@volpeon

@anthropy @ProfWolf

I think the solution would be to make fedi a bit more like email: turn instances into access providers and have communities at a higher level that ignores instance boundaries. The important thing is to separate community concerns from provider concerns since having both intrinsically tied together is confusing and frustrating. It's also stopping us from having an actually good abstraction for communities because "we already have communities", except it fucking sucks.

My idea would be this:

There are communities which each have rules, admins to enforce the rules, and their own timeline.

Choosing your instance would work like with email: you compare some straightforward data points and that's it, but at the core it really doesn't matter which one you join. It's just an access point to the network.

Joining a community then can happen at any later time after you've joined an instance. The web UI lets you browse communities and easily switch between the community timelines.
Getting banned from a community would have no impact on your ability to communicate with people outside of it. You wouldn't even have to join a community, it's just a useful way to talk with people sharing your interests.

Notice how this is equal to joining multiple instances on our current fediverse to achieve the same thing (being a member of multiple communities), but now you only have one account and communities actually make more sense because they're focused on concepts instead of domain names.

Do you see the parallels with email and mailing lists which are essentially communities on top of email? It's exactly the same dynamic.

There's probably a lot more to consider, and I don't even know if it would be doable, but this is the basic idea I would pursue if I were to redesign the fediverse from scratch.

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

@anthropy @ProfWolf Is this discussion still directed at me, too? Because all I meant to say is "federation as a concept isn't inherently difficult to grasp, but here's why people have trouble with the fediverse flavor of it". That's it, that's the whole message.

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

@anthropy

I think you're looking at this from a "fediverse vs other platforms" angle whereas I'm talking about "federation on the fediverse vs federation elsewhere".

If I create an email address, it's simple: I choose a provider by comparing some straightforward data points such as storage, cost and privacy. Then, joining communities is a separate task where I then check the rules, vibes etc. Providers and communities are completely separate.

If you join fedi, your instance is provider and community at once. The latter is true even if you don't like it, because this whole network decided to treat instances this way.
"All of the reply guys are from mastodon.social" "Yeah I'm blocking the whole domain lol". An admin doesn't like your behavior and suspends you from their (remote) instance, which cuts you off from everyone on there, which is a community decision. You will get caught up in this dynamic.
Have you heard of dansup blocking people from Loops for using a certain email provider as someone he disliked? It's the same core behavior, but in that case it was called out as stupid because email providers don't have the same role as fedi instances.

You brought up other platforms, but your comparison doesn't work with my angle, so here's my take:

With fedi, the community aspect is tightly integrated and there's no way around it.
With email, communities aren't part of it at all. They happen out-of-band and use email for notifications and personal messages at most.
This means that unlike with fedi, what happens in those communities won't affect your email account at all. You will never lose your ability to exchange emails with someone.

As a consequence, email federation is so inconspicuous that most people just automatically understand that they can send a message from Gmail and someone using Outlook will receive it.
Compare this with fedi, where you have to find out how much of the network is blocking an instance, if you can even talk with certain people, if you vibe with the rules and people on there etc.

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

The reason why people grasp federation easily when it comes to email and phones, but not at all when it comes to fedi is simple:

If you use Gmail or whatever other email provider, you don't become part of the "Gmail community". Communities form at a higher level detached from provider boundaries, and do so just fine. Getting banned from a community has no impact on your email. You choose a provider and have access to all the same communities.

Here, it's all an annoying clusterfuck that requires knowledge about the dynamics on the fediverse before you've even been part of it.

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

Why are there so many posts about dansup again, I thought he wanted to quit Masto

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

👈

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

@Gauss Classic

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

"Copilot gets Clipchamp support for automatic video creation"

WELL WHICH OF THE 3 COPILOTS IS THIS ABOUT NOW??

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

Do they hand out a bonus every time someone manages to cram the word "Copilot" into a product?

Volpeon

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip

1y

How many instances of "Copilot" does Microsoft have now? I know of Copilot (the general-purpose AI assistant), GitHub Copilot (the coding AI assistant), and now Microsoft 365 Copilot (Office????)