I've said again and again that I consider it to be of the utmost importance that the #Fediverse grows far beyond its present size. My reasoning is thus:

All major commercial social media platforms are either owned by #fascists , or by people who are only too happy to bend their knees to the fascists for the sake of profits - and thus are also fascists for all moral accounting purposes.

And they have used the power of these social media platforms to heavily promote fascists, or opened the door for fascists to promote their agenda. The resurgence of fascism we are seeing in the world these days was largely done with the aid of social media - outrage farming is an _extremly_ effective tactic for promoting fascism, especially when the social media algorithms actively support you.

I think we can all agree that fighting fascism is important (and if you _don't_ agree, go away - I don't want to talk to you). Thus, we need to attack the mechanisms that allow fascism to grow - i.e. commercial social media.

Now, maybe there is a future where we won't have any kind of online social media, but barring a complete collapse of civilization I am not seeing it - humans are a communicative species, and have always used the latest technology for that purpose. Thus, I don't see the concept of "social media" by itself to go away any time soon.

But replacing _commercial_ social media seems much more achievable - after all, the problem is #Capitalism, not #SocialMedia itself. Thus, we need to grow _noncommercial_ social media until can replace corporate social media. And as far as I can see, the Fediverse is the most viable noncommercial alternative out there.

The main objectiion to "growing the Fediverse" that I have heard is this:

"#X, #Facebook , #TikTok and the others are full of assholes. If the Fediverse grows as big as they are, all the assholes will come here as well!"

And I can understand that fear. We need to be careful about _how_ we grow the Fediverse, and there is much work to be done. Our moderation tools, for instance, could be much better than they are (just ask #BlackMastodon ...). However, of all the social media systems out there, the Fediverse alone actually has the potential to develop _better_ moderation in the long run - while commercial social media platforms see good moderation as _hostile_ to their business models (as recent revelations about #Meta have shown). Thus, fear of failure should not stop us from making the attempt.

Furthermore, while the (algorithm-boosted) fascists might be the loudest people on commercial social media right now, I believe that the majority of people using social media in the modern world are _not_ assholes, and we want to encourage these not-assholes to come to the Fediverse in large number. Or do you really think that the (predominantly white and European/North American) Fediverse bubble represents the only not-asshole group left on the planet?

And consider the stakes. Not only will the fascists become increasingly violent towards marginalized groups of people, they are actively hostile to any efforts to fight threats to Earth as a whole - #GlobalWarming first among them. We need to wrestle the microphone from them before they doom us all, and that means wrestling social media away from them - but we cannot do that without replacing commercial social media with non-commercial social media.

At least, that's what I think. If you have any better plans to fight the social media power of fascists, feel free to share them!

@juergen_hubert

It's not like we can plead with Exxon or Disney to switch off Twitter.

But governments? Three levels of government in most countries all use Twitter on a low, department level. Every paving job, every snow day is announced on Twitter. All the Universities and schools announce on Twitter.

Lean on THEM. If all government and academia leave Twitter for Mastodon, big blow for freedom right there, big blow against a gross site.

And it might start a stampede.

@juergen_hubert i think your reasoning is sound, except, what do we do?
- we can't force people to join the fediverse
- we can't improve how it works to make it more friendly (unless the new management at Mastodon behaves very differently than before)
- i think most of us are already telling our friends how cool it is

@fishidwardrobe

I have to disagree about your second point. I know I have made that mistake myself in my early days, but the #Fediverse is bigger than #Mastodon . Right now, I have accounts at instances using the following systems (not counting Mastodon):

- #BookWyrm
- #Pixelfed
- #Lemmy
- #NeoDB
- My #WordPress blog, using the #ActivityPub plugin

And I also want to do things with #PeerTube next year - and that's just a fraction of all the Fediverse implementations out there. All these systems are interoperable - and if we really want to sell the Fediverse, we need to stop thinking of it purely in terms of the software that happens to be the most popular right now.

And even if we _do_ only talk about Mastodon, there are all sorts of people who are working on addons that are independent of the "official" Mastodon setup. We are _not_ solely dependent on Mastodon gGmbH.

As for selling the Fediverse, we could do that in a more targeted manner. Identify the needs of specific groups of people, and then tell them which specific software, which specific instance is most suitable for their needs.

Fish Id Wardrobe “- we can’t improve how it works to make it more friendly (unless the new management at Mastodon behaves very differently than before)”

Why not? There are other fediverse projects out there. At the very least, we can look for and support ones that are trying to actually improve things.

I've said again and again that I consider it to be of the utmost importance that the #Fediverse grows far beyond its present size. My reasoning is thus:

All major commercial social media platforms are either owned by #fascists , or by people who are only too happy to bend their knees to the fascists for the sake of profits - and thus are also fascists for all moral accounting purposes.

And they have used the power of these social media platforms to heavily promote fascists, or opened the door for fascists to promote their agenda. The resurgence of fascism we are seeing in the world these days was largely done with the aid of social media - outrage farming is an _extremly_ effective tactic for promoting fascism, especially when the social media algorithms actively support you.

I think we can all agree that fighting fascism is important (and if you _don't_ agree, go away - I don't want to talk to you). Thus, we need to attack the mechanisms that allow fascism to grow - i.e. commercial social media.

Now, maybe there is a future where we won't have any kind of online social media, but barring a complete collapse of civilization I am not seeing it - humans are a communicative species, and have always used the latest technology for that purpose. Thus, I don't see the concept of "social media" by itself to go away any time soon.

But replacing _commercial_ social media seems much more achievable - after all, the problem is #Capitalism, not #SocialMedia itself. Thus, we need to grow _noncommercial_ social media until can replace corporate social media. And as far as I can see, the Fediverse is the most viable noncommercial alternative out there.

The main objectiion to "growing the Fediverse" that I have heard is this:

"#X, #Facebook , #TikTok and the others are full of assholes. If the Fediverse grows as big as they are, all the assholes will come here as well!"

And I can understand that fear. We need to be careful about _how_ we grow the Fediverse, and there is much work to be done. Our moderation tools, for instance, could be much better than they are (just ask #BlackMastodon ...). However, of all the social media systems out there, the Fediverse alone actually has the potential to develop _better_ moderation in the long run - while commercial social media platforms see good moderation as _hostile_ to their business models (as recent revelations about #Meta have shown). Thus, fear of failure should not stop us from making the attempt.

Furthermore, while the (algorithm-boosted) fascists might be the loudest people on commercial social media right now, I believe that the majority of people using social media in the modern world are _not_ assholes, and we want to encourage these not-assholes to come to the Fediverse in large number. Or do you really think that the (predominantly white and European/North American) Fediverse bubble represents the only not-asshole group left on the planet?

And consider the stakes. Not only will the fascists become increasingly violent towards marginalized groups of people, they are actively hostile to any efforts to fight threats to Earth as a whole - #GlobalWarming first among them. We need to wrestle the microphone from them before they doom us all, and that means wrestling social media away from them - but we cannot do that without replacing commercial social media with non-commercial social media.

At least, that's what I think. If you have any better plans to fight the social media power of fascists, feel free to share them!

@fishidwardrobe

I have to disagree about your second point. I know I have made that mistake myself in my early days, but the #Fediverse is bigger than #Mastodon . Right now, I have accounts at instances using the following systems (not counting Mastodon):

- #BookWyrm
- #Pixelfed
- #Lemmy
- #NeoDB
- My #WordPress blog, using the #ActivityPub plugin

And I also want to do things with #PeerTube next year - and that's just a fraction of all the Fediverse implementations out there. All these systems are interoperable - and if we really want to sell the Fediverse, we need to stop thinking of it purely in terms of the software that happens to be the most popular right now.

And even if we _do_ only talk about Mastodon, there are all sorts of people who are working on addons that are independent of the "official" Mastodon setup. We are _not_ solely dependent on Mastodon gGmbH.

As for selling the Fediverse, we could do that in a more targeted manner. Identify the needs of specific groups of people, and then tell them which specific software, which specific instance is most suitable for their needs.

@juergen_hubert these things are not really a replacement for *social media*.

but, actually, i think you have a point. get folks in here first, by hook or by crook. expanding these other activitypub services is fertile ground.

Jürgen Hubert

As for selling the Fediverse, we could do that in a more targeted manner. Identify the needs of specific groups of people, and then tell them which specific software, which specific instance is most suitable for their needs.

One of my long standing pain points with the fediverse as is is that no one seems to be able to look beyond “let’s spin up a general purpose microblogging website that exists solely to interface with all of the other general purpose microblogging websites”. The biggest promise of the fediverse is that you can have your pre-corporate internet style topic-focused community, and you can look over the fence at other things you’re interested in. This actually addresses a missing niche, while “8000 generic twitter-like fiefdoms” does not.

But if it’s not just aping the look and function of existing, generic, mass-market social media, with all of its dark patterns included, then people seem to turn their noses up at it. And I just don’t get it.

I've said again and again that I consider it to be of the utmost importance that the #Fediverse grows far beyond its present size. My reasoning is thus:

All major commercial social media platforms are either owned by #fascists , or by people who are only too happy to bend their knees to the fascists for the sake of profits - and thus are also fascists for all moral accounting purposes.

And they have used the power of these social media platforms to heavily promote fascists, or opened the door for fascists to promote their agenda. The resurgence of fascism we are seeing in the world these days was largely done with the aid of social media - outrage farming is an _extremly_ effective tactic for promoting fascism, especially when the social media algorithms actively support you.

I think we can all agree that fighting fascism is important (and if you _don't_ agree, go away - I don't want to talk to you). Thus, we need to attack the mechanisms that allow fascism to grow - i.e. commercial social media.

Now, maybe there is a future where we won't have any kind of online social media, but barring a complete collapse of civilization I am not seeing it - humans are a communicative species, and have always used the latest technology for that purpose. Thus, I don't see the concept of "social media" by itself to go away any time soon.

But replacing _commercial_ social media seems much more achievable - after all, the problem is #Capitalism, not #SocialMedia itself. Thus, we need to grow _noncommercial_ social media until can replace corporate social media. And as far as I can see, the Fediverse is the most viable noncommercial alternative out there.

The main objectiion to "growing the Fediverse" that I have heard is this:

"#X, #Facebook , #TikTok and the others are full of assholes. If the Fediverse grows as big as they are, all the assholes will come here as well!"

And I can understand that fear. We need to be careful about _how_ we grow the Fediverse, and there is much work to be done. Our moderation tools, for instance, could be much better than they are (just ask #BlackMastodon ...). However, of all the social media systems out there, the Fediverse alone actually has the potential to develop _better_ moderation in the long run - while commercial social media platforms see good moderation as _hostile_ to their business models (as recent revelations about #Meta have shown). Thus, fear of failure should not stop us from making the attempt.

Furthermore, while the (algorithm-boosted) fascists might be the loudest people on commercial social media right now, I believe that the majority of people using social media in the modern world are _not_ assholes, and we want to encourage these not-assholes to come to the Fediverse in large number. Or do you really think that the (predominantly white and European/North American) Fediverse bubble represents the only not-asshole group left on the planet?

And consider the stakes. Not only will the fascists become increasingly violent towards marginalized groups of people, they are actively hostile to any efforts to fight threats to Earth as a whole - #GlobalWarming first among them. We need to wrestle the microphone from them before they doom us all, and that means wrestling social media away from them - but we cannot do that without replacing commercial social media with non-commercial social media.

At least, that's what I think. If you have any better plans to fight the social media power of fascists, feel free to share them!

@kichae

Well, sure. That's true. But those other projects have to interoperate with Mastodon. That makes what they can do to change how the fediverse works limited.

@fishidwardrobe @kichae

No, both they and Mastodon have to adhere to the ActivityPub standard.

@juergen_hubert @kichae i rather thought that mastodon did *not* completely honour the standard — or that the standard was ambiguous — and misskey etc generally have to follow what Mastodon does.

Don't know myself; i've heard developers say that here.

Fish Id Wardrobe Yeah, Mastodon kinda does what it wants, and gets away with it due to market share. It picks and chooses what it wants to implement, and struggles to play nicely with many other AP platforms.

Even just as an end user of not-Mastodon, it’s really annoying.

@kichae thank you. so my point is, if you want to change the way the fediverse works non-trivially, you need to persuade Mastodon to change.

although to be honest i don't think the folks behind activtypub are any more open to acting on suggestions than Mastodon are. Partly that's for very practical reasons: they're both short on resources.

Fish Id Wardrobe Or, you leave Mastodon behind, and try to build a better garden that attracts people away.

@kichae well yes, but lots of people have tried tthat over the years, and really only Mastodon has ever suceeded. it's kind of a miracle.

Most of the other projects that managed to attract any users at all – friendica, Disapora, etc – quickly adopted some sort of interoperability with activitypub.

you can start again from scratch if you _want_, but…

@juergen_hubert
I feel like we don't have enough people.

@juergen_hubert
To be fair, it's been awhile since I've heard anyone saying we shouldn't grow the Fediverse. I think a lot of those people have had their concerns allayed or have seen the greater concern of these people controlling larger society.

I will also note, to your point of societal collapse or something, that the Fediverse is far more resilient to mass internet outages because the infrastructure is so spread out and 99% of the posts are backed up on most of that infrastructure, not simply on major services like Amazon AWS, but on smaller hosting companies servers, local to countries and communities, and even people's personal home setups.

In theory, the Fediverse could survive the total destruction of the commercially owned internet. (Though, hopefully, we will never have to test that)