Recently, there was a question by @taylorlorenz about how you explain the Fediverse to someone who doesn't use it.
And usually, what we tend to do is we talk about servers and decentralisation and federation and ActivityPub and all these highly technical concepts.
I've been thinking about it, and all that technical stuff is really impressive work by people far more clever than I'll ever be.
But for me, that technology is a facilitating thing. It's like trying to describe how a bicycle works, rather than why you ride it.
Instead, what the Fediverse is, is a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way.
Which is increasingly a rare thing online.
Almost the entirety of the internet, from SEO on the web to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to Instagram and X and Facebook, has been turned into a race to game an algorithm designed to sell ads.
What makes the Fedi unique is that it's not that.
And I suspect if you're trying to persuade someone to try Mastodon (or Lemmy, or Pixelfed, or GtS, etc), you'll get a lot further explaining it as algorithm-free, ad-free, AI-free conversations, rather than trying to describe a decentralised protocol.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub
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@aj I'm less sure that would work on its own. All of the corporate enshittified networks they already use started out that way too.
To make those points I think you have to focus on the community side. Shit like @FediPact -- I've got the stats somewhere but off the top of my head I think it was something like 30% of servers had Meta blocked before they'd really even *tried* to join, just from the announcement that they might. The fact that, unlike corporate networks where they do what they want and users whine about it until they get bored, around here it feels like debating the future of the network *actually shapes it*. Everything is built by consensus, not cash. By donations and volunteers and passion. Any VC startup can be slop free for a few years but that stuff is what *keeps* Fedi slop free.
The only thing holding back enshittification of the fediverse at the moment is the fact that fediverse is still niche. Growth-hack it towards general popularity, attract the full brunt of corporate interest, and after a couple years fedi is indiscernable part of the corporate web. Well, not fully, the nice niche we have can still exist no problem, just not be as transformative as we hoped it to be.
It's a weird balance where weaknesses become strength. The fact that Bluesky with ATProto "won" the popularity contest serves to keep the glare of commercial interest away, giving fedi more time to mature. The onboarding issues for both devs and regular people to get up to speed on the fediverse also keeps that interest at bay. And the haphazard grassroots growth of the fediverse, which encourages devs to "just build" but introduce protocol decay that must be dealt with afterwards, serve as barrier to corporate takeover.
But they are an Achilles Heel at the same time.
@smallcircles@social.coop @admin@mastodon.slightlycyberpunk.com @aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au @FediPact@cyberpunk.lol except the fediverse is intrinsically resistant to the “growth-hacking” you’re handwaving at. its decentralised nature and community-based moderation literally cannot be taken advantage of in the way other social media failures have demonstrated.
@bingbong @admin @FediPact @aj
I hope so, and it is why I mentioned that "the niche" where things are well-moderated etc. can always exist. But once big corporate parties really jump on the technology I think it'll be quite a challenge to fend them off and protect the overall fediverse culture from enshittification.
@aj Someone shared some media with me about "poisoning the algorithm" by not clicking on ragebait for days or weeks until the systems stop supplying it and shift to healthier fare and I just had to laugh, because the description of the goal was a description of the corner of the fediverse that I'm exposed to.
People are out there spending days "poisoning the algorithm" just go get what we get on Mastodon on day 1!
@aj I like this:
"a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way."
Can I use it as a tagline on piefed.social?