anthoniix

@renwillis fire album

You can try to engineer something to be resistant to certain threats, but the human body isn't like that.

With the human body comparison, you can't do much but react to what's happening to you and try to fix it or prevent it from happening in the first place in another human body.

With software, you specifically choose almost every aspect of how it's going to work. This allows you to construct it in certain ways that make it resistant to certain threats and modify it as needed.

This is not a good comparison. Our bodies are not engineered by anyone, but our software is.

RIP

The situation I'm thinking of is one where Meta creates Threads (or whatever it will be called), and then a bunch of people defederate. In that scenario, there will of course be big servers who choose to federate with Threads. Given Meta's reach and influence, they will undoubtedly have one of the bigger instances, so a lot of politicians, journalists and everyday people will go there.

Making it so people can't see that content will just make the fediverse become more centralized, because people will just go to the bigger instances that will allow for them to see that content, or just go sign up for threads. I think that's bad because it creates further centralization, even if they're providing the content that people want.

Even though I know a lot of people disagree, we need all types of content in order for this place to grow. I'm not talking about any far-right nonsense, but even garbage like tabloid fodder and stupid meme bullshit will keep our networks alive and users engaging. The easier it is for the average person to use the better. If the point is not profit, then it must be to allow people to come together and talk about almost whatever with almost whoever, and wherever.

I like the concept of copyleft, which has prevented a lot of EEE. As for protocols, the answer is a little more complex. Protocols can't really be copyrighted, so it's essentially going to be what's the easiest to implement, who is using it and what utility it provides.

There have always been competing protocols, and also closed vs open protocols. Most of the time the protocols that win are the open ones, and the trend is that they provide a lot of utility and is easily used by anyone. In my view, the question it will come down to will be: is having a decentralized social network going to provide more utility for the big players, or is the concept doomed because centralization will always provide the biggest monetary incentive?

Something that gives me hope is that social media is not a profitable business venture. This could mean that Meta is exploring the fediverse because it sees something useful in it that doesn't conflict with their business interests, but in fact supports it. The biggest tell to see if this will work out is if other companies start to adopt the protocol, at which point the safety guard is "Well, a lot of big players are using it and if I break activitypub support with them that's bad for business.".

What are we going to do then, everytime a corporation starts up an instance we defederate? All corporations are essentially evil. If we do that, we'll always just be a niche concept that will always fail to keep up with the needs and wants of users.

We need to be able to prevent bad behavior from taking over the project, while also allowing corporations to join and interact with us.

You fight back by fixing the system, or making a new one.

I think defederation is not really that useful in this case, because then your users will just leave and sign up for the platform where they can view where the most content is. Although I do agree with your general premise.

On the contrary, I'm just saying if you build something and it gets co-opted by a corporation it probably wasnt meant to be.

It's like when people talk about politicians being bought out by corporations. If that's something that can even happen, it's the fault of a broken system that would even allow that to happen.

Similarly, if the Earth can’t survive Exxon, it was never going to succeed in the first place

Actually, yes. The reason Exxon is fucking the planet right now is because of weak regulation. If we can't build a system that is resistant to the threat of earth destroying corporations, we were never going to succeed in the first place.