volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
When you describe it as a meme to get people excited as an alternative to having them stay at Twitter and Facebook, then to me, that counts as marketing.
Getting people excited about doing something based on a picture that is substantially false, that's an issue to me.
No different than if some Facebook cheerleader started putting out memes about how people should drop Fediverse for Facebook because Facebook is so much safer than those distributed punks.
Get people excited with an honest portrayal of the platform, and if the platform isn't good enough to be excited about, well then.
That's quite the theory. What do you base it on?
Attracting users through deceptive advertising isn't exactly taking a high road, and that's not even getting into the practical aspects that WILL have users putting their data and content at risk in the process.
If we have to lie to get users to move to this platform, then #Facebook and #Twitter aren't looking so bad.
volkris
boosted
When playing Marry, Fuck, Kill, I always marry the person who seems most likely to be accepting of the adultery and murder I'll also be engaging in. I want that marriage to last.
Oh gosh I so strongly disagree with SO MUCH in that article.
From the paternalistic, top down tone through the overlooking of different talents of different people--technical vs social--I think it is really flying off in the wrong direction.
If that sort of attitude is to guide Fediverse development, then this whole platform is doomed as a pipe dream.
@SrRochardBunson @Tweetfiction @atomicpoet The thing is, when you say Absolutely 100%.... Well, it's not actually absolute around here. That's just the marketing.
In reality, there IS an algorithm. "Show the firehose in chronological order" *is* an algorithm, just a particularly dumb one, for better or worse.
And it can be taken advantage of to, for example, show ads. Which this platform is happy to support.
This is not the absolute utopia it's being presented as, and it's kind of important not to paper over the major downsides of this platform, especially as it comes to privacy.
@david_megginson : network effects.
This is probably a pretty neutral summary of the story that hasn't gotten as much international attention as I'd have expected.
The timing of these embarrassing revelations about the mishandling of classified material does not reflect well on Biden. Read the story: https://r...
@SrRochardBunson @kidehen @atomicpoet
Nah, because self-hosting still leaves you with these walls between yourself and end users you'd like to be in touch with.
Even if I self-host, I'm still reliant on every instance owner sitting between me and every one of those users.
Plus, self-hosting defeats the self-organizing community building that is one of the only features of the instance model, of people wandering to instances they like and thus seeding them with mutually-liked content.
Number 1, I wouldn't say those words :)
The whole point is to not bother the user with all that stuff, so why bring it up in the marketing?/
Number 2, Mastodon's success thus far shows that "decentralized" is not the dealbreaker, even though I'd argue that the platform is not.
I really think so much comes down simply to a well-done UI that more or less hides machinery from the user.
For example, in my mind public key encryption should be core to all of this, and yet various instant messenger clients have managed to make end to end encryption accessible to masses without them having to know the term "signing key" at all.
FWIW, I really think mass adoption just comes down to creating a user experience that isn't actually all that big a hurdle to overcome.
But maybe I'm too optimistic :)
@paul , if you care to, can you give a brief description of the advantages of #inoreader over #feedly?
@kidehen @SrRochardBunson @atomicpoet
Well, I'd only change the word unilateral to universal :)
My instance can absolutely screw with my identity and content unilaterally. It just can't screw with everyone else's, universally.
But sure, federation isn't **bad** it's just not as fully decentralized as I would have liked to see, where each user really does have that ownership.
Just to hit on this one side point, that's not quite right.
There are tradeoffs in blockchains where you CAN start at the beginning of the chain and be absolutely certain that it's all solid, but there are techniques for trimming parts of the chain to lower storage requirements, maybe with less certainty in what you know of the state of the chain.
You know how in Bitcoin there is a tradeoff between time and listening for confirmations? It's a similar thing.
You don't necessarily have to have the entire blockchain locally. That's the ideal, but there are ways to avoid it.
Yeah, it's a step, but I want us to be clear that it's not a tremendous leap, and that's not just trying to cast shade on #Mastodon, but it's also to highlight remaining, practical problems with retaining this level of centralization.
The system *could have* been much more decentralized, so we wouldn't have to rely on the whims of instance owners, and since it's not, we do.
For another example, because of the centralized design choices of #ActivityPub we have #privacy issues where we rely on third party instances to operate in good faith for everything from deleting content through not sharing beyond our privacy settings.
These things are really important to me, and they come directly from the federated vs decentralized issue.
@alfredo_liberal@universeodon.com
But Biden has lost court case after court case as he tried to circumvent the democratically elected representatives.
Even if you're OK with that, doesn't it show someone who shouldn't be trusted to make strategically good decisions?
Not to mention, Biden only has authority over one of three branches of government. Even if you have such faith in his operation of authority, the other two branches can still go different directions.
And then, what happens after Biden? These corporate subsidies will take years to actually start paying off; do you really trust the next president to also collect the taxes you are counting on?
You're putting so much faith both in authorities with questionable present actions and unknown futures!
@alfredo_liberal@universeodon.com
Yeah, we've heard those promises before and we've seen them broken countless times.
Each time we're told this time will be different.
Oh, but.... THIS time will be different?
I think you have far too much trust in the promises of politicians handing out public funds to private corporations.
Yes!
#Fediverse is not fully decentralized; it's centralized around instances. Recentralized if you will.
This actually matters practically as it's caused issues, for example with the traffic surges as the centralized servers around the internet reach out for page previews to cache all at once.
And in the debates over defederation.
#ActivityPub is not a decentralized system design, although it could have been, and I think some opportunities were missed there.
@alfredo_liberal@universeodon.com
Well, private corporations will make some chips here in the US, and keep the profits from those sales, thanks to the subsidies.
They won't be enough chips for US markets, and they won't be the right type of chips to satisfy all domestic demand either, just based on the published plans of what's to be built.
I fear those huge corporate subsidies won't have the results that the politicians sold to the public.
As usual.
I don't think there's such a thing as expunging an impeachment.
Since the Constitution recognizes a process of impeachment but doesn't provide any way of undoing one, that's not really a thing.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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