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You sound disgruntled. You keep saying it won't work, but it does work, but it won't work, but it does work. Make up your mind. What I take away from this is

You sound disgruntled. You keep saying it won't work, but it does work, but it won't work, but it does work. Make up your mind. What I take away from this is that you had a bad experience and you're now giving up on the only large scale social media platform powered by the people, for the people, and instead going to bsky which keeps promising federation but in fact requires way too many resources for regular people to federate with. That's the issue, resources. Who are we expecting to host these nodes? The fedi had a low entrance threshold. But you can't federate every single message, that drastically increases the entrance threshold. Fediverse is in fact just a bunch of individual message boards with some federation between them. You can find an instance that becomes your home, your family, but you can still follow people on other nodes, you can still respond to people on other nodes.

lifthrasiir 2y ago
A "bunch of individual message boards" is not usually called a "social network" as Mastodon seems to claim itself to be. That's exactly what the OP points out, in my reading.
- vidarh 2y ago
  But Mastodon is not a bunch of individual message boards only, but a bunch of individual message boards with federation between them. When you cut off an essential part of the statement you respond to, you're setting up a strawman.
  - lifthrasiir 2y ago
    I omitted that because the OP explicitly mentions and shows that the federation doesn't work. Given no rebuttal about that, "with fedration between them" has no further meaning to me. (I also don't like how the original reply avoids a detailed discussion by merely pointing out the inconsistency instead, but that's another story.)
    - vidarh 2y ago
      The OP claims federation doesn't work. It's a purely subjective viewpoint, and in my experience entirely false. I run two Mastodon instances, one of which is a single-user instance. On neither of those do I have the problems OP claims means Mastodon federation does not work.
      - lifthrasiir 2y ago
        Yeah, you should have said that first to claim that. It is still entirely possible that the OP did experience what you thought to be impossible---that's a nature of any sizable service, innit?
        vidarh 2y ago
        Or you should have not cut off an essential part of what you responded to baed on a belief about the veracity of OPs arguments. Federation provably works. All of my exchanges involve federation because there are no other users on my instance. As such his claims are exaggerations based on his subjective notions of how federation ought to work.
        lifthrasiir 2y ago
        We are clearly talking about the federation in social networking services (which I and many others would call simply social networks, but since someone clearly didn't like that). The OP analyzes the federation as a means to build such services, while your anecdote only says that the federation is enough to serve your needs---the anecdote which the OP doesn't even object. While I don't use Mastodon for a lot of reasons, I had operated an IRC network for a long time and experienced its eventual demise as well. IRC started out as a worldwide federated network until it isn't, and many IRC networks only worked because of its constituent users---my network never reached that critical mass in comparison. I would have no reason to worry about that if IRC did have the working federation to this day! In the current fediverse choosing the correct nodes (or to federate, if you have your own personal node) is mandatory, indirectly showing that its federation is not enough, just like IRC.
- mattashii 2y ago
  No, not individual message boards per se, but when they're connected they are called a social network. Case in point: Reddit is called a social network. And Mastodon, by its inclusion in the fediverse, is part of that fediverse social network. Yes, it isn't a monolith, but when has that become a requirement for something to be called a network?
  - lifthrasiir 2y ago
    That would be a "social" "network" (any network formed with social properties), not a "social network(ing service)" (an online platform primarily used to replicate and often independently construct social networks in the human society). They are not identical in usage and the latter is the common sense.
    - cassianoleal 2y ago
      > the latter is the common sense. Common to whom?
      - lifthrasiir 2y ago
        Most Internet users who have used Facebook and likes? (And even I, who never have used Facebook, primarily use that sense.) It is the first sense in the Cambridge dictionary [1], the second sense in the Oxford dictionary available via Google Search, and the second sense and also the first non-academic sense in Wiktionary [2]. It is clearly common enough for me to say so. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/social-network https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/social-n... [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_network https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_network
        mattashii 2y ago
        Yes, but even if you take the first definition of the Oxford or the second of Wiktionary, then still would Mastodon be a Social Network, as it does match both descriptions.
        2y ago
- INTPenis 2y ago
  It's miles better than what we used to have. Imho fedi is exactly where I want to be. I was active in vbulletin/phpbb/punbb boards for years, and I always wished I could participate in all of them with one user account. That's exactly what I can do now. I think the marketing of Mastodon is what skews the image of the fediverse. We need to stop marketing as a Twitter, or a Bluesky, and more like individual communities that are able to communicate with each other. Set more realistic expectations. The USP is still that it's easy for anyone to run a node, it's still for the people, not for the millionaires with tons of resources.

lifthrasiir 2y ago

A "bunch of individual message boards" is not usually called a "social network" as Mastodon seems to claim itself to be. That's exactly what the OP points out, in my reading.

vidarh 2y ago
But Mastodon is not a bunch of individual message boards only, but a bunch of individual message boards with federation between them. When you cut off an essential part of the statement you respond to, you're setting up a strawman.
- lifthrasiir 2y ago
  I omitted that because the OP explicitly mentions and shows that the federation doesn't work. Given no rebuttal about that, "with fedration between them" has no further meaning to me. (I also don't like how the original reply avoids a detailed discussion by merely pointing out the inconsistency instead, but that's another story.)
  - vidarh 2y ago
    The OP claims federation doesn't work. It's a purely subjective viewpoint, and in my experience entirely false. I run two Mastodon instances, one of which is a single-user instance. On neither of those do I have the problems OP claims means Mastodon federation does not work.
    - lifthrasiir 2y ago
      Yeah, you should have said that first to claim that. It is still entirely possible that the OP did experience what you thought to be impossible---that's a nature of any sizable service, innit?
      - vidarh 2y ago
        Or you should have not cut off an essential part of what you responded to baed on a belief about the veracity of OPs arguments. Federation provably works. All of my exchanges involve federation because there are no other users on my instance. As such his claims are exaggerations based on his subjective notions of how federation ought to work.
        lifthrasiir 2y ago
        We are clearly talking about the federation in social networking services (which I and many others would call simply social networks, but since someone clearly didn't like that). The OP analyzes the federation as a means to build such services, while your anecdote only says that the federation is enough to serve your needs---the anecdote which the OP doesn't even object. While I don't use Mastodon for a lot of reasons, I had operated an IRC network for a long time and experienced its eventual demise as well. IRC started out as a worldwide federated network until it isn't, and many IRC networks only worked because of its constituent users---my network never reached that critical mass in comparison. I would have no reason to worry about that if IRC did have the working federation to this day! In the current fediverse choosing the correct nodes (or to federate, if you have your own personal node) is mandatory, indirectly showing that its federation is not enough, just like IRC.
mattashii 2y ago
No, not individual message boards per se, but when they're connected they are called a social network. Case in point: Reddit is called a social network. And Mastodon, by its inclusion in the fediverse, is part of that fediverse social network. Yes, it isn't a monolith, but when has that become a requirement for something to be called a network?
- lifthrasiir 2y ago
  That would be a "social" "network" (any network formed with social properties), not a "social network(ing service)" (an online platform primarily used to replicate and often independently construct social networks in the human society). They are not identical in usage and the latter is the common sense.
  - cassianoleal 2y ago
    > the latter is the common sense. Common to whom?
    - lifthrasiir 2y ago
      Most Internet users who have used Facebook and likes? (And even I, who never have used Facebook, primarily use that sense.) It is the first sense in the Cambridge dictionary [1], the second sense in the Oxford dictionary available via Google Search, and the second sense and also the first non-academic sense in Wiktionary [2]. It is clearly common enough for me to say so. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/social-network https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/social-n... [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_network https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_network
      - mattashii 2y ago
        Yes, but even if you take the first definition of the Oxford or the second of Wiktionary, then still would Mastodon be a Social Network, as it does match both descriptions.
      - 2y ago
INTPenis 2y ago
It's miles better than what we used to have. Imho fedi is exactly where I want to be. I was active in vbulletin/phpbb/punbb boards for years, and I always wished I could participate in all of them with one user account. That's exactly what I can do now. I think the marketing of Mastodon is what skews the image of the fediverse. We need to stop marketing as a Twitter, or a Bluesky, and more like individual communities that are able to communicate with each other. Set more realistic expectations. The USP is still that it's easy for anyone to run a node, it's still for the people, not for the millionaires with tons of resources.