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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Can we please remember to talk about things on the fediverse besides the fediverse itself? (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Having spent a lot of time on Mastodon... There are tons of people there talking about federated and self-hosted services, software freedom, censorship, encryption, tech regulation... A very narrow range of topics directly surrounding the fediverse get a lot of attention.

But nobody talks about anything else. Nobody goes to Instagram to talk about Instagram, nobody goes to Tiktok to talk about Tiktok, nobody goes to Facebook (at all). People use social media to either talk to their friends or talk about their hobbies and interests.

And if your hobby is tech, that's fine, enjoy. I like tech too. But please, if you have anything else to say, say it. The fediverse will never appeal to the masses if we don't embrace a wide variety of hobbies and interests.

We need people here talking about cooking. We need people here talking about fashion. We need people here talking about immigration policy. We need people here talking about everything people enjoy!

Yes, if you go to /m/fashion right now, it's... barely there. You're not going to get a ton of conversation when you post there. But that's not the point. The point is to build out the community, so that, a year from now, as more and more people attempt to post and engage, there is a conversation. There's a reason to be on the fediverse besides the meta circlejerk over how great the fediverse could be in theory.

This is the "content" people are craving. Find or start a magazine for your city, or your town, or your country. Write a post. Share posts from your favorite blogs. Comment on something, if you have anything to say at all. Share a youtube video—yes, a youtube video, I know, youtube sucks, but at least it gives us a path to a community here.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re talking about people that open up FB accounts with a phone number… they don’t understand the concept of email.

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.

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.

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My mom is afraid of computers, but she understands email just fine.

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.

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.

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 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 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 🤷.

You're just being an elitist misanthrope here. This has nothing to do with the issues facing the fediverse.

I'm just real... at least that's how I see myself.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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.

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.

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).

They use whatever their friends, coworkers, family use. Why?

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?

reset you password (cuz none of them actually remember it, they’re not used to remembering stuff)

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%?

People usually don’t care about techie stuff.

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Plenty of services offer both options because they might as well.

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.

And email really isn't secure in the first place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's best that they don't in that case.

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.

Great, it's not for them 🤷. Agree to disagree and move on 🤷.

I know plenty of people who signed up for accounts and never posted because there's nothing to talk about, nobody to engage with.

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 🤷.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

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?

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.

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 they don’t in that case.

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.

I beg to differ. There are plenty of subjects that appeal to my interests.

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?