The thing I love about this post and all its replies, is the stark difference in replies in answer to Brent's very reasonable question.

[nickapos@twit.social]

@mekkaokereke you may have noticed that there are people submitting patches to mastodon that are not accepted for months or ever for no technical reason apart from the lead Eugen not liking the person who submitted them.
This is what I meant by the phrase certain convictions. What you think should happen and what many other people think should happen will not happen until Eugen is convinced. I believe as has happened in the past he will eventually see that this is the way forward.

[jdp23@blahaj.zone]

@[email protected] According to this, Mastodon gGmbH lost their non-profit status earlier this year - https://www.heise.de/en/news/Mastodon-Laut-Finanzamt-nicht-mehr-gemeinnuetzig-9701352.html

They're still a gGmbH so maybe they're still a non-profit just without the tax status? I'll edit my post.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@jdp23 @djsundog @Eris

no, even if Mastodon was the only AP server software, it still wouldn't be centralized. It is, however, a monoculture, with all the downsides of monocultures, and that is actually one of the most important things that need to be changed. But this requires helping people discover the reality of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon.

[jdp23@blahaj.zone]

Fair enough, if Mastodon gGmbH can block progress, power is centralized but the network structure isn't.

I wouldn't say it's a monoculture, there are dozens and maybe hundreds of software platforms. That said I agree that both Mastodon's dominance and the perception that Fediverse = Mastodon are big problems, and both need to be changed!


@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

[mcepl@floss.social]

@thisismissem @Badgardener @mekkaokereke

Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense … Mastodon is not sinking, it is floating just fine. If you care only about fighting The Car Boy, then you missed the point.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@mcepl @Badgardener @mekkaokereke if you're involved in the development of Mastodon, you'll know what I mean — we're all struggling to keep things afloat because everyone has waaaay too much work on their plates.

[violanders@mastodon.nu]

@thisismissem
@mekkaokereke
There is really a fascinating amount of gatekeeping and nimbyism on this network. In a discussion the other day about better moderation tools on Mastodon someone actually used "we are not Twitter, you should go to Bluesky thankyouverymuch" as an argument against better moderation. QED.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@violanders @mekkaokereke *sigh* that's not a great argument. If we want activitypub to survive and thrive, we do need to tackle the elephants in the room around trust & safety and moderation.

Though we also need to acknowledge that some things aren't easily possible (e.g., there is no global firehose)

[lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org]

@thisismissem @violanders @mekkaokereke I have yet to see any signs that BS is prepared for the onslaught of CSAM and other horrific content that will be flooding them.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@lauren @violanders @mekkaokereke they already have CSAM filtering in place on file uploads. I'm not sure if they also do TVEC and NCII though.

(I've exchanged some early notes with them on this matter, so I know they should have this in place)

[lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org]

@thisismissem @violanders @mekkaokereke Reportedly a lot is getting through based on the public data.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@lauren @violanders @mekkaokereke might depend on if they're using known matches vs AI/ML driven unknown matches (this is the difference between having a known perceptual hash for an image and it being a "new" image.