Post AQ0Q1oZfcNikbEdUrg by f00fc7c8@kind.social
(DIR) More posts by f00fc7c8@kind.social
(DIR) Post #APzArXc08VCWcpPS7s by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:38Z
4 likes, 15 repeats
Since Mastodon saw its initial popularity circa 2017, I've noticed that most users and those reporting on it either don't think about the Fediverse as anything more than Mastodon, or treat its history as beginning with Eugen Rochko and the beginning of Mastodon. In fact, Mastodon is the latest in a long line of federated social networks going at least back to Identi.ca, and though I wasn't around for all of it, I find this history pretty interesting. (Thread; boosts welcome!)
(DIR) Post #APzArZZaqQSmhwIYeO by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:39Z
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The open-source microblogging software Laconica was developed by the company of the same name, owned by Evan Prodromou, starting around 2007. It was to be the basis of the social network Identi.ca, and a hosting service for the internal networks of various companies. Since Laconica was open-source, any user had the right to run their own public instance of the software, and Prodromou wanted these instances to be able to communicate with one another, like e-mail servers.
(DIR) Post #APzArcDj0Bkkuz5dTs by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:39Z
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For this purpose, he created the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, which, although limited, allowed Identi.ca users to communicate with users of other Laconica instances, like Leo Laporte's TWiT Army. In August 2009, Laconica - both the company and the software - was renamed to StatusNet. The same year they began developing OStatus as a more advanced protocol for federation, which by March 2010 had allowed different StatusNet instances to act almost as a single social network.
(DIR) Post #APzAre9Bq1JWtUz2gq by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:39Z
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Adding to this were other projects, such as Friendica, which used the same protocol but with a different feature set. Though Identi.ca remained the central server that most users went to, this collective of servers communicating using OStatus became known as the "federated social web."
(DIR) Post #APzArgUX7dZiAGz7Ee by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:40Z
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In 2013, StatusNet Inc. was running short on money. Prodromou closed registrations for Identi.ca and laid off the company's staff. But his efforts continued, as he developed a new, more extensible platform called Pump.io. It was never as popular as Identi.ca or StatusNet, but those interested in the future of the federated social web followed its development closely.
(DIR) Post #APzAriazIbvUgs1IZc by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:40Z
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That June, control of the StatusNet software was handed over to the GNU Project, one of the oldest collectives of FOSS developers. There it became GNU Social. Without Identi.ca as a central hub, the number of instances expanded and decentralization was realized. I started getting involved a few years after this change; I tried out GNU social as part of a broader effort to open-source my life, and I found quite a lot of people also involved in open-source.
(DIR) Post #APzArpZ7NxaeJ6CP8C by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:40Z
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Unfortunately, the federated social web of this time was quite poorly moderated; there were servers with rules against certain kinds of harmful content, but their admins had difficulty keeping up with other instances that did not share the same rules, including a lot of "free speech" instances that permitted everything within the law. As far as I recall, instance suspensions, or defederations, weren't yet a thing - if they existed, they were widely detested by the community.
(DIR) Post #APzArrhLSLMKvC40ES by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:40Z
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Mastodon's arrival on the scene nearly constituted a reset of the federated social web. Upon its release in 2016, it federated with GNU social, but it quickly eclipsed that platform in userbase, and most of the new users were unaware of the history behind the federated social web. While Mastodon expanded, GNU social seemingly stagnated, with major instances either disappearing or moving to more advanced federated platforms like Mastodon or Pleroma.
(DIR) Post #APzArv8OgDmTZxk9JY by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:41Z
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Mastodon saw significant expansion in 2017, with #DeleteFacebook and similar pushes against proprietary social networks, and a few larger companies supporting the platform. The term "Fediverse" was coined sometime around this point as a more succinct way of describing the federated social web. This was also the first time many instances began suspending, or "defederating from", entire other servers in the Fediverse.
(DIR) Post #APzArwmqXJjMhhfy08 by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:41Z
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Blocklists of instances with problematic content were widely shared, effectively shutting those instances out of the network; most successful was the #FediBlock hashtag, started by Black users such as artist Marcia X. For a time, this was highly effective in protecting some users, and even led to the fediverse becoming a haven for queer, leftist, and neurodivergent communities. Unfortunately, racism on the Fediverse persists to this day, even on some otherwise well-moderated instances.
(DIR) Post #APzAryiJN9I8gDZND6 by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:41Z
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Around the same time, Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol was being built upon by a number of experts to form the W3C standard ActivityPub. Mastodon, Friendica, and Pleroma were eager to adopt the new standard, even before it was formally published, and eventually Mastodon and Pleroma would drop their support for OStatus. The Fediverse would continue to expand and new platforms were developed - PeerTube for video sharing, Pixelfed for image sharing, BookWyrm for book reviewing, etc.
(DIR) Post #APzAs0Pb3hVfwkpSJk by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:42Z
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In October of 2022, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter, the platform that the largest Fediverse platforms had always aimed to compete with. Under his leadership, in just a month, most of the company's staff was fired, several features of the website became broken, right-wing content was massively promoted, and fears rapidly rose about the website dying or becoming the exclusive territory of the far-right.
(DIR) Post #APzAs2M7pZvByZDiBU by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:42Z
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As a result, many fledgling social networks, as well as established networks with better reputations, absorbed massive influxes of Twitter users. The Fediverse was among the more established networks; it saw activity rise into the millions of users, and that's where things stand now. Amidst chaos on the large instances, the usefulness of the Fediverse in finding communities has increased greatly.
(DIR) Post #APzAs46xIwyXQ68coi by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T03:30:42Z
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But this influx has brought new challenges as well - slowdowns and moderation issues on many instances as they have difficulty absorbing the increased traffic, a further increase in the zealous use of instance suspensions threatening to fragment the network and create centralized silos, and many new users having difficulty understanding how the network functions. (Thanks for making it to the end of this thread! I hope I didn't make any egregious errors.)
(DIR) Post #AQ04aqlnFV9mYKbjKS by iska@mstdn.starnix.network
2022-11-26T15:48:51Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@f00fc7c8 please up your character limit.
(DIR) Post #AQ09P1M8Z0HngHmmTg by clacke@libranet.de
2022-11-26T16:40:30Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@f00fc7c8 The term "Fediverse" was coined at some point in 2011–2012 as a term to describe the network that was increasingly expanding in anticipation of identi.ca leaving the network for pump.io.
(DIR) Post #AQ0GBH1UDVmptcWClk by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T15:54:12Z
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@iska If I knew of a way to do so without switching instances, I would. I have an alt account on a Friendica instance with a higher character limit, that could probably post this whole thing in one, so I polled people before posting the thread and they preferred I made it a thread here.
(DIR) Post #AQ0IxJHZJsCYiC4eeG by phneutral@ruhr.social
2022-11-26T15:13:29Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@f00fc7c8 Looking forward to a future with ActivityPub enabled tumblr and flickr. It’s like the good old internet of decentralisation and open standards finally has some sort of rebirth. Here is to the open ones!
(DIR) Post #AQ0LnARTdFV0GFZ1JA by lina@eientei.org
2022-11-26T19:01:35.292570Z
3 likes, 2 repeats
@f00fc7c8 hilarious: the faggotry with defederation started when mastodon got popular
(DIR) Post #AQ0O280n9Nd6yXLMum by maxmustermann@shitposter.club
2022-11-26T19:26:24.434972Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@lina @f00fc7c8 This shit was a feature of the fediverse from the getgo when Instances ran by a organization kompisenkompis began to blocking people for wrongthink.
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1nQ3ucRP198JFY by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T15:14:06Z
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A couple additional notes:- There were plenty of federated communication platforms before Identi.ca. Usenet, FIDOnet (federated BBSes), and of course, e-mail are examples. The lineage to Mastodon is less direct, but it's there.- The Diaspora social network, founded in 2010 by three NYU students and inspired by the ideas of Eben Moglen, was another large federated microblogging platform, but used its own protocol and was separate from the others.
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1nsQDB7sR6OxSC by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T15:47:05Z
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- The maintainers of GNU social also worked on the federated music community GNU FM, of which the most prominent instance was Libre.fm (which I also used around the same time I used GNU social). As @mattl describes it, GNU social was his effort to redirect use of GNU FM as a social network, to something better suited for social networking.
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1oZfcNikbEdUrg by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T16:55:00Z
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Made some edits to the thread. @clacke tells me that the term Fediverse has been in use since 2011-12, and I can believe that. @jesuisatire confirmed my suggestion that instance suspensions didn't exist in the fediverse during the GNU social era - at the very least, Friendica did not have such a feature.
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1p9TTGMQOHO5fk by jesuisatire@social.tchncs.de
2022-11-26T18:11:33Z
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@f00fc7c8 @clacke #fediverse most likely came out of:#federatedweb #thefederationhttps://the-federation.info/https://pod.geraspora.de/tags/federatedweb11 years ago (23/11/2011):https://pod.geraspora.de/posts/241894https://pod.geraspora.de/tags/thefederation8 years ago:https://pod.geraspora.de/posts/207698050916223098054533c43e9e16
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1pjdIpHgCQIy24 by clacke@libranet.de
2022-11-26T18:31:09Z
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@jesuisatire People involved with the identi.ca-centered network used the term "federated social web" at least a few (EDIT: months) before the first Diaspora pod was deployed:https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/The Fediverse was coined as an alternative to the Identiverse. Marjolein Katsma used both in parallel to promote the term:https://web.archive.org/web/20130517121313/http://identi.ca/tag/fediverse@f00fc7c8
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1qFBPWWNmH4AD2 by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T19:42:07Z
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More edits: comments by @mattl indicate that the GNU social project existed long before StatusNet merged with it, which is confirmed by this FSF blog: <https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-to-host-gnu-social-architecture-meeting>. I've updated my wording to reflect that.
(DIR) Post #AQ0Q1qmrOJSZSip3hY by jesuisatire@social.tchncs.de
2022-11-26T18:19:18Z
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@f00fc7c8 A publication of diaspora.arg about how to get rid of a troll on an instance scale (27/03/2017):https://pod.geraspora.de/posts/35714b00d6b201330f7c00145e5c073c(I know because .. 😮 )
(DIR) Post #AQ29Ow3mduHvZW527E by tobias@social.diekershoff.de
2022-11-27T07:52:22Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
My rememberings about that time are vague, but I think the term came up when the first Laconicats settled on new servers so explore their own Laconica servers. At some point (before the identicalypse) it came up.It might have been in the time when Mistpark (now Friendica) implemented OStatus (and the diaspora* protocol) and we needed a broader term that was not platform specific.At that time the people from the diaspora* project used the term "The Federation" a lot, and "The Fediverse" was the other side of the coin divided by the different protocols.Marjolein did a great part of promoting the terms of Laconicats and Fediverse back then. But I have no clue who wrote it the first time.@lnxw37a2 @clacke @f00fc7c8
(DIR) Post #AQ29PRSftPcOxgxqiW by morph@tty0.social
2022-11-27T08:19:31Z
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@tobias @lnxw37a2 @clacke @f00fc7c8 Sadly "fediverse" made it.
(DIR) Post #AQZICUM987OjykUDwG by f00fc7c8@kind.social
2022-11-26T16:44:58Z
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@clacke Thanks for the info - I tried to find where Fediverse was coined, but after a while I gave up looking and assumed it was around 2016-17 because I couldn't find an earlier use, and that's both when the Wikipedia article was created and when I first remember picking it up.
(DIR) Post #AQZICV1ycarI4U3d8i by clacke@libranet.de
2022-11-26T18:59:26Z
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@f00fc7c8 I don't have recorded evidence for use before 2013, and that's when I first remember hearing the term, but a thread between other veterans the other day had it at 2011–2012 and I believe it.
(DIR) Post #AQZICVXAkboPdEeXlQ by timttmy@the-pit.uk
2022-11-27T15:00:24.011084Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@clacke @f00fc7c8 I think I've still got my pre https stausnet server (see pic) which was in use from late 2009 on a shelf at work. It sounds like a fun project for the Christmas break to see if I can get it running and grep "Fediverse" and find the earliest mention.