A #FediSchism presupposes that the Fediverse is a monolith to be split in twain.

toolbear#🪧

A #FediSchism presupposes that the Fediverse is a monolith to be split in twain. This is poor way to visualize the Fediverse. At least for me it was. I think talk of a Fediverse schism is rooted in propaganda aimed at creating division.

A better mental model for myself when contemplating #Fediverse schism risk: earth worms, slime molds, or dandelions. The Fediverse more as ecosystem than platform.

TL;DR — be wary of discussions about divisions; especially when combined with outrage farming

toolbear#🪧

I don't know if schism or whatever is in the zeitgeist again. It seems to come up whenever we have a wave of folks joining.

Jupiter Rowland

@toolbear#🪧 From an outside-of-Mastodon point of view (I'm posting this from Hubzilla which is very, very much not like Mastodon), I can see schisms through the Fediverse happen quite easily.

For example:

One side: Mastodon fundamentalists who want to enforce the Mastodon culture and the Mastodon "rules" (both as established by the first wave of Twitter refugees in the mid-2010s, based solely on Mastodon 3.x and completely ignoring the rest of the Fediverse) all over the whole Fediverse. And everything that doesn't comply must be defederated.
The other side: Places that can do the same as Mastodon, but that aren't Mastodon, and that have their very own culture, not to mention features which are deeply engrained in their culture, but forbidden in Mastodon's culture. Pleroma and its forks. Misskey and its forks, fork-forks, fork-fork-rewrites etc. Friendica and its family tree. And so forth.

Or, although this may become obsolete:

One side: Those on Mastodon who don't want to have quote-posts in the Fediverse.
The other side: Again, just about everything that isn't Mastodon while capable of doing Mastodon things, because it all does have quote-posts right now.

A variant that's more likely to happen soon:

One side: Mastodon, full stop. It has introduced quote-posts. It has also introduced a quote-post opt-in or opt-out switch. This switch, however, is proprietary, non-standard and completely incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse.
On top of this, as demanded in that one quote-post feature request, there's a new rule for all Mastodon instances: Any and all Fediverse instances which "circumvent" Mastodon's quote-post opt-in or opt-out switch to quote-post Mastodon toots must be regarded "rogue" and Fediblocked.
On the other side: Once again, just about everything that isn't Mastodon, but that can do what Mastodon can do. Once again, it can quote-post right now. It can also quote-post Mastodon toots right now. And it won't know that proprietary, non-standard, Mastodon-only opt-in or opt-out. So it can quote-post any and all Mastodon toots with zero resistance.

The logical result: All Mastodon instances must immediately block all instances of Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, CherryPick, Sharkey, Catodon, Neko, Meisskey, Tanukey, Mitra, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte etc. etc. All instances of all of these have quote-posts. They can all quote-post Mastodon toots. And when Mastodon introduces the opt-in or opt-out switch, they won't know that switch. And what they don't know, they can't heed. So they'll still be able to quote-post any and all Mastodon toots, completely regardless (and oblivious) of opt-in or opt-out status.

This, however, is against the new rule that states that all instances that can quote-post toots that shall not be quote-posted must be blocked. Which applies to all of them. Thus, all of them, every last one of them, must be defederated.

If properly carried out, this would fully separate several dozen entire Fediverse server applications from Mastodon. The only reason why these server applications won't be fully separated is because it's a game of whack-a-mole. Mastodon can't defederate entire server applications by user agent (this is possible and actually implemented on both (streams) and Forte), so server applications have to be defederated instance by instance.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #MastodonCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #FediSchism

toolbear#🪧

This post is deleted!

toolbear#🪧

@jupiter_rowland
Before I was visualizing the #Fediverse as like a human body – cut off a limb or even a digit and that's a big deal worth trying hard to avoid (esp. `limb == head`).

A worm can survive and even thrive after a limited amount of division.

Can you kill a slime mold by dividing it? I imagine it would be difficult.

Worm == decentralized
Slime mold == distributed

Fedi resembles a combination worm + slime mold more than a human body.
#FediSchism

Aside: #Bsky resembles a human body