#FediverseHouse this feels like an irrelevant echo chamber, I really miss the grassroots #DIY that built this space in the first place. This #maistreaming is too much noise vs signal... currently the grassroots #DIY space is a hollow shell
(two posts combined)
That immediately got me on edge as someone new to ActivityPub in 2024. Does this mean I'm "mainstream", and somehow "bad"?
Mainstream adoption is good and a step in the right direction. I personally think ActivityPub isn't ready for general mainstream consumption, but we as a group are rapidly closing the gap and I'd much rather continue building momentum instead of waiting for the opportune moment.
Here's the hot take that I was going to originally write, but thought came off as too combative:
It sounds like you feel like ActivityPub development only counts when you're toiling away in obscurity.
As someone who's hacking away on a platform that hasn't been "mainstream" for over a decade (forum/BBS software), I bristle at the notion that what I do doesn't count as grassroots or DIY. You don't have to be the perpetual underdog to do good in the world.
I might be wrong, but it sounds like Hamish feels like big players are coming in and taking the ball away... that big players' clout and presence takes away from the attention that smaller DIY projects receive.
Maybe... but if the fediverse is 100x larger with a big player, and they take 99% of the eyeballs, have they really taken anything away from you?
I know the initial brief was not for nodebb to replace other ActivityPub clients (like Mastodon and Lemmy.)
But theres some things Im not keen on in Mastodon, and Lemmy is annoying. Although good for searching, it is far from ideal in other respects.
So there is a gap in the market for a ActivityPub system based on Node (and not an exotic combination of other languages)
So, theres a good opportunity for Nodebb to fill that gap!
This has been an attitude more generally on Mastodon over the 3 years that I've been there. There's this deep undercurrent of "finally, we're getting the attention we deserve" but also "shut up and let us talk". It seems that people who are used to being the only people in the room are craving an audience, not people actually using their toys.
There's a group of people -- developers or otherwise -- that saw the fediverse as their private little sandbox, and openly resent anyone else coming into the space, or at the very least, anyone else coming into their space and not following their rules.
It's been a significant blocker to adoption for the platform, and for the fediverse as a whole.
@julian The problem with mainstreaming is that everyone wants a piece of cake. Some people come to build, and I think that's fine, even if they take away something from existing projects. But there are also charlatans and scammers, and unfortunately faking achievements is very easy in Fediverse.
The good thing about grassroots / DIY spaces is that the latter category is non existent.
yep, it's a bit more than that, you can find out why http;//hamishcampbell.com
The top post is apt "This is a #fluffy attempt at communicating to the #mainstreaming. In reality, this post is about #activertpub and the #Fediverse. Iāve already written extensively on this, but I donāt think those pieces break through to the #mainstreaming. So, I used other examples to illustrate the issue."
@silverpill@julian there's people who have in the past also ditched fedi projects for other ones, like someone making a pleroma fork for Twitter users and abandoning it for nostr (the frontend is forked)
Yes, every since the old Gnu Social days there have always been techie-elitists on the fediverse who say things like āitās good that itās hard to use because it keeps the ānormiesā outā ā¦ and alas, that tradition continues today on Mastodon and other platforms (and is often expressed in language that echoes anti-immigrant tropes or is somewhat racist). Itās unfortunate but I donāt know what we can do about it other than attempt to minimize their influence.
Thereās always been a tension between people who are in the fediverse because they want to get away from big tech companies ā¦ and people who are in the fediverse because they think decentralization is cool, and so see it as a good thing that big tech companies are adopting the technology because hopefully over time it will provide a path for people to move off of the big corporate social networks. When Eugen called Threadsā adoption of ActivityPub āa victory for our causeā, it really drove home to a lot of people that his cause isnāt theirs. This is part of why I talk about fediverses in the plural: thereās a corporate fediverse as well as the āfree fediverseā thatās anti-surveillance capitalism (and others as well, like the āfreeze peachā fediverse). Of course, the various fediverses can potentially co-exist, but motivations and values are very different ā¦ and the bigger corporations looking at the fediverse certainly arenāt going out of their way to help or even acknowledge long-time fedi developers who arenāt directly useful to them, so thereās almost certainly some resentment on that front.
ever since 2017 (if not earlier), the fediverse has been very driven by trans, queer, and non-binary people. So if the fediverse is 100x larger with big players, and in the process it becomes 99% cis-dominant, then yes they have really taken soething away from trans people. What percentage of the speakers at Fediverse House were trans? Which speakers talked about the key role trans and non-binary people have played in Mastodon and ActivityPubās development? And since the biggest player is Meta, whoās actively hostile to LGBTQ+ people, the dynamics are even worse ā especially since so many high-profile cis fediverse influencers only talk about the positive aspects of Threads without even acknowledging the concerns of trans and non-binary people. How many of the speakers at Fediverse House mentioned the anti-Meta FediPact and Vanta Blackās perspective (shared by many of the signers) that ābeing okay with meta joining the fediverse is being okay with cosigning every goddamn trans person who chooses to remain on here to a future of constant harassmentā?
Of course the second and third bullets arenāt directly relevant to NodeBB. Youāre definitely grassroots and DIY. And getting new perspectives and energy from people like you ā or the 2022 wave ā is crucial to getting ActivityPub out of the rut itās been in for the last N years, and making the software more broadly usable. But theyāre certainly part of the overall dynamics.
@jdp23 I think the best thing about the fediverse is that YOU (the user) can choose which version of the fedi you want to live in. If you donāt want Meta, then choose an instance that blocks them out (or self-host). If you donāt want people searching your content, you can shut that off in your settings. If you donāt want ānormiesā here, then you can close the doors via your instance. What annoys me is people who want to make *their* version of the fedi the default.
And I do! But in the actually-existing fedi the search engine that was demoāed at the Fediverse House developers meetup ignores consent settings so my posts will show up there . So this is a potentially-great thing about fedi that in practice leads to repeated firestorms when developers ignore consent. (And since trans and non-binary people are some of the most passionate about opposing non-consensual search, this relates to my point about cis-dominance)
And I do! But Metaās on the W3C group that controls the AcitivityPub standard, they give demos at Fediforum, a Meta-funded nonprofit was hosting the developer meetup at Fediverse House (and is also on the W3C group, where one of their representatives has twice shut down discussions heās saw as critical of Meta on the W3C mailing list), and itās rare to see press coverage of fedi that doesnāt include Meta ā or that does acknowledge how many strong the opposition is to them being here. In practice, while having the ability to block Threads is certainly a good thing, the fedi influencers who have decided that Threads is a good thing here have only made that the default, theyāve made it so I canāt even really opt out. So yes I agree itās annoying!
Anyhow this all ties into why I see it as complex. The techie-elitism of āwe donāt want normies hereā is real, and itās harmful. But itās far from the only thing going on here.