Here's your irregular reminder that:
Twitter was a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees.
Mastodon is a niche hobbyist product run by volunteers
The fact that we're being seen as a viable alternative to them is an admission that a federated, decentralized future is not only possible, but desirable.
Mastodon is not one thing, or one place. It's a network of many things and many places. We don't have a spokesperson (I mean, there's me. I'm the official spokesperson for 💯 of the fediverse, but beyond me there is no spokesperson) we don't have consensus on moderation or blocking or tools or what is good and what is bad. Some of us are professional SREs and Sysadmins, some of us aren't. Some of our instances have been around for 5+ years, some won't be here in six months.
And that's good! All of it, every last bit of it is good.
We're wrestling power away from the billionaire class, in real time, and reclaiming it for the People.
We're wrestling power away from the billionaire class, in real time.
This is bigger than some technical standard.
This is cultural, political, and economic.
We represent an existential threat to the business model of some of the most wealthy corporations on the planet, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let anyone take that away from us without fighting against it with everything I have.
We are standing on the precipice of a transformative shift in the way we, as a society, relate to one another through the internet.
We are moving away from a Broadcast and Toward a conversation.
This is mutual aid, this is anticapitalism, this is collaborative ideation.
We are living revolutionary values, right here, right now, on a silly little social media network.
And I will fight to my last breathe any God Damn corporation that tries to Monetize that.
This is the future, and you're a part of it now. Be a good steward of the future.
necessarily anticapitalism (private control of capital is what gives us the freedom to create our own websites), but besides that point I agree with everything you've written.
These megacorps have gotten too big for their britches, and they've forgotten we don't actually need them.
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@sj_zero I'm pretty sure that being against the capitalist class is the definition of anticapitalism.
Maybe your definition of capitalism differs from the common one, and somehow has grown to include all forms of ownership and commerce?
Websites wouldn't stop existing under socialism, and it's foolish or wildly misleading to pretend otherwise.
In my view, you don't need corporations to have capitalism. One of my more radical views is that we should get rid of corporations entirely, and then the owner of a thing would be personally responsible when their thing breaks things or people or the environment instead of letting a legal picture of Dorian Grey take the heat.
@sj_zero banning corporations from existing sounds an awful lot like an anti-capitalist stance to me, although going hyperindividualist route instead of a collectivist route at the end sounds counterproductive, but if it gets us to a world where the workers own the means of production, I don't much care.
@ajroach42 I have been trying to look for curating as much of a decentralized internet experience for myself that modern internet may allow me to have with most modern social media.
I really enjoy the way this is laid out and so far as a whole seems less stressful than other major social media in this.
I know I have been looking at things like neocities too to check out as well in trying to do this to make my own webpage in and everything. Reminding me of when I was a kid a lot.
@unfossil neocities is great.
Have you looked at gemini any? https://gem.ajroach42.com/posts/2022-11-07-What-the-eff-is-gemini.gmi
Corporations are a government construct. They don't exist in nature and didn't exist in economies until relatively recently. Their unnatural existence twists the real world.
As far as the Fediverse replacing Twitter, I'm still skeptical. Yes, there is a bit of a run here by folks who were on Twitter. But I'll be interested to see how things look 2-3 years from now. I could just as easily see another big tech platform come along and be the next "hot" thing that people run to. I'm glad the Fediverse is getting exposure, but I'm not convinced it will catch on with the average person who just wants to share pictures of their family, pets, life, etc. and cyberstalk ex's. I am entirely open to being wrong here, but I think a lot of people will look and leave because it isn't like big tech. It's too different. For me, it's a great thing, but I never had a Twitter account in the first place and I have enough tech knowledge to run my own instance. That's not most people.
Most corporations are not publicly traded. Hell, my wife has one for her little vintage store. Basically it's there in case someone decides to sue her for whatever reason, they can't take our house, retirement, etc.
I think that the litigiousness is a direct consequence of this: The culture is these megacorporations that can't drain shareholders of anything but the money they've invested, and they don't manage risk because of that, so the lawsuits fly easily and often because the companies are huge enough to have tons of money to pay out and reckless enough that they're making stupid enough mistakes to have to pay out!
Then like bad parts of other cultures, it bleeds into everyday life, and suddenly you've got million dollar lawsuits for nothing between individual people, and then people need millions of dollars of liability insurance just in case, which drives more money and power into the hands of megacorporations.
Word. The issue is oligarchy. Why can one man destroy Twitter in one month? If we outlawed billionaires, these billionaires would not be free to destroy so much.
Or able to rewrite laws through lobbying with governments, effectively excluding and hampering the citizens of a country at adapting the law to their needs.
When government and companirs get to cosy we are in danger of fascism and untempered capitalism.
Look at the Uber case.
https://www.icij.org/tags/uber-files/
Why Is Anti-Monopoly Cool Again? Part I (Big issue 6-24-2019)
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-anti-monopoly-cool-again-part
The real world creates limits to things. Nations can only become so big. Cities can only become so big. Creatures can only become so big. After a point, the pressures against growing start to outweigh the pressure to grow and there's an equilibrium.
Creating an immortal and faceless corporation that makes the creator of that corporation largely blameless for anything that happens in it to a certain point bypasses many of the limitations nature puts on things. Eventually rich people die and they split their fortune among their descendants for example. If individuals are held to account for the consequences of their machinations then that seems like a reasonable limiter.
And if we realize that we can't get anything done because there's too many forms of liability out there, maybe then the incentive will be to chill out a bit. Why should the owner of a megacorp get more protection from such things than a regular person? Just make everyone more free instead of having a loophole to deal with the crippling regulation.
@ajroach42 @sj_zero Man, I don't even know what capitalism is anymore. Part of the problem (from a theoretical standpoint) is that capitalism was originally defined by socialists, who framed it in the terms provided by the labor theory of value. Mainstream has since rejected labor theory in favor of marginal utility. So it's as if the dictionary defined combustion in terms of phlogiston.
Agreed. I think maybe we are also referring to markets? But markets have always existed. Capitalism as an ideology has not.
I do wonder though if the core capitalist ideology ever really conceived within itself the ideal of ever unlimited profits? When you read about innovation that improves the costs of production or market equilibrium, it always seems there is some understood need for profit but not exponentially increasing profit.
@ajroach42 what does “federated” mean, in the sense you’re using it here?
@DrDanMarshall @sj_zero That's a great point (except that the labor theory of value is still largely correct, have you looked in to the work of Anwar Shaikh at all?)
@ajroach42
> Mastodon is not one thing, or one place. It's a network of many things and many places.
Many of them not even Mastodon at all. Let's fediverse.party! ;)
@ajroach42 It is so VERY interesting, the whole setup - seems to me to be close to the original internet setup! Thank you, you and all your colleagues on the other servers - it's very exciting to this old COBOL programmer!
@woolhatwoman @ajroach42 yeah, really eh? My very first impression - this week - is "oh! This is like the old Usenet news feed! But like, realtime and pretty!"
@arbalister @woolhatwoman I think it's got more in common with fidonet than usenet, but there's a little of each in here and a lot else besides.
@ajroach42
> it's got more in common with fidonet than usenet
Is Lemmy more like UseNet than Mastodon?
@midway can you explain what you mean by this? What are these two instances and why aren’t they federated?
@ajroach42 @sj_zero I have not, but I'll add that to my reading list. Do you agree that different kinds of labor are differently elastic in response to demand? (Also, do resources have market value because we produce them, or do we produce them because they have market value?)
@billstclair @strypey They're privately owned, so it's hard to give them an exact value, but I imagine it's not $50B anymore.
And they're apparently down to under 1000 employees, possibly under 500.
They still exist, but they are substantially smaller, and worth substantially less.
Hence "was"
A lean, mean tweeting machine! As I said, I'll wait and see.
WhatsApp was written in Erlang, by less than 50 engineers, yet it supported a billion users.
https://www.quora.com/Is-WhatsApp-fully-written-in-Erlang
Unfortunately, the "Open Source" link there doesn't work any more. Facebook must have stopped publishing it.
@billstclair @strypey @ajroach42 well it’s what we all got used to and accepted but the worlds going through dramatic change, and in many ways those changes only younger people are driving them so, things change
@ajroach42 @sj_zero uh, let me back up. I'm not an economist, I'm a philosopher who's taken a few intro econ courses and I've done some reading on my own. I'm working on an apology for social liberalism, and I'm currently writing a chapter against anarcho-socialism. So I would like to hang out with some anarcho-socialists, to make sure I'm not screwing up.
That said, do y'all grok what I mean by "elastic in response to demand"?
@midway @ajroach42 there’s a lot learning about the features and capabilities of this platform in my future
@ajroach42 this ⬇️ 💯
“The fact that we're being seen as a viable alternative to them is an admission that a federated, decentralized future is not only possible, but desirable.”
Massive thanks, too, because to be hosting a place that suddenly thousands show up & crashed the party must be bloody exhausting as well.
Appreciate you
@ajroach42 it is not a good thing that you don't have moderator concensus. it's not a good thing that some instances (say ones that promote diversity and inclusion) won't be here in six months, or will get locked down because of too many diverse people want to be included.
Twitter provided stability for these cleavages to grow. This isn't about decentralization, it's about centralization by one specific asshole.
@victoriadecapua If you honestly believe that, then you might be happier somewhere else.
The flexibility of decentralization is the only reason that a legitimately community run, grass roots social media network can exist.
If that idea, of people owning and controlling their own infrastructure, is more scary than it is exciting, you might not like it here.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope you enjoy it here. I have, for the 6 years I've been here.
re: lack of moderator consensus - This is good because it means that some instances can take an extreme stance on moderation, without having to build consensus and convince others. It means that some instances (many, most?) can block the instances that get too big to moderate (like the one that you're using, which effectively only has one moderator)
re: instances coming and going - Migration is easy. Setting up a new instance can be done with a few clicks for a few bucks a month to support several dozen people. More, smaller instances is good, even if some of them don't last very long, because it spreads the burden of moderation, and it makes it easier for people to find niche communities that they wouldn't otherwise.
Twitter provided stability through centralization until one man exploited that centralization for personal gain.
That can't happen here (but a million other bad things can!)
@ajroach42 and do stop acting like running a social platform is the same as starting a revolution. It's insulting to the people who actually are being murdered in defence of their beliefs.
Saying it's anti-capitalist while calling it the free market of ideas in the same breath is not a very promising framework for protecting people against gatekeeping, exclusion, abuse or silencing. Learn as you go is great, but it can do harm, too. And we *know* the harmful shit.
@victoriadecapua Wow, that's some vitriol.
Where did I say "free market of ideas"? That's a bullshit phrase that I absolutely would not use.
We built a volunteer run network that provides (for some) an alternative to a multi-billion dollar corporation. What is that if not anti-capitalist?
I really hope you find your way past whatever it is that has led you to lash out at someone you don't know, and put words in my mouth.
I didn't destroy twitter, and I didn't build mastodon. I'm just a guy who believes in what we're building here. (and, apparently, you're someone who does not?)
@DrDanMarshall @ajroach42 @sj_zero
Adam Smith and David Ricardo also subscribed to the labor theory of value. In the 18th Century it was absolutely the mainstream among the founders of political economy.
The penny didn't drop until some of Ricardo's followers realized that the labor theory necessarily implied that profit was theft that the backpedaling and tracks-covering began.
@Voline @ajroach42 @sj_zero Yeah, labor theory was mainstream until early 20th Century. The economists who proposed marginal utility were doing some anti-Marxist propaganda. But marginal utility is still a better theory than labor. Dismissing as *just* capitalist propaganda would be committing the genetic fallacy.
@DrDanMarshall @sj_zero ah. An apology for social liberalism sounds like exactly the kind of thing I'd hate.
You should pester @connor_dylan
@ajroach42 @sj_zero @connor_dylan lol. Definitely need to come up with a different title. If Connor show up, I'll try to remember to turn off your mentions.
@midway @Voline @ajroach42 @sj_zero oh, it made *some* sense back in the day. Karl could probably make some excuse about the value of the *social* amount of labor that goes into sex, and it's resulting exchange value :D
@strypey @arbalister @woolhatwoman My point was that usenet access was normally through a university or ISP, where fidonet was usually through a small BBS in your home town.
@ajroach42
Ah ok, more a difference in logistics than UX ;)
@billstclair
Encrypted, private chat is a very different beast from a social media platform. WhatSap is basically a glorified XMPP service. It can federate internally, so it can scale horizontally. It doesn't integrate a video hosting service. It publishes nothing on the web, so no DMCA requests. It can claim not to see any user-generated content (coz E2EE), so no moderation required. It's a much simpler service to run than Titter, both technically and socially.
I agree with you that the social media problem is harder, especially socially. I still think that most of the problems are best solved with the individual user's mute and block buttons.
Spam is best solved by being the server operator's customer, meaning you pay for the service. Federation would also not be free. Exactly what the prices should be is an issue for a free market to decide. Some server operators would prefer moderation to user and federation charges.
@ajroach42 @midway @sj_zero corporations can be held cooperatively. They just usually are not. I used to be against llc. but its not the llc that is the problem its that the shareholders have sole control over the corporation. if there was a more democratic ownership structure this would not be an issue.
@syrus @ajroach42 @sj_zero
Oligarchy and Transnational Organized Crime.
@ajroach42 @Irelandinsideandout Decentralized is a kind of half-true, considering that most instances are hosted on AWS and Azure.
@Tribo @Irelandinsideandout 1) if you want to come in a split hairs, instead consider don't?
2) yes, some instances are using S3 for storage, but Azure? Two that I know of. Significantly more on Digital Ocean. The point remains, if a major cloud provider went down a bunch of instances would go down too.
But not all of them, that's the point.
And regardless of where I'm hosting, I get a good offsite backup once a week. If something happened to my host, I could spin up a server in a local co-lo or in a closet if I wanted to, and be back online in a few minutes. There might be some loss, but the network would continue on without issue.
This is like complaining that it's "decentralized" except that it still requires an internet connection.
And, like, yeah fair! I'd love for my instance to be able to federate over sneakernet. We'll get there one day.
@ajroach42 @Irelandinsideandout Digital Ocean funded by Andreessen Horowitz 😀
@Tribo @Irelandinsideandout you seem like an intelligent person, surely you can tell the difference between a VC having a controlling stake in an organization, and a loose association of people purchasing services from an array of companies.
We live under capitalism, and so long as we do it is impossible to consume ethically. Every major cloud provider took some VC money. Most ISPs are also explicitly evil, funded by fascists. Hardware manufacturers are, on the whole, not great either.
I'm not sure why you insist on playing this bullshit gotcha game, maybe it's because you're not a good journalist, so this is all you have? I dunno I've never read your work, but this kind of antagonism doesn't make me want to.
You responded to something I said with some bad faith quibbling over centralization, and then doubled down with a well-actually-that-corporation-is-also-bad.
If you're actually trying to have a conversation about the way things work now, or the ways they could be improved in the future, sure let's go. If you just want to knock us all down a peg because you're angry you have to be here, leave me out of it.
@ajroach42 fantastic and admirable what you are doing. I really hope it grows and sustains. If I'm honest, I think the communication about the product is poor, but I understand how difficult it must be as a decentralised platform. But is there a long-term future as a volunteer-led project? Is the Wikipedia model the general aim with voluntary financial contributions from users? And how will content moderation be managed? Maybe there is a website or document with a platform guide?
@olan the "project" is more than a decade old, and decended from other older projects. Is there a long term future?
@ajroach42 I'm getting more engagement and more interesting engagement here than on Twitter, with far less effort.
it's both the ending of the power to translate money into influence, and the realization of the internet's potential to redemocratize (and warp speed) cultural evolution by letting the public now collectively determine the reach of anything anyone wants to say publicly (the 90s early web revolution).