SmittyHalibut
I see a lot of people talking about how Mastodon "Feels like the Internet I remember from 20 years ago." That's no accident. That's Federation. That's UseNet, IRC, Email, Message Boards, etc. What do they all have in common? Federation: Users congregating around watering holes of common interest, but still being a part of a larger whole. THIS IS HOW THE INTERNET WAS DESIGNED TO BE. And I am HERE for it. 302 comments | Expand all CWs
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SmittyHalibut
@ravensview I'm only 47 and it's the Internet I remember. 'course, I've been BBSing since I was 12 so, I'm a bit nerdier than average. ๐ 
Natasha Nox ๐บ๐ฆ๐ต๐ธ
@smitty @ravensview I almost missed it being 30 years and from a small village, but yeah, the Fedi really feels somewhat like the Internet from my youth. Like... no ad-infested application, no algorithmically manipulated feed, just the raw thing you came to see. And I love it. Now I just need a Matrix client looking like ICQ 5.1 - including War Sheeps, of course.
Dr Lisa Evans
@smitty I'm 47 as well, but didn't get started on the internet until the mid 90s. Ever since social media got started, it has always felt broken to me. The model was all wrong. Communities need open, free public spaces to congregate in. It's the way we human.
James Hilton ๐ข
I don't mean to sound elitist but... the normies need the internet monoliths and apps to make the internet usable. And that is fine, to an extent. We were using the net in the 90s (and dial up BBS!) and I agree I have never 'got on' with FB/insta/twitter/tiktok What makes me sad is that most users become entrapped by the likes of facebook, and never realise the true power. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
SmittyHalibut
James Hilton ๐ข
Totally agree with everything you say. It didn't need to end up this way and shouldn't have. Unfortunately, huge swathes are now in those walled gardens, and the longer it goes on, the higher and higher the switching costs become. It's likely to become more common to be baked into hardware and OS. I have no idea how it will play out though. I can't imagine the EU or FCC mandating federation or portability.
SmittyHalibut
@jimothy @lisae Iโm not convinced itโs too late. It feels like both Twitter and FB/Meta (the two worst offenders IMHO) are starting to crumble, both for different but similar reasons: clueless leadership. Itโs happened before, that momentum takes a community away from a dominant player, but never a dominant player with such mass. That just means the motivation to move needs more force behind it. It feels like thatโs beginning to happen now. One can hope anyway.
fallgh :ablobcatattention:
@smitty People are easily swayed into forgetting or believing that things always were one way, today it's very hard for people to imagine that a company isn't constantly looking down at them for "moderation" while community efforts are seen as lesser. Algorithms is also something people got too used to, which even contributes to most issues social media brings. Never saw ActivityPub as ideal either, but it's better that people are at least aware of why places like this are important.
SmittyHalibut
@fallgh it also puts control in the usersโ hands. We wanted it to be easy, so that control was centralized. We are now seeing the down sides of that, and ActivityPub/Mastodon/Fediverse puts that control back in our hands. No everyone will want it, and thatโs fine. But at least now we have the choice.
fallgh :ablobcatattention:
@smitty Choice is always the most important element, people should be able to go where they want to, not be forced into something because there's no alternative. The best situation is where everyone wins, never where everyone's under the same force that they may or may not like.
john mizerek ๐คก
lol i think i started on Web 0.01 RELAY at Miami of Ohio in 1985. pre-IRC stuff. sending users a million bottles of beer on the wall, crashing their account.
Charles J Gervasi โก๐ก๏ธ
@smitty One thing that was special was anyone could put their ideas out there. There weren't 10 channels with production managers determining your 10 choices. Somehow we went back to central gatekeepers, maybe because we realized we needed gatekeepers, but they don't have to be centralized.
SmittyHalibut
@cgervasi The commercial orgs figured out how to make it easy for the non-tech folks. Even now, we see people talk about how Mastodon is harder to understand and use than Twitter, but it's a whole lot better than it used to be.
Sarb
@smitty I remember back when we pushed hard against walled gardens. And then the rise of Facebook and Gmail meant that both email and the web became synonymous with just these two things. And mobile service providers even offered free data to access them in exchange for a cut of the revenue. Still do. I am v new here, but I used to belong to a microblogging service called Phlog, back in 2003. I was user #3. What a ride! https://twitter.com/alanb/status/1488754580100116481?s=20&t=OXA_nJPHw7lze3-EFOv8NA
SmittyHalibut
@sarb At least Email is still a Federated system. If you choose to use gmail.com, it doesn't stop me from using my own domain and still being able to interoperate with you. That's really where the problem is: breaking that interoperability between domains of control. Luckily, email became well enough established before large instances like Gmail came around, otherwise it probably would be a walled garden too.
Sarb
@smitty Too true, email you can disaggregate to a large extent. But so many people don't because it's easy. And hence the training wheels required for Mastodon. many people have never experienced an ecosystem like this before. I did for decades, but haven't in a long time, and I'm REALLY rusty. Heck knows what others feel like...
สuแดิ โ
@smitty @sarb I remember that was literally what services such as Microsoft Network (MSN) were all about in their first iterations and what Exchange server was originally for. Their idea was you would access everything through their network and stay on their network for the most part with proprietary systems for messages and "web" and a "gateway" that they could charge you for to access other networks such as AOL, Compuserve, or "internet messages".
SmittyHalibut
SmittyHalibut
@sarb I owe my entire career (and, lets be honest, LIFE) to BBSes. I got started when I was 10, was running my own by 12, and haven't stopped running it, even to today. It's what got me started in system administration and networking. I literally have no idea what I'd have done to make money if it weren't for BBSing when I was a kid.
Sarb
@smitty OMG this convo reminds me that when I arrived in NZ in 2005, the shared flat I was in was still using dial-up internet. 2005! We had to take turns with it and we had time limits. And mobile data was so expensive and crappy coverage, I had to go to internet cafes to stay in touch with folks outside of NZ. Which was everyone. I didn't know anyone here then. WOW
Tim Riemann
@smitty It is great that we, hopefully, get back to federation and move away from those isolated platforms. It feels great being here and I hope that this trend will move on.
Christopher Coder
@smitty Same, I commented just yesterday that it feels old school, without really knowing why
Martin Kubler ๐ฒ โถ ๐ด โ
@nordbergnz @smitty I'm not old enough to really remember UseNet and IRC, but watering holes of common interest works for me ;-) 
Sampath Pฤแนini ยฎ
@smitty Itโs striking a chord for the Napster Generation: https://open.substack.com/pub/paninid/p/language-norms-art-technology-generational?r=4hxgy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Michael [ะะพัะฐะบ] Skolsky R1BLH
@smitty :) not only mastodon. Mastonon is one of microblogging engines of Fediverse (others are Misskey, Pleroma, e.t.c.).
Tom
@smitty Iโm loving how messy it is. @aussocialadmin has been posting wacky regional graphics when he makes changes or updates and I just love the _personality_ that this constellation of instances has brought out.
Chester Wisniewski
@smitty It's important to note that this is the *opposite* of web3. The design of web3 is to introduce artificial scarcity, which is diametrically opposed to everything those of us on the early internet wanted to build and what the fediverse is trying to breathe new life into.
Lea Rosema
@smitty I love how it is built around an open standard and not around a company, proprietary software and patents.
Matt Buckley
I feel like this is more due to the small (but growing) network size and lack of corporate accounts than anything else - lots of people have compared it to early Twitter. Will be interesting to see how that scales!
Patrick Dubois
@smitty I heavily used IRC back in like 1995 (found my ex-wife on it!) and although it does feel like it (several servers), the main similitude is lack of trolls (for now). Hopefully it lasts but I don't understand Mastodon enough to evaluate the probability of that.
David Jayatillake
@smitty and it's web1 not web3, I'm seeing a lot of people say Mastodon is web3 and it irks me. I don't even know what web3 is for...
Petra Hall :verified:
@smitty That brought back many memories. I began with Bulletin boards, the excitement when you could follow a mailing list with smart people across the globe (and actual rockets scientists) to share ideas with. One dude wanted to make a fast version of Netscape. Called it Google. Then I loved the idea, now I hate what it has become. /me is not amused anymore
Joe in Fife ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ
@smitty very fond of IRC. I met my partner on IRCnet 17 years ago!
#
@smitty My guess is that people look at "our progress" (= we like the fediverse) and say that it's a "conservative backstep", which only the elitistic idiots would want to have, who are obviously against "good user interfaces" and not for the modern user and his "user experience" (UX). You can't have nice things with that kind of humanity.
Kalmor ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ณ๏ธโ๐:verified:
@smitty I'm just about old enough to have caught the very end of the "old internet", so all of this is giving me mega nostalgia from being terminally online from a very early age lol
Lars Bartschat
@smitty #GoodOldTimes I loved being on #IRC shoutout to anyone from #muenster on #IRCmet back in the day. ๐ฌ
SmittyHalibut
@norro youโre not locked into a server. You can move to a new one thatโs a better-for-you watering hole.
SmittyHalibut
@norro no it doesnโt. You can still follow anyone on any server. They wonโt show up automatically in your Local timeline, but you can still follow them. It becomes a problem of discovery. How do you FIND people? Thatโs where hashtags and boosts come in. Thatโs why itโs so important to boost posts you think are interesting, so those posts become searchable by more instances. 
Seamus
@smitty I delayed joining after hearing lots of reasons why it wasnโt good. But now Iโm here those complaints remind me of how poorly we often assume certain baselines and standards that donโt have to exist. This feels like all those good parts of early online communities but far more accessible and mobile friendly. Iโm excited to explore and find new friends and new communities and not worry nearly as much about whether every single person I already know is coming too.
Goosey 2 Feet
@smitty if you log in on your computer and put it in Dark Mode, it kinda reminds me of Bebo
Chris Doc Strange ๐ช๐บโง๏ธโ๏ธ๐ป๐ฅ๐๐
@smitty I was getting that vibe too. Heck, I still have UseNet with EasyNews, oh my, they were fun days though, IRC and Yahoo groups. Yes, it's how the Internet should be, before the Capitalists took over.
SimonRoyHughes ๐ฌ๐ง๐ณ๐ด๐บ๐ฆ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ๐ณ๏ธโ๐
@smitty However, it's a shame that the occasion that gave rise to the thought, "this is just like Usenet," was the merciless bullying of a man by several users of a nasty server. 
yulesmithโฝ
@smitty
boB Rudis ๐บ๐ฆ
@smitty the big issue, now, is that the internet is orders of magnitude larger and running services at scale (even distributed/federated) costs real money. I hope folks do end up wanting to support this model, though. It'd also be great if Kagi (or, ugh, Google) could make Mastodon searchable by the masses.
SmittyHalibut
@hrbrmstr this touches in where and when the internet went wrong IMHO: the belief that everything was, or should be, free. โHow are we going to make money at this?โ โI donโt know, itโs the internet! Everything is free!โ That leads to Users As Products instead of Users As Customers. 
azoriusmage
SmilingFire
@smitty I love it! Brings me back some of the hopes I had for the internet when it first started ๐๐
Ilya Lehrman
@smitty hopefully it doesn't have that unauthenticated MAIL FROM feature of the Internet of 20 years ago. 
Many Colors, Maybe Movingโฆ
@smitty important distinction: IRC and forums aren't federated, they're polycentralized. You can run your own, but they're silos: registrations are separate on each one and you can't interact across them. Polycentralized platforms are fine (and I /like/ IRC!) but they lack the smoothness, the seamlessness that federations have.
PawelK
Looks and feels like a rebirth of a phoenix in a sense, isn't it? I got the similar sensation as described and since longer while when I am here.
Maia KB Chowdhury
@smitty agree, reminds me of old listservs and how fluid and fun they were, yet improved with speed, graphics, connectivity.
thirteenthstep
@smitty almost like that's what happens when you can't just erase everyone for having the wrong opinion
a meh trash panda
@smitty I'm 24 and I mostly know the old internet from old magazines handed down by my older brother, but it is something I felt fake nostalgia for.
Hanami Mastery
@smitty 20 years ago there was no Internet in my village. And I'm trying to understand Mastodon, lol. Not easy for me :D
Kyle Orland
@smitty I think it's more because it's just the cool nerds here ATM, and not like celebrities and hate mobs. But it goes together.
Tod Beardsley ๐ดโโ ๏ธ
@happygeek @smitty all I want now is a WWIV theme for #Mastodon and holy smokes WWIV BBS is still under active development as of 2021 wait a minute what have I been doing with my life
Art H.
@todb @happygeek @smitty There is a console application for Mastodon. It works quite well. https://github.com/ihabunek/toot That's probably as close as you're going to get...
Agnew Hawk :bongoCat:
@smitty now that you put it out, I get it. For past 5-10 years the world's lived in gated monolithic experiences. This is how it was. 
Manuel *hunting Eudaimonia*
@smitty I don't know. I hope I'm feeling the future right now. The internet and FOSS was good 20 years ago but when I take a look at my FOSS and Linux journey I have the feeling that it's getting better with every year that's passing.
Rosemary Richings
@smitty i was just discovering the internet in MySpaceโs prime. I also learned how to blog on blogspot around that time. Thatโs what mastadon feels like to me, and I genuinely loved that version of the internet.
Larry Marburger :blobfoxthink:
@smitty That's very interesting. Federation was a feature but also a technical requirement of the original internet. It wasn't possible to have a single IRC or forum service. Even still, I'm sure it influenced communities. When I joined an IRC server, I didn't have the expectation that I would be connected with people across servers. That's different to today where the reason I joined Mastodon was because I'm effectively connected with everyone. Federation day-to-day is transparent. 1/2
Larry Marburger :blobfoxthink:
@smitty My impression so far is that it feels like the original internet because it's populated with "my people". As others here have pointed out, that's how Twitter felt as well. It'll be fascinating to see how federation influences Mastodon's evolution as more people enter the fold and compare that to what happened with Twitter. It's not going to be the same challenges but I'm sure there will be some interesting inflection points where federation plays a major role. 2/2
paulfreeman
@smitty yes, this what is exciting for me. I compared it a little bit to usenet as soon as a joined
SmittyHalibut
@LB0FI IRC is still there. Thatโs the great thing about a protocol, you canโt kill it. :-)
SmittyHalibut
@LB0FI so the thing you miss is the community you had on IRC back then. Where is that community now? Is there a way to get them back? Maybe find them on mastodon? Twitter? Discord? Or, stand up an isolated IRC server and point them all back at it? ;-)
SmittyHalibut
@LB0FI my point is, think of it as the community, not the technology, and you might find other ways to get it back. Or, maybe itโs scattered to the winds and you will find another community.
SmittyHalibut
@jeroenclemens Iโd argue that it still felt that way into the early 2000s. But, yes. 30 years ago too. I got active in 1993, but was into BBSes since 1985 before that.
What's it to you?
@smitty Has anyone set up shrine instances to Bob Kahn, Vintont Cerf, Robert Cailliau, and Tim Berners-Lee? For good measure, Bill Atkinson deserves a shrine too. Hypercard was my first memory of links and pages. May their decentralized, cooperative information systems live forever.
Jamie Genovese
@smitty also reminds me of a combination of Twitter and Reddit. Looks fairly like Twitter, instances serve same general idea as subreddits, but you can set up camp in one or more of them.
Thom
@smitty In those days, you had to work a little bit more, not only to build your own 'internet identity', but also to find people who have 'identities' that you're interested in. I think the same is true here. (Honestly, though, both the building and the searching for like-minded souls was a big part of the fun of those days, IMO. )
SmittyHalibut
@pdcawley true. Very true. That part does feel very different on mastodon. At least, I hope it does to the not-white-and-male crowd.
GayCookie.dev ๐ณ๏ธโ๐ :misskey:
@smitty@mastodon.halibut.com No the internet was designed for cat videos and porn! everyone knows this ๐
JamieTheMashMan
@smitty the internet also used to be more complicatedโฆ still need to sort out that bit!
Kenneth Finnegan
@smitty it's super interesting how the virality of this toot depends on our perspective. ActivityPub is only on a need to know basis, so I only see four boosts for it because that's the only four we've seen pushed to our server. |
Gregory's Server
@smitty Well, being 76 now, yup - that was the Internet I remember.