@[email protected] ActivityPub does seem to have found a niche in tying together large existing commercial social media: Flipboard, Wordpress, Threads, Medium, Ghost, etc. Useful but does not fully realize the transformational "alternate to Big Tech / surveillance capitalism" or "queer trans and non-binary-centric" aspects of the fediverse.
At this point ATProto seems to me like a better platform for creating a public conversation-focused social network. The broader ATmosphere is still at an early stage and there isn't really an interop story yet. I should probably do a post on "What Bluesky and the ATmosphere can learn from Mastodon and the Fediverse" -- for example it's very likely to go down the path of Bluesky being the de facto standard, hmm sounds familiar.
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I really by and large have mostly lost faith that anything short of a miracle will get #ActivityPub to where I would like it to be, and the forces working against success here are just hard to even look at -
I really by and large have mostly lost faith that anything short of a miracle will get #ActivityPub to where I would like it to be, and the forces working against success here are just hard to even look at@[email protected] There's a lot to be said for worrying about the compatibility layer later. It's such a bizarre situation ... the 2022/2023 adoption had so many people with deep distributed systems experience, and while there are some very encouraging projects (Letterbook for example, and the data portability stuff Lisa Dussault has been working on) the overall ActivityPub ecosystem has really failed to capitalize.
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I really by and large have mostly lost faith that anything short of a miracle will get #ActivityPub to where I would like it to be, and the forces working against success here are just hard to even look at@[email protected] it's sad and frustrating. Are you still working on FeatherPub?
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Finally we know why Threads doesn't federate with metalhead.club: We are "violating the community guidelines or terms of use!"Good points. Threads does indeed block everybody who doesn't have a public timeline accessible (although they include that in their description, so that's not what's going on with metalhead.club).
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Finally we know why Threads doesn't federate with metalhead.club: We are "violating the community guidelines or terms of use!"I'm pretty sure they're not blocking all instances with Authorized Fetch -- indieweb.social has AF enabled and it's not on their list.
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Omg this list is hilarious https://www.threads.net/moderated_serversAnd gleasonator is there because of .... no privacy policy lolsob
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On the discourse surrounding Bluesky's starter packs:@[email protected] @[email protected] interesting point from Aaron Roderick (#bluesky's Trust and Safety lead) here: their protocol makes opt-out hard. https://bsky.app/profile/aaron.bsky.team/post/3kvweuh2pkg25
In general, Bluesky and ATProto based on an all-public philosophy with the assumption that no consent is needed for public stuff. So on the one hand (as long as you ignore harassment) that makes them a better fit than the fediverse for public conversations. On the other hand that makes the fediverse a better fit for anything that's not all-public. Of course Bluesky can go against this to some extent -- mutelists and DMs aren't public, reply-gating introduces consent -- but I think it's an open question as to whether they can take it as far as people want.
FYI @[email protected] @[email protected] , continuing the conversation here -
On the discourse surrounding Bluesky's starter packs:I certainly see the potential value in starter packs -- it's a great way to address the initial discoverability challenge. On the other hand I think Bluesky's non-consensual approach is badly flawed and very likely to lead to abuse -- and the abuse vectors could be even worse in a fediverse context (because followers get access to followers-only posts that others don't, and because if you've got "approve followers" on being in a popular starter pack will overwhelm your notifications)
An double-opt-in approach could involve
- an account option "add me to starter packs", off by default; turning it on is the first level of opt in.
- for individual starter packs, notification when somebody wants to add you, and you can either approve or reject. Or you could streamline by making adding a third value to the account option "always add without checking".
In any case, there also needs to be an option "remove me from this starter pack."
For an opt-out approach, the account setting would be enabled by default (but you could turn it off), and you wouldn't have the option to approve getting added to a starter pack (but you'd get notified so could remove yourself).
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Latest #FOSSAcademic post: "Maven Ain't So Mavenly":@[email protected] Good article! The thing is, the fediverse's norms around consent are somewhat inconsistent, far from universally held, and not broadly communicated -- most of the highest-profile fediverse influencers don't particularly prioritize consent.
It's frustrating because the same pattern keeps repeating itself. I wrote "8 tips for consent for fediverse developers" a couple of months ago but it could just as well be a retrospective on what to learn from Maven.
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It's not completely clear to me how various zones of the Fediverse distinguish "scraping" from "non-Mastodon ActivityPub services functioning according to spec in ways I didn't expect."Agreed, although I think it's actually mutually intelligible today: some people think that consent matters even for public posts, others don't. But the people with the loudest megaphones are in the "if it's public anybody can do anything they want with it" camp, and position the "consent matters" perspective as problematic, naive, wrong, and/or only held by a small minority. So it's very easy for people who aren't deeply familiar with fediverse dynamics and history to assume that the same norms as everywere else on the internet apply ... and get taken by surprise that they don't.
At FediForum several guys expressed concern that these dynamics are giving the fediverse a bad reputation for developers ... which makes sense: it's clearly a minefield, who wants to venture in without a map? It was interesting, though, when I wrote up an article about it I got a lot of compliments from people in both camps ... but none of the guys who expressed concern about developers getting scared away actually shared it. Oh well. Of course, who knows, if the Maven people had read the article they might well have ignored it anyhow ... but at least they wouldn't be taken by surprise.
https://privacy.thenexus.today/consent-for-fediverse-developers/
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"An important step toward a more interoperable “fediverse” — the broader network of decentralized social media apps like Mastodon, Bluesky and others — has been achieved." Ryan's come to the rescue with Bridgy once again. #Fediverse https://werd.io/202...Yeah, it's an interesting example of how the links between the networks are now dense enough that it's in many ways a single network. I did some polls a while ago about different reactions to Bridgy Fed and the Mostr bridge - https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/112152860364679419
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"An important step toward a more interoperable “fediverse” — the broader network of decentralized social media apps like Mastodon, Bluesky and others — has been achieved." Ryan's come to the rescue with Bridgy once again. #Fediverse https://werd.io/202...Ideally it wouldn't be an opt-in - I think this kind of bridge is incredibly useful in its own right. I know it's been fraught on the Mastodon side because of Bluesky's provenance and former relationship to both Twitter and Jack Dorsey. I personally don't see the issue at all: the more the merrier.
I don't think the issue is primarily Bluesky's provenance or Jack's former involvement, I think it's that Bluesky's got different norms (everything's public, everything's searchable) and the abuse scenarios haven't yet been analyzed. Opt-in prioritizes everybody's safety over the convenience of the people who don't see any issue. So while the conversation was kind of rocky, the discussions actually led to a good outcome. I wrote about this a bit in https://privacy.thenexus.today/consent-for-fediverse-developers/
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US journalism is not "bad." It's dishonest.I know right? The argument as stated is so obviously unserious, does she not see that or just not care?
On today's immigration announcement, Bitecofer reshared the Biden campaign annoucement, positive coverage from a major network, and somebody (from somebody whose bio is "Centrist, # ReaganCaucus, @ALReaganCaucus") saying "In 2024- Joe Biden is more conservative than the GOP on the border". I wonder what the 2018 "there is no swing voter, it's all about the base" Bitecofer would say about that?
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US journalism is not "bad." It's dishonest.Who knows, quite possibly the same underlying thing that happened to Nate: went from being election forecasters to thinking they're strategists, at which point their whiteness starts to play a bigger role. I read an interview with her earlier this year (which is actually what I was trying to find with my search, the stuff with Nate was just icing on the cake) where she says:
"And I just think it is my obligation—now, I’m not trying to dismiss your concerns or the concerns that people have about Gaza—but I do see it as my obligation to make sure every immigrant community in this country knows they are right in the crosshairs. And it won’t be a small sacrifice, or four years of pain or some small setbacks. What they are promising, in writing and on video, is to decimate American Muslim communities. So I feel like getting that across to those communities is probably the most important thing that we can do."
White savior much?
https://lithub.com/rachel-bitecofer-on-democratic-strategies-to-counter-republicans-in-the-2024-election/
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US journalism is not "bad." It's dishonest.Yeah, I wasn't endorsing her in general, just highlighting her take on this poll. It's pretty consistent with her views that she'd think it makes sense to emphasize this -- negative partisanship and all that.
Out of curiosity, in light of @[email protected]'s point elsewhere in the thread about how focusing on "Trump is worse!" is a way for Biden and the Dems to try to defuse pressure on Gaza, I did a quick search for "Bitecofer Gaza". Lo and behold I found a tweet from her just last week talking about college protests: "every one Gaza vote Biden lost would have been 100 lost swing voters if he’d abandoned Israel." And speaking of election scryers who think they know everything, she was approvingly quoting Nate Silver!
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US journalism is not "bad." It's dishonest.Although for what it's worth, Bitecofer retweeted somebody who shared a screenshot of a headline with "Trump verdict makes significant number of Republicans less likely to vote for him" referring to that annoying Reuters poll. So ...
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US journalism is not "bad." It's dishonest.@[email protected] Here's another poll I'm sure you'll love: "49% of Independents think Trump should drop out post-guilty verdict"!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh btw "The polls found the race effectively tied nationally in a 1-on-1 with Biden at 45% and Trump at 44%".
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/01/poll-trump-conviction-election-independent-voters
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For those who aren’t aware, Microsoft have decided to bake essentially an infostealer into base Windows OS and enable by default.The frustrating thing is that in the later Gates-era MS (starting in 2002ish) they actually did start taking security seriously -- and made major progress for years. It's really hard to imagine something like this getting through the Windows organization of the time. And yet, here we are.
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Massive leak at #Google confirms what we have all known for years, just how much is tracked, stored, and monetized.@[email protected] And Google's now confirmed that the leak is legit ... https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/29/24167407/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-confirmation
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@mmccue - new numbers, but ones that tell the same story we discussed on your podcast: on my server, we have about 1 moderator to 500 users. Here are the new numbers on how that dynamic plays out for major social platforms in the EU:It's a great point, this diversity is such an important aspect of the fediverse (and not just for moderation of course) that it's really worth highlighting. The experience on a well-moderated small-to-medium size invitation-onl instance is very different from a larger open registration instance. Or, look at the difference between the microblogging realms of the fediverse are different than in the Lemmyverse -- where community moderators also have a role, but moderation tools are weak and the tankie ratio is high.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]