this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Fediverse
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@fediverse From my experience I am having two main issues when talking with people about the Fediverse:
@fediverse
@fediverse 2. In most of the cases I have experiences, Mastodon is the only one that has a good level of stability that allows for active consume of content present on other intances. "Content is almost instantly federated", and I guess this is because Mastodon has a lot of users and therefore a lot of instances federated. In my opinion, this gives more value to the local timeline, as it correctly reinforces the idea that instances should be the community of your own choosing.
@fediverse Mastodon is the level of UX other projects should aim to. Unfortunately, others like Pixelfed and Lemmy are still not as adopted, and profiles can not communicate that well. This makes the on-life experience of making a friend create a new account and adding you very painful, because different servers might not be synced and the content of your profile might not appear in their client. This makes people to join large instances so they can have everyone in their local timeline.
@RookieNerd @fediverse
Not being able to sync'd has to do with the hosting and how the admin set up their instance configuration.
Depending on the software, there is usually a feature for “polling”. This is the part of the #fediverse software where an admin can set how frequent the software will push and pull content and check profiles.
They also check how active an account is, be it local or otherwise, because believe it or not, polling an less or inactive account is also taxing on the server host.
These backend features or settings allows an instance to run. Imagine having 100 users who follow 100 users each. And the server is polling those 100 local users and the 100 users each.
Different fediverse software have done a different way to manage this. Some moved to other database instead of using mySQL. Some are using a different programming language instead of Ruby.
And a lot of other things we will never know about unless we look into their respective source codes.
I'm going to use the overused email analogy here, believe it or not, you don't actually receive every email sent to you. We're talking about legit emails here, they're just lost.
No technology can be perfect. Polling, sync'ing, there will always be something that will not reach you. However, developers and engineers are doing their best to minimise this (like in email land).
The way I see it, people were spoiled by silo or closed-network or closed-garden #SNS. Of course, within your own, it is easier to ensure everything is received. Like, again, in email, sending to the same domain there's a 100% guarantee it will be received. So, people expect it will be the same.
And if you explain the technical side of things, most people will run away and say, “just fix it” or “not ready for primetime”. But they never did that for the web (HTTP/S) and email (SMTP). When Chromium / Google Chrome was very buggy, everyone continued to migrate to it anyway. When developers were calling to kill IE6, corporations still use IE6 and were only forced when Microsoft seriously killed it.
Most people accept the flaws of software and services they recognise and already using but will not accept the flaws of the fediverse. I think that's what we should understand so we can change people's minds and have a better approach.
@RookieNerd @fediverse
#Firefish #Pleroma (and its forks) #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #SocialNetwork to mention a few, fits your description. ^_^
@fediverse Again, maybe I was only very unlucky with the instances I chose to let my friends sign up for the Fediverse, but we really need to think on how to make this as effortless as possible for new users. Changing paradigm is not easy, making everyone grasp the underlying concepts of the Fediverse is not easy, increasing adoption is not easy. We can not rely on another Xpocalypse.
I'm interested in discussing more about this.
@RookieNerd @fediverse
Hmm… There is a misconception on what the #Fediverse is and what is the goal, which unfortunately is what the press are telling people.
The Fediverse is about bringing down the walls (silos / walled-garden).
It never had the goal or objective or vision to replace Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, Blogspot.
The Fediverse software available today are the materialised ideas of developers who believe in a federated SocialWeb, which by the way, is the original #Web3 (not crypto). It goes all the way back to 2005 (probably earlier, I don't have my notes).
The goal was to get existing silos to open up and federate.
It just that, there are more developers who are excited about it, so we started to see serious projects related to the Fediverse. If I remember correctly, Misskey was not a Fediverse project when it first started. So, one would say Misskey was the first non-federation project that joined the fediverse network.
If these silos don't federate, it's fine too, because there are existing software and instances available.
And it has always been about choice.
If users want to stay with silo #SNS by all means. The fediverse is not here to replace them, the fediverse is here as an option and as a solution to the issues plaguing silo networks (like ads, privacy, content license, to mention a few).
That's what the fediverse is about and always have been to this day. It is never about replacing this and that, or recruiting people to switch over and encourage them to delete their silo SNS accounts. These other things were simply the passion and convictions of the users who migrated and some of the developers who developed fediverse software, it's not part of the fediverse itself.
It's just a protocol. Again, I'll use email here. If you have a server, you can choose to install your own email software. The protocol is there. Various email software are there. OR, you can just use Yandex or Gmail or Zoho and use the custom domain feature (or use their email hosting services).
If Twitter and Facebook implement the protocol, hooray! Mission accomplished. If they don't, that's fine either.
So, yeah, people are hating that Instagram will implement the #ActivityPub protocol and join the #Fediverse network. They have valid reasons and it is understandable. However, the fediverse started to be a #WebStandard protocol to allow federation and bring back the #SocialWeb as it was intended to be.
For us who were there in 2005 already, and when the first Fediverse software and instance came online in 2008, that is still our vision and goal, to bring down the walls of silo SNS.
@fediverse So, these problems break the whole idea of having one profile for accessing all the available content on the Fediverse. In general, this can be described as one major problem: even if my chosen instance is federated with some other where the content I am interested in is available, I will still have some issues in accessing.
@RookieNerd @fediverse
It's just the way it is. Different hosts, different host configurations, different fediverse software, different software configs, and all that.
Few people are aware today but when Google Mail was first beta tested (very early invite days), we did experience a lot of issues. Mails from Y!Mail not arriving. There was also one time when a mail from another server arrives garbled.
Apologies for using the email analogy again.
Let me use the mobile analogy as another example. Here in the Philippines, I don't know in other countries, we've had interoperability issues a decade or two ago. The Philippines is the SMS capital of the world, so imagine our frustration because the two major (and only) SMS providers cannot interoperate reliably.
Two different networks. Two different systems. Trying to federate to each other.
There will indeed be interoperability issues.
They haven't really solved it, but it was at least minimised.
So, yes, we have to accept that it is going to be a long road until we achieve the level wherein these challenges you have mentioned are minimised in the fediverse as well. I'm sure, politics aside, the #ActivityPub developers are finding ways. ^_^