 The history of social media in 5 waves: 1st wave: Focus on protocols. Examples: Email, finger, Usenet, BBS, listserv, IRC 2nd wave: Focus on web. Examples: Classmates.com, LiveJournal, Habbo, Friendster 3rd wave: Focus on browser-based apps. Examples: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Reddit 4th wave: Focus on mobile apps. Examples: Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok 5th wave: Focus on decentralization. Examples: Mastodon, Bluesky, Matrix, Pixelfed, PeerTube Today, I decided to check if Usenet is still *used* by people for discussions. Yes, it is. Take a look at this screenshot for yourself. Messages were posted to comp.sys.mac.advocacy today! Is this a popular way of doing social media? Not at all. However, it is persistent. You can accuse Usenet of many things: lack of moderation, spam, aesthetic ugliness, etc. But one thing you can't accuse it of is being dead. Right now, Usenet is 43 years old -- and it lives!
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@atomicpoet I just need to find a good Usenet provider again, I'd love to add that back into my social media world.   @atomicpoet I was just looking into Usenet the other day. It’s too bad it’s hard to spin up a personal Usenet server, or it’s super archaic at least. I have some resources on my home network. And people wonder why I'm optimistic regarding Meta's move into the Fediverse! Look at what shape Meta is in at the moment: they've just got rid of a company that they bought for $1B. This isn't a company trying to dominate. It's a company trying to survive. Police Facebook pages have a racial bias. Are you surprised? Probably not -- but here's some statistics to back that up. John Rappaport, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, analyzed nearly 14,000 police Facebook pages, and discovered the racial bias was consistent. Between 2010 and 2019, Black suspects were described in 32 percent of posts but represented just 20 percent of arrestees. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-facebook-posts-racial-bias/ Seems to be an error in logic. There is not an arrest in every situation where a suspect's race is known. This data is not surprising; It is expected. Meta is threatening Canadians. They will make news inaccessible on Facebook and Instagram if the Online News Act passes. The reason: the law will compel Meta to compensate Canadian journalists when their content is repurposed on those platforms. Well, I hope they follow through on their threat! For too long, Meta and Twitter have got rich off the hard work of journalists while paying peanuts. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/meta-block-news-liberal-online-bill-1.6776485
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 @atomicpoet Don't they get paid the same for a click through from Facebook as from anywhere else? I don't understand what Facebook is expected to pay for exactly. Are people meant to pass links around in hardcopy on business cards or something? I don't see the significance of the intermediary service in this transaction. @atomicpoet Absolute fantasy. Twitter is still losing money and benefits not a lick financially from journalism. Facebook couldn’t care less. News is of less than no value to them. (Google very different story, btw.) @atomicpoet 🇨🇦 Stand strong! Don't back down. Who needs Facebook & Instagram when you could be on Mastodon? 🍁 Come join us! 🍁 Journalists must leave Twitter now! That's the opinion of Celeste Headless of Current. Since Elon Musk has bought Twitter, he has been attacking the platform's most active content creators: journalists. Which is why journalists need to find an alternative and migrate elsewhere. She notes that Mastodon is one alternative, although it requires some knowledge and comfort with the technology. https://current.org/2023/03/why-journalists-should-act-now-to-create-an-alternative-to-twitter/
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@atomicpoet if journalists have indeed been Twitter’s most active user group (and it seems likely to me, based on experience), probably some introspection should be applied about why that is/was and the effect it’s had on the industry.  You can send Mastodon posts through Home Assistant! @bazcurtis has written an excellent guide on how to this. He walks you through the access rights of Mastodon’s API then shows you how to edit Home Assistant configurations.yaml. Looks like a fun project! https://www.bazmac.me/blog/post-to-mastodon-from-home-assistant @atomicpoet @bazcurtis @fediversenews I hope mastodon is ready for updates every time I turn on a light :) 🍎 Ligt for Mastodon is an iOS app released 3 weeks ago 🍎 It describes itself as “minimalist, fast, and simple”. It is made by Revoo, a developer that also makes an app called “AI Girlfriend”. They also make “AI Boyfriend” too. Generally, they’re into AI. What’s with all these new Mastodon developers being so hardcore into AI? https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ligt-for-mastodon/id1669105131
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 @atomicpoet  @atomicpoet a trend plus a trend equals 200% guaranteed success, obviously. I’m pretty sure Ligt for Mastodon is just a repurposed Nostr client. 🤣 How can I tell? The icon on the far left. For Nostr clients like Damus and Amethyst, they’re used for “zaps”, a form of crypto payments. But on Mastodon, that does nothing. And pressing it does nothing. In fact, the reason Ligt is so “minimalistic” is because you can’t do a whole lot of things on Nostr. 🤖 There's an Android app called Mammoth for Mastodon 🤖 It is unrelated to @mammoth for iOS, and is made by a developer named Justin Willis. The focus of it seems to be on AI, particularly AI generated images, AI driven autocomplete, and AI status generation. If you really love AI—to the point of obsession—you'll love this app.
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 @atomicpoet @mammoth @fediversenews "I got promoted today" would have been a perfectly fine post. @atomicpoet @mammoth @fediversenews And if you don't love AI, you'll want to avoid it. It's good to be warned about this kind of thing. 🤖 Another new Android app for Mastodon 🤖 @ZonePane for Mastodon is a "Simple Mastodon app". It looks to be made by a Japanese developer. Google Play says it contains ads. I haven't verified this yet. 🤖 New Mastodon app for Android recently dropped! 🤖 @moshidon for Mastodon arrived in Android Play on February 27, and it was updated on March 7. It describes itself as "Mastodon for Android but it's Material You and has more features." Indeed, this is a fork of the official Mastodon app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.joinmastodon.android.moshinda  @atomicpoet it's actually been around for a while, but I guess it was only available on F-droid until now. 📰 @tootsdk has added support for Akkoma and Friendica! 📰 @tootsdk is a cross-platform Swift library for Mastodon and the fediverse. It aims to support all major server software. You can use @tootsdk to build a client for Apple operating systems, or Linux with Vapor. With Akkoma and Friendica support, both platforms move closer to better client integration! See chart for how this works. @atomicpoet @tootsdk For what it's worth, Akkoma is already natively supported by (probably) most Mastodon clients, although only a subset of its wider range of features are accessible for most of them. Text formatting, for example, may be visible on some other clients, but you probably can't format text within most of them.
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 @atomicpoet @elk @fediversenews It does work well – I have it on my laptop. But I never use it. I'm used to accessing Elk through elk.zone, and I'm not seeing any incentive to change that. Perhaps you can provide one?  @atomicpoet @elk @fediversenews It's a PWA ( progressive web app). Many of the browser based clients are including the Mastodon web app and @phanpy . You can install them from the chrome menu to the windows, iOS, or Android desktop. More here: https://web.dev/what-are-pwas/ Bots talking to bots. That’s going to be Big Social very soon. It will just be a big firehose of bullshit with no one around to read it. Who does this appeal to? Apparently, “busy” (in reality: lazy) entrepreneurs. However, if entrepreneurs can’t come up with their own coherent thoughts, they have no business saying anything on social media.
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 @atomicpoet an interesting scenario since the AI bots have no concept of truth: what if the AI makes a false statement and the executive posts it uncritically? Some regulatory bodies might have a frown. @atomicpoet is there a way to financially penalise using bots? If I can trick their bot into agreeing to a sale, can I make it binding? @atomicpoet wait till the bot comes up with a massively unprofitable special offer. or goes off on one about inhumane policies directed at refugees Default accessibility warnings are now enabled in @apps. Which means that if you try to post media without a description, there will be a dialogue box that says “There are missing media description.” A warning also comes up when you boost posts without media descriptions. This is an important consideration for accessibility, and helps the Fediverse be available to more people. See screenshots.
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  @atomicpoet @apps @fediversenews It really is too bad that Diaspora never integrated ActivityPub. They talk to Friendica and Hubzilla. But they don't talk to Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, or PeerTube.
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@atomicpoet I was part of the 2019 Google Pluxodus to Diaspora (& MeWe and others) In addition to no ActivityPub, Diaspora also suffers from being a walled garden with no search or discovery function unless you login. I wonder how Dennis Schubert feels about @mozilla starting up mozilla.social. He's a core diaspora* dev who works at @mozilla.social He wrote this very intense post about why diaspora* wasn't going to add ActivityPub, and it seems he wasn't very happy about Mastodon. https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7422#issuecomment-451750994  @atomicpoet I was using diaspora in early days, and one thing @evan said, comically dubbing it Evans law of networks: (paraphrasing) Software projects will only ever adopt or join networks larger than themselves. 🥳 @MonaApp now supports non-Mastodon instances 🥳 Which means that Pleroma, Akkoma, Pixelfed, Friendica—and other server software that uses Mastodon’s API—might be supported by @MonaApp! I have tested this on my own Pleroma instance, atomicpoet.org. It indeed works! This is such a big deal to me that @MonaApp will probably be my daily driver. See screenshot.
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 @atomicpoet @MonaApp @fediversenews Can I browse any of Pleroma, Akkoma, Pixelfed, Friendica from Mona without having an account there? Are there any servers I can add to my Mona Communities that would allow me to browse their “local timeline” - assuming non-Mastodon ActivityPub instances have such a notion. This could be a great introductory exposure to other Fediverse services from Mastodon with minimal user effort.  @atomicpoet @MonaApp @fediversenews It’s by far one of the better clients generally, so this is really good news. @atomicpoet @MonaApp @fediversenews I signed into Friendica (venera.social) and Pixelfed (pixelfed.de) to Mona no trubs. Did a couple cross-post tests, profile edits as allowed from Mona. Seems rough but reasonable given the task at hand. Now I just have to *use* these services in addition to Mastodon :)  @atomicpoet @Vivaldi @fediversenews I've been using it. I like having multiple browsers for my multiple fediverse accounts. 😂  @atomicpoet @Vivaldi @fediversenews I look forward to #Vivaldi browser being on iOS / iPadOS! 😃  @atomicpoet You see this story by @NaomiNix of the Washington post? It's not so important that Meta is "considering" a new social network. The real story is "decentralized model gains steam". And what is that "decentralized model"? The Fediverse! The mainstream media is now acknowledging that the Fediverse is cutting edge social media technology. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/11/meta-mastodon-activitypub/
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@atomicpoet 🚨BREAKING NEWS!🚨 Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is now co-authoring the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. The intent is to make WordPress a "first party Fediverse member" on par with Mastodon, Pleroma, and Pixelfed. WordPress already powers 43% of all websites—and every one is a potential Fediverse server. Automattic employee @kraft just confirmed this.
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  @atomicpoet @kraft @fediversenews Nice! It means I can shut down my cronjob reading the wordpress RSS feed and posting to mastodon https://steinar.bang.priv.no/2020/06/27/join-mastodon-and-slowly-posting-a-wordpress-rss-atom-feed/  |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet And the difference between "protocols" and "decentralization" is?
@atomicpoet I feel old, I've been in every single wave.
@atomicpoet @dmacphee You are making it too easy, probably because federated is on your agenda.
Wave 4 is mobile based, but actually has 4 phases based on the media itself.
Text based.
Chat based.
Image based.
Video based.