Suppose there are six social networking services, A, B, C, D, E, and F.
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Suppose there are six social networking services, A, B, C, D, E, and F.
A and B use protocol p.
C uses protocol q
D uses protocol r.
E and F use protocol s.A and B can communicate using p.
B and C can communicate using q.
D can only communicate with itself.
E and F can communicate using s.
There are no other connections between services.Where is the fediverse here? Are there multiple fediverses depending on connections?
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@andi The "Fediverse" is somewhat illusory. No one owns it. It has no singular identity. Things can be partially, or only slightly, "Fediversal," and to an extent people saying the Fediverse is entirely one thing or another are wrong. It has different facets that can become visible.
One's perception of the Fediverse changes greatly depending on where one resides within it. If your instance has blocked a lot of other instances, you'll see it as smaller, but possibly kinder.
To use your example, all other things being equal, someone in B will see more accounts than anyone else. They'll have the widest view, but that doesn't mean they'll have the best experience.
Truth Social runs a version of Mastodon, but it doesn't federate with anyone, it's its own little locked off thing, thank frog.
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@andi not trying to be annoying (though possibly succeeding effortlessly) but there’s also a possible answer along the lines of ‘there’s not enough information in the problem description’ to the effect that the presence of “communication” isn’t enough and it’s about a particular mode of affiliation (‘server diplomacy’ of some sort or other) and that this, not connection or protocol, is what matters. 1/2
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@andi 2/2 that might make you group a subset of A-B-C (say, just A-B) together with E-F even though the two clusters aren’t directly connected, on the grounds that they share the same general form of affiliation: so E could, in principle, extend that relationship to A, it just chooses under these circumstances not to (and that would still feel like a collective, ie a single fediverse, to me).
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@UlrikeHahn That's interesting - so could add some idea of affiliation or broaden the notion of protocol so it's sociotechnical, for example?
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@andi yes. here’s an example of someone who has been arguing something like that: https://destructured.net/federated-mediated-networks