5 ms·

I’m surprised at how the EU has been sleeping on this platform. Well maybe not the EU, as the Union itself actually has a server instance for both its organisat

by devjab 3y ago

I’m surprised at how the EU has been sleeping on this platform. Well maybe not the EU, as the Union itself actually has a server instance for both its organisations and it’s elected officials, but the member countries. Like my own. All our politicians are on social media, but they are all on three platforms, two which are owned by two American billionaires and one which is owned by the Chinese government. All three platforms has massive privacy and democracy issues in terms of how they operate, and none of the content on them are owned by their users. Now I’m all for the EU using regulation to eventually reform something like meta into being a decent enough centralised platform. But why on earth would our institutions be on something they don’t control? With ActivityPub and Mastodon our government could run a server for all our elected officials and then it would be our country that governed what they could and could not post on there. Now, I’m not a political radical, but I do think it’s sort of silly that Meta can dictate and censor what our elected officials can say on a social media. This isn’t an issue for like 99% of them, but the concept is just anti-democratic. The same could sort of be said about our journalists. If we had a press corps server instance, then someone posting that Tibet is a country or whatever “radical” thing you can get banned for, wouldn’t become a conflict of interest. Because they’d be allowed to write that, and our press corp genuinely couldn’t give two shits what China has to say about it.

gsatic 3y ago
> This isn’t an issue for like 99% of them That's why 99% don't care or will ever care about mastadon. Just like all other EU funded efforts go nowhere. Social medias main features are - broadcast, Following others broadcasts, discovering what's trending. To the general public these are already solved problems on existing platforms. The reason they jump from blog posts to twitter, or Facebook to insta or from insta to tiktok is there is a new feature available. Mastadon does nothing new that the 99% think they need. In fact the main search results and discovery is a stream of total shit compared to other platforms.
- ASalazarMX 3y ago
  That's why Fediverse apps are awesome, 99% of regular social media users are not there. But seriously, I believe their strengths are what will make them win in the end: - Rapid pace of development. - Focus on users instead of ads or investors. - You can become a dictator of your own instance, but no one gets to be dictator of the Fediverse. - Bad instances will get shunned by the rest. Of course, their biggest weakness if funding. So far donations can keep up with the small userbase, but the userbase will keep growing. Some popular Lemmy instances are growing at almost 100 GB per day already.
  - Forgeties79 3y ago
    >focus on users instead of ads or investors I remember when we talked about Reddit the same way. We’ll see if it lasts. I say this as someone who uses Kbin in particular a lot. I like it now but we’ve been down this road so many times. It’s hard not be skeptical. They also need to make the relationship between these different apps and how it all works easier to digest. And some quality 3PA’s to fill in the gaps. I think Sync has plans to point at Lemmy so here’s hoping we see that soon!
    - ASalazarMX 3y ago
      > And some quality 3PA’s to fill in the gaps You mean third-party apps? The passion with which developers have been working on Fediverse apps lately is humbling. On iOS, the ugly child of open source apps, just for Lemmy there's Memmy, and in TestFlight, Mlem, Thunder, and LiftOff!. These last are still beta/alpha, but Memmy is mature enough to compare with the former third-party Reddit clients. The official Mastodon app recently got a much needed upgrade, and there are other good clients like MetaText, Ivory, and many more. If anything, there are too many choices now, the dust needs to settle. It's refreshing to see a fundamental questioning of the status quo (corporate lordship), and a disrupting and viable technology (Fediverse) making strides in the right direction. I might be biased because I remember a diverse Internet from before the corporate takeovers, and it seems like the Fediverse is attracting older adults who got to experience some of that diversity too: https://mastodon.art/@jsstaedtler/110668308409683502 https://mastodon.art/@jsstaedtler/110668308409683502
- timeon 3y ago
  > Social medias main features are - broadcast This features decreased for those platforms recently - since they are becoming walled gardens. That is why for example Slovak railway company switched from Twitter to Mastodon this month. More people are on Twitter, but that does not matter for some forms of broadcasting, when anyone can view content on Mastodon.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  It's mastodon... With an o!
- harouiin 3y ago
  Mastodon is awesome. It doesn't matter about the 99%. The quality of engagement there is far superior and it's a platform that respects users.
whimsicalism 3y ago
> two which are owned by two American billionaires Meta is owned by public investors (plenty of whom are in the EU), nobody has a majority stake.
- blitzar 3y ago
  While Zuckerberg owns just 13 percent of Meta's stock, he controls 61.1 percent of the vote because of the company's voting structure.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Huh - TIL. Those sort of arrangements should be illegal imo
    - Sunspark 3y ago
      Why? It was his company to begin with. Nobody forced anyone to buy the stock. Everyone buying the stock willingly accepts that Zuck is the King of Facebook.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        We should have more stringent laws regarding the form of corporate governance. When ownership stakes are sold with profit stakes, it creates more sustainable enterprise with aligned values.
Perz1val 3y ago
[flagged]
- didntcheck 3y ago
  Then have a rule that the any elected member of the current house(s) can have an account. Moderation actions on those members should be rare, public, and conducted on the authority of the Speaker (or sensible equivalent for the political system). Whether the posts should enjoy parliamentary privilege, and/or be constrained by the rules of "unparliamentary language", is a detail that would need working out Of course this has the downside of losing your account if you lose your seat, and not getting one until you're elected, but hopefully this will nudge political parties to run their own instances for their members The above would presumably not apply to other accounts like the press accounts of a government department. I think they/the acting government can police themselves, as they currently do with Twitter, and as they've done with statements to the press since before computers
spookie 3y ago
As someone who has contributed to the Fediverse, I can assure you the EU hasn't been sleeping on this and has helped many other projects (not just Mastodon) through funding. Really, if anything, they've helped a lot of folks sustaining their contributions.
- rossng 3y ago
  To give a specific example, the EU has a funding programme called NGI to support 'next generation internet' projects. Some (all?) of this money is distributed through a small organisation called NLNet, who have decided to support a number of Fediverse projects: - Mastodon: https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/ - Lemmy: https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/ - Pixelfed: https://nlnet.nl/project/Pixelfed/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Pixelfed/ - Misskey: https://nlnet.nl/project/Misskey/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Misskey/ - Bonfire: https://nlnet.nl/project/Bonfire/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Bonfire/ And quite a few more. Honestly, I'm not sure how much of the ActivityPub ecosystem would exist without this funding.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    I love love love the concept of federated social media. The onboarding experience though. Just signed up at pixelfed.social, installed the Android app, try to log in and ... nothing happens?!? No error, nothing.
    - NoboruWataya 3y ago
      You are not being "onboarded" - they are not a business and you are not a customer (or an employee). Which may also explain the additional friction - sounds like you encountered a bug, or else the instance was just temporarily having issues. If the problem persists I would suggest filing an issue (assuming you are using an open source app).
      - barbazoo 3y ago
        I would file a bug if I got an error message at least. But without even an error message, what would I even tell them?!
qznc 3y ago
Germany is not too shabby. https://social.bund.de https://social.bund.de multiple governmental departments https://gruene.social https://gruene.social and https://spd.social https://spd.social two parties currently in government
mousetree 3y ago
If they want to reach their citizens it makes sense to post on the big platforms
- mcsniff 3y ago
  Who's citizens (or subjects some might say) are they really, if congregation and discourse isn't happening on public "property" (in the digital sense of the word)?
  - mousetree 3y ago
    I'm still a German citizen even if I use the internet
  - SllX 3y ago
    Facebook might have several billion users but it will never be a sovereign nation and even if they were to start calling their users “citizens” tomorrow, it would hold no weight under any internationally recognized standard or the laws of nations. Sovereign nations and corporations are entirely different types of entity with virtually no overlap in real power, so you’re just muddying the waters to even imply otherwise. Even historically powerful corporations like the British East India Company found the basis for their authority in a nation which eventually revoked their authority, assumed its debts and obligations, and took possession of their armed forces, equipment, claimed lands and authority and disestablished the corporation.
erk__ 3y ago
The organization EU also has a mastodon instance https://social.network.europa.eu/explore https://social.network.europa.eu/explore
jwildeboer 3y ago
The EU has been sleeping so much on this that they started their own instance quite some time ago and actively communicate with the fedizens ;) https://social.network.europa.eu https://social.network.europa.eu
PontifexMinimus 3y ago
> But why on earth would our institutions be on something they don’t control? I imagine is because they think their message will reach more people on Twitter/Facebook/Tiktok than on Mastodon. The fix for this would be for the EU to mandate that Twitter and Facebook federate using ActivityPub, in such a way that following a Mastodon (etc) account gives that account as much reach as an account directly on Twitter/Facebook would have. As for TikTok, since it's a massive national security risk it should just be blocked. > I do think it’s sort of silly that Meta can dictate and censor what our elected officials can say on a social media This is only possible because your elected officials don't have the balls to tell Meta to do the right thing.
Incipient 3y ago
>Meta can dictate and censor what our elected officials can say on a social media. This isn’t an issue for like 99% of them, but the concept is just anti-democratic. Actually that kinda IS democratic. The government can't just do whatever the hell it wants. that would be undemocratic. The fact an external for-profit company in another country can limit what your politicians says however is a bit weird. But seeing as, generally, they won't have vested interest in Dutch affairs, maybe they're actually better than an internal entitity that may have a vested interest?
- tremon 3y ago
  You have a very limited view of democracy. Just because it's not "the government" doesn't mean it's suddenly "the people" deciding it.
  - Incipient 3y ago
    I just mean it's more towards democracy than a government running it's own podium. Calling it "undemocratic" seems like the more limited view imo?

by devjab 3y ago

gsatic 3y ago

> This isn’t an issue for like 99% of them That's why 99% don't care or will ever care about mastadon. Just like all other EU funded efforts go nowhere. Social medias main features are - broadcast, Following others broadcasts, discovering what's trending. To the general public these are already solved problems on existing platforms. The reason they jump from blog posts to twitter, or Facebook to insta or from insta to tiktok is there is a new feature available. Mastadon does nothing new that the 99% think they need. In fact the main search results and discovery is a stream of total shit compared to other platforms.

ASalazarMX 3y ago
That's why Fediverse apps are awesome, 99% of regular social media users are not there. But seriously, I believe their strengths are what will make them win in the end: - Rapid pace of development. - Focus on users instead of ads or investors. - You can become a dictator of your own instance, but no one gets to be dictator of the Fediverse. - Bad instances will get shunned by the rest. Of course, their biggest weakness if funding. So far donations can keep up with the small userbase, but the userbase will keep growing. Some popular Lemmy instances are growing at almost 100 GB per day already.
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  >focus on users instead of ads or investors I remember when we talked about Reddit the same way. We’ll see if it lasts. I say this as someone who uses Kbin in particular a lot. I like it now but we’ve been down this road so many times. It’s hard not be skeptical. They also need to make the relationship between these different apps and how it all works easier to digest. And some quality 3PA’s to fill in the gaps. I think Sync has plans to point at Lemmy so here’s hoping we see that soon!
  - ASalazarMX 3y ago
    > And some quality 3PA’s to fill in the gaps You mean third-party apps? The passion with which developers have been working on Fediverse apps lately is humbling. On iOS, the ugly child of open source apps, just for Lemmy there's Memmy, and in TestFlight, Mlem, Thunder, and LiftOff!. These last are still beta/alpha, but Memmy is mature enough to compare with the former third-party Reddit clients. The official Mastodon app recently got a much needed upgrade, and there are other good clients like MetaText, Ivory, and many more. If anything, there are too many choices now, the dust needs to settle. It's refreshing to see a fundamental questioning of the status quo (corporate lordship), and a disrupting and viable technology (Fediverse) making strides in the right direction. I might be biased because I remember a diverse Internet from before the corporate takeovers, and it seems like the Fediverse is attracting older adults who got to experience some of that diversity too: https://mastodon.art/@jsstaedtler/110668308409683502 https://mastodon.art/@jsstaedtler/110668308409683502
timeon 3y ago
> Social medias main features are - broadcast This features decreased for those platforms recently - since they are becoming walled gardens. That is why for example Slovak railway company switched from Twitter to Mastodon this month. More people are on Twitter, but that does not matter for some forms of broadcasting, when anyone can view content on Mastodon.
sureglymop 3y ago
It's mastodon... With an o!
harouiin 3y ago
Mastodon is awesome. It doesn't matter about the 99%. The quality of engagement there is far superior and it's a platform that respects users.

whimsicalism 3y ago

> two which are owned by two American billionaires Meta is owned by public investors (plenty of whom are in the EU), nobody has a majority stake.

blitzar 3y ago
While Zuckerberg owns just 13 percent of Meta's stock, he controls 61.1 percent of the vote because of the company's voting structure.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Huh - TIL. Those sort of arrangements should be illegal imo
  - Sunspark 3y ago
    Why? It was his company to begin with. Nobody forced anyone to buy the stock. Everyone buying the stock willingly accepts that Zuck is the King of Facebook.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      We should have more stringent laws regarding the form of corporate governance. When ownership stakes are sold with profit stakes, it creates more sustainable enterprise with aligned values.

Perz1val 3y ago

[flagged]

didntcheck 3y ago
Then have a rule that the any elected member of the current house(s) can have an account. Moderation actions on those members should be rare, public, and conducted on the authority of the Speaker (or sensible equivalent for the political system). Whether the posts should enjoy parliamentary privilege, and/or be constrained by the rules of "unparliamentary language", is a detail that would need working out Of course this has the downside of losing your account if you lose your seat, and not getting one until you're elected, but hopefully this will nudge political parties to run their own instances for their members The above would presumably not apply to other accounts like the press accounts of a government department. I think they/the acting government can police themselves, as they currently do with Twitter, and as they've done with statements to the press since before computers

spookie 3y ago

As someone who has contributed to the Fediverse, I can assure you the EU hasn't been sleeping on this and has helped many other projects (not just Mastodon) through funding. Really, if anything, they've helped a lot of folks sustaining their contributions.

rossng 3y ago
To give a specific example, the EU has a funding programme called NGI to support 'next generation internet' projects. Some (all?) of this money is distributed through a small organisation called NLNet, who have decided to support a number of Fediverse projects: - Mastodon: https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Mastodon/ - Lemmy: https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/ - Pixelfed: https://nlnet.nl/project/Pixelfed/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Pixelfed/ - Misskey: https://nlnet.nl/project/Misskey/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Misskey/ - Bonfire: https://nlnet.nl/project/Bonfire/ https://nlnet.nl/project/Bonfire/ And quite a few more. Honestly, I'm not sure how much of the ActivityPub ecosystem would exist without this funding.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  I love love love the concept of federated social media. The onboarding experience though. Just signed up at pixelfed.social, installed the Android app, try to log in and ... nothing happens?!? No error, nothing.
  - NoboruWataya 3y ago
    You are not being "onboarded" - they are not a business and you are not a customer (or an employee). Which may also explain the additional friction - sounds like you encountered a bug, or else the instance was just temporarily having issues. If the problem persists I would suggest filing an issue (assuming you are using an open source app).
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      I would file a bug if I got an error message at least. But without even an error message, what would I even tell them?!

qznc 3y ago

Germany is not too shabby. https://social.bund.de https://social.bund.de multiple governmental departments https://gruene.social https://gruene.social and https://spd.social https://spd.social two parties currently in government

mousetree 3y ago

If they want to reach their citizens it makes sense to post on the big platforms

mcsniff 3y ago
Who's citizens (or subjects some might say) are they really, if congregation and discourse isn't happening on public "property" (in the digital sense of the word)?
- mousetree 3y ago
  I'm still a German citizen even if I use the internet
- SllX 3y ago
  Facebook might have several billion users but it will never be a sovereign nation and even if they were to start calling their users “citizens” tomorrow, it would hold no weight under any internationally recognized standard or the laws of nations. Sovereign nations and corporations are entirely different types of entity with virtually no overlap in real power, so you’re just muddying the waters to even imply otherwise. Even historically powerful corporations like the British East India Company found the basis for their authority in a nation which eventually revoked their authority, assumed its debts and obligations, and took possession of their armed forces, equipment, claimed lands and authority and disestablished the corporation.

erk__ 3y ago

The organization EU also has a mastodon instance https://social.network.europa.eu/explore https://social.network.europa.eu/explore

jwildeboer 3y ago

The EU has been sleeping so much on this that they started their own instance quite some time ago and actively communicate with the fedizens ;) https://social.network.europa.eu https://social.network.europa.eu

PontifexMinimus 3y ago

> But why on earth would our institutions be on something they don’t control? I imagine is because they think their message will reach more people on Twitter/Facebook/Tiktok than on Mastodon. The fix for this would be for the EU to mandate that Twitter and Facebook federate using ActivityPub, in such a way that following a Mastodon (etc) account gives that account as much reach as an account directly on Twitter/Facebook would have. As for TikTok, since it's a massive national security risk it should just be blocked. > I do think it’s sort of silly that Meta can dictate and censor what our elected officials can say on a social media This is only possible because your elected officials don't have the balls to tell Meta to do the right thing.

Incipient 3y ago

>Meta can dictate and censor what our elected officials can say on a social media. This isn’t an issue for like 99% of them, but the concept is just anti-democratic. Actually that kinda IS democratic. The government can't just do whatever the hell it wants. that would be undemocratic. The fact an external for-profit company in another country can limit what your politicians says however is a bit weird. But seeing as, generally, they won't have vested interest in Dutch affairs, maybe they're actually better than an internal entitity that may have a vested interest?

tremon 3y ago
You have a very limited view of democracy. Just because it's not "the government" doesn't mean it's suddenly "the people" deciding it.
- Incipient 3y ago
  I just mean it's more towards democracy than a government running it's own podium. Calling it "undemocratic" seems like the more limited view imo?