4 ms·

for chrissake * just fund some fediverse development as a public good * make sure its user friendly and easy to setup * force easy export of social graph *

for chrissake * just fund some fediverse development as a public good * make sure its user friendly and easy to setup * force easy export of social graph * use your mouthpiece to advertise that an alternative exists and is better for the health of digital life * done sometimes it is quite ok if the collective purpose (and purse) steps in and cuts runaway private enterprise to size. even the most red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalists admit that corporate interests adapt to the legal and social sandbox they operate in. stop talking. do

vadfa 5y ago
The EU loves wasting money on things like these. Obviously they never gain any traction (since this depends on millions of people moving to another platform that is worse), but since public money belongs to nobody...
- streamofdigits 5y ago
  An example of "wasting EU money" on fediverse development would be useful. How can switching to social media that are less privacy invasive, less manipulative be "worse". NB: It is obviously true that the public sector can waste money. Everybody has their favorite examples. This is not the time and topic to debate how to fix the public sector.
  - vadfa 5y ago
    It wouldn't be useful because people wouldn't switch. It would be a lot of money spent on the development of a subpar software that nobody would use.
    - streamofdigits 5y ago
      why don't you try, say mastodon, just for fun. its perfectly usable even though it has been built using many orders of magnitude less resources than these walled gardens
      - vadfa 5y ago
        I don't see why I should try mastodon when twitter has way more users and the same moderation policies.
        streamofdigits 5y ago
        each mastodon instance has different moderation policies. you can setup you own instance and experiment. you are free not change your mind about social media but please stop throwing around inaccuracies
arp242 5y ago
I'm not entirely convinced that "the fediverse" is really the answer, but I do think that developing viable alternatives is. The same applies to Free Software and such in general; complaining about "Microsoft GitHub bad" is nice and all, but if all the Open Source alternatives are demonstrably worse then ... well ... (some of them are okay, but still lacking in various areas especially for more serious use, GitLab is a mess that barely works, and don't get me started about that atrocity of GNU Savannah). Anyway, re: fediverse; I suspect that it will have the same problems as Facebook if it really takes off, if not worse. The reason there's no problems now is because basically, few people use or care about it, but once it takes off bad actors will start looking for ways to abuse/manipulate it and we'll be back where we started.
- streamofdigits 5y ago
  there are many issues around social media that are still unresolved and existing fediverse implementations are not necessarily more advanced in this respect. but the transparency, evolvability, standards based architecture are all aspects that would much accelerate finding solutions
  - arp242 5y ago
    Perhaps; although I'm not so sure. Another story from yesterday which didn't take off much, but I thought was pretty good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29010941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29010941 I don't really see federation improve on that all that much, but maybe I'm just lacking in imagination.
    - streamofdigits 5y ago
      its a good read but remarkably it manages not to mention once the fediverse (and mastodon in particular) where alternate strategies are already facing empirical validation. if they did do a more thorough research of how it is setup they would know that some very simple choices have huge calming effect: e.g., not showing the number of "likes" on the timeline and not allowing "comments" on reposts. and those are just tiny interventions in the scheme of things. having open source codebases that can be forked but still interoperate via activity pub means that a fragmentation, speciation, niche creation will happen organically which will further reduce the phenomenon of irrate digital mobs its not like people don't have imagination, but a "system" that sucks in XX billions of profit per quarter acts as a black hole: any light-ray of hope is crushed back into its reality distortion field
tomjen3 5y ago
How would you force the export of the social graph? There isn't an identifier that you can take elsewhere that isn't also private.
- streamofdigits 5y ago
  https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...

vadfa 5y ago

The EU loves wasting money on things like these. Obviously they never gain any traction (since this depends on millions of people moving to another platform that is worse), but since public money belongs to nobody...

streamofdigits 5y ago
An example of "wasting EU money" on fediverse development would be useful. How can switching to social media that are less privacy invasive, less manipulative be "worse". NB: It is obviously true that the public sector can waste money. Everybody has their favorite examples. This is not the time and topic to debate how to fix the public sector.
- vadfa 5y ago
  It wouldn't be useful because people wouldn't switch. It would be a lot of money spent on the development of a subpar software that nobody would use.
  - streamofdigits 5y ago
    why don't you try, say mastodon, just for fun. its perfectly usable even though it has been built using many orders of magnitude less resources than these walled gardens
    - vadfa 5y ago
      I don't see why I should try mastodon when twitter has way more users and the same moderation policies.
      - streamofdigits 5y ago
        each mastodon instance has different moderation policies. you can setup you own instance and experiment. you are free not change your mind about social media but please stop throwing around inaccuracies

arp242 5y ago

I'm not entirely convinced that "the fediverse" is really the answer, but I do think that developing viable alternatives is. The same applies to Free Software and such in general; complaining about "Microsoft GitHub bad" is nice and all, but if all the Open Source alternatives are demonstrably worse then ... well ... (some of them are okay, but still lacking in various areas especially for more serious use, GitLab is a mess that barely works, and don't get me started about that atrocity of GNU Savannah). Anyway, re: fediverse; I suspect that it will have the same problems as Facebook if it really takes off, if not worse. The reason there's no problems now is because basically, few people use or care about it, but once it takes off bad actors will start looking for ways to abuse/manipulate it and we'll be back where we started.

streamofdigits 5y ago
there are many issues around social media that are still unresolved and existing fediverse implementations are not necessarily more advanced in this respect. but the transparency, evolvability, standards based architecture are all aspects that would much accelerate finding solutions
- arp242 5y ago
  Perhaps; although I'm not so sure. Another story from yesterday which didn't take off much, but I thought was pretty good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29010941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29010941 I don't really see federation improve on that all that much, but maybe I'm just lacking in imagination.
  - streamofdigits 5y ago
    its a good read but remarkably it manages not to mention once the fediverse (and mastodon in particular) where alternate strategies are already facing empirical validation. if they did do a more thorough research of how it is setup they would know that some very simple choices have huge calming effect: e.g., not showing the number of "likes" on the timeline and not allowing "comments" on reposts. and those are just tiny interventions in the scheme of things. having open source codebases that can be forked but still interoperate via activity pub means that a fragmentation, speciation, niche creation will happen organically which will further reduce the phenomenon of irrate digital mobs its not like people don't have imagination, but a "system" that sucks in XX billions of profit per quarter acts as a black hole: any light-ray of hope is crushed back into its reality distortion field

tomjen3 5y ago

How would you force the export of the social graph? There isn't an identifier that you can take elsewhere that isn't also private.

streamofdigits 5y ago
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...