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Top-level
 I am hopeful about the changes at Mastodon. I think IFTAS is doing absolutely crucial work with very little support. I've come around on bridging, as wildly imperfect as it is, as a stop-loss and a way of keeping fedi more viable for more people who are willing to accept the (nebulous) trade-offs. But also I love the federated model and I want it to be a real option for more people in more places, so it's discouraging to keep hitting "eh screw the normies" when the societal risks are so high. 6 comments
 @kissane there's been a lot of criticism against the IFTAS though – it's not all "screw the normies", there's the whole thing about the proximity to the self-proclaimed moderation authorities that push comically terrible blocklists that insist that every single trans/queer instance is somehow racist @valpackett So two things here—one, my mention of IFTAS is a sidenote about many things that could help and has very little to do with my central points. Two, there's a some lore (non-derrogatory) about IFTAS "pushing" Bad Space or equivalent via FediCheck and as far as I can tell as an earnest semi-outsider, that isn't happening? IFTAS just recommends CARIAD (https://connect.iftas.org/library/iftas-documentation/cariad-policy/) for new admins and has no working relationship with anyone in that whole schism. @valpackett Also! I am happy to admit that I wasn't there when the Deep Magic Was Written etc, and I don't want to express excessive certitude/ IFTAS looks to me like an org that is trying very had to keep clear of trouble and make tooling we desperately need here, so I am trying to help with that stuff. That doesn't mean I'm ready to accept collateral damage to queer/trans fedi, and I continue to talk to people about this but it does seem like there's some confusion I can't get my head around.  @kissane I have conflicting feelings about the bridges. I think it could be nice to have more of those at protocol level. But so far, the bridge projects I've seen for the Fediverse have been either very middle-man focused and a bit tone deaf at the beginning (Bridgy) or outright adversarial (mostr.pub). I would really like to see bridges, but not as much bridge-as-a-service ones @kissane The rapid growth of Bluesky is cause for hope; a lot of people want to leave the incumbent toxic platforms. The question is whether users will migrate in large enough numbers, fast enough, for network effects to turn against incumbents. The openness of the fedi (and Bluesky) is an advantage. I can send a funny link to people who haven't left Meta via text or email and they can see what they are missing. If they send me something funny from Instagram, it has to be a screenshot. |
Gregory's Server
@kissane We really need to talk someday :)
(and probably sooner than later)