• Leslie(she/her)@fapsi.be
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    2 years ago

    Do you have example of people demanding defederation because they are non-techie?

    well i guess you missed the latest drama on lemmygrad where they where asking to purge all the liberals from lemmy.ml.

    And no i don’t think this is an issue of adoption stage, because federation is a useless feature to the general public, the only people who will ever need federation are software enthusiasts and even then just as a toy to play with.

    You seem to imply that the solution to capitalism is to forget that it is a problem

    The solution to the contradictions of capitalism is building socialism. Do we throw away the progress of industrialization because it was done by capitalists? No, we correct the contradiction of ownership of capital by seizing it from them. Centralization, like industrialization, is a very important and progressive step that transformed internet communication. You can undo this step, but you will always end up learning the bitter way that centralization is an inevitability for any social media of the masses.

    you probably misunderstood primitive communism

    The dogmatic view that there can be no freedom without federation is not healthy, the real source of the supposed freedom that federation gives is open source. there are freedoms that federation provide but those are only relevant if you actually host an instance, otherwise what is the difference between a regular open source reddit alternative and lemmy? you can checkout hexbear.net which runs an older version of lemmy without federation, they are just as active if not more than lemmygrad (very similar userbase) the only difference is that they don’t have to deal with the inherent problems of federation and their admins can actually focus on building the community instead of wasting their time trying to reinvent ways to prevent spam from randomly popping up servers.

    If we want to challenge mainstream media, we must address the real issues that users of mainstream media face, reach out to them, and understand their genuine dissatisfactions. Is this what fediverse developers do? They all get together and decide that the problem people have is a lack of federation and go on to write walls of code without any consideration for the general audience. They never seek feedback from the people. They get all their validation from their peers who also believe that lack of federation is the problem. This is what I described as a cult. It might be a little harsh, but I couldn’t find any better words.

    This complete alienation from the real users is what makes you believe that writing a federated tiktok will materialise into anything more than a graveyard of instances. If the fediverse developers actually understood the needs of the people, Peertube would already have something similar to YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. Facebook and Google might be evil, but they actually have to build software that matters to people or they will lose the users they have. The Fediverse has no real users except the developers themselves, so they can build whatever nonsense they want. In your example, you are assuming that the Facebook userbase actually cares about the messaging protocol. I’m pretty sure they don’t even know what that is. Many issues you may have with social media are non-issues or mild inconveniences for the majority of the population.

    • liwott@nerdica.net
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      2 years ago

      I do not understand what makes centralization analogous to industrialization rather than to centralization of the means of production.

      the real source of the supposed freedom that federation gives is open source.

      What is the point of being able to replicate the software if you cannot use it to connect to your friend’s network?
      In fact, federation is what enable to centralize the network (arguably the mainstream media’s strength) without having to centralize the power (arguably their misdeed).
      If, in your opinion, the problem of big tech is not the centralization of power within a few hands, please explain what it is.

      The Fediverse has no real users except the developers themselves

      The Fediverse has 5 millions of users. I don’ t think more than 100 of them are developers.

      you can checkout hexbear.net which runs an older version of lemmy without federation, they are just as active if not more than lemmygrad (very similar userbase) the only difference is that they don’t have to deal with the inherent problems of federation

      Sure, if the goal is to build a filter bubble, then having to communicate with external users can be a problem. To add to this:

      well i guess you missed the latest drama on lemmygrad where they where asking to purge all the liberals from lemmy.ml.

      Lemmygrad users do not complain about the rest of the Fediverse speaking only about tech and federation, they complain about them disagreeing with their view.

      In your example, you are assuming that the Facebook userbase actually cares about the messaging protocol.

      When did I say anything of the sort? Why would they have to drop a functionnality just because a lot of people do not care about it? Before, people with no Facebook account could communicate with Facebook users via XMPP. Now they have to create a Facebook account for that. Facebook did not remove the feature because it was convenient for some users, they did it to trap more users in. This is the thing people want to escape with federation.

      • Leslie(she/her)@fapsi.be
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        2 years ago

        The Fediverse has 5 millions of users. I don’ t think more than 100 of them are developers.

        My bad. I meant that the people who actually make use of federation are almost exclusively programmers. The rest of the users don’t benefit from federation.

        If, in your opinion, the problem of big tech is not the centralization of power within a few hands, please explain what it is.

        The problem is not the centralization of power within a few hands, but the contradiction between the needs of the users and the needs of these few hands. It’s okay to let a few hands hold all the power, as long as their interests align with ours. Your philosophical disagreement with this concept has very little effect on reality. As long as big tech can meet the needs of people, they will keep using their services. Federation is a tool that will make meeting the needs of people very hard, if not impossible. There are areas where the interests of big tech are in direct, irreconcilable conflict with those of users (e.g., ads; users want as little as possible, big tech wants the maximum). If you want to solve the problems of users, you should first figure out irreconcilable contradictions like this and then solve them without hurting the needs of people that are currently being met by big tech.

        Sure, if the goal is to build a filter bubble

        This is what the people want, everybody trying to use social media want filter bubbles, federation adds a huge and unnecessary obstacle to this, there is a thread now on lemmy where people are discussing ways to block entire instances.

        Lemmygrad users do not complain about the rest of the Fediverse speaking only about tech and federation, they complain about them disagreeing with their view.

        That’s not what i said, like mentioned above i was trying to show you why filter bubbles are a necessity for anyone who is not an idealist fediverse advocate.

        This is the thing people want to escape with federation

        Which people are you talking about? The majority of the people don’t have any problem with this, why should they change their ways because some nerds decided that making a facebook account is a sin?.

        • If I may interject as a person who is not a programmer, and who is not an “Idealist” in online federation. I think that the biggest harm with the centralization of the internet is that similar account types cannot communicate. Think about the headache that would be had if to send an email, the domain name had to be the same. While I would not say it is a “sin” to have a facebook, I don’t think making something federated adds any downsides.

          If you want to live in your own instance, atleast with lemmy, you can just never leave the local tab, it is a choice to venture into the all, but that is a choice that is willing to be made. I personally like this and think it is a fair compromise. It also keeps the power from falling into just one entities hands, but other than that, going into all.

          as for Lemmygrad pushing to de-federate, dieing out, or pushing for lemmy or other instinces to purge users, I have not seen that, the closest I have seen is a “this is why purges are necessary” and that is a comment ment for the in group, as lemmy.ml mentions they are a leftist website.

          This whole thing is new, and social media like reddit, twitter and facebook is old relitivly, it will take time to get numbers to grow, but I genuinly don’t thing federation is the thing that is going to break the growth.

          also I think the term you are thinking of is “group think” or “echo chamber” and not cult, but I could be wrong so please correct me.

          either way, that is my 2 cents.

          • Leslie(she/her)@fapsi.be
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            2 years ago

            Think about the headache that would be had if to send an email, the domain name had to be the same.

            Think about all the headaches we have now because anyone with a domain can send spam emails to you. Email would have been much better if there were only a few, or at best, a single email provider. In fact, the reason why email is usable today is because we don’t treat all domains as equal and put more trust in a few providers. The concentration of email users into a few domains is what allows it to be used by so many people today.

            If you want to live in your own instance, atleast with lemmy, you can just never leave the local tab,

            But users from other instances can still interact with local posts.

            as for Lemmygrad pushing to de-federate, dieing out, or pushing for lemmy or other instinces to purge users, I have not seen that, the closest I have seen is a “this is why purges are necessary” and that is a comment ment for the in group, as lemmy.ml mentions they are a leftist website.

            I didn’t mean to single out any particular incident or group of users. I was attempting to make the point that federation is a major roadblock to the ability of every group of people to block “outsiders.” Other important needs of people are also hampered by federation (for example, discoverability).