 In Malaysia, I got valuable feedback about the Fediverse. Namely, two things about Malaysians: 1. Unless you're a gamer, no one owns a desktop or laptop. However, it is common to own more than one Android smartphone. 2. P2P social networking is not feasible, and people don't trust locally-hosted servers. This is because people fear their own governments more than they fear foreign-owned corporations. It's not uncommon for people to get arrested for what's on their phones. 35 comments
@atomicpoet I think most white-collared workers do have a laptop that they either bought themselves or are work-assigned. Itโs true that desktops are mostly owned by gamers though. Somewhere along the way, people lost or didn't gain the experience owning, maintaining, or building their own desktops. Practically speaking, I am the only person in my social circle working primarily with my desktop simply because it's the best bang for the buck, and I don't have to be mobile for my work, usually. @rewarp lol I have used that as a legit excuse every time I am asked whether I will ever see people in the office IRL. No laptop I own or have access to are better than my desktop, so it's an actual debuff on top of the stamina-drain from travelling. @rewarp That's why we should all be reading anarchist and labour texts. I just tell the folks who wanted me to use WhatsApp to provide me with a phone and paid package. And I have a company laptop too for some jobs, but I am still working from home permanently. If they don't like it, I will just go do something else. @rewarp @rewarp @rakyat @atomicpoet Sadly, true sangat! I'm a xennial & did my architecture undergrad yrs in Malaysia. We all built our own desktops, hosted our own websites, community forum. Flew desktop tower with me when I left lols. Using gamer's spec laptop rn. Haha I bought a check bag just for my desktop (which damn right was coming home with me and I am using it to write this toot) from my stint in grad school. Was expecting to pay taxes or whatever when I went through immigration, and I have never been so happy for Malaysian "eh too much trouble" attitude when they saw all my bags and nerdy face and waved me on. @rewarp @rakyat @atomicpoet Waliauweh! Sturdy gila. I get what you mean with our customs, we never know which way they'd sway :clowncop: @atomicpoet And newer than that, and happened to an individual: https://worldofbuzz.com/msian-gets-arrested-and-twitter-confiscated-by-mcmc-for-criticising-najib-and-umno/ (Just in case anyone is interested about citations) @cendawanita @atomicpoet You know what, to understand the challenges Malaysians face with our law enforcement, thereโs no better person to talk to than Fahmi Reza. He got arrested so frequently & has his phone confiscated so often that Iโm sure he has elaborate strategies/best practices in place when it comes to protecting data lol @atomicpoet @atomicpoet @atomicpoet for the Fediverse to expand and be useful into such environments, I think there might be a case for civic actors, NGOs and others to step up their game. Perhaps providing both hosting service as well as various instances for these kind of needs. One key will be to find other financial models than add revenue. Perhaps also frontend apps that makes more sense in that context as well.  That may not be sufficient. The technology may need to be added-to support their use-case. Interestingly, people have been considering use-cases like theirs for decades now. So, what to add isn't necessarily a mystery. Although a convention for the exact implementation would need to be decided.  @atomicpoet Does this only apply to Fediverse or decentralized/federalized solutions in general? What about communication via Matrix? What about using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies? Bittorrent? @michal @atomicpoet if you use end-to-end encryption it should not matter where the server is located? @MishaVelthuis @michal @atomicpoet Having your server seized and may not be returned easily, unless you tell them how to decrypt it -- even we know it is impossible... I think it still does matter. I see. Tricky. I guess running your own instance on a cloud service in a country that you trust would be a way out? In fact latter countries could provide such services at low/no costs? Maybe university networks have a role to play here? (In the Netherlands we now have a Mastodon server for students and employees in Dutch research institutes: @SLURF @SURF @vtraag ). @MishaVelthuis I'm not well-versed with what laws admins have to comply with, but just putting a server offshore might not help much. I once read a toot (seems to have been deleted now, so take this with grain of salt) that said being an admin makes you deal with legal stuff that doesn't make sense, for example because it shouldn't be applicable to your site. so... I don't know.  Isn't electricity and power outages also a problem in #Malaysia? Making #selfhosting diffiult? They can still use #Mastodon. They just need to find an instance. @Stark9837 Power outages are not frequent here, at least not in the cities. @Stark9837 @Stark9837 1.??? Computer Science and Information Technology is a required subject in Malaysian public schools. During the pandemic the entire nation had to engage in online learning?? Digital poverty is a real thing here, just like anywhere, but presumably a large number of households had a computer or laptop?? There were also a number of free or subsidized laptop schemes for lower income households. Most Malaysian college n uni students have laptops?? @keropokin @atomicpoet During the pandemic it was more common for kids to use tablets or phones than a laptop. While most college/uni students have laptops, a large number of school leavers don't go to uni. Most of the population uses a phone as their main device now. While millennials had a higher number of computers, the trend seems to be towards phones and tablets for the younger generation. Laptops and desktops aren't what people are using to access social media @keropokin @rakyat might have more recollection as well @keropokin 2. Lowyat Forum (basically the Malaysian reddit) has been online since 2002 Lol, not sure about ur sources but are we talking about the same Malaysia here?  @atomicpoet When I think about the fediverse, I don't think Mastodon is the killer app for mass adoption on the Malaysian context. The most popular social media is tiktok, followed by Facebook and Instagram. The twitter format isn't exactly popular here and most are passive users that don't use it for discussions. From my personal experience most use it because it's easy to get news updates fast and to follow viral topics. Mastodon doesn't fit the use case by design. |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet Yup 2 was on my mind when I thought about having my own instance