Should we encourage "Fediverse Selection"?

helge · January 6, 2023, 7:54am

Hello all!

I’ve been trying to understanding how federation works. I won’t be talking here about technical aspects, but more social ones (maybe?). So it’s not about HOW you see a Note, but WHICH notes can you see. In what, I write below, I will focus on what Mastodon calls a “Hashtag timeline”, but I think the concept applies equally well to the visibility of replies.

“Fediverse Selection” is an idea I had to describe what is visible on an Instance in the Fediverse. I’ve tried to write up what I mean in the Jupyter notebook:

github.com

HelgeKrueger/mastodon_recommender/blob/028fa857d4d8e4a2ba45677ac6e47d6e1df6bd6c/fediverse_selection.ipynb

{
 "cells": [
  {
   "attachments": {},
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "# Fediverse Selection\n",
    "\n",
    "The Fediverse is a collection of federated instances. These instances share content with each other, which content gets shared depends on who follows who (and other factors such as relays). The aim of this notebook is to understand how the choice of instance affects the visible content.\n",
    "\n",
    "My general assumption would be that communities with shared interests (e.g. Taylor Swift) choose the same instances. This means that content covering this interest (e.g. Taylor Swift) will be more present on these instances. If this assumption holds true \"Fediverse Selection\" occurs.\n",
    "\n",
    "While this notebook only talks about hashtags, federation and Fediverse Selection affect other things, like the visibility of replies. So if you are on an \"Taylor Swift\" - instance, most of your replies might refer to Taylor Swift. If you are on a different instance, not a single reply might involve Taylor Swift.\n",
    "\n",
    "#### Future work\n",
    "\n",
    "If the Fediverse Selection occurs, the methods of this notebook can be used to build an Instance Recommender. Choose hashtags you want to see and an instance is recommended where this hashtag features more prominently."
   ]
  },

This file has been truncated. show original

Note: This is Work In Progress, the ideas are still forming. The jupyter notebook performs roughly 3 * # hashtag * # instances requests.

By encouraging “Fediverse Selection”, I want to encourage people to “Choose instances that already federate topics they are interested in”. This would mean instances become more focused. I hope the consequences would be

More content on the instance people are interested in
Less network traffic, as focused posts only get federated to specialized servers

The only negative effect, I could imagine is that it would encourage the formation of isolated communities, and thus potential radicalization.

So anybody any comments? Opinions?

Thanks,
Helge

PS: I also posted this as something that might be too broad for the scope specified in POLL: SocialHub Scope and Purpose?

WisTex · January 11, 2023, 10:26am

This sounds similar to the strategy that Mastodon already employs. They do exactly as you describe. They direct people to instances that have a particular topic or niche or shared interest.

It does reduce some of the network traffic, and it does make it easier for people to find people with shared interests, and it does promote the idea of communities, which can be a great thing or a toxic thing. It all depends on who is in the community and whether they shun outsiders who think differently than they do. But that really is not a new problem.

Another model that I am working on is a “content and community” concept, where a website or app has content about a specific topic, and then creates a community around that. People come for the content, and stay for the community.

I think community-building can be a very positive thing. Sure, you will have a small percentage of toxic communities, but that is not unique to the internet. The key is that any community that is built should have publicly stated rules and moderators that act professionally and reasonably.