6 ms·

The Fediverse has some big problems coming

30 points by edavis 4y ago

the-printer 4y ago
Author uses Honk. His criticism is valid.
WorldMaker 4y ago
The analogy I have found that applies to many things on the Fediverse including this: A restaurant is a public space. Just because you are having a conversation in a public space does not de facto make that conversation itself public. There is an expectation of privacy, and it is considered rude to eavesdrop. In a restaurant, violations of such cultural norms may be challenged by shouting and might even result in fisticuffs. If you look like you are eavesdropping on restaurant conversation you shouldn't be, you might wind up getting punched for it. The author of this violated a similar cultural norm and got all the shouting. (They should feel lucky they didn't get the fisticuffs. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on point of view, we haven't invented the technology to punch someone remotely via the internet yet.) Given the above analogy, this shouldn't be a surprise. (Part of why this is a very useful analogy.) ' The author suggests that the Fediverse should do more technical things to better enforce these cultural norms, but discounts the existing cultural enforcement in the process (which was clearly noticed given the complaints about it). Not every problem can be solved technically and there's always a balancing act between "building a nice public space" (building a restaurant) and "giving people the expectation of privacy inside it" (letting your patrons have chill conversations). It's still a good idea to add additional technical enforcement of cultural norms as best as possible, but it isn't and shouldn't be necessary. Sure, there will likely always be bad actors, but bad actors exist in real life, too. We're coming off an era of social media where cultural norms were enforced by centralized Terms of Service agreements and centralized gatekeepers that often had something of a "if you can technically do it, it's fine to do" laissez faire attitude. A lot of developers aren't used to dealing with cultural norms such as "restaurant privacy", but in lieu of central Terms of Service enforcers (and lawsuits) most of what something like the Fediverse has *are* cultural norms, so there will be a necessary adjustment period for developers to learn that just because something is technically possible according to the specs/protocols/technologies/platforms it may violate cultural norms and may not be ethically right to do. Not every sociopolitical problem can be solved technically, especially in a distributed web of different instances. That leads me to what I think may be the best missing suggestion here: this is a documentation problem. Some of these cultural norms should probably be better documented somewhere, preferably not too far removed from W3C's ActivityPub specification, some of these cultural norms of what not to do with the specs to avoid many more developers falling into similar traps as this one.
romwell 4y ago
The Fediverse is a misnomer. A better name would be Feudiverse, since it's feudalism by design — complete with instances feuding over control of how the entire thing is run. The admins of the instance have absolute control over accounts (i.e. people) that sign up with them. The instance admins are the law of the land, and can kick accounts off the net for whatever reason, as well as draw up the bridges and prohibit passing through their lands. Like in any feudal system, people are judged by which Lord they belong to (i.e. which instance they sign up with), and will be treated accordingly. Each instance is a clan, with collective responsibility built-in. There is no Federation without a Federal government that ensures rights of the citizens via a constitution. And there's no Fediverse without a central account authority that limits what instance admins can do to any individual account. Mastodon is a Feudiverse.
- masterof0 4y ago
  Mastodon is not the Fediverse. There is plenty of alternatives out there. What you describe sounds a lot like freedom. Instead of only one entity controlling what is said in their platform, now you have many entities, and the user can pick which community to join, based on the federation links, topics, server performance, etc... or start their own (with a single-user blogging platform like microblog.pub). There is no need for governance, if you like A, then you go to an instance with people who like A. If you are the type of person who prefer to be told what to do,then I'm sure there are also instances for that as well. And again, Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
- sschueller 4y ago
  You can literally run your own personal Mastodon instance with just 1 account in it and take part in any discussions on the "fediverse".
  - romwell 4y ago
    >You can literally run your own personal Mastodon instance with just 1 account in it and take part in any discussions on the "fediverse". Yeah, and I can literally just run my own email server too. I don't, and chances are you don't either. Guess why.
witheld 4y ago
This post is basically just someone whining that people were mean to them on Mastodon.
- DoItToMe81 4y ago
  Why does so much Mastodon 'criticism' boil down to this? There is much to criticise in how the protocol scales poorly, especially compared to Pleroma. Why does it always come down to "Someone was mildly mean to me and I couldn't report them and get them banned from every server. The Fediverse has fallen........"

30 points by edavis 4y ago

Author uses Honk. His criticism is valid.

The analogy I have found that applies to many things on the Fediverse including this: A restaurant is a public space. Just because you are having a conversation in a public space does not de facto make that conversation itself public. There is an expectation of privacy, and it is considered rude to eavesdrop. In a restaurant, violations of such cultural norms may be challenged by shouting and might even result in fisticuffs. If you look like you are eavesdropping on restaurant conversation you shouldn't be, you might wind up getting punched for it. The author of this violated a similar cultural norm and got all the shouting. (They should feel lucky they didn't get the fisticuffs. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on point of view, we haven't invented the technology to punch someone remotely via the internet yet.) Given the above analogy, this shouldn't be a surprise. (Part of why this is a very useful analogy.) ' The author suggests that the Fediverse should do more technical things to better enforce these cultural norms, but discounts the existing cultural enforcement in the process (which was clearly noticed given the complaints about it). Not every problem can be solved technically and there's always a balancing act between "building a nice public space" (building a restaurant) and "giving people the expectation of privacy inside it" (letting your patrons have chill conversations). It's still a good idea to add additional technical enforcement of cultural norms as best as possible, but it isn't and shouldn't be necessary. Sure, there will likely always be bad actors, but bad actors exist in real life, too. We're coming off an era of social media where cultural norms were enforced by centralized Terms of Service agreements and centralized gatekeepers that often had something of a "if you can technically do it, it's fine to do" laissez faire attitude. A lot of developers aren't used to dealing with cultural norms such as "restaurant privacy", but in lieu of central Terms of Service enforcers (and lawsuits) most of what something like the Fediverse has *are* cultural norms, so there will be a necessary adjustment period for developers to learn that just because something is technically possible according to the specs/protocols/technologies/platforms it may violate cultural norms and may not be ethically right to do. Not every sociopolitical problem can be solved technically, especially in a distributed web of different instances. That leads me to what I think may be the best missing suggestion here: this is a documentation problem. Some of these cultural norms should probably be better documented somewhere, preferably not too far removed from W3C's ActivityPub specification, some of these cultural norms of what not to do with the specs to avoid many more developers falling into similar traps as this one.

romwell 4y ago

The Fediverse is a misnomer. A better name would be Feudiverse, since it's feudalism by design — complete with instances feuding over control of how the entire thing is run. The admins of the instance have absolute control over accounts (i.e. people) that sign up with them. The instance admins are the law of the land, and can kick accounts off the net for whatever reason, as well as draw up the bridges and prohibit passing through their lands. Like in any feudal system, people are judged by which Lord they belong to (i.e. which instance they sign up with), and will be treated accordingly. Each instance is a clan, with collective responsibility built-in. There is no Federation without a Federal government that ensures rights of the citizens via a constitution. And there's no Fediverse without a central account authority that limits what instance admins can do to any individual account. Mastodon is a Feudiverse.

masterof0 4y ago
Mastodon is not the Fediverse. There is plenty of alternatives out there. What you describe sounds a lot like freedom. Instead of only one entity controlling what is said in their platform, now you have many entities, and the user can pick which community to join, based on the federation links, topics, server performance, etc... or start their own (with a single-user blogging platform like microblog.pub). There is no need for governance, if you like A, then you go to an instance with people who like A. If you are the type of person who prefer to be told what to do,then I'm sure there are also instances for that as well. And again, Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
sschueller 4y ago
You can literally run your own personal Mastodon instance with just 1 account in it and take part in any discussions on the "fediverse".
- romwell 4y ago
  >You can literally run your own personal Mastodon instance with just 1 account in it and take part in any discussions on the "fediverse". Yeah, and I can literally just run my own email server too. I don't, and chances are you don't either. Guess why.

witheld 4y ago

This post is basically just someone whining that people were mean to them on Mastodon.

DoItToMe81 4y ago
Why does so much Mastodon 'criticism' boil down to this? There is much to criticise in how the protocol scales poorly, especially compared to Pleroma. Why does it always come down to "Someone was mildly mean to me and I couldn't report them and get them banned from every server. The Fediverse has fallen........"