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The hacker in me loves the idea of the Fediverse. All of these services seem fun and, different, and I would love to participate. I am even willing to (and have

The hacker in me loves the idea of the Fediverse. All of these services seem fun and, different, and I would love to participate. I am even willing to (and have in the past) set them up for myself. The issue comes when I think about my community: I can count on one hand the number of people I know that fit (what I think is) the criteria for the Fediverse: A. Possesses the technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients B. Understands the value of decentralized platforms and holds those values themselves C. Knows more than 1-2 people who ALSO meet the qualifications of A and B (aside from me) I think this leaves two possibilities: 1. There can be a small number of large instances, which removes the issues caused by A and B but has the effect of reducing most of the benefits found in B (focus, privacy, catered speech, etc). 2. There will need to be a million tiny silo'd instances (<5 people). This solves B, but we run into the issues of A and C. I realize this is closer to the goal. I'd love to see Fediverse “platforms” succeed, but I'm not sure how they can since the network effect is what is needed.

jedimastert 4y ago
I completely agree, there's such a barrier for entry that's incredibly difficult for not-tech people to emphasize with. I think there's an interesting case to be looked at with Discord. Not that discord itself is decentralized, but the surprising amount of vibrant and active communities in the form of Discord servers. If the client-side barrier can be sufficiently lowered, I'm sure many communities like that have at least one or two people knowledgeable enough to set up an instance or two
anderspitman 4y ago
> Possesses the technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients Yep. Self-hosting something like Plex (please consider Jellyfin instead) or a social Fediverse server shouldn't be any more difficult or less secure than installing an app on your phone. I think projects like Sandstorm, yunohost, Cloudron, etc have the right idea, but they're still way too complicated for the average person to get up and running. I've been chewing on this problem for about a year, and I believe it's solvable with technologies that are currently available. This is the focus of my current main side project.
riffic 4y ago
> technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients This will be largely alleviated with managed or hosted services. For example, a lot of corporations used to run mail services on-prem but no longer need to do this, they've moved on to purchasing it directly from a provider like Microsoft or Google Workspace. Also, this largely reflects the idea behind Discord and Slack - hosted services will be the dominant players once the ecosystem evolves. also, I'll repeat my new business model Twitter should adopt -- take the underlying protocol (ActivityPub), white-label their services and sell them to orgs who want Twitter on their own domain (also allowing for control over the username namespace like email / @anyusername@domain.tld). I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. A global unified namespace like the one Twitter uses is problematic (squatting/trademark disputes, etc) and awful.
- beepbooptheory 4y ago
  Maybe this was the underlying goal in their efforts with Bluesky?[1] 1. https://blueskyweb.org https://blueskyweb.org
  - riffic 4y ago
    probably. Fortunately Bluesky is vaporware so the Fediverse and ActivityPub actually have the advantage here of being a standard that has an established community of implementors, and momentum. EDIT: I've said before, the PBLLC should be working with the W3C, IETF, or other open bodies, and they've always had a seat at the table (https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join).
    - pfraze 4y ago
      We're absolutely not vaporware. We're also completely happy to live in a world where both ActivityPub and Bluesky exist, and prioritize different problems with different approaches.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  > I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. It would dilute the Twitter brand and divide internal resources. That's the main critique I can think of. Would never happen while Twitter was a publicly traded corporation. Under private ownership, it very well might happen. I think the Fediverse idea is great, but people are dumb. @somebody is about as far as most people can handle. @somebody@domain.with.dots is confusing, and nobody will understand. Imagine having to explain bang paths to Fred in accounting so he can send an electronic mail. Never underestimate how obtuse the average computer user is. They can be taught, but it takes many, many years before it becomes common enough that people grok it without trouble. (I like your idea, btw.)
glenstein 4y ago
I agree with your points on B and C, but the vast majority of people don't have to know or care about A.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
proactivesvcs 4y ago
It depends on who "your community" is - if they're people who can set up their own instance, and care about decentralisation - congrats, there are already loads of them on the Fediverse, in terms of users and instances. C) solved. If your community is "people I'm interested in talking to" then they don't need A) or B, and there are so many of those on the Fediverse that congrats, C) is solved. The fact of the matter is the Fediverse (and even just Mastodon) is that 1) is not the current reality (plenty of medium and small-ish instances), and 2) does not have to be, and indeed is not the reality, and even if it were, A and C still need not apply. I sometimes fear people jump into the Fedi but, understandably, aren't versed on how discoverability works, thinks there's no-one interesting there, and leaves. Whether setting up your own instance or using a tiny existing one, you can browse the user directories and posts from other, larger instances, and find interesting souls to connect with, without having to make an account there. Most importantly one can search tags used in posts and profiles which relate to your interests. Any good / mature client (or the web UI) lets you search for tags and pin them as their own timelines - so a rolling conversation about your fav topics, across all instances that you federate with.
andreyk 4y ago
For 2, I wonder if there could be a 'wrapper' service (website) around Fediverse that makes it as easy to set up an instance as Slack or Discord. It would still be decentralized, except the service could abstract away the technical bits entirely.
- myself248 4y ago
  Bingo. Send payment here, choose a name, your instance spins up, and stays up as long as you've paid for hosting. When payment runs out, it emails you a download link to export your data which you can take to another provider, or just start paying again and it starts working again. I'd send a few bucks to such a site, sure.
  - msoucy 4y ago
    There is such a thing in masto.host, though I haven't used it personally.
thriftwy 4y ago
Platforms should not own content and subscribers graph. Users should own content and subscribers graph, preferably by reliance on public key cryptography. Then you will be notified of your peers' contents on any platform. Imagine a popular but controversial blogger deplatforming attempt, followed by his 300k subscribers getting an 'Your contact has just uploaded their first video on NextTube' notification in five minutes. You don't need many platforms when platform understands they only have power to de-content themselves. You also no longer need those rows of social icons since you only need to subscribe to a creator once. Content should reside in P2P/DHT mesh and platforms would only present, curate, decorate and discover it. But it should also be discoverable via PKI+DHT.
kixiQu 4y ago
https://runyourown.social/#keep-it-small https://runyourown.social/#keep-it-small <-- Something like 50, where only 1 or 2 have to have the technical skills, seems reasonable to amortize the admin time. I don't totally know why we're saying that kind of middle number is infeasible.

jedimastert 4y ago

I completely agree, there's such a barrier for entry that's incredibly difficult for not-tech people to emphasize with. I think there's an interesting case to be looked at with Discord. Not that discord itself is decentralized, but the surprising amount of vibrant and active communities in the form of Discord servers. If the client-side barrier can be sufficiently lowered, I'm sure many communities like that have at least one or two people knowledgeable enough to set up an instance or two

anderspitman 4y ago

> Possesses the technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients Yep. Self-hosting something like Plex (please consider Jellyfin instead) or a social Fediverse server shouldn't be any more difficult or less secure than installing an app on your phone. I think projects like Sandstorm, yunohost, Cloudron, etc have the right idea, but they're still way too complicated for the average person to get up and running. I've been chewing on this problem for about a year, and I believe it's solvable with technologies that are currently available. This is the focus of my current main side project.

riffic 4y ago

> technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients This will be largely alleviated with managed or hosted services. For example, a lot of corporations used to run mail services on-prem but no longer need to do this, they've moved on to purchasing it directly from a provider like Microsoft or Google Workspace. Also, this largely reflects the idea behind Discord and Slack - hosted services will be the dominant players once the ecosystem evolves. also, I'll repeat my new business model Twitter should adopt -- take the underlying protocol (ActivityPub), white-label their services and sell them to orgs who want Twitter on their own domain (also allowing for control over the username namespace like email / @anyusername@domain.tld). I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. A global unified namespace like the one Twitter uses is problematic (squatting/trademark disputes, etc) and awful.

beepbooptheory 4y ago
Maybe this was the underlying goal in their efforts with Bluesky?[1] 1. https://blueskyweb.org https://blueskyweb.org
- riffic 4y ago
  probably. Fortunately Bluesky is vaporware so the Fediverse and ActivityPub actually have the advantage here of being a standard that has an established community of implementors, and momentum. EDIT: I've said before, the PBLLC should be working with the W3C, IETF, or other open bodies, and they've always had a seat at the table (https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join).
  - pfraze 4y ago
    We're absolutely not vaporware. We're also completely happy to live in a world where both ActivityPub and Bluesky exist, and prioritize different problems with different approaches.
deltarholamda 4y ago
> I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. It would dilute the Twitter brand and divide internal resources. That's the main critique I can think of. Would never happen while Twitter was a publicly traded corporation. Under private ownership, it very well might happen. I think the Fediverse idea is great, but people are dumb. @somebody is about as far as most people can handle. @somebody@domain.with.dots is confusing, and nobody will understand. Imagine having to explain bang paths to Fred in accounting so he can send an electronic mail. Never underestimate how obtuse the average computer user is. They can be taught, but it takes many, many years before it becomes common enough that people grok it without trouble. (I like your idea, btw.)

glenstein 4y ago

I agree with your points on B and C, but the vast majority of people don't have to know or care about A.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

proactivesvcs 4y ago

It depends on who "your community" is - if they're people who can set up their own instance, and care about decentralisation - congrats, there are already loads of them on the Fediverse, in terms of users and instances. C) solved. If your community is "people I'm interested in talking to" then they don't need A) or B, and there are so many of those on the Fediverse that congrats, C) is solved. The fact of the matter is the Fediverse (and even just Mastodon) is that 1) is not the current reality (plenty of medium and small-ish instances), and 2) does not have to be, and indeed is not the reality, and even if it were, A and C still need not apply. I sometimes fear people jump into the Fedi but, understandably, aren't versed on how discoverability works, thinks there's no-one interesting there, and leaves. Whether setting up your own instance or using a tiny existing one, you can browse the user directories and posts from other, larger instances, and find interesting souls to connect with, without having to make an account there. Most importantly one can search tags used in posts and profiles which relate to your interests. Any good / mature client (or the web UI) lets you search for tags and pin them as their own timelines - so a rolling conversation about your fav topics, across all instances that you federate with.

andreyk 4y ago

For 2, I wonder if there could be a 'wrapper' service (website) around Fediverse that makes it as easy to set up an instance as Slack or Discord. It would still be decentralized, except the service could abstract away the technical bits entirely.

myself248 4y ago
Bingo. Send payment here, choose a name, your instance spins up, and stays up as long as you've paid for hosting. When payment runs out, it emails you a download link to export your data which you can take to another provider, or just start paying again and it starts working again. I'd send a few bucks to such a site, sure.
- msoucy 4y ago
  There is such a thing in masto.host, though I haven't used it personally.

thriftwy 4y ago

Platforms should not own content and subscribers graph. Users should own content and subscribers graph, preferably by reliance on public key cryptography. Then you will be notified of your peers' contents on any platform. Imagine a popular but controversial blogger deplatforming attempt, followed by his 300k subscribers getting an 'Your contact has just uploaded their first video on NextTube' notification in five minutes. You don't need many platforms when platform understands they only have power to de-content themselves. You also no longer need those rows of social icons since you only need to subscribe to a creator once. Content should reside in P2P/DHT mesh and platforms would only present, curate, decorate and discover it. But it should also be discoverable via PKI+DHT.

kixiQu 4y ago

https://runyourown.social/#keep-it-small https://runyourown.social/#keep-it-small <-- Something like 50, where only 1 or 2 have to have the technical skills, seems reasonable to amortize the admin time. I don't totally know why we're saying that kind of middle number is infeasible.