Former Diaspora core team member, I work on various fediverse projects, and also spend my time making music and indie adventure games!
Most of the backlash pertains to the board members appointed to the new nonprofit. One of the members is a lawyer that has defended crypto and AI companies, another is ex-Twitter angel investor Biz Stone.
Mastodon’s community usually has some kind of vague beef about one thing or another when it comes to Eugen and the decisions he makes for the project, whether it’s a new feature or a design change or that he didn’t do something that other projects wanted to do.
Yeah, if you read the article, Hometown and Glitch actually get mentioned. The criticism is not about making a fork to do your own thing… but, instead, about trying to compete with Mastodon directly.
Doing that kind of fork (which is what people are calling for) requires a tremendous amount of coordination, effort, and commitment that cannot be done casually.
This is a situation that I think will get better in time. There’s some really promising efforts involving Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, where multiple projects collaborate on shared ways of doing things. Some of these behaviors are getting studied and standardized by the larger SocialCG entity, as well.
There’s also a lot of promising development behind a Fediverse Testing Suite. If we can develop a platform-agnostic testing system for people to build against, it will potentially become the new development standard, rather than optimizing for Mastodon and nothing else.
I think there’s a balance to be struck between “good defaults” and “customize to your heart’s content.”
Emissary is very much in line with some of my own pipe dreams regarding Fediverse / IndieWeb platforms, but it’s still very young as a project. I think the best thing they could probably do is ship bundles of templates as different experiences, that are easy to install right out the gate.
Want a bog-standard microblogging system? Go for it. Want something more like Lemmy? No problem. Want to just build something yourself from scratch? Here’s the docs.
I think what excites me about this is that it could be a tremendous development tool for people looking to mock up new ideas for apps and platforms, while sitting in top of ActivityPub and offering actual functionality. The Music project the lead dev is working on already looks great in less than two weeks of development, and aims to be compatible with Funkwhale.
You’re also screamingly White
Just because I have privilege doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced harsh realities that are relevant to this context. The idea that a person’s race automatically qualifies or disqualifies them to speak on a subject without context or nuance is just silly.
You’re out here mad because a dude expressed that it’s stupid to compare server hosting for commodity open source communication software to societal decay caused by landlords, real estate developers, and people with four times the local income all rushing into a place and pricing out the people who already lived there. Y’know, something that actually has a real and tangible material effect.
Video version available on PeerTube here: https://spectra.video/w/cgUdgFb1ZpcTEK8UydLu59
It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified
As someone who has repeatedly seen cities become gentrified (first Peoria, Illinois, then San Francisco, then Phoenix), I get what you’re trying to say, but also don’t think it’s an appropriate metaphor.
The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.
Frankly, I think this is a bit melodramatic. The Anti-Threads part of the Fediverse will stay in their isolated bubble with little to no change, while the rest of the network continues to grow or change. It’s not like operational costs are skyrocketing, or that hosting will become any more scarce or more difficult. It’s not like the servers have to move to a different neighborhood. Gentrification is predicated on the finiteness of physical space and affordable places to live.
and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.
This is probably news to you, but there’s not even a coherent, all-encompassing definition for what the Fediverse even is. The idea that there’s a “real Fediverse” vs “Fake Fediverse” glosses over all kinds of history and nuance. The best anyone’s gotten to defining it is by specifying protocols and interoperability, but even that doesn’t quite cover it.
The Fediverse isn’t just the parts you like, minus the parts you don’t like.
I’d actually love to see something like this happen, as it seems to be something European governments and officials are embracing. To have something similar for the United States would be incredible.
I think at the moment, there’s a real need for advocates, consultants, and vendors that can actually cater to government entities here. I would imagine there’s probably some crazy data requirements needed for US Government Officials.
Thing is, for federation to work, his team had to opt into it. The fact that his statuses and profile render natively in Mastodon and Akkoma are a pretty strong start.
I’d like to see Meta put their money where their mouths are, and finish the integration. I think we’ll probably see that happen sooner rather than later.
Fucking amazing book, I laughed so hard from start to finish.