this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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Right now, it's attracting a circlejerk of people who only want to talk about how good the fediverse can be. I don't know what you mean by "the right audience," but this is not an audience I or anybody else wants to spend time around, and it's not an audience that can build real collective knowledge or anything like that.
My menswear friends aren't coming anywhere near the fediverse. Not because they're "the wrong audience" and the fediverse only appeals to cool people, but because there's nobody talking about menswear and the fediverse doesn't appeal to people.
Why do you follow it if you don't want to see it?
I don't see anything on FB or IG that I don't avail myself of. I follow users I want to follow. I go on reddit, I join subreddits I want to join. I don't have to run away from the content I pick.
Tiktok is dumb though, IDK why you'd want to see algorithm-selected content like that.
I mean, you're free to downvote that nonsense. It's certainly not a problem on Reddit, it only exists in the subreddits that are specifically about cringey recipes.
You mean people with hobbies? You exclusively want people here without hobbies?
All of your gripes sound like a lack of patience, or a need for the corporate instances of social media to be replicated in the fediverse.
DIY isn't for everyone. It will have rough edges. It will lack things until you build them.
You want people to go somewhere? Make it worth their time. This is like burning man. Show up to a blank slate and make it fun/interesting/sustainable.
If that's not for you.. well.. perhaps you should stop trying to square peg this round hole.
I'm trying to do that, but it'll take more than one of us. I'm trying to encourage others to join me. Is that a problem?
Six years is not enough time to wait for one other person who thinks suits are cool?
See, you're saying "corporate instances of social media," but what you mean is "any other social media that could possibly be perceived as a success." The fediverse is uniquely lacking in content. It doesn't need to be corporate for people to come here and make it something.
You ever been on forums? You know what it's like to not have upload privileges as a user and have to upload everything manually on some pix host?
The fediverse is like that and will most probably stay like that. Why? Cuz space costs money, and people host their own instances.
This fact (having to upload your content on external hosts, rather than just hitting the image upload button and the thing gets uploaded on the instance) coupled with how different the fediverse is and how harder it currently is to find communities you might like, is a no go for most normies. Deal with it 🤷.
Reddit became huge off the back of imgur, only developing its own (asstacular) image upload service in recent years. I haven't had to upload many photos to kbin yet (it seems to work fine), but I can't imagine imgur being a problem if I had to use it.
I highly doubt this is part of the problem.
That was true 13+ years ago, when most normies didn't even have a FB account, let alone a reddit account. Back then reddit was mostly full of geeks, they know how to upload images on pix hosts, that was never a problem for them, and it isn't now, that's why we use Lemmy, dispite of it lacking a lot of things that a social media platform in 2023 is most definitely supposed to have. But, we don't care. Normies care. The don't like having to switch 10 different apps to upload an image, to have to copy/paste comm URLs in search because your instance still doesn't federate with the instance with the comm that you'd like to join, they don't like not being able to follow users (Lemmy still doesn't support that), they don't like having 50 different apps that basically do the same thing (which, of course, it's the whole point of joining an open source network, choice). They want consitency, which is the only thing that the fediverse will never have, and the whole point of even having a fediverse (you don't like a policy on an instance? fine, move, no one's stopping you 🤷). When you take away consitency from them, they feel overwhelmed and this thing is just too complicated, end of story.
See, normies were never a part of forums, IRC, BBSes. They're late internet adopters. They have no idea how things were, that different servers might have different rules, some require SSL, some don't, others might wan't you to register the uname with an email, etc. They will never get the defederated aspect of the fediverse. It's like speaking some alien language to them, it simply does not compute. Corporate centealized media is all they know.
It's really not that hard to explain. Just tell them it's like email, they'll get it.
I swear, most techies think that non-techies are another species. It's not that hard to explain things, and not everybody is as incompetent as our mothers. Young people understand technology better than old people, not worse, not sure how that part has you confused.
But yeah, being able to post photos directly without going to imgur is easier and more intuitive, I'm glad it seems to be built into kbin without any issue.
You're talking about people that open up FB accounts with a phone number... they don't understand the concept of email.
They don't even understand the concept of phone numbers, they just know they dial and get the other person on the other end, that's it.
You sure about that? Cuz I've had talks with young people that are considered techies amongst their friends, they know a lot less than what techies used to know at that age, which was dissapointing for me. For example, they know that Thor hides their real IP, they don't know how though. They think it's somehow magical and that it doesn't need an IP.
Though I have to admit that I have also met great ones amongst them. The trouble is, they are precious little to be found. And they're usually the weird kids, not even techies, just pure genious, future coders in most cases. So, no one actually notices them. You'll hear about them as the guy/gal that invented this or that algo that navigates this or that.
No, I'm not. My mom is afraid of computers, but she understands email just fine. I've been able to explain federation to a lot of my non-techie friends. You're giving me some hypothetical caricature of a technophobe, but I'm telling you, I've done it, I've explained it to people, it's not that hard, you just hate people too much to give them a chance.
I assume you're talking about TOR, and not Thor. I consider myself a techie, I'm a patent attorney with a degree in computer science. I've read about how TOR works a few times, and probably once new whatever it is you're getting at, but I couldn't tell you how the fuck TOR works now. And I couldn't care less. And I don't need to understand it to sign up for the fediverse or upload a photo to kbin or upload a photo to imgur.
You don't need to be a software engineer with experience in every field of technology to click a link, sign up for an account, and leave a comment. My mom could do it (if she wanted to, although she's probably get angry at me if I suggested it and talked to her about it for more than 20 seconds).
You're just being an elitist misanthrope here. This has nothing to do with the issues facing the fediverse.
Really? Then please come over here and try to explain the same to my mom. Cuz I've tried it a million times, she doesn't understand the concept and she doesn't like to understand at this point, all she knows is, it works, like a phone number, it just works. She doesn't understand why calling her brother abroad without the country's calling code doesn't work, I had to type the number in her phone with the country's code because she didn't think that was important and just left the code out... cell operators were also a PITA to explain to her, and I don't think she got that either, cuz she still asks me what the first 3 numbers in front of the cell are and sometimes I give her bogus codes just to see if she'll go "don't screw with me", but she writes them down and never asks me why is this code different from all of the rest that are in use here... not ever.
So please, don't tell me everyone understands email, cuz they don't. I'll bet you whatever you want that, if you do a street questionare and ask people to explain the concept of email as plainly as possible, over 70% with either get it completely wrong or just shrug and tell they have no idea how it works.
Yeah, Tor, sorry. Had a nick on a game, Thorazine, everyone called me Thor there, so now it just slips sometimes.
You don't need to understand any of that, apparently you have a logic streak in you since you have degree in computer science. One, not everyone has that gift, two, even if they did, they might not have developed it, and three, you went to uni. Please tell me the world statistic (percentage) of people that actually went and graduated. I haven't seen the statistic either, but I bet it's no more than 15% on a global scale, which about sums my estimate of over 80% of the population not being able to understand simple things (yes, they are simple IMO) like email or federation. It's not that it's complicated, it's the attention span problem. Uni teaches to have long studying session, weeks, months at a time. People that never did that, they just can't force their brain to concentrate on one single thing for more than 5 minutes at a time, especially not if they're not getting paid for it and none of their friends use that thing that you're trying to explain. The very concept of freedom and having the choice to do things your way or how you'd like to be run, escapes them. They just don't care. They use whatever their friends, coworkers, family use. Why? Cuz why not. Everyone else uses it, it's simple, you just type in your phone, reset you password (cuz none of them actually remember it, they're not used to remembering stuff) and off you go to using that app on your new device.
You proved my point with the last sentence in brackets. People usually don't care about techie stuff. Techies do, they love it, but regular people... no. Why would I bother explaining something like the fediverse or email to anyone that doesn't even wanna hear about that. Has anyone ever asked you (out of the blue) "hey man, you know how that mastodon thing works?". No... and no one ever will... not unless you start explaining first. No one cares dude, because they're perfectly OK not knowing about that and just living their lives with coproeate social media. It's a means to and end for them, they don't actually care about freedom, they don't even understand why this is free and the other one isn't, lol 😂, they're both free to them, except this one is a hell of a lot more complicated for signing up. "Now I gotta chech my email for a confirmation link, great 😒... shit, can't remember my password 🤦... aaah, fuck this shit." See how easy it is for normies to give up. Make the sign up process with a phone number and sign ups will skyrocket, I guarantee you that. But... wait, that's info that I would rather not share with a social network. Yes, for people like you and me, yes, for normies, it's just easier 🤷.
I'm just real... at least that's how I see myself.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Why wouldn't you just give her a number and tell her that's the number? Fuck that, why don't you just send her a contact and tell her "click on Bob and it'll call bob! Or tell it to call Bob and it'll call Bob!" Why the fuck would you ever bother to explain country codes to her? Nobody needs to know about country codes, you're inventing this problem.
I'm getting the impression that when you say you don't understand email, you're talking about how people don't know how email routing works, don't understand pop vs imap, don't understand why the sender field is sometimes not accurate. That's not what I'm talking about, because it doesn't fucking matter. Everybody knows everything they actually have any reason to know about email. If I asked a hundred people on the street how to send an email, or check their email, one hundred of them would be able to describe the process successfully. You're just looking for excuses to call them stupid to make yourself feel smarter.
Well, obviously college isn't the only sign of intelligence, obviously you don't need a college degree to operate imgur, or upload a photo to kbin, obviously children don't have college degrees, and obviously different nations and cultures have different systems and norms around education, but:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cac/intl-ed-attainment
So 40%, as of 2021, in OECD countries. Is that good enough for you, asshole?
Also, fun fact, 4.37 billion people use email: https://techjury.net/blog/how-many-email-accounts-are-there/. (yeah, that article is written weirdly).
How fucking stupid are you? It's literally called social media. You're confused about why people would rather see what their nieces and nephews are up to than listen to some stranger rant about how stupid everybody, everywhere is?
you should not be remembering your passwords. You know you're not supposed to remember your passwords, right? I have hundreds of unique, complex, randomized passwords, I don't remember them. I know a lot of normies who are smart enough to not remember their passwords, Apple and Google are both making it easy. Why are you remembering your passwords? Are you part of that 80%?
They shouldn't need to. Most people don't know how IG works and enjoy it just fine. The reason people don't enjoy the fediverse is not that it's too complicated, it's that it's not enjoyable enough. If people ask me what the deal is, I explain it, but if they ask me why they should join, I can only talk about theory and potential, because there's nothing worth doing here, it's all potential. It needs to be an enjoyable place with people who don't call them idiots and with people who are talking about things they want to talk about.
You don't need to roll your own server on the fediverse. You don't need to compile your own app from source. You don't need to set up your own image server to share images from. You just need to come here and lurk, or vote, or comment, or post, or whatever, and have some fun.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Plenty of services offer both options because they might as well. Yeah, SMS is less secure. Who cares? This is not a bank account, nobody's account is gonna get hacked. And email really isn't secure in the first place. But also, there are plenty of services that only offer email signup, and plenty of people use them, and I've never really heard of anybody having an issue signing up with email, my mom manages, my sisters manage, my technophobic cousins manage.
But they would never come to the fediverse in the first place, because the fediverse never really had a selling point that mattered to any of them. They want to see their friends, and their friends don't use it, or see their hobbies, and nobody talks about their hobbies, or see anything that they could possibly care about, and there's none of that here. If I paid people to check it out, they wouldn't stay. I know plenty of people who signed up for accounts and never posted because there's nothing to talk about, nobody to engage with.
The fediverse will never offer phone numbers as a regustartion option. Why? One, it's invasion of privacy (something the fediverse is strictly against), and two, it's a service that costs money, while email is free.
Nobody said it is, it can easily be spoofed. In fact, phone number registration/sign in is far more reliable... but that is invasion of privacy.
Yes, if the services offer "sign in with Google/FB/Twitter", yes, most people will use that. Ask them if they usually use the last "sign in with email" option and you have your answer... because the other methods I mentioned requires just one click/tap, but not the email option.
It's best that they don't in that case.
Great, it's not for them 🤷. Agree to disagree and move on 🤷.
I beg to differ. There are plenty of subjects that appeal to my interests. It's just that there are non for most non-tech oriented people. And that's fine, they have the rest of the social medias for that. Hey, I got a few subs on reddit that will never move here and all of them are tech related. And that's fine as well, I'll just visit them from time to time on reddit, don't get what the big deal is 🤷.
Do you know what an option is? Are you confused about how options work? How is it an invasion of privacy to let me choose between the thing we're already able to do and a new thing that some other people might choose if they want to?
No, I'm talking about services that only offer email signup. Actually, there is also eBay, which I guess offers a facebook sign in option, but my mom and sister both signed up by email, they found it easier, because they both occasionally use one of the same computers, and they didn't want to log in and out of facebook to switch ebay accounts.
It's best that you stop sucking your own dick about how fucking high your consciousness is and how much better you are than everybody else.
Okay, are you going to disagree with my point?
I still know plenty of people who signed up for accounts and never posted because there’s nothing to talk about, nobody to engage with.
You found people here talking about what you like talking about. Why shouldn't anybody else have that?
OK, then don't spend your time here 🤷. I like it. If I don't like it, I'll leave. It's as simple as that 🤷.
By the right audience i don't mean your everyday Joe, I mean intelectuals, or just people that in general think that there's nore to life than just sharing family photos on social media, sharing their new boob job or whatever. That is exactly why I don't like mainstream social media and why I joined Reddit, people made memes there with those kinds or posts/stories... and I was like, finally, my kind of crowd... not just people showing me "oh loooook, doesn't her nose earing look cute ☺️", and me silently going "Jenny, I don't give a f*ck about her nose earing, why in the world would you think I care about that. If I wanted to see it, I would ask.", but really outloud saying "oh, yeah, so cute ☺️". Why? Because Jenny just had to share that with me, cuz she knows I have FB/Insta. Now, I don't have to hear that. Why? Cuz I don't have neither and she just jumps me when she shares that with everyone. Finally, piece 🙏.
See, people like Jenny and her friend with the nose rings, that for some reason, just felt that she had to share that for the whole world to see, is exactly what I'm trying to get away from here.
Keep your mainstream social media accounts to talk to your friends, use the fediverse for everything else you might think could be a good topic to discuss here. That is what I would do. I actually deleted everything on mainstream social media, except for Reddit and Lemmy. Everything else was just noise to me.
Who said I follow cooking or fashion. I know because my wife does, lol 😂. That's like every second post on FB and Insta now.
I never said that, but most of the people on mainstream media are like/karma whores or they make money from sharing stupid short clips. I am against them coming here. Sure, they can come and open up shop or whatever, with link to their mainstream social media, hey, it's OK, but most of them will give up after a short time cuz, well, no one here actually watches those stupid short clips that just show you how to make something very simple, but done in an extremelu complicated way, so you'd go "woooow, so cool 😯", which mostly works on a brainless audience, which is what most of Meta's plaforms are filled with, but it won't work here.
And we do have some thriving hobby communities here, look at c/woodworking, it's doing great.
Alright, putting aside your elitist bullshit and your complaints about content you're not seeing because you chose not to see it...
Do you see the difference between Reddit and Lemmy? Reddit has tens of millions of users having intellectual conversations about fashion, clothing, style, etc. across dozens of different subreddits. Some of those conversations are quite pleasant. I'm not going to suggest that you follow them, you're not into fashion, that's okay. I'm suggesting that the people who like those things go and talk about those things instead of dwelling on the metaconversations about the fediverse itself.
Once you realize that over 80% of the wolrd's population are complete idiots, you'll start seing things differently as well. Why do you think Reddit was at the bottom of the social medias when it came to the number of users? Because it didn't attract those 80% of the population, that's why.
OK, then try and convince them to come over here and open up shop. Don't know what else to tell ya, I'm not forcing anyone to do or not do anything, if someone asks me on which social media I spend most of my time now, I'm not gonna lie, but if they don't ask what Lemmy or the fediverse is, I'm not gonna start talking about it either. Apparently, they have no interest in knowing more about it, and that's cool, I respect that. If I wanted to see more of this or that that Lemmy or the fediverse doesn't have, I'll just join a social media platform that does, end of story.
Well, I know you're an idiot, since you seem to struggle with math. If your definition of "complete idiot" includes people in the 75th percentile of overall knowledge, and you don't see how that makes your definition meaningless and makes you a piece of shit, I can't imagine why you think anybody would want to chat with you.
I'm here for conversations. There's no way for me to convince people to come to a social network to not have conversations. Nobody wants that. A very small number of people want to try to build this social network. Those people need to build it, topic by topic, rather than circle-jerking about nothing.
You're young. I used to think exactly like you. You'll start seing things more from my point of view as you get older.
OK, make content then. Show them there is content, just no one to talk to.
You want things to happen instantly, they don't happen like that.
Exactly how young am I, o great omniscient lord on high?
SIX YEARS.
You're in your 20's, I can tell that much. Get to your late 30's, then we'll talk.
You started using Mastodon when nobody was actually using it. Things will happen in year or two from now. People are finally getting fed up with the nonsence and ads on mainstream social media. That coupled with bad decisions management wise will reduce the actual users on those platforms (bots don't count). The time of growth is now, not 6 years ago.
Guess again, dumbass.
Maybe stop pretending you know everything about everybody. You took a stab in the dark and pretended it was knowledge. You don't need to make assumptions about how old people are because you want to use those assumptions to judge them. You told me I'm too young to know anything, and that you knew better because you were older. You just don't realize how stupid you are.
Nothing has changed in the past six years. We've had multiple moments that have felt like... oh wow, people are going to start caring about the fediverse! People are going to come join and it's going to be a place where people do things! But none of those moments materialized into anything, because a million signups mean nothing if you can't find anybody to follow, can't find any followers, can't find anybody talking about anything but the fediverse, and feel, when you post, that you're shouting into the wind. You're not going to post. You're not going to come back tomorrow. You're not going to come back in a year. You tried the fediverse, there was nothing there, you went back to the social networks where society resides.
For something to change, we're going to need to have a conversation people want to join. We're going to need to build communities that people want to post in, or vote in, or lurk in, or comment in, or share posts from, or talk about, or care about. We can't just say "there's no Zuckerberg!" That's not enough.
You can pretend all you want, I know I'm right.
You never asked how I know that. The fact that you got fired up and started using curse words says a lot.
Please quote where I wrote that. I wrote older people are wiser. Not smarted, wiser. Why? Because they have more life experience. Not every older person is wiser, but those that have more than 2 synapses firing up there, usually are.
Once again, trying to make me look bad or get me angry (maybe 🤔) by saying things that I might take as an insult, says a lot.
Plase take a look at what has happened this year alone regarding social network platforms and you'll see I'm right. Reddit's API changes, Twitter limiting tweet views, Meta launching Threads and deciding to federate that platform with the fediverse. Please point at another year in which so many changes have been made on all social networks worldwide. Trust me, the time is now. If it doesn't happen now, it'll most probably never happen.
A million sign ups means a lot. If it means nothing to you, than I guess you're just expecting for miracles, which is another thing that points to your age. Younger people usually believe in these things, that some sort of a massive global shift will happen in one direction or another. Even for Reddit and Digg that took years and years. Things will move even slower because of the federation aspect of the fediverse. Don't think 1G users will suddenly shift in 2, 3 months, that is not going to happen. If the whole of the fediverse gets to 1G users in a decade from now, that should be considered a thriumph.
You're interested in normie subjects/hobbies. That's fine, no one says you shouldn't be. Just don't expect people in the fediverse to be interested in those same things. So, you're interested in fashion and suits. Those are mostly things that people with no actual preference about the direction in which this world is heading to (in general, not just the internet, social media, etc.). They're considered superficial. Not saying you are, but people interested in how they physically appear is something that appeals to status, which in turn tells a lot about how those people view the world - through status. Those are not the types of people that will usually care about the direction in which the social media platforms are heading. They usually care about how they appear in society. And that's fine too. But, they don't see anything wrong with how social networks work or where things are heading right. For them, things just work and they see no need to switch/change platforms.
You shouldn't expect to see many posts related to the subjects you're interested in on the fediverse. Those are usually not things that people who have a higher consciousness and decided to drop the mainstream social media will be interested in. Even if they are, they realize that this place will most probably never be a place where those kinds of interest will thrive, or at least not till corporate social media pose a real threat to the reputation of the fediverse (as is the case with Meta). So, they take their business elsewhere, i.e. to the social networks where these communities thrive. Hey, there's nothing weong with that, I do it as well, I have no plans to delete my Reddit accounts, they serve a purpose now and will most probably do so in the future. Not use them as frequently, yes, no doubt, the fediverse is now the first thing I open, not Reddit, when it comes to social media that is. But out right completely delete them? I really can't see a reason, there are still subs there that I know for a fact that won't switch to the fediverse. Why? They have their reasons, and I get that. I might not agree with it, but I get it. So, no hard feelings, I'll check up on them from time to time, and that's about it. My point is, you should do the same and stop asking why years have passed and yet nothing has happened regarding having more people that are interested in this or that on the fediverse. Just deal with it. It probably won't happen, so I'll just use mainstream social media, but if it does happen some day, hey, how cool, finally ☺️.
Be that change. Start posting on a more a link like aggregator place, like KBin or Lemmy. Mastodon is more of a microblogging thing. From my experience, places more like Reddit sprout meaningful conversations regarding ceratin subjects. So, try and do the same on KBin or Lemmy, see how it goes 🤷.
My identity is not a secret dumbass, you can look me up. You can tell me how you "know" that I'm in my twenties, but you don't, because I'm not. You "know" that in my twenties because you think my worldview is somehow less mature than yours, and that somehow explains my age. No, I'm just less of a dick than you are.
Oh, I see, so you're wiser than me because you've spent more time in your mom's basement than you think I've spent alive, huh?
You're explaining why there's an opportunity now. There's still nothing happening on the fediverse. People are flocking to threads and ignoring the fediverse. I'm trying to argue that we should do something about that, make the fediverse a social network and not just a place to discuss the fediverse. You're arguing that it's probably already happened and I just haven't noticed yet. I've been here for six years. A million signups sounds like a lot, but I'm telling you, nothing has changed.
It means potential. It means opportunity. It does not mean that we've arrived, or hit an inflection point, or taken advantage of the opportunity.
Not nearly as long as it's taking for the fediverse. I don't want to spend six more years crossing my fingers while Threads grows and the fediverse continues to stagnate, and then wonder why people didn't bother.
I really... I don't understand why you're confused when I insult you. It's hard to imagine that this isn't an intentional, active attempt to be seen as a piece of shit. Do you not see how hard you have to suck to say something so stupid, so elitist, so wrong-headed as this? You do not have a higher consciousness than other people, you have one interest most people don't have. Cooking and fashion and cat gifs are not lowly interests, they're interests you don't have. Your personal preferences don't make you some kind of ubermensch, dumbass, they're just preferences.
Yes, I'm aware that the fediverse is mostly techies and nerds. That does not make it better. Reddit has plenty of room for people with different interests. Twitter has plenty of room for people with different interests. Lemmy and Kbin are designed to support different interests. But you continue to express some kind of fear that, if people who like clothes come to the Fediverse, they're somehow going to make your experience more like tiktok. Fuck off with that noise. Don't subscribe to fashion magazines, problem solved.
I'm doing both. @malefashionadvice and similar communities are absolutely dead. I have found twelve accounts I want to follow on mastodon, half of them have never posted, and the other half are software projects. And I'm really pushing it, I'm really looking, there's just nobody talking about anything interesting.
I really feel that's the experience almost everybody on the planet would have if they tried signing up for and using mastodon. That's why those six people don't post—they came, they gave it a chance, they found a barren wasteland of nothing, and they left.
OK, you're taking this way too seriously and getting fired up over nothing. This is not a courtroom and I don't have to listen to your insults.
Take care.
I'm getting fired up over you insulting all of humanity. If you can't stand to be called an idiot, maybe stop calling billions of people idiots in every comment, idiot.
Fuck off.