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.
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Well, if adoption by Mastodon gGmbH is essential to any progress here, then the ActivityPub Fediverse is just as centralized as Bluesky at this point. Fortunately I don't think that's the case.
EDIT: I had originally described them as for-profit, based on this article about them losing their non-profit status. But, I don't know German law, maybe a gGmbH is still a non-profit but not for tax purposes. So I edited it to remove a possible misstatement -- the key point from a decentralization perspective is that they're a single entity, https://www.heise.de/en/news/Mastodon-Laut-Finanzamt-nicht-mehr-gemeinnuetzig-9701352.html
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] -
mekka okereke :verified:replied to nickapos :clubtwit: last edited by
I'm explicitly calling this out as an excuse that I will not accept.
As an example, I'm saying that the obstacles to making something like starter packs work on Mastodon is not hundreds of millions of dollars.
As another example, I said that BlueSky is winning against Twitter, who has 2 orders of magnitude more resources than them. Because it's not about resources as much as it as about "listen to your own users."
Many of those BlueSky users tried Mastodon first.
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@jdp23 but mastodon gGmbH is a non-profit, hence the g in gGmbH.
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nickapos :clubtwit:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@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. -
@[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. -
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.
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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] -
@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.
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@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.
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@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. -
@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)
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@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.
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@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)
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@thisismissem @violanders @mekkaokereke Reportedly a lot is getting through based on the public data.
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@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.
