And, as media coverage of the Twitter exodus grew in late 2022, Twitter did something that further promoted Mastodon: Twitter blocked the mention of Mastodon on Twitter....
At the heart of this is a clash between Rochko and many Mastodon contributors. This has been framed as a tension between open networking – which would build up the nascent Mastodon federated network, a goal of Rochko’s – and implementing features that would protect marginalized people from harassment....
In contrast to the boutique approaches preferred among the three SocialWG camps, corporate social media at least have one common goal in mind: more users, which leads to more personal data to gather and more attention to sell to advertisers....
In keeping with the name “Playvicious,” Marcia brought a great deal of creative energy to the instance. They started hashtags, like #FineFemmeFriday to highlight self-identified women, #FridayFeelsRadio to share music for the weekend, and #Fedikitchen for the foodies of the fediverse....
First, it is false to argue that the #fedipact members are against openness. As I have argued across this bok, the covenantal fediverse is open to people who want to become members. They just have to do a few things: see themselves not as signing up for social media, but joining a community and abiding by its ethical standards....
Instead of seeing it as a marginal activity, Fisher and Tronto see caring as essential to human society. “Caring crosscuts the antitheses between public and private, rights and duties, love and labor,” they write. Care is relational, happening between caregivers and care receivers....
And frankly, that is their right. There is no rule that says a FOSS social media project must specify ethical behavioral practices. In the world of Free Software, “Freedom 0” – the freedom to use software for whatever purpose one wants to – is considered to be an absolute freedom....
Critique of corporate social media is now a major concern of fields such as media studies and software studies. However, unlike many of my peers, I argue for something more than mere critique....
Rochko’s vision had attracted many people. But his decisions have also rankled people. Even in the heady early years of Mastodon, Rochko’s central role as final arbiter of features grated against many Mastodon contributors. In 2019, The Daily Dot reported that many formerly enthusiastic Mastodon contributors and instance members were quitting....
Overall, ActivityPub is an impressive work, worthy of inclusion alongside other W3C standards that we use every day on the web, such as HTML (the language of websites and many mobile apps) and CSS (a design language). But if we look closer at its history, ActivityPub is also a very non-standard standard....
Chip Butty
and 1 other
boosted
The adoption of codes of conduct not only differentiated Mastodon from corporate social media sites, such as Twitter, but also from pre-existing, FOSS-based, federated social media systems, most notably GNU social. Started in 2010, GNU social had been the flagship FOSS alternative to Twitter....
While vanta boosts mutual aid posts of others, she also asks for help, as well. Recently, she posted to the fediverse, asking for help in finding a job in Seattle, expressing their vulnerability as someone who is underemployed. Moments of vulnerability like this are common on the fediverse....
The adoption of codes of conduct not only differentiated Mastodon from corporate social media sites, such as Twitter, but also from pre-existing, FOSS-based, federated social media systems, most notably GNU social. Started in 2010, GNU social had been the flagship FOSS alternative to Twitter....
This attitude is in keeping with general perspectives on the inescapability of capitalism itself. Critics of capitalist culture argue that the dominant view is “capitalist realism,” where capitalism appears to be everywhere and part of everything with no alternative. In the face of the power of capitalism, people tamp down their ambitions for other economic forms....
Revoy’s funding model is to crowdfund each issue of Pepper&Carrot, and to do that, he has relied on working in public on social media, posting frequently and sharing videos about his work. He sees this as replicating the street art approach of his Avignon days. “I really started as a street artist.... It’s a bit fundamental in the way that I work,” he told me....
Quirk and Gruber are emphasizing that ActivityPub, the protocol that enables the fediverse to work, is an open social media protocol. For Meta to adopt it is an endorsement of such opennness – something Meta is not known for. Meta is known for its “walled gardens” – centralized, closed systems that can’t interoperate....
Federated social media is a radical departure from corporate social media. While big companies like Google and Microsoft produce email servers that can intercommunicate with hundreds of other providers, in the world of social media, cross-company communication is largely unheard of....
Codes of conduct help instances decide to maintain (or allow, in the case of Awoo.space) connections....