Brands, businesses, influencers and power users will eventually join the fediverse. Why not embrace them? Its in our best interest to grow the fediverse.
I started a new suite of tools in June to support them. It was created with privacy in mind, you will only see public data insights and stats. Any user will be able to use this feature. After federation support is finished I will focus on this again! #pixelfed
@dansup aha bold in the menu is back. bless
@MightyPork Yeah, i took your advice and changed all the menus.
Let's not explicitly invite capitalism. Let them build their own damn tools.
@mmn The fediverse is meant for everyone, not just for people or entities you like. BTW, Diogo only has 2 weeks to finish the GS AP plugin so you might want to start helping him since you've done almost nothing as a "mentor".
cc @up201705417
I also appreciate your work with Diogo but you should be well aware of my situation and our communication by now. I would prefer a somewhat more pleasant attitude than your above post. Thank you.
@mmn I would prefer if you maintain GNU/Social and actually respond to issues/merge requests instead of reacting to my statuses.
And because free networks are made not just for developers but also a lot of contributors and just users, we don't like the idea that build tools for they.
I'm enough old to remember when there was no much people in Internet and some prophets start to guess that it will be better when companies came here.
Now we have just a dozen of Internet companies that believes they own Internet... and maybe they are right.
Anyway, @mmn did not said who can came to !fediverse and who not. Just who he/we don't like and for who don't want to work.
(1) At least in !gnusocial I think most people are here to escape for that companies and people you invited in your previous status, maybe not so clear in Mastodon. Just understand our reaction. :)
@up201705417
I know and understand that you have had differences but both you and all of us have to think that there are a lot of people behind that liked to have !gnusocial improved and maintained.
I don't know what can we do, but at lest there are some people that we'd likes to help in anyway.
Please let's try to do it!
@up201705417
on the other hand, much of the fediverse seems to have enthusiastically jumped into the "block all the things" mentality (even some of the GNU Social people[1]), corporate instance entries in a blocklist / firewall won't even be noticeable
[1] I can't subscribe to !fediverse, for instance (connection timed out), and it looks very much intentional, tcptraceroute stops at the last hop; since I don't remember ever insulting someone around here (or being insulted, for that matter), I guess they just did a curl | grep free speech or something
@mmn @dansup I mostly agree with your sentiment, but let me offer one possible explanation.
When contacting a company via any private channel (e-mail, phone, whatever), they can just ignore you or do whatever they please, and rarely they get burnt.
Companies/brands use social media to promote themselves. The more followers they have, the better the promotion. But also, the bigger the burn if somebody calls them out publicly on their bullshit.
So in a way they are making themselves vulnerable.
I'm pretty sure I don't want Twitter-style brand callouts in the fediverse. If I saw it I'd block it. Brands can either stay on Twitter or have their own instance which can be easily blocked.
If brands do show up one nice thing is that they have no central authority to protect them from criticism or spoofs, and there aren't necessarily "real names" they can try to retaliate against. The lack of ability to buy their way into controlling the platform will deter them to some extent.
@mmn makes sense!
Of course anyone can implement this. I just don't think it benefits or otherwise contributes to humane social spaces.
Bots are also an interesting topic of discussion that I think anyone developing for the !fediverse should put some thought and critical thinking into.
@mmn It would be helpful for any social org's outreach. Seeing what people like to interact with is good knowledge. Especially as many social org's have limited resources. This is also something any big corp would have no issue to handle themselves. Making it available to everyone would be a more democratically way.
If you where tasked to do this. How would you do it?
cc: @dansup
@GardenOfForkingPaths @mmn @dansup No, wouldn't think so... FB, Google, Github e.t.c.. probably scores a lot higher. Also Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. With a bit more resources invested one would be able to find that out though. Right now I only know of https://mastodon-tags-explorer.hcxp.co/tags/broad which could hint on that kind of questions.
@Michcioperz The main difference is visibility. There are no ads on the fediverse. Your timeline is yours, based on the people you follow and in chronological order.
There are no ads only because there are no brands yet. There is no system for ads, but ads can be brought into the federated timelines through spammy accounts. One person on the server following a spammy account is enough for it to flood the federated timeline. I can imagine brands automating this.
@Michcioperz There is no federated timeline on pixelfed. Just your personal timeline and the local timeline.
even if by design you don't have ads and the timeline is chronological, it will get messed up
@Michcioperz How? You willingly follow the users whose content appear in your timeline. You can unfollow them or report them too.
@Michcioperz By using public data like a discover page based on hashtags you've used as well as content relevant to accounts you follow.
This is an interesting question for me, and I'd like to know if you have reasons like pros and cons for that.
Thinking in self hosting a @pixelfed instance, maybe if no federated timeline I'll need less resources like disk space and bandwidth.
At the other side, maybe was difficult to know and follow more people.
What is your point of view?
>but ads can be brought into the federated timelines through spammy accounts
Which already happens if one takes a look at the federated timelines.
Also, "influencers" are mostly enterprises, aka they sell products (mainly themselves, but not only). Some of them don't, but most of them function like that.
They won't come here any time soon because there's not enough people (nor mainstream consumerist background) to "influence" (sell) profitably. My guess.
@dansup I came here to escape brands. Well, to escape from the mindset that brands and celebrities and breaking news are all-important. I can get news elsewhere, and I just buy things when I need them to use instead of "engaging with brands", I'm not interested in celebrities unless they're doing something I care about (like write books; but then it's the books I'm interested in, not the fact that they're famous).
In short, if Mastodon turns into Twitter I'm not at home here any more either.
@irina You will never see brands unless you follow them or someone you follow shares them.
@Michcioperz @dansup I don't think so. But other people might.
@nipos @dansup Strong opinion!
But isnt this the real advantage of the #fediverse? You can just block commercial accounts / make your own instance / whatever. Good luck blocking ads on #facebook, right? π
@dansup although itβs inevitable that those things would eventually make their way into the fediverse, actively creating tools in order to help them is, at least from my view, anathema to the entire point of the federated networks. are we not here to simply socialize, not to be βinfluencedβ and advertised to? why help the people weβre avoiding?
that being said, it stands that it probably wouldnβt usually show up unless itβs wanted.
@dansup Charge a recurring fee for that
@dansup Gotta say, without any context this looks pretty worrying. What kind of "insights" and "tools" would be offered?
@dansup what images would a brand share that would *not* be an ad? How long until you offer timeline ad placement for a fee, turning pixelfed into just another Instagram?
@dansup This sounds like it's going to be a good argument for me when I start attempting to convert influential instagrammers.
Blobpats from here 
@dansup So looking forward to translating all pixelfed :D