thenexusofprivacy

joined 10 months ago

Yes there several english-speaking instances running Misskey or a fork. Here's the list for Sharkey - https://fedidb.org/software/sharkey

Misskey's a vibrant colorful very interactive experience

Bluesky's a very good Twitter alternative, at least for now, although it's owned by a VC-funded startup so we'll see how long that lasts

Mastodon (and even moreso forks like Glitch and Hometown) are good if you want a small-to-medium size community along with the ability to be part of broader conversations. It can be a decent Twitter alternative for some people (especially white techies) but Bluesky's a lot more usable, easy to get started on, and diverse.

Thanks for the clarifications!

Yeah, it's somewhat useful but certainly not a great solution. It's great that they went the opt-in route, but there aren't any good existing frameworks for how to do it, so they had to roll their own. There's certainly room for improvement, it would be great if either Bluesky or the Social Web Foundation (or both) or somebody else invested in it, but hard to know if and when thta'll happen.

[–] thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

There isn't direct federation between Mastodon and Bluesky; instead, Bridgy Fed connects them - https://fed.brid.gy/docs#fediverse-get-started

As Strypey acknowledges, there's a lot he didn't know about at the time and left out. Before Mastodon: GNU Social and other early fediverses includes a lot of that.

For what it's worth, the guy who mostly maintains the Wikipedia page agrees with you. And yet even so, at least for now, the Wikipedia page states "The majority of fediverse platforms ... create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol" -- which pretty clearly implies that not all fediverse platforms use the ActivityPub protocol.

Anyhow whether or not you agree to disagree ... we disagree. Time will tell how broad usage of the term evolves. In the original article I pointed to examples of TechCrunch and Mike Masnick using the term in the broader sense, but maybe those will turn out to be points off the curve. We shall see!

Yep. And also, like I said in https://privacy.thenexus.today/bluesky-atmosphere-fediverse/

For one thing, most of the people who came to Mastodon in late 2022 didn't have good experiences ... so didn't stay in the Fediverse.6 Flash forward to 2024, and Mastodon still hasn't addressed the reasons why.

Bluesky, by contrast, has put a lot of work into onboarding and usability – as well as giving people better tools protect themselves and others, and find and build communities ... So today, BTS ARMY and millions of Brazilians, and everybody else looking for a Twitter alternative are more likely to have a good experience on Bluesky than Mastodon.

Great point. And Jay won the power struggle with Jack, which almost nobody gives her credit for.

Yeah, it's a great name.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/17792698. I had posted here last week asking for suggestions, and incorporated some of them -- for example, the last section mentions the proof-of-concept Faircamp integration into Hubzilla.

Including:

  • DAIR-tube, the PeerTube page of Dr. Timnit Gebru's Distributed AI ResearchCenter
  • The Website League, an island network that's taking a very different approach
  • GoToSocial v 0.17, continuing their focus on safety and privacy with interaction controls.
  • Piefed and the Threadiverse
  • Bonfire's new Mosaic service along with their work on Open Science Network and prosocial design
  • Letterbook
  • Bluesky and the ATmosphere's continued momentum

The post has more info on all of these and more ... there really is a lot going on.

Kuba's link i that thread is good, it looks like there's currently about 370 PDS's -- Bridgy Fed got an exception from Bluesky so is the only one that currently has more than 10 uses. https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdses I know some people who just run the open-source code for Bluesky's PDS (which is pretty straightforward) and some run other implementations.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/17686207

It's a very long post, but a lot of it is a detailed discussion of terminology in the appendix -- no need to read that unless you're into definitional struggles.

 

I don't like the clickbait title at all -- Mastodon's clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn't surprise me if it outlives Xitter.

Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn't stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.

 

The Social Web Foundation (SWF) is a new non-profit with a mission of "a growing, healthy, financially viable and multi-polar Fediverse”. In TechCrunch, Sarah Perez reported that SWF has "some backing" from Meta as well as Flipboard, Ghost, Mastodon, and others as well as a "large grant" from the Ford Foundation. "In total, SWF is closing in on $1 million in financial support."

One of the hot buttons in the discussion is SWF's relationship with Meta. So I set up a series of polls on Mastodon. Here are the options for this one -- I'm not sure how to do polls on Lemmy, so please leave your thoughts in the comments

  • SWF shouldn't engage with Meta at all
  • SWF should work with Meta occasionally, when it's necessary
  • SWF should work with Meta together often, but no formal relationship
  • SWF should have Meta as a partner, advisor, or some other formal relatoinship, but no funding
  • SWF should take funding from Meta, but no formal relationship
  • SWF should take funding from Meta and a formal relatiionship
 

In 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) and its cross-posts, quite a few people said things like "maybe racism is a problem on Mastodon, but I don't see it on Lemmy." Then again, plenty of comments in the various threads were in fact examples of racism on Lemmy, so one takeaway is that at lot of people don't see racism even when they're looking at it. And helpful commenters pointed out some of the other patterns of racism on Lemmy. ... but that wasn't really the thrust of that discussion.

So I wanted to ask more generally, what are some of the examples you've seen of racism on Lemmy? Quotes and links are great, but also feel free just to describe examples or call out more general patterns!

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/15011909

Feedback welcome! Here's the TL;DR list

  1. Listen more to more Black people
  2. Post less – and think before you post
  3. Call in, call out, and/or report anti-Blackness when you see it
  4. Support Black people and Black-led instances and projects

Other suggestions?

 

If you're a developer working on a fediverse app or service and want to get it right – or just don't want to be the center of the next firestorm – here are a few suggestions.

 

There's another wave of discourse about The Bad Space on the microblogging side of the fediverse, so here's my article from a couple of months ago.

If you're familiar with Fediseer, there's some discussion of similarities and differences in Compare and contrast: Fediseer, FIRES, and The Bad Space

 

A really interesting look at the recent spam wave.

 

The good news is that there are some straightforward opportunities for significant short-term safety improvements. If fediverse funders, developers, businesses, and "influencers" start prioritizing investing in safety, the fediverse can turn what's currently a big weakness into a huge strategic advantage.

Contents:

  • It's about people, not just the software and the protocol

  • It's also about the software

  • And it's about the protocol, too

  • Threat modeling and privacy by design can play a big role here

  • Design from the margins – and fund it!

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7992691

There are some straightforward opportunities for short-term safety improvements, but this is only the start of what's needed to change the dynamic more completely.

This is a draft, so feedback welcome!

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