 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
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@smitty It's a change for the better: from acting as a consumer to be a proactiver user, there's a hugh difference. @smitty when I was growing up with the internet, I remember jumping between various forums dedicated to niche interests. There was definitely strong communities formed in those. Though Mastodon and Twitter's timeline-like model feels very disorganized to me, not that it's trying to be the same thing though. It's just different. More like a massive general thread on a forum.  @smitty I too am a geezer, and appreciating this focus. "See kids! THAT's what the Internet is supposed to look like!" @smitty I couldn't agree more. I am 41 years old and I can honestly say this is so peaceful just like being on AOL chat rooms. @smitty It’s also decidedly non-commercial / non-mega-corporate, which is refreshing. @smitty Yes! The "old internet" never went away. It got sidelined by corporate internet, but it's always been there, and it's nice that we get to rediscover it. I wrote an essay the other day that traces the history of social networks through the development of personal computing, and the tension between hacker culture and corporate monetization. You can see the ideas of decentralization and federation as early as the 1970s. @iamabrickhouse @smitty I’ve got as far as the inception of IRC, and just had to pause to say that your essay is well worth a read! I’d never heard of Community Memory, for instance. Followed.  Yes!  @smitty Yeah, Dave Winer warned us early and often about "walled gardens." We didn't listen, and we've got hell to pay (at least in the U.S. and arguably in a lot of other places) as the result. This feels like a big step back in the right direction.  @panamared27401 @smitty Watching the whole interweb ecology evolve over the last two decades, I’ve gotten convinced that 80% off the people ((not just in US, everywhere) will sell their souls for ‘convenience.’ I won’t name apps, corps etc. @smitty same here. I actually find IRC better than it was 20 years ago these days thanks to @liberachat  @smitty Also feels similar to FIDOnet and the late-80s BBS scene, for the same reason. It's a huge improvement.  @smitty As someone who remembers the internet from 20 years ago, I also remember some really dark consequences of how it was. It will be interesting to see if this new form of federation will be able to keep awfulness at a distance as the network grows. I hope it's up to the challenge. @whreq You're not wrong. I hope the moderation tools built-in to Fediverse help prevent that this time.  The #Fediverse (and #Mastodon in particular) has some fairly strong mod tools already. I’m inclined to think that most people will be just fine. @aditya12anand @whreq It's ultimately all the same shit we have now. Entitled jerks who thing that since they can't see the person they're abusing, its somehow ok for them to abuse them. People with little to no empathy. Mostly testosterone poisoned white boys who are told they should be powerful and strong and dominant, and take that out on arbitrary people they find on the Internet. Ya know, the usual. Back then, there was basically no moderation. But you could at least find a private place. @aditya12anand @smitty Unfortunately, I think the main thing moderating most websites is advertisers, not technology. I don't like ads or advertisers, and definitely don't agree with many of their policies for publishers, but at least the threat of losing revenue has kept many sites free from the worst categories of nastiness. Awful people exist, and can fund their own communities. The bad stuff can be blocked but not taken offline. @aditya12anand @whreq No, I think we'll win the battle because our motivations are the community, not global dominance and eyeballs. @aditya12anand @smitty It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future... I don't know. I'm new here (although I've been lurking public messages for a few years) and think moderation will remain useful, but having been a moderator of one of the first social networks (centralized even), I just hope everyone who does moderate can keep up and finds a way to cope with the shit. I know I couldn't, ~2 decades ago. It's basically impossible to protect the moderators. @aditya12anand @smitty Hate groups, CSAM, gore, and worse, were all not something you'd encounter easily, but once you'd uncover a part, you could easily find more to keep feeding your curiosity. Moderation was sort-of like here except even more proactive: all links were manual (no automated federation), and one simply didn't link to those things. One advantage of centralized platforms that can be held responsible, is that they can actually *delete* the stuff. @aditya12anand @smitty Honestly I don't think much can be done to avoid the pitfalls, except to be transparent that they exist and to teach people how to deal with the nastiness mentally. I personally wouldn't know how, though! @aditya12anand @smitty I think the main pitfall would be to think that all sites will be equally safe and nice just because they look a certain way. On the old web, the pitfall may have been "looks professional so must be legit", on fediverse it might be "looks exactly like those other sites full of nice people, so must be legit". But once you cross the wrong border, the whole idea of what's nice and nasty may be completely opposite. @mtkr I do! I started in 1993, but I figured it felt mostly the same up until the early 2000s. Hence my "20 years" number.  @smitty I think they mean it feels like shittier technology, like how the internet was 20 yrs ago @smitty I like some of the "old web" stuff referenced here https://notes.neocoretext.net/basic-html-competency-is-the-new-punk-folk-explosion/ @smitty how does it feel to have a "viral toot"? I'm just following a bunch of folks who have chimed in on this discussion, as a self selected group of folks I want to follow. I've known @smitty for most of my professional career, was honored to have him as a groomsman at my wedding, and have about 5 years in him. This is definitely more of the internet I grew up with. Let's keep it weird and fun. @smitty Gosh I miss IRC. I made some of my very closest friends, to this day, that way. @smitty And mostly it is based around open standards. Like you can choose your email provider of choice and still be in contact per email with your friends on other email provider, you can choose your #mastodon instance and still connect to your friends on others. And like you can change your email provider, you can change your instance. @smitty speaking as someone that never got to experience Usenet and IRC because I'm gen Z, I'm really enjoying the federated nature of this platform and I think it will definitely become more popular. @smitty to some degree that must be a function of size too, right? At a certain threshold you hit Eternal September and the Fediverse isn’t there yet. @WMD505 the difference is, Fediverse has the tools to make the trolls disappear. A user can block another user. A site admin can block an entire site, email domain, IP address range, etc. is it 100% perfect? No. But it’s WAY better than on twitter, which isn’t really motivated to prevent interactions. They’re motivated to encourage interaction, even if it’s harmful interactions to one of the two parties. @smitty I got that exact feeling when I signed up and started looking around. Reminded me of being a young teen and discovering IRC, using Netscape etc.. Gave me a real thrill! 🍸 |
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@smitty Total agreed.