lol funnily condescending name
frankly, i find the name enough on the nose to be brilliant. love it.
OH SHIT NOW I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THE NAME
what’s the meaning of the name
You know how there’s a fake fact that golfishes have a really short amount of attention span? Yeah
oo aha
for years i was waiting for someone to make something like this. its finally here
yes but early alpha
deleted by creator
Here is goldfish’s very cool icon
Was this intended to be a single site or a collection of instances?
it’s in alpha currently, but future activitypub support is planned according to the github
support on patreon https://www.patreon.com/GoldfishSocial
POV you find these on your car
Yikes, The fediverse is a cult of developers who engage in self-indulgent software creation to satisfy their regressive notion of decentralization.
Interesting take to have on Lemmy.
to satisfy their regressive notion of decentralization.
What is so regressive about federation?
Federation is like living off the grid because you don’t like cities and their administration. Blinded by their privilege, they argue that everyone should follow them and their methods are the future. Sitting in their log cabins in the middle of nowhere, they lament about the crisis of cities and how tearing them down is the way of progress.
When you examine the history of the internet, you can see how centralization transformed the inefficient federated services accessible only to the privileged as toys into utilities that positively impacted the lives of the masses. The remaining prevalent federated services, plagued with the curses of federation like email, are systematically stripped of their federation features to make them fit the needs of the modern world.
The fediverse advocates are like the above mentioned primitivists, who, while correctly identifying certain problems with cities or modern civilization, suggest the regressive path to primitivism as a solution to them without realising that we have been there and even if you somehow managed to achieve it, we will still, by historical necessity, come back to where we are today.
How come you compare centralized corporative social media sites with cities? How does that even work? Given that cities are interconnected to other cities and you can move freely from one to the other.
And what is this whole conversation about privilege? What’s so priviledged about community funded federated services, made by the people for the people. In that sense, the whole goddamn democracy is an act of privilege.
How is the fediverse anything like living off grid? Given that the whole point of it is interconnectivity?
The rest of the non-analogical criticism is just technically false. Not just incorrect, its just false. But as you said, I too have a huge chunk of text in my mind. Couldn’t be bothered to create an exposition for reactionary comments.
Please stop jacking off to the mirror.
Calm down, dude. This is why I didn’t want to write a lot of text all at once. The analogy made perfect sense to me, but only when someone else read it did I realise that it might not be the best way to describe it.
There are many ways to interpret an analogy. I guess it’s my mistake that I didn’t properly guide the reader to the intended interpretation. Obviously, I’m not talking about the connectivity of cities. At the end of the text, you can see me using the term city synonymously with the modern world.
Fediverse claims to be “for the people by the people,” but if you examine any real Fediverse project, you can see how it’s actually “for the system admins by the programmers.” Federation is just a toy feature for its developers and other software enthusiasts to play with.
Why do you think all of the Fediverse has the same boring demographic of privalaged keyboard warrior programmers pretending like they are leading the revolution against big tech? And why is it that whenever another demographic arrives as refugees, they immediately demand defederation or die out immediately?
The open for everyone approach made sense in the early days of the internet, when everyone capable of using the internet was also able to develop and improve it (to some extent). But the modern internet is not like that. It has people from many different backgrounds. They can’t host millions of instances of Peertube to watch cat videos. Centralized software makes internet communication accessible to the masses with unprecedented efficiency that doesn’t force my grandma to own and maintain servers.
Sometimes I self-censor words like “capitalism” to appeal to certain audiences. I guess it would have made more sense if I said that the solution to capitalism is not abandoning the productive forces it gave us to go back to primitive communism or arguing that everyone should become capitalists by owning enough capital.
Going back to the off-grid analogy, arguing that everyone should host their own instance because you don’t like some corporate policy is not any different from arguing that everyone who is upset about landlords should abandon modern apartments, cities, and all their comforts to go back to nature and start engineering mud houses.
Centralized social media is a superior and progressive technology that makes internet communication accessible to the people. Sure, it is not made by the people, but it certainly is made for them. And trying to solve that contradiction by considering everyone who isn’t involved in the “making process” as not “people” is regressive.
Fediverse claims to be “for the people by the people,” but if you examine any real Fediverse project, you can see how it’s actually “for the system admins by the programmers.”
Good point.
Wouldn’t that be a sign that the Fediverse is still in an early adoption phase rather than a feature of federation itself?And why is it that whenever another demographic arrives as refugees, they immediately demand defederation or die out immediately?
Do you have example of people demanding defederation because they are non-techie?
From the top of my head, these are 3 examples of stable communities that do not focus on tech :- mastodon.art
- climatejustice.social
- lemmygrad.ml
the solution to capitalism is not abandoning the productive forces it gave us to go back to primitive communism
I fail to understand what your proposed solution to capitalism is in this case. You seem to imply that the solution to capitalism is to forget that it is a problem. Am I missing something?
Centralized social media is a superior and progressive technology that makes internet communication accessible to the people.
Centralized media are easier to understand, and so are more accessible. The need to chose an instance is also an obstacle from a responsibility perspective : if I join a small instance, am I a burden for whoever runs it?
Should I donate? When I encounter a problem, should I bother the admin.I do think that it would help the fediverse to have some ad-based instances where people can join without that kind of difficulties, of questionment, of guilt of being a user rather than a contributor.
I would not consider this a problem as long as it still federates.
As long as it only shows its ads to its own user but allows them to communicate also with ones that do not want to submit themselves to the ad-model.
That is the freedom that I think the Fediverse is built around : being able to use a platform without being trapped.I do not see the advantage in them being walled gardens.
I think them being closed is the result of them abusing the power that their large userbase gives them, rather than a feature that is good for the users.
To take a specific example : Facebook Messenger did not drop XMPP because they had to, they dropped it because they could afford it.Do you have example of people demanding defederation because they are non-techie?
well i guess you missed the latest drama on lemmygrad where they where asking to purge all the liberals from lemmy.ml.
And no i don’t think this is an issue of adoption stage, because federation is a useless feature to the general public, the only people who will ever need federation are software enthusiasts and even then just as a toy to play with.
You seem to imply that the solution to capitalism is to forget that it is a problem
The solution to the contradictions of capitalism is building socialism. Do we throw away the progress of industrialization because it was done by capitalists? No, we correct the contradiction of ownership of capital by seizing it from them. Centralization, like industrialization, is a very important and progressive step that transformed internet communication. You can undo this step, but you will always end up learning the bitter way that centralization is an inevitability for any social media of the masses.
you probably misunderstood primitive communism
The dogmatic view that there can be no freedom without federation is not healthy, the real source of the supposed freedom that federation gives is open source. there are freedoms that federation provide but those are only relevant if you actually host an instance, otherwise what is the difference between a regular open source reddit alternative and lemmy? you can checkout hexbear.net which runs an older version of lemmy without federation, they are just as active if not more than lemmygrad (very similar userbase) the only difference is that they don’t have to deal with the inherent problems of federation and their admins can actually focus on building the community instead of wasting their time trying to reinvent ways to prevent spam from randomly popping up servers.
If we want to challenge mainstream media, we must address the real issues that users of mainstream media face, reach out to them, and understand their genuine dissatisfactions. Is this what fediverse developers do? They all get together and decide that the problem people have is a lack of federation and go on to write walls of code without any consideration for the general audience. They never seek feedback from the people. They get all their validation from their peers who also believe that lack of federation is the problem. This is what I described as a cult. It might be a little harsh, but I couldn’t find any better words.
This complete alienation from the real users is what makes you believe that writing a federated tiktok will materialise into anything more than a graveyard of instances. If the fediverse developers actually understood the needs of the people, Peertube would already have something similar to YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. Facebook and Google might be evil, but they actually have to build software that matters to people or they will lose the users they have. The Fediverse has no real users except the developers themselves, so they can build whatever nonsense they want. In your example, you are assuming that the Facebook userbase actually cares about the messaging protocol. I’m pretty sure they don’t even know what that is. Many issues you may have with social media are non-issues or mild inconveniences for the majority of the population.
I do not understand what makes centralization analogous to industrialization rather than to centralization of the means of production.
the real source of the supposed freedom that federation gives is open source.
What is the point of being able to replicate the software if you cannot use it to connect to your friend’s network?
In fact, federation is what enable to centralize the network (arguably the mainstream media’s strength) without having to centralize the power (arguably their misdeed).
If, in your opinion, the problem of big tech is not the centralization of power within a few hands, please explain what it is.The Fediverse has no real users except the developers themselves
The Fediverse has 5 millions of users. I don’ t think more than 100 of them are developers.
you can checkout hexbear.net which runs an older version of lemmy without federation, they are just as active if not more than lemmygrad (very similar userbase) the only difference is that they don’t have to deal with the inherent problems of federation
Sure, if the goal is to build a filter bubble, then having to communicate with external users can be a problem. To add to this:
well i guess you missed the latest drama on lemmygrad where they where asking to purge all the liberals from lemmy.ml.
Lemmygrad users do not complain about the rest of the Fediverse speaking only about tech and federation, they complain about them disagreeing with their view.
In your example, you are assuming that the Facebook userbase actually cares about the messaging protocol.
When did I say anything of the sort? Why would they have to drop a functionnality just because a lot of people do not care about it? Before, people with no Facebook account could communicate with Facebook users via XMPP. Now they have to create a Facebook account for that. Facebook did not remove the feature because it was convenient for some users, they did it to trap more users in. This is the thing people want to escape with federation.
I’m really fucking tired of reading accusations after accusations in this conversation without a single goddamn philosophical justification. Quit your bullshit and stop using words like “cult” lightly.
The amount of ad hominem in everything you’re saying, I could make a house out of it. “Boring Privileged keyboard warriors”, okay how are they keyboard warriors, how are they privileged?
Also the code for every federated social platform if publicly available, how else do you think we have so many instances? And if you do have problem with having different instances, why are you on lemmy? Please have even a glimpse of coherent philosophy. People should make their own instance because they can, stop comparing it to the shelter problem. The fediverse ain’t your real estate. It has no parallel to it. A server is a host of information, a house is of your body. No one’s even trying to host their own instances all the time because we dont really need to, that’s been proven with several federated software and is a prime example of good moderation. The fact that we even have so many diverse set of people on a single server is a goddamn testament to it. I’m a brown liberal, for one. No, your granny does not need to goddamn host her own server, quit your straw man bullshit.
I have no clue what capitalism has to do with your argument given that hosting fediverse means dealing with capitalism, in terms of hosting and money transfer methodology when it comes to funding the servers and the developers, so idk where you’re getting at with that.
What goddamn authority are you even talking about? Just spin your own instance? And if you dont know how, how is that an issue of the programmers, have you managed a FOSS project at the scale of the fediverse? Server development and management is a tough goddamn job, people get paid millions of rupees to do it.
Just admit it goddamnit, you’re a corporate shill who’s resentful about anything that tries something different. I’m so fucking disgusted by the way you use your language. I’ve given you three opportunities to make an exposition and all I’ve got is ad hominem. Be better, stop being so narcissistic. I’m tired that you’re attacking not the movement but the people behind them. Just shows how shallow your goddamn worldview is, grow the fuck up and do something about what you dont like Instead of shitting on community work.
I think you are abusing the word “ad hominem” here : the words she uses to describe techie freedom enthousiasts are quite hard, but she does have a point that the Fediverse is mostly made of them, as opposed to the more general audience of centralised platforms.
In fact, I am getting much more “ad hominem” vibes from your comments.
Justifications for the accusations please.
I’m a brown liberal
Understandable have a nice day
- she wrote from another instance that federates with lemmy.ml
Bruh you’re making absolutely zero sense
There is a wall of text about this theory in my head, but writing it all at once will only serve to reinforce my confirmation bias. I’m trying to elicit a response that will stress test my theory so that I can return to these discussions later and create a coherent write up.
Reactionary replies produce reactionary responses. You can pretend that you were being all critical and all, but unless you create an exposition of your thoughts in an authentic fashion, you’re just playing philosophy.
