Conversation

Notices

1. Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 05:13:24 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

   Seems to me that #Mastodon (& the other #Fediverse apps) represent a surprisingly sophisticated solution to a much more difficult technical & usability problem than what Twitter does... & it was developed in half the time & with several orders of magnitude less resource (both people & money). It's a remarkable feat no matter how you look at it.

   • Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 05:15:18 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     Most of Twitter's innovation & investment seem to be in areas of managing vast centralised computing challenges & sugar coating, from a UX-perspective, large scale user privacy exploitation.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 05:16:31 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @lightweight Yeah, as I've said before: A huge way FOSS achieves so much with so little resources is because we cut out the nonsense that comes with monetization!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 06:23:56 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • dn

     @lightweight @dn Yes, that's correct. We can't entirely do without monetisation in our current society, and we do for-the-most-part suffer (both devs & e.g. fediverse admins) due to the reduced income.

     And yes, I often see the need for curation being overlooked by techbros...

   • Dave Lane 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 06:23:59 JST Dave Lane 🇳🇿

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane
     • dn

     @dn @alcinnz I think Adrian's referring to the *code* that supports monetisation, and revenue-gathering features (like advertising engines and user profiling).

   • dn (dn@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 06:24:00 JST dn

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz @lightweight Is the "cut out" precisely true? #Federation shifts central hosting costs outwards. The individual instances must find their own #funding source.
     Considerable effort goes into building, maintaining, and moderating instances - again #distributed cf centralised, unlikely 24/7 coverage, and easily overlooked.
     Thanks to those who contribute to our/wider/federate benefit!

   • baconandcoconut (baconandcoconut@freeradical.zone)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 06:24:58 JST baconandcoconut

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz @lightweight And/or we're trying to write stuff for ourselves and human beings that we like rather than people we see as a source of income whose welfare (or lack thereof) does not unduly affect profitability.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Friday, 27-Jan-2023 06:24:58 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • baconandcoconut

     @baconandcoconut @lightweight This explains why we design things the way we do, but doesn't explain how we do it on so little funding.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 28-Jan-2023 02:37:53 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     • baconandcoconut

     @baconandcoconut @lightweight Yes, privilege is typically part of it, but its not just time we save by skipping adding the spyware, advertising, & DRM.

     Mastodon may not be the best example (judging by its reputation) but we typically can get by on less compute! Often we like to avoid servers entirely!

     I'm definitely relying on this as I configure the cheapest server I can find to manage my projects' development!

   • baconandcoconut (baconandcoconut@freeradical.zone)'s status on Saturday, 28-Jan-2023 02:37:54 JST baconandcoconut

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz @lightweight It probably saves a little time to skip adding in all the spyware and advertising? But I suspect that part of the answer is that the FOSS community contains many people who have the time and energy to do work they don't get paid for because their day job pays well and their position in society doesn't demand that they use all their leisure time for chores or care-taking.