I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media.

I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media

…

Federation does not work I’m not saying federation “won’t” work or “can’t” work. Merely that in 2025, nine years after deployment, federation does not work for the Mastodon use case.

I could opine at length about possible federated architectures and what I think the ActivityPub people clearly got wrong in hindsight.1 But the proof is in the pudding: Mastodon simply doesn’t show users the posts they ask to see, as I quickly

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago

    Now you are contradicting yourself. Sure, there are survival niches for small cockroach companies in the shawdow of the large FOSS based oligopolies, but that is the status quo and no improvement at all.

    • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      A “cockroach business” is something that has no significant revenue but at the same time takes up so little resources that can be operated forever. This is completely different from, e.g, small email hosting providers like Migadu or some agency that gets real customers to make wordpress customizations.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        You can argue all you want about definitions, but that doesn’t change the fact that these companies are at the wim of the large oligopolies and pose absolutly no threat to them, nor do they even want to because their business indirectly depends on these oligopoles existing.

        • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          these companies are at the whim of the large oligopolies

          Why? We are talking about FOSS and services based on FOSS, here. Do you think that Google would be able to successfully shut down small email providers without repercussions?

          pose absolutely no threat to them

          Why is that relevant? I do not particularly care about eliminating the large corporations, at least not from the start. I’d be more than happy if we could grow this ecosystem here to become a sizable share of the overall market.

          I’d rather work towards a world where Facebook has “only” 70% of the market to themselves and the rest of us foment a healthy economy sustaining the other 30%, than to keep this delusional idea that a scrappy bunch of nerds are going to be able to take Lemmy/Mastodon/PixelFed/Matrix/XMPP to the mainstream by wishful thinking and “community” alone.

          • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            Many of these email providers only exist as a less bad alternative but compatible with Gmail etc. And the oligopol could shut them down any time as their primary service is sending emails to the oligopol.

            What you are proposing is basically to make the Fediverse a small managed opposition to Meta’s Threads, which I am sure Zuckerberg would love.

            But that is not what the Fediverse tries to be and neither does it aim to become mainstream. We are doing prefigurative infrastructure building here. If people want to join, great. If not, also no problem. But if society decides to finally get rid of this capitalist hellscape, then the Fediverse will be there and ready to use.

            • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
              1·
              7 days ago

              I disagree about “the primary service” of a minority provider. The minority provider can do a lot more than just “send” emails to the larger share, and I think they can be instrumental for us to bring a tool from the intolerant minorities to the mainstream.

              I also disagree about the idea of “managed opposition”. “Managed opposition” is what Mozilla does to Google with Firefox. They are paid by Google to be kept around. I am not saying that we should take the Fediverse and seek funding from Threads, or for us to depend on Facebook.

              Finally, I have serious doubts that this “prefigurative infrastructure building” is effective. To me it seems like just a collective of aimless rebels who want to keep this universe secluded from everyone else, but it’s just too afraid to say it out loud.

              Anyway, thanks for the chat. I understand I won’t be able to change your mind, but to go back to the original topic: I just wish that next time we don’t see someone as “toxic” just because they were not willing to put up with all these silly rules and rituals that everyone seems to follow without questioning.

              • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
                1·
                7 days ago

                I just wish that next time we don’t see someone as “toxic” just because they were not willing to put up with all these silly rules and rituals that everyone seems to follow without questioning.

                Something, something Chestertons fence…

                These “rituals” are vital for the continued existence of the Fediverse. Without a clear anti-capitalist and anti-oligopolist stance it will be co-opted and destroyed like many similar efforts that came before. You are being very naive if you can’t see that.

                • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
                  1·
                  7 days ago

                  Without a clear anti-capitalist and anti-oligopolist stance it will be co-opted and destroyed

                  With this continued “anti-capitalist” stance there will never be anything to be destroyed. Without real investment and resources, this will be forever nothing more than a castle made of sand.

                  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
                    1·
                    6 days ago

                    You sound like a reverse Tankie 😅 No proof of anything other than your ortodox economic believes, and when confronted with the living proof of the opposite (the Fediverse) you just claim that it can’t and will never exist 🤦

                    Millions of people are using it every month, and it seems to do just fine despite contstant claims since many years that it can’t survive…