also a local feed you can consume (all the people on your instance), which is kind of a workaround if you can't be bothered with finding a fair amount of people to follow for your own timeline to be interesting.

dleslie 6y ago

My experience with the fediverse was that enjoying the benefits of federation encountered the same issues with content and user behaviour that can be found in silo'd services. That is to say, fediverse sites increased their likelihood of replicating/serving hate, pornography and illegal content in correlation to the number of external sites they were connected to and the size of their user base. It left me wondering why even bother? It's no better than using Discourse for a private group and Twitter/Facebook for public groups. Perhaps worse.

seany 6y ago
Being able to pick where that line is, and who gets to decide it is a big part of the draw.
freeone3000 6y ago
There's no algorithmic advertising, no universal tracking, and your instance's mod team is known to you instead of a faceless automation farm.
- dleslie 6y ago
  That's all true of hosting a private Discourse instance, as well.
  - librexpr 6y ago
    You said in your original comment: > using Discourse for a private group and Twitter/Facebook for public groups Even if what freeone3000 said about Mastodon is also all true about Discourse (I know nothing about Discourse, but I'll take your word for it), it's not true about Twitter/Facebook. And since Mastodon is aimed more at the public group use case, Mastodon is a useful replacement of Twitter/Facebook even by your own logic.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      Not quite: Twitter and Facebook have _armies_ of community moderation employees at their disposal; the fediverse has volunteers.

S-E-P 6y ago

I would argue that what is described in this post is inherent in all social networks. The wonderful thing about the Fediverse is that depending on the node you connect to, or the people you choose to federate with (in the event that you have your own instance) that your experience will be vastly different. It’s given me some of the most enjoyable interactions I’ve ever had online in the last ten years. You need to have a thick skin, take the time to use filters, block certain keywords. And use Pleroma, Mastadon is crap, Pleroma let’s you type for DAYS, “limited character cap” is really only a mastadon thing and it’s crap.

josteink 6y ago
Pleroma-link for those too lazy to search: https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/
kowlo 6y ago
Is that the only benefit of Pleroma over Mastodon? Have you checked Misskey before https://join.misskey.page/en/ https://join.misskey.page/en/? It looks interesting too...
cbozeman 6y ago
> You need to have a thick skin Actually we need the rest of social media to have this, and then we don't need these alternative platforms. There are simply too many people who have grown up without having any meaningful opposition in their lives - without having someone challenge their ideas and values and making them defend said ideas and values, and they simply do. not. know. how to cope with it.
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  Is this purely a US phenomenon? I don't see this much at all from people who live here t(the UK), but we're really starting to feel the effects of social media censorship hit hard, and I know a lot of people are really angry about Big Tech pushing their own moralistic world view on our country.
  - 6y ago

eznzt 6y ago

This seems a list of things that are wrong with people, not with the fediverse.

einpoklum 6y ago

Can someone contextualize this post somewhat, for readers who have been living under a rock and don't know about the Fediverse nor who is "we" at "infosec-handbook"?

riffic 6y ago
Wikipedia has an article on the Fediverse, to sum it up it's a community of communities based on open web standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse I don't know anything about this "infosec-handbook" group.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  I actually went and read that, but it's wholly unclear what place the fediverse actually has in online culture today, what "kind" of people use it, or parts of it; what it replaces for them; etc.

kowlo 6y ago

Besides Pleroma mentioned elsewhere in this thread, has anyone checked our Misskey (https://join.misskey.page/en/ https://join.misskey.page/en/)? It has some interesting features, like arranging your own virtual room and sharing it with others. I've not seen much of it yet.

Jkvngt 6y ago

None of the issues they bring up are any better on big tech's social media. And of course we should all work to "other" big tech and its employees.

TheJoYo 6y ago

I also want to leave the internet because there are bad opinions on it.

olah_1 6y ago

I’ve had critiques about the fediverse for a long time. I’ve also had critiques about urbit for a long time. It seems to me that Zot improves pleroma/mastodon to solve their problems (server extinction, account migration). It also seems to me that Urbit improves Zot to solve their problems (user experience, global naming).

wizzwizz4 6y ago

I'm upset that they're painting these social issues as Mastodon-specific ones, and that they're painting the Fediverse as just Mastodon, but they do have a point about RSS.

TheJoYo 6y ago
I don't see how RSS fixes anything they complained about. They also recommended people use stackexchange over federated networks.

teh_klev 6y ago

> Many people read the headlines of a post and then guess what is written in the remaining article This isn't just endemic to the Fediverse, it's endemic everywhere. Bites tongue.

ankit219 6y ago

Part of the things that you mentioned in your experience, "us v them" ideology, reverse burden of proof are all a defining characteristic of any forum that thrives. And, arguably, its not a bug it's a feature. Typically, a forum has a lot of registered users, but very few who are active daily. (Reddit reported 52M MAU in Oct 2020, an increase by 44% post pandemic. Their MAUs in Dec 19 were 430M. So, about 7-10% users are very active, others are lurkers). The most frequent users (power users) gain kind of an influence which is suited to their experience the most (not talking about HN per se, not as frequent here) and they come to define the rules of the forum. It's not specific to mastodon, and forum moderators allow it because they are the users (and many a times mods themselves) and it does not really break a rule. The us v them mentality in particular is key for the forums since it invokes an emotional response in using that forum. Many lurkers stick to the forum if they cant find a better alternate to stay in touch with the topic, and they leave when they do. The other problems you highlighted may not be a platform problem but a human problem which will happen on almost every other platform. I don't think there is a solution to this except finding other smart people who are more self aware, though that is easier said than done.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

I think that the author of this and I can just agree to disagree, which is OK with me. I am on mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson and I get a lot of value from it. re: “I’m privacy-friendly; please donate”: I donate but don't mind identifying myself. If you want anonymity then don't donate to whoever runs the server that you use. You are free to follow and un-follow (if you see toxic material) as you wish. I hope that I don't sound like I am lecturing or otherwise being obnoxious, but if you don't think that the large Internet platform companies have too much power then I recommend reading "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" and "privacy is Power." The great thing about the Internet is that anyone can get a domain, get creative, share their stuff, meet people, make business acquaintances, etc. I see the Fediverse as another tool to use.

lrvick 6y ago

I am one of the people that got a lot of shares on Mastodon for being critical of Signal. I think this article greatly misrepresents the main arguments going around the Fediverse about Signal, and the arguments for alternatives. 1. Signal holds the only set of signing keys to the only published binaries allowed on the network, compiled by them, that in turn control all signing keys. If pressured they could push a malicious update with unpublished code. The published server code has not been updated since April last year, so either they have made no changes since then or they are already comfortable pushing updates without matching public source code. 2. The bulk of metadata protection on Signal comes down to trust in SGX, which indeed is an entirely broken technology and keys can be extracted from it via a number of side channels if there is sufficient motivation, such as a government trying to track down dissenting views, or a future owner of Signal that secretly is willing to cooperate with a state actor. Intel also could, if ordered, also issue a microcode update intentionally compromising the RNG used for keys, etc. Signal places a huge centralized target on its back so I think these risks are plausible and worth being aware of. 3. Signal forces all TCP/IP metadata to one stack, which if combined with heuristical analysis, I strongly suspect it would be possible to work out which IPs communicate with which other IPs even without aid of SGX contained metadata. 4. Signal is actively hostile to any third parties that compile and sign signal network compatible binaries and release them via open source app stores, and vows to fight them and get them removed from the network. Moxie repeatedly says he prefers the install base tracking proprietary stores like Google and Apple afford. 5. Signal has built their entire social graph on phone numbers which require ID to buy and are actively tracked in 200 countries, and many carriers will sell out their customers to bounty hunters etc. This is directly at odds with their stated goals of furthering privacy. When asked what alternative I suggest, I say Matrix. Those that really need privacy can use a pseudonym via Tor on a server of their choice hosted by people they trust and avoid revealing PII to the messenger at all, unlike Signal. The most private metadata is that which you are not required to reveal in the first place. The server and remaining metadata that must exist, like sensitive channel memberships, easily be hosted in a server you own on property you own. Sensitive channels could stay on that server and not reveal any metadata or group participation to the wider network giving you granular control of your own metadata and where it lives. If you really wanted to you could even use generic tools that exist for SGX to do FDE on the database disk with the key in SGX and in turn also run a lean binary like Dendrite in SGX. I don't think this is worth it, and I think SGX is largely security theatre at this point but this is what freedom looks like. You can run your own server and maintain it according to your own threat profile, instead of using a one size-fits-all threat profile a centralized walled garden forces on you. If you still think all the arguments above are totally unreasonable and you don't like hearing a lot of opinions critical of popular centralized services like Telegram, Signal, and Whatsapp... then indeed the Fediverse may not be for you. Most users care a lot about keeping digital sovereignty which is why they joined the Fediverse in the first place.

jessehattabaugh 6y ago

I've been banned from two mastodon servers; one for saying "Neil Degrasse Tyson is my spirit animal" and the other for simply disagreeing with somebody. The tribalism is strong on Mastodon and of you don't make effort to conform you won't last long.

TheJoYo 6y ago
I haven't had this issue on my instance but I do cross-post onto Mastodon instances that focus on infosec. The only complaints I've gotten have been from Mastodon mods that want some specific content warning or some such that I can't be bothered with. I just delete those posts, fuckem if they don't want it.

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago

I was looking to find an insightful article about the problems with Fediverse. But I only found an article that rants about the toxic humanity. This article has nothing to do with so called "Fediverse". It's so unrelated that the title almost reads like a click bait.

kelnos 6y ago

This just reminds me that the problem with discourse isn't centralization, control, lack of privacy or security, or any other thing. The problem is that people act in bad faith online, a lot. Give a bunch of people a platform to broadcast their thoughts, and a lot of people will be lazy about those thoughts. A lot of people will turn it into a competition and be more concerned about creating a following rather than spreading truth and fostering healthy discussion. Sure, I'd take a Fediverse over a Facebook or a Twitter any day; lack of corporate control and the ability to run your own instance and federate are just plain better from a "health of the internet" perspective. But that doesn't solve the social problems inherent in any community where people most don't know each other personally and don't have to interact face-to-face.

sneak 6y ago
Decentralized, opt-in publishing requires decentralized, opt-in moderation. I have designed some solutions around this, but haven't found the right product/ecosystem in which to implement it yet. The basic idea is that you need multiple independent publishers of append-only "credit rating" feeds, publishing their own views/opinions of the reputations of different servers, users, or hashtags across the whole of the network. Services can aggregate all of these moderation/rating feeds in realtime, and provide to their users a list of all of the different "social credit rating agencies", or moderation feed publishers. You as a user could then choose your moderators from across the internet, then their own moderation decisions are applied to your feeds. It's sort of like outsourcing the management of your block/mute list. You could, of course, disable all of the moderation feeds and see the firehose of slurs and spam, or switch to different ones. We solved this with email (poorly, and over a long period of time), and RBLs were part of that process. We'll eventually see the same for federated/p2p systems as well.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I don't think this is the point. You are trying to solve a social problem via technical means, and that generally does not work. Spam/scam email isn't a great parallel: that sort of thing is a more-or-less anonymous party intruding into someone else's life in order to try to sell them something or steal something from them. Blocking that kind of communication is the correct solution, and that's what success looks like. Getting people to have nuanced, respectful conversations online is a completely different thing. If you get to the point where your best option is to block the other person, or moderate/delete their posts, that's a failure, not a success.

erik_kemp 6y ago

Thanks for sharing your considerations. It's good that people care and think carefully about which services to use and not to use, and also share it. I think the main problem is that the idea and implications of decentralisation are hard to fully grasp. It does not imply privacy or security. It does imply decentralisation of power, decentralisation of rules & code of conduct and decentralisation of financing. My own experience: Mastodon has provided me a first step in more digital sovereignty. It is very refreshing to have a timeline that you can fully control. Moving to Mastodon felt like moving into a new village. You start with an empty timeline, and you have to actively work on your first connections. After some initial effort, you are rewarded with meeting interesting people. They welcome you in their communities, and you can keep on discovering amazing people through the messages they boost! Feel free to interact via erik@mastodon.utwente.nl :-)

PointyFluff 6y ago

Literally just an article that highlights the problems with social media in general. Total click-bait; I sure thankful for ublock.

Zoo3y 6y ago

Most of the points they elaborated on are People problems, not Mastodon problems. The genuine critiques of Mastodon they listed are migration issues, updating posts (it makes sense 'edited' posts lose their clout), and character limit (already way bigger than twitter's). Also, aren't they falling into their own "Us vs. Them" argument by complaining about general Mastodon users?

TheJoYo 6y ago
I'm sure they've never made lazy statements about information security, like recommending stackexchange over a federated platform.
josephg 6y ago
People problems and technical problems aren’t so cleanly separated. People speak in pithy soundbites on Twitter in part because of who they are, and in part because of ergonomics of the platform (limited character counts, etc). Mastodon is a place as much as a product. The technology affects how we interact, and how we interact in turn influences design choices.

cblconfederate 6y ago

RSS needs to add a <reply_to> field to replace the fediverse. There's really no need for a unified community; metadata can be provided separately by other systems.

aasasd 6y ago

> Their messenger doesn’t offer any server-side protection. In their case, a server-side party can directly access your data in cleartext—this is trivial. I'm gonna need names.

arendtio 6y ago

I expected something more technical, but instead the points are mainly based on culture (which seems to be a problem for most social networks). In addition, I find it weird that there are several parts where they argue against decentralization. I mean, those are just examples for specific situations, but putting all examples together tells a story of itself.

FalconSensei 6y ago

> Many Fediverse users claim to be the “better and open-minded alternative to Twitter.” We think that this doesn’t reflect reality, as explained below. I also had my problems with Mastodon and Pleroma users. Unfortunately, there are idiots everywhere and, while federation helps to some degree, separating left/right extremists, trans people and transphobic people, you can still be in an instance focused on anime, and get attacked because you use Mac/Windows instead of linux.

WClayFerguson 6y ago

I'm not finished with the platform I'm developing, but it does solve all the issues mentioned in this article. https://quanta.wiki/n/screencast https://quanta.wiki/n/screencast

kevincox 6y ago

I think that some of their points are good. I think the major one is that unless you run your own instance you have no ownership over your identity (save the mastodon migration tools). I think it is weird that if I want to use Mastodon to post short messages and PeerTube to post videos I need two different identities. I think it would have been better if I could have a shared identity that could be used across multiple fediverse apps, or used to move my identity from a "shared" provide to a new one, or a self-hosted one. I also think that length-limited posts are not a great basis for a social network, but that is not mastodon specific.