(webdev Tory) @worldsendless@qoto.org

Innovation in decentralised social networks

Flipboard’s Mike McCue recently released the first episode of the new podcast Dot Social with Mike Masnick, where they discuss protocols, platforms, and the decentralised internet, and it’s worth listening to.

Johannes Ernst gives a thread with a summary and responses here, which is worth reading. One thing I’d like to comment on is Mike Masnick’s comment that he expects innovation more to happen on Bluesky’s ATProto than on fediverse’s ActivityPub.

I agree that innovation in the decentralised network space is happening to a signficant extend outside of the fediverse sphere, but I disagree with the idea that this will happen on Bluesky and ATProto. Instead, I think that Nostr is a more likely candidate:

Innovation in a decentralised network is currently largely dependent on individual hobbyist developers that are experimenting. For an individual developer the accesibility and difficulty of working with the protocol is an important consideration. From my understanding talking to developers is Nostr the easiest to work with. ActivityPub differs a lot, but can certainly be difficult, especially regarding actual interoperability. I have been told that ATProto is the hardest of the three to develop for, plus that it is simply not even put into practice yet.

Culture of the network is even more important though in driving innovation. The fediverse has cultures and etiquette that say that some innovations in the network are unwelcome, especially regarding search and consent. One of the things that interest me about the fediverse is that the social impact of technology is taken into account. We’re building these networks for people. But making features off-limits in a network does limit innovation as well, there is a cost to it.

Bluesky is threading a difficult middle ground here with the culture. The developers seem to have more of a technologist mindset to protocol design, and concerns about how federation will interact with content moderation are not given much care. At the same time, a core group of Bluesky users is not particularly interested in federation, and wants a simple Twitter replacement. That puts the team in a pretty difficult spot with regards to future innovation. They made great strides with custom algorithms, but they do experience significant pushback from the community on features that they themselves want to work on, especially relating to opening the network.

Nostr has an explicit culture of adverse interoperability, and a libertarian community who seems to be quite inspired by crypto’s mantra of ‘if we can build it we should build it’. This is not really grounds for a network that is safe for many people. It does provide a fertile ground for rapid experimentation and innovation. The network is by far the smallest of the three, but it has also created quite some innovations that the other two network haven’t, in the recent months. Multiple long-form article publishing sites, a torrent archive, an integrated payment system for subscriptions with crypto, and more. There are good reasons to be have some issues with some of these innovations, but it is hard to deny that they are developing at a rapid speed.

Overall I think that innovation often happens at the fringes where there is reasons for experimentation. But also, cultural reasons that inhibit innovation speed can actually be pretty good from the human perspective.

#fediverse #nostr

https://laurenshof.online/innovation-in-decentralised-social-networks/

Worldwide community of activists protest OverDrive and others forcing DRM upon libraries - Greg Farough @ Defective by Design @ FSF: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/worldwide_community_activists_protest_overdrive_and_others_forcing_drm_upon_libraries

On Friday 8th December they're asking you to:

* Not use Libby, etc.
* Discuss the harms of DRM, especially in relation to libraries, with hashtag #DayAgainstDRM
* Don't watch any DRM'd or streaming-only media, etc for that day.

Pfft, trivial for me! I'll binge DRM-free!

A fully switched to Firefox a few months ago when Google kept on pushing their "Manifest V3" Chrome policy, now that they continue to push it and remove V2 (and with it meaningful adblockers) from Chrome in 2024 maybe you want to start migrating as well?

https://developer.chrome.com/en/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

Don't go to Brave btw. It's a shit company that keeps doing shady stuff and is run by a homophobe. There are so many browsers, just pick one. (Whether other Chromium-based browsers will keep an interface for effective customization for users around is for you to research. Just use Firefox TBH).

Key bit: "#Tumblr moving away from a growth strategy also aligns with the larger movement toward smaller and decentralized social media, characterized by the dispersal of Twitter’s users onto platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon, Discord, and even back to Tumblr itself.

'Every future for Tumblr that I’m involved in will include it being more open, supporting more standards, APIs, and open source.'”

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/17/23964580/tumblr-downscaling-smaller-social-media-site

Just got my @indivisibleteam newsletter, and I'm heartened to see that they're stepping back from Twitter. They're removing Twitter from their social media links on their website, phasing down on-Twitter content, and helping folks migrate to alternate platforms.

It's good to see large influential organizations finally drawing the line. It's awesome that they're not just doing so passively, but actively helping people leave. #Twitter #Indivisible

Read the inspiring story of how Eyüpsultan, Turkey switched to free software, gained independence from proprietary software, and saved money ($$$) in the process! If they did it in their city, your city can do it too! | Read more at: https://u.fsf.org/3m9