I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media

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Federation does not work I’m not saying federation “won’t” work or “can’t” work. Merely that in 2025, nine years after deployment, federation does not work for the Mastodon use case.

I could opine at length about possible federated architectures and what I think the ActivityPub people clearly got wrong in hindsight.1 But the proof is in the pudding: Mastodon simply doesn’t show users the posts they ask to see, as I quickly

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

See long argument above. It exists and is viable for millions of people. Once people decide they want something other than corporate social media, the Fediverse is there. There is no point in trying to make the Fediverse a copy of the corporate social media to appeal to users that see no reason to switch. The Fediverse is relevant regardless of the size, because it proves a real alternative is possible and viable.

[–] rglullis 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There is no point in trying to make the Fediverse a copy of the corporate social media to appeal to users that see no reason to switch.

Again, this is just a lazy cop-out and a perfect display of the hubris here that is so off-putting.

You make it sound that the people using Instagram or TikTok are there because they like the Surveillance Capitalism, or getting bombard by ads, or they are all sucking up to Zuckerberg. Have you ever considered that maybe people are still there because they actually like some of the features they use in the products and they can't find it here?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you actually talked to some people using TikTok? Yes, they do like the personalized algorithmic feed, and that is inseperable from the surveillance part, and they certainly don't want to pay for it either.

The ones with hubris are people like you that think they can turn the Fediverse into the next big thing. Of course people already on the fediverse are going try raining on your parade 🤷

[–] rglullis 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, they do like the personalized algorithmic feed, and that is inseperable from the surveillance part.

There is absolutely nothing stopping the personalization algorithms to run on-device or delegated to a separate service from the video feed.

they certainly don’t want to pay for it either.

It doesn't have to be a "donation/public funding" vs "ads/surveillance capitalism" dichotomy. I bet we can find alternative models of governance and funding, provided we get to a place Fediverse is relevant enough to attract the attention of some small business, media channels, institutions, etc.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There is absolutely nothing stopping the personalization algorithms to run on-device or delegated to a separate service from the video feed.

But that is not how the TikTok recommendation algorithm works and doing it locally only would be a very poor substitute most likely, as it seem to also recommend what other people with a similar behavior pattern have liked. And the same algorithm is used to identify suitable targets for advertisers, so the two are basically inseparable.

provided we get to a place Fediverse is relevant enough to attract the attention of some small business, media channels, institutions, etc.

That's like saying the community garden needs to be relevant enough to attract a seed shop and a fast-food stand etc. And a few weeks later there is no more community garden but rather a strip mall owned by the local oligopolists renting out booths to entrepreneurs. That is just not helpful at all, because it destroys the very foundation of what the Fediverse tries to achieve.

[–] rglullis 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

would be a very poor substitute most likely

phanpy is already doing it for Mastodon, and there are plenty of people satisfied with it.
You have no idea how far one can go by getting a generic training model and fine-tuning on the device
we don't need to have something a perfect replacement. We just need "good enough".
even if it is not perfect, it is better than the nothing that reactionary "no algorithm in the Fediverse!" crowd is bringing to the table.

That is just not helpful at all, because it destroys the very foundation of what the Fediverse tries to achieve.

Says who? You and the gatekeepers who'd rather have everyone stuck in the past, just to preserve some technical/ideological purity?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You are mixing up two topics here. If someone wants to experiment with a local only algorithmic feed that's fine, but I can practically guarantee that this will never be enough to convince people to switch from TikTok and the like.

And the other topic is about commercialization. You are the one stuck in the past thinking that is the only way for the Fediverse to succeed. Quite on the contrary, if anyone seriously tried that it would fail quickly and just result in burned investments and a lot of goodwill towards the Fediverse lost.

[–] rglullis 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Quite on the contrary, if anyone seriously tried that it would fail quickly and just result in burned investments

What do you think that Automattic, Flipboard and Ghost are doing? Do you think they are paying people to develop integrations with AP because they are really nice people and have zero intentions of profiting from their investments?

Look, I better leave this conversation. I should have learned by now that there is no point in arguing with ideologues.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

The problem is that you are the ideologue but fail to realize that. Capitalism is an ideology and a very harmful one.

As for those investments, lets see, but I don't expect much to come from those.