"The Fediverse is Already Dead": Thoughts on the present and future of Mastodon, ActivityPub, and federated social media in general.
@noracodes This was a wonderful read. Thank you. I was aware of most of it, but still there were a couple of eye-openers. Having been "online" since 1996 (and I know this still makes me a young 'um in the eyes of some), it's a bit sad and exasperating to see the same things happen over and over again in different technical guises: first it was the IRC network wars (and channel wars), then the rise of e-mail spam and various blocking mechanisms (and some people 's refusal to use them), then web forums, blogs, lately it is one "social network" (and I use that term very widely, with apologies for some of its negative connotations) after another... At first people don't think about the social aspects, then they're taken aback at the first problems, then some leave, some quarrel, others hastily put up filters, then some malicious actor finds a way around the filters, users leave in disgust and exasperation, and years later, an archipelago forms... sometimes much too late.
@noracodes Thinking aloud, I feel like the issues are
1. Over simplifying everything that uses ActivityPub into one moosh, even though it's not.
2. ActivityPub itself is not a great spec, leading to lots of not entirely interop protocols atop it (Mastodon has its own api.) I've done a little work here myself and it's not as nice as I'd like. It's not actually interoperable.
3. Self hosting is, and will probably always be, too hard for most people. Federated is not a good design, just least bad.
@noracodes related thought that I don't think we brought up: there was a guide to Mastodon we saw a while ago that was like "on Mastodon, the people on your instance /are/ your recommendations algorithm".
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@noracodes Thank you for writing this. Archipelago is a *really* great metaphor here; thanks for planting this idea.
> "In other words, people on the outside attribute malice too broadly to the entire network, while people on the inside attribute malice too narrowly to a few individuals or, at most, a few servers."
This is a great observation.
Unrelated, but ironically trying to describe my birdsite experience to others feels very similar to the issues you describe trying to paint "the fediverse" with a single brush.
I had a locked account with mostly personal follows. I relied friends to informally curate my experience. I blocked early and often. People who had thousands of followers, or an open account, or had an algorithmic timeline, or used it in different ways almost certainly experienced a different birdsite.
In some ways, I think birdsite was also too big to have a universal experience either, but not having explicit instance community or defed tools made its islands much fuzzier and less well-defined.
@noracodes thanks for that. I lucked into a great instance (thanks @stux ) so I think a lot of the problems people see aren’t visible to me. So much of any online experience comes down to luck and people you will probably never meet.
@noracodes Thanks for this -- super thought provoking -- I like the distinction of fediverse, communities, tools. A few more thoughts in reaction to it -> https://crank.report/thoughts-after-reading-the-fediverse-is-already-dead
@noracodes Hi! Your idea reminds me of Archipiélago Uno :)
