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> Imagine you're a rather small server and suddenly Eli Lilly and Company joins your instance. The point of mastodon is not that big companies will join small
by jameshart 4y ago
> Imagine you're a rather small server and suddenly Eli Lilly and Company joins your instance.
The point of mastodon is not that big companies will join small volunteer-run instances. They can run their own mastodon servers, just like they run their own mail servers and chat servers (or, more accurately, they outsource running their own mail and chat servers to Google and slack).
The right place for ActivityPub to land is that businesses and institutions will host their own (or pay a SaaS offering to do it for them, like they do with email and their CMS today), individuals will sign up to shared services (like you sign up with gmail for email, or blogger.com to blog).
The problem is going to be holding the barbarians at bay. All the same stuff we have to do for email will need to be deployed: Community blocklists for misbehaving servers, IP reputation, ML spam detection…
And funding it will require cash which the adtech industry will spiral in and offer to provide. ‘Federate with our servers and we’ll pay you 1c for every message you allow us to post to your users…’ Server admins will resist for a while but eventually, the walls will crack.
Enjoy it while it lasts, this burst of old school volunteer-run internet. It won’t survive this eternal September. It never does. As the architect of the Matrix said: Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it
- user3939382 4y ago> the architect of the Matrix Who was, by the way, an homage to Vint Cerf, creator of TCP/IP.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoYep and there’s already a paid service offering hosted instances! https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/ There’s also an open and active GitHub issue on mastodon discussing how to separate server hosting from domain name so you can point DNS at an existing instance and use it from that domain: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668 Many thanks to my friend on twitter for pointing me to both of these: https://twitter.com/__jesse_li/status/1592006641897320448 https://twitter.com/__jesse_li/status/1592006641897320448
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoI just had nightmares of internal corporate instances. >Mastodon by Teams (tm), please log in with your active directory credentials to see the latest posts from HR!
- trelane 4y agoAt least they'd (Microsoft) have to make the changes publicly available, since it's AGPL. So they can't have secret shenanigans that others don't have.
- doctor_eval 4y agoGenuinely don’t understand. Is the ActivityPub protocol AGPL? Is there something stopping MS from just building their own server from scratch?
- codefreakxff 4y agoThey would also make a Microsoft owned version of the protocol to support features only their client and server supported
- sitkack 4y agoWhy wouldn't they just implement SOAP over JSON?
- class4behavior 4y agoAs a side note, imho, there's little incentive for (large) businesses to associate with any particular instance because of the evident risk that users would target and harm their brands.
- shagie 4y agoThere are several reasons why they wouldn't want to associate with a public server. While the verification green check mark is nice, it is much better to have PR hosted on toot.company.com instead. Furthermore, there's the "who can see what" - https://restoreprivacy.com/mastodon-privacy-issues-risks/ https://restoreprivacy.com/mastodon-privacy-issues-risks/ > Because these messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, the server owner can read everything in plaintext. (See also https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 ) That's a BIG "companies should be hosting their own servers."
- jameshart 4y agoExactly. You're not going to go find Hertz on mastodon.social to complain about your rental car booking being screwed up, any more than you would expect to reach their helpdesk through hertzcustomersupport783@aol.com.
- 094459 4y agoI can see most companies not spinning up Mastadon servers simply because of the license.
- tptacek 4y agoIf ActivityPub succeeds, it's unlikely that the Mastodon server will be the only mainstream implementation.
- wizzwizz4 4y agoMastodon is already not the only mainstream implementation. It wasn't even the first mainstream implementation. https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ lists ten.
- hugs 4y agoIt's been a looooong time since I mostly did web dev, but if anything got me back in the game, this is it. I'm sad to see Twitter implode, but this unnatural disaster is a window of opportunity that feels like the mid-2000s social media Cambrian explosion all over again.
- godelski 4y ago> The point of mastodon is not that big companies will join small volunteer-run instances. But does this really address that issue? I see this as an attack vector really. Let's say Elon isn't happy with the competition. He can join a small server and force them to either increase hosting fees or to shut down. That's really the point of the author's comment and the relationship to scaling.
- Bilal_io 4y agoI don't know the underlying architecture of mastodon, so forgive my naive question, but why wouldn't rate-oiniting be a solution in this instance? Or if one believes they're under attack by a large group of people by aimpling registering and posting 1 post, then rate limiting won't be affecting, so they could realistically pause registration, right? Please correct my misunderstanding.
- polytely 4y agothe admin can just ban elon and set the instance to invite only, easy
- rsynnott 4y ago... I mean, they could just kick him off.
- bartread 4y ago> Enjoy it while it lasts, this burst of old school volunteer-run internet. It won’t survive this eternal September. It never does. As the architect of the Matrix said: Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it This is perhaps my biggest regret. I've ignored Mastodon because it seem too much like a PITA to deal with. Now I've been looking at it more seriously, but so has everybody else who's on Twitter, so by the time I get there it's going to be... Twitter pre Musk. This isn't really that appealing. Coulda woulda shoulda, etc., but I just wasn't paying enough attention at the right time. Rather like Bitcoin. Don't get me started.
- madrox 4y agoYou may enjoy private Discord servers more if you're seeking online community
- int_19h 4y agoThe influx is going to be contained on a few large servers. If you run your own instance, you can just not federate with them.
- naravara 4y agoIf you're not federated with them your instance is going to be a ghost town. I think it'll be hard to run an independent instance with enough activity on its own to be worth joining unless you have some external source of community/fandom to keep fresh streams of users coming in to manage churn. The largest community Discords, for example, tend to be around YouTubers, streamers, podcasters, etc. where they build the community around their content and fanbase. This was also the way the big PHP forums used to go.
- WorldMaker 4y agoPeople used to love the relative calm of the small PHP (and Perl) forums. For some of us in the early internet the big forums were toxic place to generally be avoided. You can have a wonderful time on a tiny instance that only federates with mostly other tiny instances and never sees the biggest instances. Mastodon doesn't need to be Twitter where you "must" follow celebrities of any sort or streamers/podcasters/YouTubers/Influencers. People claiming that Mastodon is terrible because it isn't focused solely on massive instances with maximal "reach" are missing the point: that is a *feature* and not a bug. People have forgotten the early days of Twitter when it was mostly about following real life friends, or conference acquaintances. There's a usefulness to quieter, stiller social media. It's great to have tiny instances with tiny follow streams.
- spion 4y ago> Community blocklists for misbehaving servers, IP reputation, ML spam detection… Not really. Email and ActivityPub are radically different in one way that makes all the difference: AP is whitelist-based (follows). > Federate with our servers and we’ll pay you 1c for every message you allow us to post to your users... And this is a fine model - much better than all the power concentrated in one stagnant entity that forbids everyone else from participating, extending or improving.
- jameshart 4y agoI don't see how follow-driven whitelisting eliminates issues with misbehaving peers. ActivityPub servers can receive 'Follow' requests to any of their inboxes, from any server. Seems like a peer that just pops up on a random address, spams out a bunch of follow requests referencing actor profiles containing crypto pump-and-dump scams, then vanishes would be just as much of a nuisance to Mastodon as an equivalent SMTP-based spammer.
- zmmmmm 4y agoFully centralised, but the best counter example I have in my mind is Reddit; here you have largely community moderated content under a general umbrella of quite loose policies. Reddit is I think pretty successful in that even though some subreddits are totally overrun with moronic content, the ones I care about are high quality. So even though it's centralised I don't think any of the fundamentals that make it work can't be decentralised. If Mastodon can follow these rough guides for how to make community moderation work, I think there's a chance it can be successful without falling into the cavern that email did.
- tootie 4y agoTwitter could have done what Reddit did. Dorsey just didn't get it and Musk gets it even less. Reddit has been growing slowly, making some very public mistakes along the way but never getting ahead of their skis. I think it's definitely true that Twitter was bloated, but firing half the company on a lark was a pretty stupid plan. They need to cull features, pay down technical debt and reduce costs. They also need to strongly affirm that their moderation policy is to create a platform that is free of abuse and amenable to the most people possible. Not "free speech". The two smartest people in this business are Yishan Wong and Ellen Pao.
- mrtranscendence 4y agoThe fact of mass layoffs immediately after the takeover just baffles me. I understand the pressure to reduce costs, and I understand that in some sense Twitter might be overstaffed for the features it offers. But the blunt of instrument of firing over half the company with a week's preparation feels extraordinarily inept. It's a wonder they've been able to keep the lights on -- losing access to their official Twitter handle was a nice touch. The money they saved over a more reasonable, long-term solution can't be that much in the scheme of things. Just spitballing ... offer a generous severance for voluntary layoffs now along with a hiring freeze, and give a mandate to simplify the offering and reduce infrastructure costs. Take the time to learn the business and identify which areas can be profitably wound down. Only then reorganize the company and make targeted layoffs. (Bonus idea: don't rush features like Twitter Blue that no one asked for, are ripe for abuse, and might even lose money overall if reports are correct.) I've never been a huge Musk fan, but any respect I had for him as an effective business leader has evaporated.
- fire 4y agois there a reason we couldn't or shouldn't use existing mail infra and maybe auto-negotiate a protocol upgrade for mastodon servers?
- derefr 4y ago> Federate with our servers and we’ll pay you 1c for every message you allow us to post to your users… What's the problem there, if you know all your users have corporate-mandated spam-blockers installed that will drop the spam they're paying you to forward?
- jameshart 4y agoI see you've never interacted with the adtech industry before.
- dredmorbius 4y ago"Eli Lilly" did effectively join Mastodon, in 2018, except that it was Wil Wheaton, and ... things went poorly. Wil joined what was at the time my own home instance, following something of a flameout on Twitter, itself caused by 1) people harassing him there, 2) Wil employing a shared, user-generated blocklist which 3) by both its own size and celeb-driven adoption rendered many other Twitter accounts effectively blocked --- not by Twitter, but as a result of individual adoptions of that blocklist. How legitimate inclusions were, and/or how feasible it was to get off the blocklist, I really can't say. That said, Wil arrived on Mastodon with both a large fan and foe base. Harassment of Wil began on Mastodon. <https://www.theglobaldispatch.com/mastadon-shuts-down-wil-wheaton-after-attacks-from-sjw-mobs-trolls-as-they-win-again-11877/ https://www.theglobaldispatch.com/mastadon-shuts-down-wil-wh...> The admin/moderator was ... less than transparent or capable, and responded to a case of "this profile is causing me problems" by banning that profile rather than seeking out the root cause of the griefers who'd in fact triggered the problem. <https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251 https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251> Ultimate, Wil left Mastodon as well, writing his own account of the matter: <https://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/ https://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place...> Mastodon's evolved its own tools and practices (both technically and as a community, including a community of admins), and should perform better in future, though much engineering progress emerges through pain, suffering, or worse. Wil is, in the world of celebrity, fairly modest stakes. I've heard tales of Twitter that there was a point where it could only handle a tweet from one major celeb (e.g., Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, or one of the 'dashians) at a time, and effectively had servers dedicated to sufficiently large accounts. Celebrities proved an interesting stress-testing mechanism. Mastodon ... has not yet experienced this, and I've my concerns with how well it might handle such scaling, or what specific elements of scaling (users, instances, posts, interactions, ...) will prove most problematic. I've certainly seen and heard of numerous cases of growing pains over the past few weeks, though nothing insurmountable. But: 1. Celebs and brands are profile types that should be considered. 2. Mastodon's had some experience and performed poorly, both technically and culturally. 3. Adding very-high-profile profiles to the network needs some consideration. It's quite likely that there will be poorly-thought-through adoptions in future, however.
- 4y ago
- hinkley 4y ago> ‘Federate with our servers and we’ll pay you 1c for every message you allow us to post to your users…’ Isn’t that a protection racket?
- jameshart 4y agoI see you've interacted with the adtech industry before.