Post APJED2l2C9dsKKdMXY by mcg@social.lol
(DIR) More posts by mcg@social.lol
(DIR) Post #APJAAgkIfE9bf8ubOy by humanetech@mastodon.social
2022-11-02T12:10:06Z
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@robertwgehl Hi there. Did you see this entertaining and great article about the #Fediverse by @elilla ?https://wordsmith.social/elilla/a-futuristic-mastodon-introduction-for-2021I think some interesting social dynamics are described, that I wasn't all too aware of until reading about them. May be interesting as input for your work.
(DIR) Post #APJAAh9p8KZQwIqzBY by hankg@friendica.myportal.social
2022-11-02T12:56:58Z
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Prescient point here: "No single point of failure: Even if one Mastodon website is bought by Elon Musk, the federation itself can’t be, because the fediverse isn’t a website, it’s a communication method that anybody can use."
(DIR) Post #APJAAhWrkf0C5ldO6K by humanetech@mastodon.social
2022-11-02T13:09:35Z
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@hankg @robertwgehl @elilla Yeah. Sorta kinda. I have a different worry: that a corporate takeover starts at the 'substrate' level of the Fediverse not long after first commercial business entries and when it is clear money can be earned here. The ecosystem substrate is where the people and processes and organization structure should be to maintain open standards and ActivityPub extensions and other interoperability / tech aspects, that are needed for a healthy ecosystem that can evolve.
(DIR) Post #APJAAhyA7ApvSQPBeC by humanetech@mastodon.social
2022-11-02T13:15:33Z
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@hankg @robertwgehl @elilla It may not matter to many fedizens, but they'd be pushed to the forgotten fringes in dusty places where bulletin boards still exist. That can be fine, but imho is also missed opportunity to expand what we have now, which is quite unique.Yet we have no substrate at all and only individual people doing their thing, creating great projects but not able to withstand a corporate onslaught.
(DIR) Post #APJAAiMycugahO10KG by elilla@transmom.love
2022-11-02T14:21:21Z
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@humanetech @hankg @robertwgehl I remember what Google Talk did to XMPP, Apple's promises regarding Darwin, and the stab in the back of the Linux community that was the Android app store.corporations have ways to appropriate open source labour, and embrace-and-extend never went out of fashion. the danger with the fediverse is a prominent, gold star fediverse app which treats a single instance as special (*cof* *cof* *hack* *spit*). open source communities treat designers, writers and translators like trash, enshrining programmer opinions as laws; corporate can have designers on their teams by paying them money. this results in open source apps generally having terrible interfaces and user experiences, masto inclusive. if I was an evil corporation getting in the fedi game, I would buy everyone involved in mastodon.social, get a team of designers, writers etc. to make a polished, actually pleasant update to the "official" app, gatekeep which instances can be accessed on the official app (you can start with "soft" gatekeeping by loosely enforceable but defensible rules, then require certification into a whitelist, eventually require your software), then finally you add proprietary features that block others (easy example: user-level emojo, like Telegram stickers, but in a way designed to break interoperability; only the people on Mastodon™ can see those toots).at this point you are the owner of the means of production. everybody else can still run their own softwares, of course, but compare how much stuff is available on NetBSD or F-Droid vs. OSX or Google Play, and that means you're back to the network effect problem (you and your tech clique use open fediverse, but you're forced to use proprietary Mastodon™ because Everybody Is There).this vulnerability is one of the many reasons why I'm enthusiastic about next-generation ethical-political licenses, like @thufie's non-violent public license. the capitalist class is the enemy, and (by definition and by philosophy of life) wants to own everything. as long as this is not acknowledged, as long as we don't draw a line on the sand and declare open hostility, we can't defend against cooptation.
(DIR) Post #APJAArWAc6O54VNyPA by mcg@social.lol
2022-11-02T14:39:29Z
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@elilla @humanetech @hankg @robertwgehl @thufie I've been considering one of the big commercial players may stand up a AP server. Scaled to handle huge numbers of people. Then slowly extend and extinguish. Much like Google Talk and Facebook did with XMPP.
(DIR) Post #APJED2GC2oyKmgCjT6 by jesse@tech.lgbt
2022-11-02T14:45:16Z
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@mcg @elilla @humanetech @hankg @robertwgehl @thufie someone will pour hundreds of millions into capturing a largely ignorant and apathetic user base and then we will repeat in the fediverse what we saw happen on the internet: consolidation, extension, monopolization, then exploitation.
(DIR) Post #APJED2l2C9dsKKdMXY by mcg@social.lol
2022-11-02T15:23:03Z
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@jesse @elilla @humanetech @hankg @robertwgehl @thufie I like to think we’ve grown smarter about this sort of tactic now and a attempt like this would be largely de-federated almost immediately.
(DIR) Post #APJED3AYfG3hbUZkK8 by humanetech@mastodon.social
2022-11-02T15:27:06Z
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@mcg @jesse @elilla @hankg @robertwgehl @thufie It is the question who defederates whom, if the corporate parts start to dominate the social graph. Then it is the nice parts that will push themselves away to the fringes and out of sight of fine people we'd like to see as fedizens in our little enclosed world that is then left..
(DIR) Post #APJED3f2puRf82q5qK by mcg@social.lol
2022-11-02T15:28:58Z
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@humanetech @jesse @elilla @hankg @robertwgehl @thufie I hope if we(the open fediverse) do it first and quick, the big silo gains nothing more than the same users but running a closed AP service.
(DIR) Post #APJED4875phIaCRJ9U by humanetech@mastodon.social
2022-11-02T15:33:10Z
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@mcg @jesse @elilla @hankg @robertwgehl @thufie There's no brand to the Fediverse. If Birdsite & Co come, design 10 brilliantly sleek apps for a couple million bucks, and spin up 10k 'instances' (in some datacenter).. then to outside world, add a good marketing sauce and campaigns, and...Then that becomes that nice Fediverse already. The Corpoverse.
(DIR) Post #APJED4huwiKyNFBtxY by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-11-05T23:44:00.297863Z
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There's a serious threat of all these corpos who crave to control everything on earth coming in and going "nice distributed social network you got here!"If the corpos wanted to, they could destroy the fediverse in two ways: First, they could embrace, extend, extinguish. Second, a libel campaign to pressure companies or governments into just destroying all of our basic human rights in ways that effectively end the fediverse.I love seeing new users on the fediverse whether they're people I like or not, but the inrush of silver spoon corpos rushing away from Twitter scares me.