# orderedItems[].object.content
@mkljczk @rysiek @cwebber @ben that's not unreasonable, but I would ask how is it different to receive a follow request (or follower) from one of Threads' 200 million users different from one of the fediverse's max. 10 million? Especially given Meta's horrendous record of moderation and consistent contempt of their users?

I'm convinced it's Meta's intentional (or, charitably) incompetent attempt to drive regressive regulation rather than an earnest attempt to "protect" their users.

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@mkljczk @rysiek @cwebber @ben that's not unreasonable, but I would ask how is it different to receive a follow request (or follower) from one of Threads' 200 million users different from one of the fediverse's max. 10 million? Especially given Meta's horrendous record of moderation and consistent contempt of their users?

I'm convinced it's Meta's intentional (or, charitably) incompetent attempt to drive regressive regulation rather than an earnest attempt to "protect" their users.

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes this post is a perfect example of why partitioning networks based on their underlying properties will never, ever work. People are complicated! Our online social networks are only reflections of our "real" social networks: https://twit.social/@MisuseCase/113478 599315992718

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes this post is a perfect example of why partitioning networks based on their underlying properties will never, ever work. People are complicated! Our online social networks are only reflections of our "real" social networks: https://twit.social/@MisuseCase/113478 599315992718

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes I think I fully agree with you, but just draw the line of where the work needs to happen at a different layer.

The fundamental reason for this is that people really don't care about protocols and never will, and networks like twitter and instagram and facebook (i.e., categories) are monopolies at global scale (cf email, the telephone network, postal network). For niches, it's different, but for "general" networks I see plenty of evidence that it's true.

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes I think I fully agree with you, but just draw the line of where the work needs to happen at a different layer.

The fundamental reason for this is that people really don't care about protocols and never will, and networks like twitter and instagram and facebook (i.e., categories) are monopolies at global scale (cf email, the telephone network, postal network). For niches, it's different, but for "general" networks I see plenty of evidence that it's true.

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes it's not credible for atproto folks / activitypub folks / etc to claim that the payload of "some text [length dependent on implementation], an author, a date, and an optional media attachment" (more or less) is meaningfully different, and I think it's a shame that we've drawn a distinction at that layer. Similarly, blocking semantics ultimately come down to the software implementation, not the protocol (i.e., activitypub implementations are not the same "community" per your criteria)

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes it's not credible for atproto folks / activitypub folks / etc to claim that the payload of "some text [length dependent on implementation], an author, a date, and an optional media attachment" (more or less) is meaningfully different, and I think it's a shame that we've drawn a distinction at that layer. Similarly, blocking semantics ultimately come down to the software implementation, not the protocol (i.e., activitypub implementations are not the same "community" per your criteria)

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes for sure – fidelity of the representation is very important. I think we need to lean *more* into making distinct "medium types" and allowing those to be the carriers of social norms. At the atproto/activitypub/rss/etc layer, though, I strongly believe the distinctions aren't meaningful beyond the communities that have formed around them.

e.g., instagram thrived because the social expectation was "square pictures of daily life, more or less"

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes for sure – fidelity of the representation is very important. I think we need to lean *more* into making distinct "medium types" and allowing those to be the carriers of social norms. At the atproto/activitypub/rss/etc layer, though, I strongly believe the distinctions aren't meaningful beyond the communities that have formed around them.

e.g., instagram thrived because the social expectation was "square pictures of daily life, more or less"

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes in today's world, where specific technologies and the organizations that deploy them are so intimately tied, it's a subtle but imho important distinction, and perhaps the fact that we can't meaningfully make that distinction in any existing interfaces speaks to precisely the fundamental problem of decontextualization that you're pointing to?

Anyhow, I have no strongly held answers to this hard problem, but I do think that the [relatively] atomized alternative isn't a viable one.

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes in today's world, where specific technologies and the organizations that deploy them are so intimately tied, it's a subtle but imho important distinction, and perhaps the fact that we can't meaningfully make that distinction in any existing interfaces speaks to precisely the fundamental problem of decontextualization that you're pointing to?

Anyhow, I have no strongly held answers to this hard problem, but I do think that the [relatively] atomized alternative isn't a viable one.

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes in the interests of not just saying "you're wrong" (because you're really not – I really do think your sentiment is an important and very real one), I guess I would ask:

"Given a 'bridged' world, with all its inherent advantages and disadvantages, how can we build and support healthy communities?"

Asking that, I think, would force us to admit that it's not the *technology* that defines communities, but the *social structure* that supports any given community.

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes in the interests of not just saying "you're wrong" (because you're really not – I really do think your sentiment is an important and very real one), I guess I would ask:

"Given a 'bridged' world, with all its inherent advantages and disadvantages, how can we build and support healthy communities?"

Asking that, I think, would force us to admit that it's not the *technology* that defines communities, but the *social structure* that supports any given community.

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes my perspective on this is informed by watching, first, people flock to Twitter and ignore the better possibilities, and, later, seeing just how hard it was to educate much less convince even the most committed people that there was the possibility of alternate communities. I'm at almost two decades of watching this slow progress!

Which is really just to say that it is slow, and it must be intentional, and it's ridiculously hard. And that it will continue as such.

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes my perspective on this is informed by watching, first, people flock to Twitter and ignore the better possibilities, and, later, seeing just how hard it was to educate much less convince even the most committed people that there was the possibility of alternate communities. I'm at almost two decades of watching this slow progress!

Which is really just to say that it is slow, and it must be intentional, and it's ridiculously hard. And that it will continue as such.

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes for a real-world comparison, it's perfectly possible and good to be e.g. straightedge, but refusing to communicate with anyone who isn't vegan would present certain logistical problems.

In my mind, it's not that these bridged (this is a good word for it!) systems mean that we automatically get healthy communities. Far from it. Rather, the bridging makes it *possible* to have healthy communities, assuming people are willing to put in the hard work of establishing and nurturing them. ❤️

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes for a real-world comparison, it's perfectly possible and good to be e.g. straightedge, but refusing to communicate with anyone who isn't vegan would present certain logistical problems.

In my mind, it's not that these bridged (this is a good word for it!) systems mean that we automatically get healthy communities. Far from it. Rather, the bridging makes it *possible* to have healthy communities, assuming people are willing to put in the hard work of establishing and nurturing them. ❤️

# orderedItems[].object.content
@lrhodes speaking as someone who's advocated for the "open protocols are enough" vision, I think you're absolutely right.

The catch is that the only state where it's *less* possible to build community than a bridged-and-open (even if toxic) scenario is one where the bridges are closed.

Or, put another way, it's always been possible to build small, intentional online communities. But, those are exclusive to too many, and the network effects limit their scale too much.

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@lrhodes speaking as someone who's advocated for the "open protocols are enough" vision, I think you're absolutely right.

The catch is that the only state where it's *less* possible to build community than a bridged-and-open (even if toxic) scenario is one where the bridges are closed.

Or, put another way, it's always been possible to build small, intentional online communities. But, those are exclusive to too many, and the network effects limit their scale too much.

# orderedItems[].object.content
@danyork @ricmac I find it really "funny" in that (to my mind) one of the key features of "decentralization" is that you don't need to ask permission – just implement the protocol and you're good to go. Similarly, all the moderation stuff is social, with a bit of protocol support.

There's nothing anywhere that says "If you implement ActivityPub you MUST NOT implement atproto" (also RSS, email newsletter delivery, etc). People first!

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@danyork @ricmac I find it really "funny" in that (to my mind) one of the key features of "decentralization" is that you don't need to ask permission – just implement the protocol and you're good to go. Similarly, all the moderation stuff is social, with a bit of protocol support.

There's nothing anywhere that says "If you implement ActivityPub you MUST NOT implement atproto" (also RSS, email newsletter delivery, etc). People first!

# orderedItems[].object.content
@ricmac @danyork I'm way too overloaded to actually do an implementation, but for the life of me I can't see any reason Mastodon couldn't implement an atproto representation of accounts. Same-same for Bluesky and ActivityPub. I wish we had that so that we could just stop with all this nonsense. :(

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@ricmac @danyork I'm way too overloaded to actually do an implementation, but for the life of me I can't see any reason Mastodon couldn't implement an atproto representation of accounts. Same-same for Bluesky and ActivityPub. I wish we had that so that we could just stop with all this nonsense. :(

# orderedItems[].object.content
@spiralganglion @akkartik @jimmyhmiller I don't have that relationship with the term, but my lay-person pronunciation was "an-see-oh-tropic." I feel a bit daft, but I wonder if this is similar to how Canadians pronounce "asphalt" (i.e., "ash-fault")

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@spiralganglion @akkartik @jimmyhmiller I don't have that relationship with the term, but my lay-person pronunciation was "an-see-oh-tropic." I feel a bit daft, but I wonder if this is similar to how Canadians pronounce "asphalt" (i.e., "ash-fault")

# orderedItems[].object.content
@sl007 @hongminhee (multi-choice "NASCAR" quizzes were possibly the worst UX approach ever created for auth, and have had lasting negative effects on sign-in systems for 15 years)

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@sl007 @hongminhee (multi-choice "NASCAR" quizzes were possibly the worst UX approach ever created for auth, and have had lasting negative effects on sign-in systems for 15 years)

# orderedItems[].object.content
@sl007 @hongminhee passkeys can be layered on top of any mechanism.

My "secret" auth system hack is that oauth-capable google addresses can be discovered by string matching (@gmail.com etc) OR by MX matching ".l.google.com." – if someone enters one of those addresses (easily 70-80% of users), direct them immediately to Google Sign In (with the login_hint parameter set to their email address https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/web-server). It's way more magical than "magic" links. ✨

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@sl007 @hongminhee passkeys can be layered on top of any mechanism.

My "secret" auth system hack is that oauth-capable google addresses can be discovered by string matching (@gmail.com etc) OR by MX matching ".l.google.com." – if someone enters one of those addresses (easily 70-80% of users), direct them immediately to Google Sign In (with the login_hint parameter set to their email address https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/web-server). It's way more magical than "magic" links. ✨

# orderedItems[].object.content
@sl007 @hongminhee 100% to fedi-handle as a good option. My overriding principle is always "fewest questions to the end user."

There's no reason nowadays, especially for developers, to not use long-lived session cookies (or at least transparently rotate the session). Given that, if they're not signed in there's a good chance they don't remember which mechanism they used in the first place.

If you can do discovery to one-click sign-in (e.g. webfinger->fedi oauth), do it!

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@sl007 @hongminhee 100% to fedi-handle as a good option. My overriding principle is always "fewest questions to the end user."

There's no reason nowadays, especially for developers, to not use long-lived session cookies (or at least transparently rotate the session). Given that, if they're not signed in there's a good chance they don't remember which mechanism they used in the first place.

If you can do discovery to one-click sign-in (e.g. webfinger->fedi oauth), do it!

# orderedItems[].object.content
@hongminhee it's not possible to *only* use passkeys as there's no reliable recovery option in the event that someone loses access to theirs. Passkey + email recovery (which is the same as magic link).

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@hongminhee it's not possible to *only* use passkeys as there's no reliable recovery option in the event that someone loses access to theirs. Passkey + email recovery (which is the same as magic link).

# orderedItems[].object.content
@crispius @Chigaze yes, this. The election results in BC are clear: despite the threat of splitting the vote, BC voted on the whole *more left* than the previous election. The lesson isn't that the electorate wants to see more conservative policies, it's that the conservatives ran a very strategic game and our electoral system sucks (but is changeable, unlike the electoral college).

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@crispius @Chigaze yes, this. The election results in BC are clear: despite the threat of splitting the vote, BC voted on the whole *more left* than the previous election. The lesson isn't that the electorate wants to see more conservative policies, it's that the conservatives ran a very strategic game and our electoral system sucks (but is changeable, unlike the electoral college).

# orderedItems[].object.content
@willowbl00 I regret to inform you about France and the likelihood of undesirable politics. 😢

The main thing missing is what does immigration and/or visas to those places look like for you (from a strictly administrative/rights perspective)?

The other thing I'd have is climate resilience. Having barely survived a major and improbable wildfire this summer (re: much of our property burned, but the house didn't), it feels a more real consideration than I ever imagined, sadly. 😢

# orderedItems[].object.contentMap.en
@willowbl00 I regret to inform you about France and the likelihood of undesirable politics. 😢

The main thing missing is what does immigration and/or visas to those places look like for you (from a strictly administrative/rights perspective)?

The other thing I'd have is climate resilience. Having barely survived a major and improbable wildfire this summer (re: much of our property burned, but the house didn't), it feels a more real consideration than I ever imagined, sadly. 😢