Aral Balkan
I’m seeing some about the fediverse along the lines of “we welcome our new venture capitalist and Big Tech overlords… what could possibly go wrong?”
What could possibly go wrong? Oh, I don’t know… take a look at the whole damn web. Take a look at email. Take a look at any resource that was part of the commons but was enclosed/captured by corporate interests. Read up on embrace, extend, and extinguish.
1/2
Aral Balkan
Look, I’m not saying we’ll be able to keep the fediverse from going down the same path. Architecturally, it’s compatible. Mastodon and nearly every other fediverse app is built on a traditional Big Tech stack and inherits its success criteria (and scaling characteristics). But there is value is resisting for as long as we can. Because the fediverse is a stopgap and it would help those of us working on longer-term solutions to have it around for as long as possible.
Bobby Moss
@aral XMPP is perhaps the cautionary tale we should be wary of.
From what I remember, Facebook and Google went in claiming they would support cross-platform instant messaging. Then they added their own changes that “accidentally broke” cross-platform messaging. Then Google Talk and Facebook Messenger became walled gardens that happened to run on XMPP.
Aral Balkan
@mjgardner The problem is there is no such thing as “a little bit of #BigTech investment.” Big Tech does not invest unless the goal is monopoly. It’s a zero-sum game for them. (Whether or not they succeed is another issue, but they will try.) Hoping for Big Tech investment in the commons is like hoping colonialists arrive to raise the living standards of your community. Sure, they may have some nifty tech but it comes with terms and conditions attached. And you end up being colonised.
Mark Gardner
@aral I’m kinda hoping for a little bit of #BigTech investment because actual #Mastodon server and network scaling is kinda terrible. Some folks with better distributed systems experience and a commitment to gradual uplift would be really appreciated.
Mark Gardner
@aral I get what you’re saying in the article about how individual servers are the endgame, and I’m onboard with that personally both via #ActiviryPub and #IndieWeb. But we have to cross the distance to there for non-geeks and people who can’t afford celebrity geek concierges.
Aral Balkan
@mjgardner Which is exactly the goal of #SmallWeb :)
Aral Balkan
@autiomaa This. So micro.blog sounds very cool (just had a gander) :) Are you hosting folks on VPSs?
Daniel Schildt
@aral Architectural issues of Mastodon are largely caused by it mirroring the same design decisions as the biggest commercial platforms. 💯
Wrote before about it:
Current limitation of Mastodon is that since user accounts are on sub-directory on each of the services/servers, people don't own their own identity. Problem with the export is that as each of the user accounts is mapped to the server, it's not possible to simply change the hosting platform.
https://mastodon.social/@autiomaa/109552972635674629
Pauline von Hellermann
@aral I am with you 💯 - it should be purposefully maintained and fostered as a #DigitalCommons. I would love to see far more discussion here about this, and of rules etc we might need to prevent/slowdown/minimise corporate takeover. Also because it opens possibilities for discussion of value of #Commons and #Commoning for other public goods too (eg transport, energy, education, etc). Very curious to hear that fefiverse a stop gap!
Aral Balkan
Jye Lewis
@aral this post is extremely well written, love it. Makes me want to move to my own instance 😅
Aral Balkan
@mehulkar I’m saying it wouldn’t use Sidekiq to begin with ;)
https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
(I need to update that post or make a new one with links to https://codeberg.org/kitten/app and https://codeberg.org/domain/app – both very much under construction at the moment.)
mehulkar
@aral read your post. are you saying that if mastodon was designed for decentralization, it would not be kicking off 3k sidekiq jobs for your birthday post? Or that those 3k (or 23k at the extreme) jobs would be very efficient?
Aral Balkan
@autiomaa Interesting. (And apologies, I thought it was your baby for a moment.) :)
Daniel Schildt
@aral Micro.blog is a commercial service, but their implementation of ActivityPub is somehow more nicer than that of Mastodon. But the blog side is technically based on Hugo static site generator, while the added value from their own systems is easier UIs for people moving from larger platforms. Export formats include WordPress, and that can be imported to most FOSS publishing tools (either directly or via conversion).
Mark Gardner
@aral Sorry, can’t get on board the “#capitalism is evil” train. I know where it stops.
Aral Balkan
@mjgardner At a kinder, fairer place?
Aral Balkan
@mjgardner Ah, just read your bio… Objectivism/Ayn Rand. No need to take this further, then. I guess we’re agreeing to disagree :)
Aral Balkan
@jik Because Gmail. There are also countless independent web sites in the world. But the majority of people still experience the web through the lens of Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
Jonathan Kamens
@aral I don't understand why I keep seeing you and others citing email as an example of this. There are hundreds of thousands of SMTP servers happily interoperating with each other, many different IMAP server implementations, and many IMAP clients that can talk to them, and many of the above are open source. I've run my own mail server for 30+ years. There are a few big players, but they're really not the same as the social media walled gardens.
Jill Minor
@aral If I follow you, you won't have to expand capacity will you? I'm not too popular. 😄
Aral Balkan
@jillrhudy No, not at all. It’s actually been quiet stable since the biggest influx and the last time I upgraded my instance. But that’s very nice of you to ask :)
Jill Minor
@aral wow. Thanks for explaining all this.
Aral Balkan
@TransitBiker As is your right :)
TransitBiker
@aral stopgap? Disagree.
mittfh
@autiomaa
@johanvc @aral Aside from domain names, most individuals who self-host will be renting one or more of the server, the data centre in which the server is located, or the server's connection to the 'net (which, unless you have a direct tap into the backbone, is generally how you access the Internet on client devices). ISPs will, of course, be collecting data on you, and in the UK, are now mandated by government to keep "Internet Connection Records" for at least 12 months.
Daniel Schildt
@johanvc @aral Self-owned digital identities have been reality for a long long time. But also, not really, as domain names are rented, not owned. Identity that is binded to domain names is vulnerable to various types of security problems. Eventually there will be more reliable multi-channel identity verification systems that could avoid some of the issues.
JohanVanCamp :damnified:
@autiomaa @aral You are right, but the positive side is that even for identity we're moving towards decentralisation at a growing pace, with even Microsoft facilitating and promoting verifyable credentials and decentralized identities. It won't be long now before applications start embracing this paradigm and portable, self-owned identities become a reality!
JohanVanCamp :damnified:
@mittfh @autiomaa @aral Yup, so owning your identity by self-hosting to some extent is an extreme and imperfect approach - but the best you can do for now. True decentralized identity using blockchain does look (more) promising to me - and it may finally be a moral and sensible application for blockchain tech 😋
Aral Balkan
@mittfh Yep, we can’t rebuild or control the whole stack (well, I can’t anyway). This is where I like Joanna Rutkowska’s approach of building tech that doesn’t trust the rest of the stack (which I feel is very different to building tech that doesn’t trust people or tries to remove trust/humanity from the equation altogether. We should be trying to model humanity not erase it.)
But yes, especially with domains, there’s so much potential for a commons-based approach..
Aral Balkan
@alexelcu Ok, give me a few minutes so I can call my friend at Google so we can do a little experiment. I’m going ask them to mark your email as spam in their systems. Then I’ll circle around in a few days time and we can see how your email experience is going :)
Alex Nedelcu ☕️
@aral I understand the fears, but:
> Take a look at email
IDK what you mean, as my email is doing just fine. And having comercial service providers to pay for hosting your email is pretty sweet, as I really don't want to self host my email.
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