Post APo3CWohO2PMwbSN60 by chmaucher@eupublic.social
(DIR) More posts by chmaucher@eupublic.social
(DIR) Post #APn7tx8papsHhQsKiu by tiago@social.skewed.de
2022-11-20T09:54:39Z
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The #fediverse is one of the most hopeful aspects of the internet, since it tries to bring it back to its decentralized, federated roots. In my opinion, there is no other way to guarantee free communication.However, it is not without its challenges. Looking ahead, it's easy to identify some of them:1. Centralization is an emergent phenomena. We can see this happening with the distribution of instance sizes, and the clear “rich get richer” dynamics that take place. This is not due to bad actors, it is simply how people tend to behave.2. Commercialization is yet to hit this platform, but if it becomes popular, it will undoubtedly happen. Instances that serve ads, promotes content, etc, will appear at some point.3. Related to point 2, it is possible that Google and/or Microsoft will seise the opportunity to try once more to move into the social media domain, and make services that connects to the #fediverse. This will be sold as an adoption of the federation, and hence progress. But to see how that goes, we need only to remember what happened with google chat and the open Jabber protocol — they abandoned it as soon as their service became popular enough. Bait and switch.4. Legal intimidation of smaller instances is a real menace. The push to force Facebook/Twitter/etc to be liable for what users post will backfire, and render every instance admin responsible for what every single user posts. Note that it does not matter one bit if the content is actually problematic — a single cease or desist letter from a lawyer will terrify most admins out there.These are not problems without solution, but it's unclear how things will unfold.
(DIR) Post #APnB0faxWnfPAbvVMe by admin@besocial.co.za
2022-11-20T10:29:28Z
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@tiago very interesting times for federated
(DIR) Post #APnSgzV9banQI9yeC8 by manlius@mathstodon.xyz
2022-11-20T13:47:33Z
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As said by @tiago centralization is an emergent phenomenon. We have seen its effects even on the Ethereum network, and it led to a cascade failure in a few hours! We named that phenomenon “emergent centralization” since in principle no centralization was expected at all in the system.Paper: https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-018-0180-6
(DIR) Post #APnTj5RgZnIrGCuzWC by bobkopp@fediscience.org
2022-11-20T13:59:09Z
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@tiago Might be helpful for lawyers in the community to set up legal toolkits for instance administrators, and other ways of sharing legal support across instances
(DIR) Post #APnTyeHnK3mFeyiDZo by futurebird@sauropods.win
2022-11-20T14:02:00Z
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@tiago How is the post able to be so long?
(DIR) Post #APnZ5MClRh7ZNdNStc by maguilera@mastodon.lol
2022-11-20T14:59:11Z
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@tiago many of these dangers arise from a scenario in which capitalist platforms can freely disembark into the fediverse. IMO the best defense is to think of what kind of public intervention can guarantee scenarios in which communities are still in control. From strong regulation to capitalist digital platforms (e.g limits to data monetization), to infraestructures supported by public institutions (a broad network of instances supported by universities, public libraries, etc)
(DIR) Post #APnZZYJD0YaNbin2q8 by tiago@social.skewed.de
2022-11-20T15:04:43Z
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@maguilera I think the last thing you mention is very important! We need to use public infrastructure, in particular universities, to protect the #fediverse. This is how the internet flourished initially. But alas, it was handed over to the private sector for profiteering...
(DIR) Post #APncptBVSZRaqefX16 by adrien@infosec.exchange
2022-11-20T15:41:16Z
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@tiago Very much interested to see how point 3 plays out. Businesses will go where people are. Will we see the hotmail/gmail equivalent of mastodon instances, heavily promoted and loaded with ads and trackers?
(DIR) Post #APo3CWohO2PMwbSN60 by chmaucher@eupublic.social
2022-11-20T20:36:40Z
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@tiago As Mastodon becomes more popular, I wonder how European-style hate speech regulation demanding content providers to actively moderate will impact an decentralized platform. If instance-hosts will be demanded to actively moderate, this might lead to a polarisation with many small instances that can still be comfortable moderated by non-professional hosts and few very large dominant professionally administrated instances that might rely on commercialization to be economically sustainable.
(DIR) Post #APo4xRE05wZFALDuwi by jrredho@mastodon.world
2022-11-20T20:56:22Z
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@tiago Whatever direction it heads, I vote that we take all of the "features" ideas that Joseph Goebbels would've loved and omit them from the very start.Thank you!
(DIR) Post #APoAVL2C7IHbaDgYmO by floyduk@twit.social
2022-11-20T21:58:30Z
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@tiago on point 2 I would expect to see other instances blocking an instance that serves ads and paid priority. On point 3 this used to be called “embrace, extend, extunguish”. Embrace the technology. Then “improve it” by extending it. Then let the original die because standards became fractured. Microsoft were masters of this.
(DIR) Post #APoE90kxEGII8bEMU4 by OscarFM@hostux.social
2022-11-20T22:39:10Z
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@tiago looks like the problem is in between..laws or maybe the problem is in economy or both :D
(DIR) Post #APoGCSH3ZhboGA13xI by katafrakt@ruby.social
2022-11-20T22:51:59Z
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@tiagoI've been thinking about this today and I predict that Fediverse will remain relatively ad-free, because it does not offer analytics on views and clicks. Without that, it's impossible to calculate conversion rates or reach and very hard to put a price on ad impression. Unless ad business adapt to this reality, it won't be very interested in Fediverse.
(DIR) Post #APoGCSjlqwZrhDRziC by tiago@social.skewed.de
2022-11-20T23:02:19Z
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@katafrakt I see nothing that prevents anyone from changing the code to include said analytics for a particular instance -- or even accounts that interact with it. The ActivityPub protocol only regulates how instances communicate, not how a particular instance spies on its users.
(DIR) Post #APoGgyuUnbLkAN1H6W by katafrakt@ruby.social
2022-11-20T23:07:50Z
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@tiagoYes, but why would my instance send information about views to the "ad instance"? It would require a great deal of cooperation from multiple instances.
(DIR) Post #APoIwhlqUUpjYCbBqa by tolis@mastodon.gamedev.place
2022-11-20T23:33:06Z
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@tiago I wonder how feasible is for each one of us to have our own instance. It could be part of our internet provider package and our data could be served from our routers or something like that. Yes, there is still centralisation around the provider but maybe a step closer to decentralisation since it would be closer to the producer of the data?
(DIR) Post #APoKF2oD6tLdxx0uZM by tiago@social.skewed.de
2022-11-20T23:47:38Z
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@tolis The provider idea is how email worked back in the day — you got one from your ISP.But ISPs are now near monopolies too...One idea is to have universities and other public infrastructure providing access, but that cannot be the complete solution.My dream is that we all get a fast bidirectional internet connection, and we can all self-host lightweight versions of email/microblogging/etc in our own homes — but this is totally farfetched as a general solution...
(DIR) Post #APoKUtSvcFPDcbcIN6 by tiago@social.skewed.de
2022-11-20T23:50:30Z
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@katafrakt I don't think this would be widespread across all instances, it would affect only the largest ones... The problem would be serious if the largest instances are really dominant.Ad-based surveillance at scale would indeed be very difficult if the network remains sufficiently distributed.