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New: Last Week in #fediverse - ep 96

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    mastodonengineering@mastodon.socialM
    Latest releases, progress on Fediscovery, FOSDEM plans, and community highlights - catch up on all the latest news from the core team in our November Trunk & Tidbits post. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/12/trunk-tidbits-november-2024/#Mastodev #Mastoadmin #Mastodon #Fediverse #OpenSource
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    natanox@chaos.socialN
    @OSUniBe
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    julianJ
    Also this is why when I had my outgoing Mastodon server issue out an instance account move, I didn't receive any new followers here. Oops!
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    newsmast@newsmast.socialN
    @box464 Hi Jeff, glad you're looking forward to it!
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    M
    @simon_lucy @Gargron @rabble @ricmac ā€œNeedā€ is a strong word Iā€™d say. Instead, Iā€™m coming from the perspective of what ā€œthe fediverseā€, an ecosystem of connected (ā€œnot isolatedā€) platforms, promises regarding inter-platform connectivity.And a simple angle into that, I think, is the embedding of GIFs, videos, polls, emoji etc in social media, which has grown into a de facto standard over time for what were originally text-based platforms (over on BlueSky, theyā€™re still whinging about the lack of such).Thatā€™s an enhancement or enrichment of the UI and the scope of social interaction or conversation that basically expands into the big space of features that the web browser affords. In addition to whatever written language is used in the text of a platform, the additional elements of representation, communication and interaction all contribute to forming its ā€œsocial language and formatā€, which then ties in closely with its culture.The more the fediverse promises connectivity between different platforms, the more thereā€™s an expectation that these ā€œlanguages and formatsā€ get translated across the protocol between platforms. Thing is, this isnā€™t just about text, itā€™s about a platformā€™s full gamut of visual elements and their formatting or arrangement. That is, itā€™s about their UIs. The more a platformā€™s UI gets lost as its translated/interpreted by another platform, the more there isnā€™t real connectivity at a meaningful social (media) level. Expectations matter here too, where disappointingly ā€œlossyā€ interactions are simply uncompelling for many.The web browser and internet is an important backdrop to this IMO. All web pages just work (kinda mostly) as they are intended in everyoneā€™s web browser. Thereā€™s no loss. Each link takes you to where and what youā€™re supposed to. Same with books, or PDFs, or films or music. Fidelity of format is and has always been paramount.And so, as I claim, the protocol is only the beginning, the foundation.The actual site of the fediverse is in how UIs get translated across different platforms.At some threshold of mis-translation, the connection, and the promise of the fediverse, is broken (even if not for everyone, as full or wide-band connectivity is the promise IMO).Coming back to the web browser and the internet ā€” where itā€™s important IMO to recall many fediverse advocates describing it as an opportunity to ā€œremake the internetā€ ā€” an obvious alternative presents itself (I think): Our fediverse clients/interfaces ought to be capable of rendering any form of social media in its intended/designed format just like the browser and the internet. And of course, this doesnā€™t preclude user customisation such that some or even many might want to restrict content to a certain format. But, itā€™s also relevant I think to point out that many have accounts and are active on multiple platforms, both on the fediverse and on big social and interact with overlapping sets of people. Which is to say that using the browser/smartphone-OSs, people are already doing what Iā€™m suggestingIn fact, Iā€™d argue that what we have now is strange. Each piece of social media interaction has to get translated into whatever my current platform decides is the appropriate format and understanding of that interaction. In reality, thatā€™s really not much progress on the screen shots used to share inter-platform content on big (unfederated) social media ā€¦ and Iā€™d say itā€™s a policy that clearly germinates from the same design culture (where the fediverse is still in its ā€œlets clone big socialā€ phase).So, UI-Matching (which requires a good deal of Data-Model-Matching) ā€¦ thatā€™s the actual fediverse. What weā€™ve got now is some weird middle ground that mostly breaks its promises.

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