My dream is a world of bottom-up social networks, governed and shaped by the people who use them. The fediverse now isn't that, but it hints at the possibility. I think we should defend what we have, but I'll be disappointed if we never grow beyond it.
I feel like the dominant sides in this #threads debate are either more content than I am with the status quo, or more sanguine than I am about the threats posed by Meta.
so. many. bad. arguments
@misc I feel like, yeah, on the one hand the fediverse does need to grow beyond what it is now for me to stay interested in it, but also that Meta in particular being the first "outside actor" to really be interested in it is bad. I actually agree both with the most optimistic booster statements and the most pessimistic "Meta is evil" statements at the same time, because I feel like it contains a lot of both. Time will tell which ends up being dominant
@misc I also feel like a lot depends on whether it just ends up being Meta or if another big actor ends up getting involved as well, it's a lot easier to maintain your independence in the shadow of two giants than in the shadow of one giant
@julieofthespirits Yeah. I'm extremely wary of Threads just taking over X's hegemonic status. It's kind of hard for me to imagine, given my experience on Threads? But it could definitely happen and it would be very bad.
@misc I think this is what makes it saddest that Tumblr abandoned its federation plans. It's obviously a shadow of its former self, but even still, having one big player, one medium player, and then a bunch of small players at the margin is a much more sustainable environment than one big player and a bunch of small players
@julieofthespirits Best case scenario: Meta jumps in the pool, Tumblr follows, Bluesky sees the writing on the wall and implements ActivityPub. X finally crumbles, banks seize it from Elon, put it under sane leadership that either embraces the fedi or at least tries to start winning back users and advertisers. No one has a monopoly. A flurry of energy and investment ensues, optimal conditions for the emergence of something truly new, exciting, and impactful.
@misc Meta jumped into the pool and Tumblr backed out though, so that's not happening
Maybe if Wordpress's AP integration became more than a somewhat janky opt-in plugin
@julieofthespirits I found @laurenshof's take on this persuasive
https://indieweb.social/@laurenshof/111563006645321243
@misc @laurenshof oh, I hadn't seen that one, last I had heard they had backed out and were possibly winding tumblr down altogether, thanks for the link
@julieofthespirits @laurenshof In fairness, here is a persuasive case for bearishness https://goblin.band/notes/9n556v4dvdc95sor
@misc @julieofthespirits thanks for this Jesse. I think it's good to try to think of potential positive avenues, instead of only considering all the pessimistic scenarios.
I honestly hope Bluesky can join before meta burns this place to the ground.
It's what the Fediverse (including Mastodon) was supposed to be!
Mastodon's promo film from 2018 made it very clear:
https://fedi.video/w/cbQE3NRw76FayQCSdb14TU
But bit by bit, the Mastodon developers have started walking away from that vision
@FediThing The two problems are a) that it's a techieocracy, where all power is held by code contributors and instance operators, and b) that relatively few people use it. It needs to democratize within and expand outward. (or be succeeded by something that does both)
Yeah.
If there was a greater variety of server types used, that might help as people would have alternatives if one starts going south.
At the moment most of the donations are centralised on one project (Mastodon) while interesting compatible alternatives like GoToSocial get much less support.
Maybe we have focused too much on just decentralising the network, and not enough on decentralising the software that runs on it. (And many have said this all along!)
You're always going to have a dedicated minority keeping the network going, but we don't need to hand so much power to one particular group of maintainers.
@FediThing I think that’s true, but I also think that building structures that give “regular” users more of a voice would help with all of the above.
One thing that doesn't get mentioned very often is managed hosting, where non-technical people can run their own instance with the hosting company handling the technical stuff.
If that was more common, that would give more people, groups and communitiies direct control over what happens on their instance.
It used to be that individuals and groups and businesses had websites, if we could get back to something like that for social network instances it would return a lot of the power to ordinary users.
I use managed hosting for my own instance, and it's worked really well so far.
@misc @FediThing yeah this hits at the core of the problem imo. forks etc wont fundamentally change things until weve figured out a better governance model than BDFL
Indeed (and thanks for the video!). Have either of you read @noracodes's "The Fediverse is already dead"? It's got some great perspectives on this front -- and sketches a potential path forward. https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/