this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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104
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: Cohost and the Fate of Centralized Platforms (audiovalentine.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

last week i was in a conversation with a few people about social media. i guess they were finally leaving xitter and wanted to know where to go. cohost came up and they all made accounts immediately. then i mentioned mastodon and was immediately rebuffed because "sometimes those instances shut down"

whoops!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's super easy to migrate accounts on Mastodon. Even works fine to move an account from Mastodon to Akkoma for example.

[–] mke 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Your content stays behind, though, and some shut down without warning.

Your posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Content is mirrored on all federated instances and it is very rare for an instance to shut down without notice.

[–] mke 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I meant that it's not directly associated with you as the owner through your migrated account.

Edited comment (many to some).

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This should hopefully get better over time as some instances stick around for longer. You'll be able to point to instances that have stuck around for a while, which means they'll probably stick around for some time longer. The problem right now is that the fediverse and many instances are still young, and something that started yesterday is not too likely to still exist tomorrow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

i just have such a hard time wrapling my head around why the fedi is under that level of scrutiny to begin with while everyone assumed cohost would be forever. i had an account there but stopped using it years ago because half the time i tried to log in it was down! come october there will be a plethora of mastodon instances that both predate and have outlived cohost

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This will all keep happening until we decide we have been tricked one-too-many times by centralized platforms. The only way to escape the hellish state of the current internet is to pursue options that drag the network back towards its decentralized state; a state where corporations are unable to control who we talk to, what we see, where our attention is for five or more hours a day, every day.

This will keep happening until we abandon centralization and choose and free, open source, decentralized future. Or else the beatings will continue until morale improves.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Honestly that's why email has stuck around. Can you imagine if one company controlled email? That would've enshittified and shut down years ago lol

[–] mke 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I agree with the overall spirit, but this is a bit shallow, no? Not much of an attempt to argue its points. It makes some claims, refuses to elaborate, then leaves. Feels written for people who already think the same.

Because of this as well as poor financial management, Cohost will pass out of internet culture with little impact

Would decentralization have helped it make a much greater impact? Would it have helped Cohost survive? Seems to me that financial issues would've killed it regardless.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Would it have helped Cohost survive?

Well in theory if cohost was decentralized, the instance that is now shutting down would just be one of many. As it is, it's one of one, the only one.

Plenty of Lemmy instances have shut down, some less abruptly than others. One cohost instance shutting down is not that remarkable, all things considered. It's only remarkable cause there's just one instance.

[–] mke 3 points 2 months ago

In theory, I doubt development would continue. For a federated cohost to survive long term, it would also need to be open source, with a developer community that could fork the project and carry the torch. That's a very different cohost we're envisioning, even excluding required UX changes to make it possible.

At that point, one might as well imagine a cohost that explored better ways to make money, or attracted more users, or ran a tighter ship. Both scenarios lead to this discussion never happening.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know what Cohost was but I'm pessimistic about Lemmy these days. Note that the link is to an article moaning about the centralization of sites like Reddit and that Cohost (whatever that was) failed because it was run by the same type of people. At first I didn't click on the link because it says "audio" so I expected it to be audio and I didn't feel like listening to one. It's a written article though.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m pessimistic about Lemmy these days.

Why? The userbase is quite stable, and new platform are emerging (Piefed, Mbin), and more people are probably going to come the next time Reddit messes up

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

The instance system is confusing for new users and they might not even realize that they're missing out on a lot of content by signing up to the wrong instance.

In the end it's just a bunch of centralized websites sharing content if the admins feel like it and sure you can create your own instance but another admin can decide to defederated from yours anytime they feel like it, that's still a lot of power in the hands of a single person...

Both front and back end need to be decentralized and also separated from each other. Make all content available to all and have people develop a UI to access it, let the users curate their feed.

This way people sign up on one page and can use the same credentials no matter what page they go to, the competition for front end devs is to offer the best UI, the development for the hosting part is what's done as a community on GitHub or whatever...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I always point new users to Lemm.ee nowadays.

another admin can decide to defederated from yours anytime they feel like it, that’s still a lot of power in the hands of a single person…

All of the top 20 instances ask feedback from their communities before defederating. They know that if they don't, people will switch instances in two clicks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Most people won't switch though, they won't want to lose their username, their feed and so on, we're creatures of habits...

Hell, trolls could go around and recreate accounts on the top 100 instances with the same username users have on other instances to prevent them from reusing the same username elsewhere, just that is a weird concept to explain "Oh yeah, someone else can create an account and pretend to be you and unless people notice that the instance they're from isn't the same, there's no way to know it isn't you!"

You're sending users to Lemmy.ee but in the end it's an instance controlled by one person paying the hosting fees and with the last word on what goes on on their server.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (50 children)

Most people won’t switch though, they won’t want to lose their username, their feed and so on, we’re creatures of habits…

You can keep your username, export and import your subscriptions and block list in two clicks from the settings.

Hell, trolls could go around and recreate accounts on the top 100 instances with the same username users have on other instances to prevent them from reusing the same username elsewhere, just that is a weird concept to explain “Oh yeah, someone else can create an account and pretend to be you and unless people notice that the instance they’re from isn’t the same, there’s no way to know it isn’t you!”

"You are [email protected], but someone could create [email protected] and pretend to be you"

Also, this kind of impersonating would probably get the trolls banned.

You’re sending users to Lemmy.we but in the end it’s an instance controlled by one person paying the hosting fees and with the last word on what goes on on their server.

Lemm.ee had 5 admins. The main one has been very clear that he keeps defederation to a minimum: https://lemm.ee/post/35472386?scrollToComments=true

Of course you need to trust him and his team.

If you prefer a paid model where you have a customer relationship with the admin, you might to have a look at https://communick.com/services/lemmy/

The owner is @[email protected] , who commented below

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[–] mke 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This isn't an absolute rule. Of course they don't (and shouldn't) ask for feedback before cutting off Nazi instances, but it's not always so clear.

.world defederated from fosstodon and I'm still unsure why.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

.world defederated from fosstodon and I’m still unsure why.

Have you asked on [email protected] ? Could be spam issues too

[–] mke 2 points 2 months ago

No, thanks for suggesting. I saw a thread by other curious users and checked fediseer. Might be an admin issue, but I didn't see clear evidence.

Don't think it was spam as, unless I'm misunderstanding, that seems unlikely from fosstodon.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The issues are describing are real, but can be solved with better clients.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Interesting read!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (8 children)

In the end it’s just a bunch of centralized websites sharing content if the admins feel like it

The whole point of the fediverse is having a choice of admin. That democratizes the space because people can choose where to go. The point is not to rid yourself of admins entirely (or at least not without just becoming your own admin, but then there is still an admin, it's just yourself).

Make all content available to all and have people develop a UI to access it, let the users curate their feed.

Sorry but the vast majority of users are not interested in curating their feed. Most people don't want to also be moderators. I mean fuck it's difficult to even recruit mods for even medium-sized communities. Most people don't like "absolute free speech" and want some level of moderation. Making all content available is not a path towards healthy platforms - it runs into the nazi bar problem instantaneously.

I won't even comment on the herculean technical challenge of doing it in the way you describe, but even if it was possible, I don't think it's actually desirable. It sounds good on the surface, but that's about it.

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[–] mke 3 points 2 months ago

What you're describing sounds closer to how atproto is supposed to work, but it's yet unproven in regards to decentralization.

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