A place to talk about spreadmastodon.org and wider issues that this brings up

Fediversity
1

Talking to the person behind https://spreadmastodon.org/

Had a look through his https://bluem.ventures/ list of projects, it’s all Slacktivism - Wikipedia and #NGO pushing.

Asked him, “Have you taken a moment or two to think this might be seen, on balance, as damage rather than helping the #openweb culture of the communers who built the spaces you are going to be pushing at? It’s important not to be doing blinded Imperialism - Wikipedia coming into a “commons” space.”

Issues on this here Activism can we try and address these issues, to mediate the balance of damage/good before you push the project out, thanks.

20338

2

While I don’t necessarily agree with what this project is doing, it’s a free country. :man_shrugging: . But I do find your question (below) interesting, and curious of what you mean by it:

Have you taken a moment or two to think this might be seen, on balance, as damage rather than helping the #openweb culture of the communers who built the spaces you are going to be pushing at?

What damage do you think this will cause exactly and how?

3

On this subject, I can point you to a few different views

A #mainstreaming view An Open Web

A neutral view OpenWeb - Wikipedia sadly this has been captured by a #dotcons, god that’s bad, we should change this. The other option I found, a very bad article that is closer Online community - Wikipedia

My background view http://hamishcampbell.com/tag/openweb/ is what am talking about.

You will notice I am using a social view of the technical internet and #openweb as at their root they are more social than technical, though this is likely hard to see for most people - we need to make this easer :slight_smile:

Ps. there is a song for this subject The Coders Song

Have a read of the background (more lack of it, what a mess) then feel free to ask me from this.

UPDATE I asked Wikipedia to move the #dotcons squatted page for #openweb please add your voice here thanks https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AOpenWeb#Can_we_move_this_artical_off_squating_#openweb

4

i’m not hamish, but i assume that pitching specifically “mastodon” and even more specifically “mastodon.social” is the issue. if we’re all using the same things, that leads to a monoculture, and if most people are piling onto a single server, then that’s opening the door to encirclement and possible enclosure of the Open Web.

3 Likes
5

Yep, that’s a core problem, good to also look at the wider issues this raises:

"#openweb culture comes from the principles and values of the early internet, where open standards and decentralized systems were prioritized over closed, proprietary ones. This culture is based on the idea of a free and open internet, where anyone can participate and create without the need for gatekeepers.

#Slacktivism is a term used to describe online activism that requires minimal effort or engagement, such as signing an online petition or changing your social media profile picture. While these actions can raise awareness about an issue, they are criticized for being insincere and ineffective in creating real change.

#NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, are involved in social activism and advocacy work. However, they are criticized for promoting their own agendas rather than empowering the communities they claim to serve. This can create a power imbalance, where the voices and needs of the community are not heard or prioritized.

We need to think about the #mainstreaming of these issues’ due to the increasing visibility and attention they are pushing in the wider public, move back to the #openweb.

With this shift in attention comes the risk of co-optation or watering down of the original values and principles. It is important to be on guard and maintain a healthy balance, ensuring that the voices and needs of communities are prioritized and that efforts are not insincere or ineffective.

The wider #Fediverse relying heavily on a single platform, mastodon or instance https://mastodon.social, can have negative consequences. Leading to a concentration of power and influence in the hands of a few individuals and entities. This can result in issues such as censorship, lack of innovation, and a loss of privacy for users.

Additionally, if a single server or platform is responsible for hosting a significant portion of user data or activity, it could become a target for cyberattacks or data breaches."

Good to keep in mind it’s a subject which is about balance as much as right and wrong.

7

I agree with all of that. The OP mentions “damage”. I guess I don’t necessarily agree with the amount of “damage” this post seems to make this particular scenario out to be. That’s why I was curious about it. There’s a lot of “damage” on the internet :slight_smile:

Ironically, an “open” web means we should promote decentralization, but it also means people should have the right to do what they want on the web as well (as long as it’s legal, ofc). If someone disagrees with it, just email them and voice your feedback and concerns. Unless I’m just missing something, it doesn’t seem like there’s much discussion to be had around this :man_shrugging:.

But, in efforts to be slightly more productive, what exactly can we do about this sort of “damage”? Other than calling one’s specific efforts out in a public forum?

1 Like
8

There are quite a few threads on mastodon that are dealing with this issue in a good way, the more, the better please.

UPDATE
When a group of people come in to the #Fediverse with an imperialistic agenda and hide this agenda, we end up with lots more mess and a bad smell at best or real damage to our commoners at worst. It’s important that we catch his early and try and mediate for a less stinky and damaging outcome.

They are often trying to help, let’s try and work with them if we can. But please PUSH back hard if we can’t, keep it polite #FULFFY is best.

9

I agree. Mastodon can do what they want. They are an independent FOSS project. We might be frustrated about it and should encourage collaboration where we can. Other than that, by focusing on the heterogenous future of the Fediverse rather than a narrow microblogging path, our success in doing so will provide incentives for Mastodon to comply to that or risk side-tracking their app.

1 Like
10

Yep, both of these answers are basically #BLOCKING because they don’t engage with the text here, and they disagree without any meaningful content. This is kinda the same issue we are actually talking about on this thread with the original topic.

The is wide discushern on mastodon, can link you to it if you can’t find it and are interested?

Nobody is saying any different to this, so nothing is being said, just likely adding mess with lines like this.

This is what this text is about - so not adding anything here, the rest is simple repeating what I was saying in a tone that is disagreement… adding more mess.

Signal-to-noise issue @aschrijver can you please try to communicate in a less mess creating way, and please try and add something to the thread, thanks.

20338

Am assuming you guys are replying to the thread so answering as if you were.

1 Like
12

Soooo… we can’t agree with each other now? Support each other? Really?

1 Like
13

This is not a personal issue as every post tries to say, good to keep on subject and not get distracted, thanks. In the terms of the tread, it’s a group, social issue, yes the “personal mess” is a result of the subject, but not the subject of the thread.

Let’s focus on the thread

This thread is about this second part, the topic of the thread, not personal drama, thanks.

This is a small collection of the threads there are meany more, I think mastodon is starting to fail for threaded convastions and failed a while ago for history… our projects at the #OMN address these issues. Who else has thinking on this?

the mess
the mess750×709 35.6 KB

The #mainstreaming system is coming… what’s the plan?

14

Did you notice the text on the embeds “Mastodon hosted on campaign.openworlds.info” something about that seems wrong?

BRANDING on the fediverse is a thread (that also goes well off-topic) on the subject.

16

OK, thanks for confirming.

17

On the subject of the thread :wink:

The has been lot of good feedback to the one man #PR company https://bluem.ventures/ who are making the website for spreadmastodon.org (This site is not affiliated with Mastodon gGMBH) they say they are going to update the site from the feedback and have not surprisingly fallen silent to do that.

Must stress, was a LOT of good feedback, I think the drama came from their initial interaction on mastodon, they talked about the #Fediverse and decentralized federation, but the draft site only talked about the brand and the only instance was the brand’s flagship instance.

It was this normal #mainstreaming mismatch that created the feedback, let’s see.

18

On the wider issues Fedi.Tips: "I don't think people are realising the danger the…" - Mastodon 🐘 this huge thread is on topic.

Why am posting it? Because it’s full of twitter like poison toots as well as a few voices of reason.

It illustrates that the #mainstreaming mess is here, and it’s growing.

What’s the ideas/ plan to compost some of this mess, this is a “native” subject for #socialhub #OGB

UPDATE this is a good summing up of the issue [BUG] App onboarding is directing new users to join mastodon.social by default · Issue #1023 · mastodon/mastodon-ios · GitHub and gives you a place to “vote” and comment directly to the #FOSS #feudalism and petition the king though his favourites

19

I believe there’s a middle ground here that sidesteps heated escalation and talks of defederating from large instances:

20

Yep the defederate from big instance makes little useful sense for a first second or 3ed action, there are a lot of bad ideas floating around. Hoping this is a space to focus on good “native” ones for action.

For me, in the end, this is a social and political problem - tech likely does not have a useful solution by itself.

22

Social, as in different groups of people with different agendas. Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Social - Wikipedia

Political as in Politics - Wikipedia “is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.”

Rarely are we using the terms in #mainstreaming ways, what would be the point :wink:

The issue we face most of the time is that these strong currents are unspoken, much of the time the people expressing them are actually blind that they are motivated by social ideals. People find this hard to see or hard to accept other’s point of views - creates much of the mess we have to compost.

In this thread we have Mastodon, well more the king and his favourites, pushing power politics Might makes right - Wikipedia they can do this in a #mainstreaming way because they are the majority of use on the #Fediverse it is a normal way of thinking in #FOSS

Remember they are doing what they are doing from the “best” of intentions and are honest in this, nobody is wrong from the view of #FOSS governance. But the load of people saying don’t do this from a “social” #fediverse “culture” point of view.

We need to build a bridge between social and political when likely the majority of people don’t actually see these - that’s a challenge :slight_smile:

UPDATE
The mess we are making Updated Welcome-Screen (IOS-134) by zeitschlag · Pull Request #1005 · mastodon/mastodon-ios · GitHub #mastodon locked as off-topic and limited conversation to collaborators

Because people were saying things like “This PR was not reviewed thoroughly, as #Mastodon is a decentralized way to access the Fediverse, so pushing a specific server is not beneficial for the network.”

mastdon
mastdon985×778 55.2 KB

23

What #mastodon is doing now is going to lead to a lot of mess, duo to people squabbling. This might or might not be a level of mess that negates the vertical move to “simplicity” of a single codebase and a single instance. That would be a waste.

Good not to get confused about this part, it is the king and his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favourite that are pushing this mess,

This is actually the same as the #NGO mess we see in #XR at the same time

As the righwing is failing, the mess is growing in the left… who would have thought… well actually we should all think about this as the is a long history of the same thing happening over the years.