I don’t think it can but hear me out for a second. How about we just don’t grow? We’re not beholden to stock owners needing to see growth year over year. Can we just be happy with what we have?
100% agree with you. Growth must not be the goal, maybe a byproduct. Focusing on growth will eventually compromise the quality of our experience.
Absolutely agree with you as well. Natural growth as a byproduct would mean that those that wish to stay in the fediverse like what the see and stay with the community.
Yes. The argument that we need to grow is a capitalistic one imo. This isn’t a capitalistic platform afaik. Small communities are naturally better, I think.
I don’t think it needs to be our goal, but I think if the fediverse gets popular, we should let it grow. I see this place as an infinite green space for people to come and feel free to discuss their interests. Lemmy’s communities ensure that it scales, because you only join ones that interest you. Then the community can enforce whatever spirit of discussion it wants to maintain and people can create another community if they want to try something different.
My thoughts exactly. Growth is a byproduct of quality. Similarly, if the Fediverse grows too much and quality starts to slip, we should also let it shrink until quality comes back. I think our aim should be quality, and anything else is just a side effect.
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
Threads in the Fediverse is like a powerful dictatorship trying to “deepen its bonds” with a small but democratic government. The dictatorship will eventually exploit the power asymmetry to control the democracy, direct or indirectly, effectively erasing it. In that situation, the best approach is to simply not play along the dictatorship. (Defederate Threads.)
Another threat to democracy is internal: the centralisation of control over the whole into a few hands. In the case of the Fediverse, this is the reliance on central systems (front-end software, back-end software, instances, discovery systems, etc.). I see what the author proposes as a “Universal Declaration on Fediverse Rights” as, potentially, a new mechanism enabling those central systems - who gets to decide what goes in that declaration?
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
An important detail is that the author falls into the fallacy of conflating epistemic and moral matters. This is specially explicit here:
Because without believing in the existence of a objective truth (which they don’t, because they attribute themselves to moral relativism),
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles.
That is not a problem. That’s a feature.
You make a few good points, I will try to counter them.
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
True, its for separation of powers but this doesn’t mean there cannot be any central rules decided upon. For example the consititution of the united states. However, because the Fediverse doesn’t have a government, I think a better analogy would be a league of more or less democractic countries that work together. Of course they can agree to an universal declaration, like the united nations agreed on human rights for exactly the same reasons.
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
Agreed. However, there is a difference between a constitution of a country and agreements between countries. For example, the NATO has an agreement with the US that if any NATO country is attacked, US will jump in. However, this is completely build on trust, if Trump decides to not jump in, no one will be able to stop him, meaning there isn’t any higher institution that controls the different actors in this agreement other than the actors themselves. This is why I think the analogue of a league of nations is better, because agreements can be much more loose here.
Of course, there would still be a question who would write this document, but the basic idea would be that if it was supported by many servers, it would be put up more or less by word of mouth. To do this most effectively, it would be good to create the document in a way that many servers willing to agree to it. For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers. And eventually, the most reasonable one will be hold up by the most servers. I think of it as a dynamic process.
But yeah, there would have to be put some thought into it how to craft it and most likely we don’t have the institutions yet to do something like that.
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
Could be true, I need to think about this longer. However, I still think that as a foundation, basic fediverse rights could be agreed upon through reason and that they could become effective tools against Meta and to improve the Fediverse in general. Of course, they shouldn’t be too detailed and let enough freedoms how to realize them technically.
the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles.
That is not a problem. That’s a feature.
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant. Its not like the Fediverse will automatically develop in a good direction. I don’t believe in a hierarchy-free, anarchic society. We need institutions and agreements to ensure that the Fediverse stays a good place.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
So perhaps the best analogy with RL politics would be a confederation with lax citizenship laws and federated entities being free to choose which other federated entities they interact with. With a key difference:
The Fediverse can be completely acephalous. And the reason becomes evident once you analyse the UN of your example - it’s effectively Europe and USA wearing a bunch of sock puppets, pretending to talk in the name of the “nations” (actually countries, but whatever) of the world. An acephalous Fediverse would not develop a similar problem.
In this case (Threads), it means that, while we should promote defederation, how to deal with it should be, ultimately, up to each instance.
NATO example
I don’t pay taxes to any NATO country so what I’m going to say is solely based on the Fediverse situation, plus whatever I parsed from your example:
We should not need to rely on “trust” on first place. Instead a better approach is to acknowledge that people will fuck it up, they will do things that counter the best interests of the whole, and that the system needs to handle it.
For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers.
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant.
Or we could leave those moral matters up to each instance to decide. And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
I said separation of powers because you said the Fediverse should be like a democracy. Then it should have that. For me, democracy is first of all a better way to control those in power, which is why I think we shouldn’t think of the Fediverse as a democracy, because it isn’t; at least not currently. It’s not like you have a say in the general development of the Fediverse, because there is no real centre to it anyways.
So, I agree with you here, I just don’t think that’s what a democracy is. If the Fediverse would be a democracy, it would have government, a constitution, etc.
But as I said, I agree with you how we should think of the Fediverse: as acephalous. However, why should it be completely acephalous? Why shouldn’t servers make agreements with one another? The Fedipact is one of those, the badspace, too. And while I’m not a fan of the first one, its generally fine, if they don’t force people into it (like you said). Why then not try to do the same thing but with some actual principles?
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
Then many servers will opt out of it and it will become irrelevant. That’s the beauty of it. Because its only an agreement that is not controlled by any centrlized entity, its not as binding. The same as with the Fedipact: it wasn’t set up by any central entity and will not be enforced by it other than the community or powerful servers. But that the community and powerful servers will try to influence the course of the Fediverse is the the case anyways!
And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
For Nazi-instances, that’s easy, but for example in the case of Threads, it quickly becomes very complicated to agree on which instances should be isolated and which not. How do you determine that if not through speaking to other servers? And if you do that, you can just as well speak to them about common rights and write them down somewhere. It’s the same thing but with more transparency.
We cannot build the Fediverse without trust and mutual agreements. It will just not work; and we are also already doing it.
The US is a failed and corrupted state that we don’t need to recreate. It’s built on more wrong things than good. Keep your American propaganda to yourself and don’t infest the actually free fediverse with your liberal corporatist ideals.
And this isn’t even touching on the myriad of reasons for us not to federate with an entity like Meta. Not even gonna iterate on them because they’ve been infinitely chewed in and out.
It might have been fake, but weren’t there already reports of Meta blocking links/tags in relation to pixelfed?
If it’s true, they’ve already proven to be a bad faith actor. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already scraping data from every other instance that federates with them.
At the end of the day, one side will be right. My moneys on the anti-threads side.
How is that any different than the weekly defederatiosns here?
We need some basic rules,
- No single direction federation
- Users own their content and can licence it as they feel fit
With these 2 it would be hard to fuck up
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I think we’re up to 16 now. The Fediverse is being ruined.
I mean there are a shitload of reasons to not federate with Threads, but I feel like “it will federate ads to your server” is kinda the only one I should need to mention.
Are you sure you don’t mean a Universal Declaration of Fediverse Independence from Reddit, Threads, and Twitter/X?
Many people like simplistic garbage. You can’t convince them to like something better, as that creates demands on them to grow as a person, when they likely have other priorities in their lives that demand their attention more forcefully.
This is why McDonalds is the worlds most successful restaurant. Not because it is good, but because it is undemanding.
So, when people think we can pull users from the McDonalds crowd with superior quality, it just makes me laugh.
The soul is always lost
Can we stop all this philosophising and just get on with enjoying it for what it is? Please?
I’m really tired of hearing everybody’s thoughts on Meta and Threads. And souls. And money. And the future. There are too many captains of the ship who want their 15 minutes of steering time. Opinions ate like assholes, everybody has one.
If you want Meta and Threads in your life, then join it or an instance that is going to federate with it. If you don’t, move to an instance that won’t. Same applies for any community that your part of. Or start your own. That’s the beauty of this.
Can we please let it rest?
You didn’t have to click on this post.
You didn’t have to reply to my comment.
Yes, but I’m not complaining about being tired of reading comments about this.
And?
So, since I’m not going somewhere and then complaining about going there, my actions are reasonable and normal. Since you clicked on the post, and then complained about what it clearly was going to be about, yours are not. Thus, we are not the same, and your “yea you too” comment simply made no sense.
Not that any of this is particularly surprising on the internet.
I think your confusing me with somebody who cares what your view of your actions is, or what your expectations on the internet is.
All you’ve done is complain about me posting my opinion. Not the actual opinion. But that I just posted it.
If you don’t agree with me, that’s cool. But try to use a few more brain cells to make it a constructive argument that we can discuss rather than the childish bullshit you’ve posted so far.
I haven’t complained about a single thing. All I did was try to give you an idea that you may not have thought of, and then make an amusing observation and answer a question of yours.
Not my fault if it bothered you.
I don’t disagree with you at all. I just thought that maybe you hadn’t considered that you don’t have to read something if you suspect you may not like it. This doesn’t occur to everyone, you see.
The irony of you showing up here to bitch about something you had no reason to even click and then insulting someone else’s brain while they are literally demonstrating more thought than you is just hilarious.
