@kichae i don't know how you define "open" but it seems to be missing the point. the point is that people are walking into homes as if they were public parks. i am talking at the level of *people*, not at the level of protocols or platforms. these aren't just "gripes", they're existential questions for these communities. and as those communities are eroded away, as people *leave*, something is lost. those people may reorganize and regroup elsewhere, but needs are no longer considered by devs...

@kichae things like the anti-viral nature of mastodon, which was seen as a major reason for people to use mastodon in the first place, are being rolled back or compromised on by people who have no such qualms with virality. as a consequence, mastodon is going the way of twitter in 2012.

but people are stuck using mastodon because they cannot migrate easily or cleanly. the mastodon protocol is too fragile to allow much more than asking your followers to refollow you elsewhere. your posts gone.

@kichae ultimately, it's a simple matter of constituencies. is the protocol going to evolve toward networks of trust, consent, etc... or is it more about reach, publicity, audience? who gets a seat at the table -- the people, or the corporations? well, the corporations are certainly getting their seats at the table, it looks like... and suddenly, there's no room left for anyone else to sit down.

@kichae to better illustrate the noise vs signal approach, and to expand on what i said earlier: imagine that, for several years, a vibrant community has built itself in the margins of what these softwares and protocols allow. they came here to get away from the mainstream offerings. and then, almost literally overnight, they are outnumbered by people who came from those mainstream offerings. what was once vibrant is now drowned out or trampled upon, as even the software itself shifts underneath

@kichae things like the anti-viral nature of mastodon, which was seen as a major reason for people to use mastodon in the first place, are being rolled back or compromised on by people who have no such qualms with virality. as a consequence, mastodon is going the way of twitter in 2012.

but people are stuck using mastodon because they cannot migrate easily or cleanly. the mastodon protocol is too fragile to allow much more than asking your followers to refollow you elsewhere. your posts gone.

@deadsuperhero @kichae sure, i broadly agree re: multitudes, though i think the solution is “more explicit contexts” rather than attempting to put everyone and everything in the same space.

put another way, the desire is not “mainstreaming”, it’s the other things — sustainability, communication, and so on. everything else is a means to those ends.

@deadsuperhero @kichae sure, i broadly agree re: multitudes, though i think the solution is “more explicit contexts” rather than attempting to put everyone and everything in the same space.

put another way, the desire is not “mainstreaming”, it’s the other things — sustainability, communication, and so on. everything else is a means to those ends.

@deadsuperhero @kichae so in the same vein, the negativity is against the erosion or destruction of the future where those ends are achieved. what is desired is a paradigm shift away from “view everything from one website” and a return to that multitude of diverse communities.

i was telling julian the other day that going to other websites isn’t the problem. the problem is that you can’t interact on other websites. imagine if you could!

@deadsuperhero @kichae so in the same vein, the negativity is against the erosion or destruction of the future where those ends are achieved. what is desired is a paradigm shift away from “view everything from one website” and a return to that multitude of diverse communities.

i was telling julian the other day that going to other websites isn’t the problem. the problem is that you can’t interact on other websites. imagine if you could!

@julian The problem with mainstreaming is that everyone wants a piece of cake. Some people come to build, and I think that's fine, even if they take away something from existing projects. But there are also charlatans and scammers, and unfortunately faking achievements is very easy in Fediverse.

The good thing about grassroots / DIY spaces is that the latter category is non existent.

@deadsuperhero @kichae i think we can have healthy sustainable growth but it cannot be as rapid as the strongest proponents want it to be. millions joining overnight is not sustainable. the current protocols are also a major detriment. social infrastructure cannot handle it. things like that

I think there are a few things going on here.

• Yes, every since the old Gnu Social days there have always been techie-elitists on the fediverse who say things like "it's good that it's hard to use because it keeps the 'normies' out" ... and alas, that tradition continues today on Mastodon and other platforms (and is often expressed in language that echoes anti-immigrant tropes or is somewhat racist). It's unfortunate but I don't know what we can do about it other than attempt to minimize their influence.

• There's always been a tension between people who are in the fediverse because they want to get away from big tech companies ... and people who are in the fediverse because they think decentralization is cool, and so see it as a good thing that big tech companies are adopting the technology because hopefully over time it will provide a path for people to move off of the big corporate social networks. When Eugen called Threads' adoption of ActivityPub "a victory for our cause", it really drove home to a lot of people that his cause isn't theirs. This is part of why I talk about fediverses in the plural: there's a corporate fediverse as well as the "free fediverse" that's anti-surveillance capitalism (and others as well, like the 'freeze peach' fediverse). Of course, the various fediverses can potentially co-exist, but motivations and values are very different ... and the bigger corporations looking at the fediverse certainly aren't going out of their way to help or even acknowledge long-time fedi developers who aren't directly useful to them, so there's almost certainly some resentment on that front.

• ever since 2017 (if not earlier), the fediverse has been very driven by trans, queer, and non-binary people. So if the fediverse is 100x larger with big players, and in the process it becomes 99% cis-dominant, then yes they have really taken soething away from trans people. What percentage of the speakers at Fediverse House were trans? Which speakers talked about the key role trans and non-binary people have played in Mastodon and ActivityPub's development? And since the biggest player is Meta, who's actively hostile to LGBTQ+ people, the dynamics are even worse -- especially since so many high-profile cis fediverse influencers only talk about the positive aspects of Threads without even acknowledging the concerns of trans and non-binary people. How many of the speakers at Fediverse House mentioned the anti-Meta FediPact and Vanta Black's perspective (shared by many of the signers) that "being okay with meta joining the fediverse is being okay with cosigning every goddamn trans person who chooses to remain on here to a future of constant harassment"?

Of course the second and third bullets aren't directly relevant to NodeBB. You're definitely grassroots and DIY. And getting new perspectives and energy from people like you -- or the 2022 wave -- is crucial to getting ActivityPub out of the rut it's been in for the last N years, and making the software more broadly usable. But they're certainly part of the overall dynamics.

@julian not to buy into the "grassroots vs mainstream" narrative per se, but the emphasis on mainstream adoption at this stage is imo misplaced and only serves to reinforce broken patterns of "social media" and its consequences over the past 15-20 years. asking people to make the leap right now is going to leave a lot of people disappointed. we need to offer more compelling reasons to be here, and a genuinely better experience for multimodal communications that aren't shoved into the square hole

@jdp23 I think the best thing about the fediverse is that YOU (the user) can choose which version of the fedi you want to live in. If you don’t want Meta, then choose an instance that blocks them out (or self-host). If you don’t want people searching your content, you can shut that off in your settings. If you don’t want “normies” here, then you can close the doors via your instance. What annoys me is people who want to make *their* version of the fedi the default.

@jdp23 I think the best thing about the fediverse is that YOU (the user) can choose which version of the fedi you want to live in. If you don’t want Meta, then choose an instance that blocks them out (or self-host). If you don’t want people searching your content, you can shut that off in your settings. If you don’t want “normies” here, then you can close the doors via your instance. What annoys me is people who want to make *their* version of the fedi the default.