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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@jdp23 @mekkaokereke
Thanks for the info. I gather it's pretty pervasive then, generally.

It seems that many ppl have either accepted scraping, haven't considered it, or use apps that prevent their creative content from beng scraped (not sure how many use those apps, but some apparently do).

I appreciate the overview, Jon!

Jon

My pleasure! Yes alas it's fairly pervasive and I think most people are resigned to it (not that I'm saying that's a good thing).

If yo're on an fedi instance with local-only post, that's one alternative. Also we're starting to see federations of isntances like The Website League, where posts aren't public to the entire internet, so that's also scraping-resistant. I think things will go more in that direction in general, not just because of scraping. Time will tell! But on public Twitter-like social networks, it's hard to be optmistic.

@[email protected]

Oblomov

@jdp23 @djsundog @Eris other implementations going forward without waiting for Mastodon is good, but it's not enough (case in point, Quote Boosts; nobody cared that other platforms had them). Part of that is a general misconception of what the Fediverse is and how it operates (and one of the reasons I insist on speaking about the Fediverse rather than Mastodon alone), but part of it is that practically the biggest player in town not supporting something *is* a problem. Monocultures are bad.

nickapos :clubtwit:

@mekkaokereke I think we need to take into account the resources available to BlueSky and the resources available to mastodon. Mastodon will always be slow to evolve and because its controllers have certain convictions it will take extra time to persuade them to move to a different direction. But eventually they will get there. BlueSky may be ok today, but we have seen this play out in the past, when VC people are calling the shots we all know what happens in the end.

Jon

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

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mekka okereke :verified:

@nickapos

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. ‍️

Eris Renée

@jdp23 but mastodon gGmbH is a non-profit, hence the g in gGmbH.

nickapos :clubtwit:

@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.

Jon

@[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

@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.

Jon

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!

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