Beyond technical features: why we need to talk about the values of the Fediverse (part 1)
Beyond technical features: why we need to talk about the values of the Fediverse (part 1)
The Fediverse has a different value system than commercial social media: striving for genuine connections, protecting privacy and championing accessibility
I appreciate the author taking a swing at this topic. She suggests these values:
fostering genuine connection
protecting privacy and enforcing consent
championing accessibilityI think she's obviously right about the first value but the others are less clear. There's certainly groups on Mastodon who are keen on privacy, consent and accessibility but if you look at the features of the apps and how they're constructed I don't feel like those are really core values. ActivityPub is a privacy nightmare and most apps have between ghastly to ok accessibility.
It's hard to pick out values that we all share because of the inherently chaotic nature of it. Perhaps that's a value tho - diversity.
There's a pretty strong anti-capitalist theme that comes up a lot. At it's best, this is a "people before economy" value, a pro-democracy, a pro-life (in the literal sense), pro-freedom value. No billionaire can buy the fediverse and shape it in their singular vision.
The federated nature of things means people can find their own instance to call home, one that suits them and their kin without losing access to all the goodies of the wider network. Is this a value? What is the word for it? Self-actualization?
From the "privacy nightmare" "article":
If you have any objection at all to your posts and profile information being potentially sucked up by Meta, Google, or literally any other bad actor you can think of, do not use the fediverse. Period.
It's on the internet. Public. Got it. It's almost as if, and hold on to your hats here, the whole point of posting on something like Mastodon or Lemmy or so is to have a public discourse, as you cannot know who will be replying anyways. It's almost as if, and this is getting wild, I know, read-access being public is intentional and explicitly part of the design.
Sorry, but this always make me rage. It's like these people are discovering in 2024 that public access means anyone can read it, not just 2000 individual tech bloggers. It's like in 2024 they're discovering that, but aren't technicallly skilled enough to open a forum to have their closed-of discussions in.
Sigh.
No wonder the tech sphere is going to shits if this is the modern discourse around it. :(
Sorry, rant over.
It’s because of how people people on mastodon freak out over privacy and consent. That’s why he wrote that article as the expectations and views of a large number of users are fundamentally against what actually happens
It’s on the internet. Public. Got it. It’s almost as if, and hold on to your hats here, the whole point of posting on something like Mastodon or Lemmy or so is to have a public discourse, as you cannot know who will be replying anyways. It’s almost as if, and this is getting wild, I know, read-access being public is intentional and explicitly part of the design.
This is true for Mastodon and Lemmy and I generally agree with this sentiment.
That said, ActivityPub is more than just Lemmy and Mastodon. ActivityPub is more general than that. Lemmy and Mastodon are designed in a way where public discourse is the default and everything you write is expected to be public. But ActivityPub on its own has no such assumptions. There's nothing about ActivityPub that says that you cannot build a more private social media with it. But actually you can't really, because of the problems that the blog post points out. But the vision I think for some people is that this should be possible.
I'm personally not 100% convinced that that vision is even possible though tbh.
I appreciate the author taking a swing at this topic.
Agreed, me too. Also, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts regarding this - they're very insightful.
It's hard to pick out values that we all share because of the inherently chaotic nature of it. Perhaps that's a value tho - diversity.
I agree. I don't think it's realistic to expect all of the fediverse to adopt a set of core values, not any more than we can expect all of the internet to adopt a core set of values. Certainly, there's no one in a position to enforce them from the down top, at the very least.
most apps have between ghastly to ok accessibility.
I want to start off by saying that I respect you and your opinion very much. I think this is a serious point of concern, especially considering that a major reason given for the exodus that happened from a major website back in July 2023 occurred in part due to fear of loss of accessibility (which was an unintended consequence of API restrictions). r/blind moved to the fediverse primarily because of this point.
So basically, a failure here really feels like it would have serious ramifications for the fediverse.
There's certainly groups on Mastodon who are keen on privacy, consent and accessibility but if you look at the features of the apps and how they're constructed I don't feel like those are really core values.
Agreed - but that just means there's room for something new. Hopefully from the diversity of groups that you alluded to above, a privacy minded group with dev skills will arise with a new entrant to the fediverse here.
ActivityPub is a privacy nightmare
I've been doing some thinking about this. One (not yet fully fleshed out) thought I had was if content was retained on the original server (the one the community/magazine is based in) and others receive a new "CONTENT_LINK" type of ActivityPub message that points back to the original server. A good app/web UI can then fetch from the link to display the content - but this would happen client side and be meant to be analogous to a web browser fetching a page from a web server. I wrote more about what I had in mind in https://lemmy.world/comment/12109601
No billionaire can buy the fediverse and shape it in their singular vision.
This is a positive IMHO.
There's a pretty strong anti-capitalist theme that comes up a lot.
That's true. Time will tell if things like sub.club are able to move forward
The federated nature of things means people can find their own instance to call home, one that suits them and their kin
I'd call this, the power of community
without losing access to all the goodies of the wider network.
And this, going global.
Is this a value? What is the word for it? Self-actualization?
I think this is usually termed "having the best of both worlds".
I should point out though that this isn't entirely true. I don't think that we can really say that this applies to folks who made their home on exploding-heads or lemmygrad, for example.