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Comment by web3-is-a-scam | Hacker News Reader

Blocking one of the biggest on-ramps will surely work wonders for adoption.

>Blocking one of the biggest on-ramps will surely work wonders for adoption.

I'm not clear on what, exactly, Meta's AP offering might be (is it a separate user base from their other products, or an integration into them?) or how it will interact with other fediverse instances (FB/Insta users can follow users in the Fediverse without Meta enabling the reverse?).

If, on the other hand, there's full, two-way federation with Meta's services, that could be a huge boon to the fediverse, as it would share their "network effect" with a bunch of other players. Which, I guess, is possible.

But given Meta's track record of the lengths that they'll go to in pursuit of growth and profit, I'd be shocked if they actually did so.

As such, it doesn't surprise me that the fediverse is suspicious and skeptical of Meta's entrance.

Just a guess but I think they're going to do a full two-way federation with injected ad content. This could be very sneaky in how it works with the existing fediverse protocols. You really only have the power to block an instance or a user. What if each ad has its own user ID and is returned inline with any remote query for content? What if they take it a step further and inject ads using desired user's own IDs to show them when you follow your grandmother's content who would be very difficult to move off of FB?

As a fediverse host you can probably make custom spam like filters, and I'm sure there will be some distributed tools to fight this kind of thing... But right now a lot of the fediverse is assuming that moderation of external hosts is pretty straight forward and not actively adversarial. If you disagree with the policies or the populace that is attracted to a particular instance block the instance. That doesn't work with something at this scale.

I don't agree with instances proactively blocking Meta before they've shown their true colors, but I also don't think they're wrong. I just think we should let the monsters take off their mask and allow the social consequences to come when the blocks happen for a good reason.

>If you disagree with the policies or the populace that is attracted to a particular instance block the instance. That doesn't work with something at this scale.

Ummm...Isn't that what TFA is all about? Blocking bad actor instances? Or are you asserting that "What if each ad has its own user ID and is returned inline with any remote query for content? What if they take it a step further and inject ads using desired user's own IDs to show them when you follow your grandmother's content who would be very difficult to move off FB?" are the actions of a good citizen of the Fediverse?

I'd say those would be the actions of a profoundly bad actor who shouldn't be allowed to interact with my fediverse instance.

>If you disagree with the policies or the populace that is attracted to a particular instance block the instance. That doesn't work with something at this scale.

I'm not sure why you don't think blocking would be workable. You can block hosts and entire IP ranges in admin UIs for AP instances, or you can just block all of Meta's AS'[0] at the network level. How is that unworkable?

>I don't agree with instances proactively blocking Meta before they've shown their true colors, but I also don't think they're wrong. I just think we should let the monsters take off their mask and allow the social consequences to come when the blocks happen for a good reason.

I don't necessarily disagree, but given Meta's past disrespect for their product (that'd be you, by the way), it's not surprising that many folks don't want anything to do with them -- before or after they show their true colors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%...

Maybe adoption isn’t the goal. Just a thought…

of course it is.

There's no reason federated social media has to adopt the exponential growth or die mentality.

Some federated bubbles will want to, but plenty of others won't. And they can continue on just fine.

> Some federated bubbles will want to, but plenty of others won't.

And this is exactly why the current idea of "fediverse" was not only dead on arrival but is just as dead 7 years down the (counting from Mastodon's release date which is the most popular implementation).

People just want to communicate, they don't know nor care about the technical details. They know that if they ask the person they just met at the bar for their Instagram they will find them on Instagram. Same deal for Twitter, Snapchat & TikTok.

For the fediverse however, the water gets murkier and the outcome isn't guaranteed because of the above (and many other technical details). (the only guaranteed outcome is that nobody is going to embarrass themselves mentioning "Mastodon" outside of a tech conference)

If you need other reasons why I consider Mastodon and the current implementation of "fediverse" DOA, see my previous posts: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Yikes. I was half expecting you to end that last sentence with a contemptuous "NERRRRRRRRRDS!!!"

The fact that the fediverse crowd see nothing wrong with naming a social network "Mastodon" implies "NERRRDS" without having to even mention it.

Btw, I say this as a nerd & tech guy that hates ad-supported social media and wishes for a better alternative, but the current iteration "fediverse" is not it, for many different reasons besides branding which I've written about previously: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> The fact that the fediverse crowd see nothing wrong with naming a social network "Mastodon" implies "NERRRDS" without having to even mention it.

I don't think Mastodon even makes the top 25 of most cringeworthy social media parlance when "tweet" continues to be the reigning champion since 2006.

It's not. In so far as you can assign a "goal" to a network as diverse as the fediverse, many services (maybe most?) started out as a way to specifically get away from the growth mindset of giant corporations. The fediverse was initially popularized among the queer and trans communities as a way to remain safe from giant platforms that do a bad job moderating where they would be harassed all day. These are the people who made the fediverse what it is, and they could not have done the same on a giant billion-user platform like Facebook. Somewhere smaller and more intimate is easier to moderate, and keeps people safer. The point isn't rapid growth, or adoption, it's organic growth that doesn't outpace our ability to keep our users safe.

Adoption as in numbers to please some department or board (or even a lone server owner) probably isn't. Not in general.

Adoption as in getting more and more interesting people posting and talking? Probably yes, because if it's not then I suppose I don't get what the heck this could be all about.

Think about a physical community, perhaps the area where you live. Do you really want the population of your neighborhood to 10x? Population size changes the characteristics of a place. Sometimes, you’re content with the way things are.

If not for the physical space constraints (crowded streets) - I suppose I do. More folks around means more opportunities, more diversity. Even if I won't interact with 99.9% of them, why would I be against a possibility that they'll bring something more I might like to the table? I mean, unlike in physical world, no one can shove anything up my face unless I'm specifically in a mood to see what else is out there.

The beauty of distributed digital landscapes (as opposed to corporate-ran walled gardens) is that you're in more control of how it works and what you see. When there's no central hub, there is no land to fight for - I don't have to see the giant concrete anthills of dense cities, the space I see is configured to my preferences. And of course I would like to have more options of what to read and whom to talk to, than less. Even though I'm unlikely to consume any of this Instagram content (it's just not my thing).

So, I don't quite get this "barbarians at the gate!" thing. But then I don't get the idea of Fediverse servers as some sort of communities either - to me having a shared server is just an unfortunate consequence of technical limitations making it's highly impractical a true distributed system. I really don't want to care what server something or someone is on.

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