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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:02:42 JST Aral Balkan

   I don’t know who needs to hear this but the fediverse is not an app.

   #fediverse #mastodon #journalists

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:27:17 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping

     @stooovie Haha, indeed :)

   • Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping (stooovie@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:27:18 JST Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping

     in reply to

     @aral also not a website. People call everything either an app or a website.

     And complex visual effects are now "editing", but that's a different debate :)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:29:02 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Frankie Saxx

     @frankiesaxx 😇

   • Frankie Saxx (frankiesaxx@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:29:03 JST Frankie Saxx

     in reply to

     @aral
     that #journalists tag :doge:

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:52:11 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     @jedes_jahr_ein_neues_protokoll The Silicon Valley binary.

     @troet.cafe @ellenor2000

   • Elephant (jedes_jahr_ein_neues_protokoll@troet.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:52:19 JST Elephant

     in reply to

     • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     @ellenor2000 @aral If it's not an app it must be a cloud.

   • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs) (ellenor2000@mastodon.top)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:52:20 JST La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     in reply to

     @aral quick! think of the most obnoxious thing to call an app

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:53:38 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Andreas F.

     @af The Internet… is that like AOL?

   • Andreas F. (af@cas.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:53:39 JST Andreas F.

     in reply to

     @aral Probably the same ones who don't know the difference between the #Fediverse and #Mastodon, or the difference between the #Internet and the #Web.

     #journalists

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:55:41 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • nellie_m

     @nellie_m And let’s also take a moment to recognise all the 80-year-old mums out there who were programming the absolute crap out of computers before either of us were even born :)

     (Heck, the original computers weren’t machines, they were women who did the calculations in their heads.)

   • nellie_m (nellie_m@home.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 18:55:42 JST nellie_m

     in reply to

     @aral
     for my 80 y-old mum, everything on her laptop screen is a window.

     I gave up trying to point out the difference between, say, the operating system and a browser. But I still love that she uses it even if the only way she knows to take notes is to screenshot everything 🙂

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:06:17 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     @ellenor2000 Sorry, I don’t understand. Why?

   • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs) (ellenor2000@mastodon.top)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:06:18 JST La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     in reply to

     @aral You might want to delete&redraft that.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:20:06 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Salavora

     @Salavora It’s the difference between AOL and the Internet. If you’re wondering “what’s AOL?”, exactly. The app is AOL.

   • Salavora (salavora@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:20:07 JST Salavora

     in reply to

     @aral but so far I only care about the app. I really only want to know what my friends are up to and what happens in the world.
     The only stuff I saw about the fediverse so far was that image of a tree with "those parts are all for wriring and those are all for something with web and this one is like that other program you once used way back when and..."
     For me that image proved, that there is nothing for me there.
     What "Wow, this is a true game changer and utterly awsome!" am I missing here?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:23:39 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Chris Trottier

     @atomicpoet And please let’s not forget about the web. I’m first and foremost a designer. I abhor bad experiences. Heck, I’ve got talks on the subject (https://small-tech.org/videos/ux-talk/). And I’m perfectly happy with the Mastodon web experience. The Web (especially Big Web, which is the only web we have right now) isn’t perfect by any means but it’s also the only open platform we have that anyone can access regardless of what tech ecosystem they may otherwise be locked into. We must protect it.

   • Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:23:40 JST Chris Trottier

     in reply to

     @aral Frankly, we need to socialize the notion that the Fediverse itself shouldn't centralize around one singular app or service.

     Let's start using as many apps as we can!

   • Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:23:41 JST Chris Trottier

     in reply to

     @aral Thank you!

     Adding to that, the features that so many journalists want (like quote boosts) can be found in other apps!

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:25:39 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Fish Id Wardrobe

     @fishidwardrobe Well, yes and no. It carries the assumption of data coupled with functionality. Which itself defines the hegemony of surveillance-based capitalist technology. Separating those two things (data and features) is one of the prerequisites for moving beyond the Silicon Valley model of technology.

   • Fish Id Wardrobe (fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:25:40 JST Fish Id Wardrobe

     in reply to

     @aral "app" is an almost meaningless word. Might as well say it's a solution that you can architect.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:29:19 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     @ellenor2000 Ah, silly me. Thanks for the heads up. Edited it :)

   • La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs) (ellenor2000@mastodon.top)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:29:20 JST La Ursidinoj (Bjornsdottirs)

     in reply to

     @aral You garbled the first @ by interspersing it with your message, in case that matters to you.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:40:26 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Salavora

     @Salavora Indeed. And soon, some Big Tech company will have the best app, which they’ve invested millions in and everyone will start using. When they have enough users, they’ll start making the rules (this won’t affect your experience, the cat videos will continue to flow in). It won’t matter when they defederate from the other servers (what’s the fediverse anyway amirite?) By that time, they may even be able to buy the rights to the nostalgic name of a bankrupt company and call the app Twitter.

   • Salavora (salavora@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 19:40:27 JST Salavora

     in reply to

     @aral If I only want to watch cat videos, I don't need to know, let alone understand, how the internet works, about VPN, fillezilla and different browsers as long as I have something that establishes the connection. Be it via dial up modem and the stuff on the good old AOL CD or fibre optics and Vodafone.
     What I am taking away from this: The other parts of the fediverse exist, but at the moment mastodon is the only bit, that is important to my interests and I can forget about the rest.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 20:01:58 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • nellie_m
     • Fish Id Wardrobe

     @nellie_m I’ll just be happy if those actively engaged in shaping public opinion have some clue what we’re talking about :)

     @fishidwardrobe

   • nellie_m (nellie_m@home.social)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 20:01:59 JST nellie_m

     in reply to

     • Fish Id Wardrobe

     @fishidwardrobe @aral
     yes.
     And I’m on the phone trying to troubleshoot for the umpteenth time and can’t even find out whether she’s talking about Mail or Firefox or the Finder: she doesn’t get how the name in the menu bar in the upper left hand corner is the active app in the foreground. They’re all the same to her 😏
     Point here is, no, the fediverse is not an app. And we’ll probably have to embrace that some using it won’t ever know what we’re talking about.

   • Fish Id Wardrobe (fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Saturday, 24-Dec-2022 20:02:00 JST Fish Id Wardrobe

     in reply to

     • nellie_m

     @nellie_m @aral Well, technically, she's more or less right. Everything she sees is *presented in* a window. So if she says "The email window" to describe Outlook, say, then that's pretty much how I describe it, too…

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 25-Dec-2022 19:57:59 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • clew

     @clew An app is one thing; the fediverse is many things that you can experience in different ways using a plethora of different apps.

     PS. I like to think I have a pretty good grasp of why “appness” matters… although watching this talk back I cringe every time “UX” – instead of just design – and users – instead of people – comes out of my mouth. That, and my naïve approach to open and how mistaken I was to value it over free as in freedom.) :)

     https://archive.org/details/podcast_fronteers-videos_aral-balkan-the-future-is-na_1000106521975

     https://ar.al/notes/the-documents-to-applications-continuum/

   • clew (clew@octodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 25-Dec-2022 19:58:00 JST clew

     in reply to

     I would guess that anyone who needed to hear that the Fediverse isn’t an app could also use a refresher on why app-ness matters. Apps are a norm for enormous swaths of people.

     What difference is important to you just now?

     @aral