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1. Panos Damelos (panos@calckey.social)'s status on Monday, 19-Jun-2023 15:08:30 JST Panos Damelos

   There is another reason I find the discussion about blocking #Meta's #ActivityPub project #Threads interesting:
   
   I've been saying for a while now that the #Fediverse is a new and different beast, and whoever tries to understand it simply as a direct social media replacement misses the whole picture. We're also federated communities, just as much.
   
   Today we see a lot of concern about "what will the #Fediverse do" with #Meta. Wanna know what we will do? Everything and nothing. Because the Fediverse is not one entity. This is the essence of its decentralized nature - and that's cool. If your server intends to block Meta servers completely - cool. If not, cool again.
   
   But if you expect a unified response on something like that, you're in for a disappointment.
   
   This is not a "schism", a "problem", something to "solve". This is just decentralization in practice. We don't need to have the same blocklists, and that's ok. Open protocols are not something you can control, so chill. When the time comes for this subject, choose a server with a policy that you agree with. But if you're worried that we won't all have one unified stance... are you sure you actually like #decentralization?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 19-Jun-2023 15:08:29 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Shine F.

     @panos @luthien1126 The fediverse isn’t decentralised, it is federated. What’s the difference? Give Meta and the other Silicon Valley companies a year or two and you’ll see.

     They never need more than the benefit of the doubt and a handful of useful idiots to legitimise them until they gain network effects.

     (It’s inevitable that they will take over this space given its design but social pressure could delay it. But it’s lacking where it’s needed the most.)

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 19-Jun-2023 15:29:21 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Shine F.

     @panos @luthien1126 Yes, there is something wrong with its design. It adopts the tech stack of Big Tech along with its scaling characteristics. It has inherent economies of scale. And yes, it is inevitable.

     But it’s also a stopgap and that has immediate, real-world value today. Especially for those of us working on alternatives that don’t have that design flaw like the Small Web (instances of one that connect to one another directly).

     #peerToPeer #SmallWeb

   • Panos Damelos (panos@calckey.social)'s status on Monday, 19-Jun-2023 15:29:22 JST Panos Damelos

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     • Shine F.

     @aral@mastodon.ar.al @luthien1126@mstdn.social If you truly believe that "it's inevitable that they will take over this space given its design", then there's something wrong with this space's design. If we can only delay it, then the whole issue is an exercise in futility anyway.
     
     I'm not afraid of the two fedi servers I use being "taken over", though. Users could jump ship and use Meta's platform instead, if it's that much better. But we always have the danger of users leaving fedi completely (on greek fedi for example, I certainly see less active users compared to 6 months ago). If users are gonna leave, I'd rather see them leave for Meta's federated platform, than for Meta's (or Musk's) centralized platforms - so that I can at least still follow them if I want. It would be great if Meta or similar companies didn't exist at all, but this is something for the fall of capitalism. Which I'm afraid will need much bigger struggle than fediblocking a server.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 19-Jun-2023 16:36:23 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Shine F.

     @panos @luthien1126 Oh I agree. The greatest value of the fediverse has been to get people (some people; it’s not mainstream as you say, but it’s far more mainstream than any of the other attempts have been) thinking in the right direction. And yes, once it becomes commonly accepted that it has been Web 2.0-ified by Silicon Valley, that’s what will drive folks to the Small Web. I’m just saying it’d be nice to have enough time to make sure it’s there when that happens.

   • Panos Damelos (panos@calckey.social)'s status on Monday, 19-Jun-2023 16:36:24 JST Panos Damelos

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan
     • Shine F.

     @aral@mastodon.ar.al @luthien1126@mstdn.social Perhaps you are right. However, "we need to save ActivityPub from big companies, although we can't" doesn't sound very convincing. If it's inevitable, then we need to focus on what you call "the small web" ASAP. And then there's the question: Is the small web also inevitable? Is the "federated" web inevitable? Because right now we're not even close to a point where ActivityPub-type federation is mainstream, and we're looking at ways to move further from that. The Fediverse could fail. The Small Web could never go mainstream. If you think that we can't avoid the centralization of ActivityPub but for now we need to delay big companies from joining it so that we have more time to prepare for the Small Web, how can you be sure that something like this won't accelerate things? That this isn't exactly what's needed right now, so that we see the design flaws of AP in action and move on? But the idea that we need to collectively leave the Fediverse behind but not right now is just an idea, just an opinion. I'm far from convinced that things will play out like you expect, and in expected timeframes.