fediverse – Techdirt (original) (raw)

We Teamed Up With Bluesky To Tell The Supreme Court How State Social Media Laws Don’t Take Into Account User Empowerment

from the empowering-users-is-important dept

As you know, the Supreme Court is now considering the NetChoice/CCIA cases challenging two similar (but not identical) state laws regarding social media moderation. The laws in Florida and Texas came about around the same time, and were clearly written to target ideological speech. Both of them put restrictions on how certain social media apps can moderate or even recommend certain speech.

As you’ll recall, district courts in both states found the laws obviously unconstitutional attacks on the 1st Amendment. On appeal, things went differently. The 11th Circuit agreed that most of the Florida law was unconstitutional (we think they’re wrong about the part they weren’t concerned with too). But the 5th Circuit went rogue and said that of course states can set whatever moderation laws they want (which is in conflict with later 5th Circuit rulings regarding state pressure on moderation, but I digress).

Anyway, you can follow along on the docket for the case at the Supreme Court, where NetChoice/CCIA filed their brief recently. This week, a bunch of amicus briefs are being filed, some of which are really interesting.

I wanted to focus on one brief in particular in this post: our own, written by Cathy Gellis. We teamed up with Bluesky (the alternative microblogging service that is building a federated protocol for social media) and Chris Riley (in his personal capacity as the operator of a Mastodon instance) to make some points that we don’t think other amici are likely to make.

The key point we tried to make is that so much of the arguments being thrown back and forth are really about who it is that gets to determine how a website moderates: should it be the government or should it be the website? If those are the only two options there are, then it already does seem obvious that it should be the website, not the government.

But, the key to our brief is pointing out that this assumes, falsely, that this is the only possible model out there. Instead, we highlight, that it is possible to envision a world in which users themselves get to decide, and any ruling that says the government gets to decide would fundamentally make that kind of user freedom and empowerment impossible.

A fundamental part of my Protocols, Not Platforms article (which, in part, helped inspire Bluesky) was that it would empower users to have more control themselves, or at least let them choose which intermediaries they trust to help them with algorithms and moderation, rather than relying on the same platform that they use for the hosting of the content itself.

For example, Bluesky has an amazingly useful feature called “custom feeds” and it has created a marketplace of algorithms so that you can create your own algorithms and share them with others, or you can just decide to use someone else’s algorithm (or even adapt it further yourself). That is, rather than relying on a company like Twitter or Facebook to decide what you should see, on Bluesky, you get to make those decisions yourself, or hand them off to someone you trust.

But, in that architecture, it means that Bluesky often won’t even know what algorithms people are using (the algorithms don’t have to live on Bluesky’s servers, indeed, Bluesky itself might never even be aware of them). But should these laws (or laws like them) apply to Bluesky, that kind of ecosystem basically would be effectively barred, because the law would limit what kinds of algorithms could work on Bluesky, and Bluesky itself would have no way to control those third party algorithms.

This ecosystem of platforms is necessary in order for there to be meaningful choices in what expression Internet users experience online. Platform choice, and the customization algorithmic choice enables, are what helps realize the expression-promoting value of the Internet and ensures it captures a diversity of expression by putting the choices of what expression to be exposed to in the hands of users. It is not for the government to take away this choice, creating a platform or algorithmic monoculture, which is what the Florida and Texas laws threaten.

Similarly, we used the example of how comments here at Techdirt are moderated, in which much of the moderation is actually handled by community votes, and how there’s no way to comply with these laws for such community moderation practices either:

But while the Copia Institute’s moderation practices can be described in broad strokes, they cannot be articulated with the specificity that the Texas law would require. For instance, the law requires that platforms disclose their moderation standards. See, e.g., TEX. BUS. & COM. CODE § 120.051. And it also puts limits on how platforms can do this moderation. See, e.g., TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 143A.002 (banning certain moderation decisions, including those based on the “viewpoint” of the user expression being moderated). But even if the Copia Institute wanted to comply with the Texas law, it could not. For instance, it could not disclose its moderation policy because its moderation system is primarily community-driven and subject to the community’s whims and values of the moment. Which also means that it could not guarantee that moderation always comported with a preannounced “Acceptable Use Policy,” which the Texas law also requires. TEX. BUS. & COM. CODE § 120.052. It would also be infeasible to meet any of the Texas law’s additional burdensome demands, including to provide notice to any affected user, TEX. BUS. & COM. CODE § 120.103, maintain a complaint system, TEX. BUS. & COM. CODE § 120.101,24 or offer a process for appeal,25 TEX. BUS. & COM. CODE § 120.103. None of these faculties are features the Copia Institute has the resources or infrastructure to support. In other words, the Texas law sets up a situation where if the Copia Institute cannot host user-provided content exactly the way Texas demands, it effectively does not get to host any user-provided content at all. Or, potentially even worse, it would leave Techdirt in the position of having to host odious content, including content threatening to it, its staff, or others in its reader community, in order to satisfy Texas’s moderation requirements.

There are all sorts of other important 1st Amendment reasons why these laws are deeply problematic. But we assumed (almost certainly correctly) that the briefs from NetChoice/CCIA and other amici will cover all of that.

Our brief was more focused on highlighting how these issues go beyond just the 1st Amendment concerns of big websites, but how they might impact a new generation of social media platforms, like Bluesky and Mastodon, whose very models and infrastructure are fundamentally different from the “giant silos” of today’s major social media platforms.

Too much of the discussion assumes that there are only two parties who might have a say in the moderation of social media: governments and the platforms. But we want to make the court aware that a new generation of services are focused on enabling the users themselves to make that choice, and if these laws are allowed, it could wipe out that possibility.

Filed Under: community moderation, content moderation, decentralized, federation, fediverse, florida, protocols, social media, supreme court, texas
Companies: bluesky, ccia, copia institute, netchoice

Meta Launches Threads, And It’s Important For Reasons That Most People Won’t Care About

from the though-they-should dept

As you may have heard, yesterday Meta finally launched Threads, its Twitter-like microblogging service, built on ActivityPub, but using Instagram account credentials for login. The reaction from across the internet has been fascinating. I’ve seen everything from people insisting that this will clearly finally be the one single “Twitter killer” everyone’s been waiting for, to this is the microblogging equivalent of Steve Buscemi saying “how do you do, fellow kids.”

Clearly, lots of people were willing to check it out. Mark Zuckerberg (on Threads) claimed that 2 million people signed up in just the first few hours.

Of course, I got that screenshot on the web (which lets you see things, but not login or post to Threads). When I tried to get a copy of it from the mobile app where you can actually post, I got this:

So, uh, yeah, still some kinks to work out.

By this morning, Zuck was saying Threads had 30 million signups in its first day.

I mean, that’s what you get for bootstrapping on a social network and social graph that already has over 2 billion users. Some are complaining that this is an example of Meta leveraging its “dominant” position to enter a new market, but as I explain below, I don’t think this is so bad, because the open protocol nature of this means it’s actually resistant to the worst potential exploitation.

I have no idea how Threads will do. It’s possible it’ll catch on. It’s possible it’ll flop. I have no real crystal ball on how it will do, and people who are insisting that one outcome or the other is inevitable are just guessing, so they can claim they knew it all along when whatever happens, happens.

What Meta does have, though, is the ability to scale this. While there is a relatively small team working on it, apparently just “a few dozen” Instagram employees, Meta does have the infrastructure in place to scale if it does catch on, which still remains a challenge for basically everyone else.

And, it’s not just the technical infrastructure, but the trust and safety infrastructure as well. Not that I think anyone is going to say that Meta has been particularly good at handling trust and safety challenges, but they have people and they have technology… and (importantly) they have experience.

But, still, the bigger, and more important part here, is just the fact this is built on ActivityPub. Back in December, I talked about when Mastodon/ActivityPub might have its “Gmail moment,” where a big company steps in and offers a better UI, better features, and a simpler onboarding setup.

While a bunch of mid-sized companies have embraced ActivityPub, including Mozilla, Medium, and Flipboard, Meta is in a different league altogether. And that has both advantages and disadvantages.

But, the important point to me, and the one thing that matters, is that this shows that big companies can make use of interoperable protocols to build on, rather than building up silos. While Threads does not currently interoperate with the rest of the fediverse, the company has made clear that it intends to do so at some point, and even included this fact in the splash screen when you first setup Threads:

And that’s important. For the last two decades, the big internet companies have mostly focused on building their own proprietary silos, rather than using open protocols and interoperating.

Now, it’s true that some of the new European regulations coming into force put pressure on tech companies to interoperate more, but it remains to be seen how well that actually works (and notably, Threads is not available in the EU, as they found it impossible to currently comply with GDPR requirements). What is clear and is notable, is that this is the first time in a long time that we’ve seen a “big tech” company embrace an open protocol.

And, yes, some people fear that the goal is to “embrace, extend, extinguish,” to use the old Microsoft playbook. But the nice thing about protocols is it actually creates incentives against doing so. Because of its open nature, if you don’t like where Meta is going with threads, you can go elsewhere. But you can do so without losing your ability to communicate with those in your network who remain on Threads.

That’s powerful and it’s how the internet was always supposed to work, but which we’ve gone away from.

Indeed, one way to look at this is that it’s Meta bringing many millions of new people to the protocol-based decentralized social media world. And even if plenty stay within Meta’s private park, it will allow those outside the network to communicate with those inside, and also to highlight how they can get the same basic thing without having to cough up data to Meta.

So, I’m personally not that excited about Threads as a product, nor am I all that worried about it doing something bad for the fediverse. I am excited that it shows how big companies can make use of open protocols in a manner that keeps the internet more open, enabling communication not just within a single silo, but where the users have more control, rather than a single centralized company.

Having more of that is a good thing.

And, while I know a bunch of Mastodon instances are planning to defederate from Threads as soon as it connects to the wider fediverse, I think the statement put out by Mastodon creator, Eugen Rochko, is actually quite thoughtful about all this:

We have been advocating for interoperability between platforms for years. The biggest hurdle to users switching platforms when those platforms become exploitative is the lock-in of the social graph, the fact that switching platforms means abandoning everyone you know and who knows you. The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers. Which in turn, puts pressure on such platforms to provide better, less exploitative services. This is a clear victory for our cause, hopefully one of many to come.

I agree completely. This is validation of open protocols and pushing power to the ends of the network, rather than just another silo. That, alone, is a good thing that should be celebrated.

Filed Under: activitypub, fediverse, interoperability, mark zuckerberg, mastodon, microblogging, open protocols, protocols, protocols not platforms, social media
Companies: meta, threads

Mozilla Wonders What Social Media Could Look Like If It Started With A Clear ‘No Assholes’ Policy

from the experiments-are-good dept

Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. And, contrary to what most people believe, a huge part of content moderation is not “we have to suppress this content that scares us,” but just an attempt to “stop people from being jerks to others.” Unfortunately, too many people get confused, and think that “free speech” means they get to commandeer private property to be assholes to others, which results in confusing fights over people claiming their “free speech” is under attack when the reality is that a private property owner has decided you need to stop being an asshole.

But what if a social media network came along and just said upfront: our policy is no assholes and we’re not ashamed to say we’ll kick you out if you’re being a jackass?

As I’ve been discussing lately, I’m excited about the various new experiments with decentralized, protocol-based social media, because it allows for much more experimentation, and because it enables both services and users to opt-in to what they feel comfortable with. More competition can mean both more innovation (perhaps leading to new insights!), but also more communities trying different things and taking wildly different approaches, allowing users to opt-in to the situation they want.

One thing I’ve been talking about for a while is how the Fediverse/ActivityPub model allows for the possibility of companies to come in and provide much better experiences, that might improve on the core “Mastodon” approach that most (but definitely not all) people on the Fediverse use. And while some people were nervous about “companies” moving into the Fediverse, I was excited to see more corporate interest, because I hoped it would lead to some more interesting approaches.

Mozilla, which announced months ago its intent to enter the Fediverse with some sort of ActivityPub-based instance, recently laid out more details of its private beta plans. Their key differentiator? They plan to be more aggressive in moderating. Rather than presenting themselves as a “neutral” platform, they’re admitting upfront that their moderation plans have an opinion:

Today, we’re expanding Mozilla.social to a private beta. We’ve put a lot of work into getting to this stage, but there is a lot more to do before we open it up more broadly. We’re making a long-term investment because we think we can contribute to making Mastodon, and social media generally, better.

You’ll notice a big difference in our content moderation approach compared to other major social media platforms. We’re not building another self-declared “neutral” platform. We believe that far too often, “neutrality” is used as an excuse to allow behaviors and content that’s designed to harass and harm those from communities that have always faced harassment and violence. Our content moderation plan is rooted in the goals and values expressed in our Mozilla Manifesto — human dignity, inclusion, security, individual expression and collaboration. We understand that individual expression is often seen, particularly in the US, as an absolute right to free speech at any cost. Even if that cost is harm to others. We do not subscribe to this view. We want to be clear about this. We’re building an awesome sandbox for us all to play in, but it comes with rules governing how we engage with one another. You’re completely free to go elsewhere if you don’t like them.

Now, you might not agree with that approach. But the cool thing about ActivityPub/Mastodon is that… you don’t have to. You can just join another instance that takes a more “free speech” type approach.

Letting a lot of communities all figure out how their own norms and rules will work, and letting users choose which ones to support and take part in, seems to function more like the analog world, where social norms, and local communities actually matter. One of the great things about social media has been its ability to connect people across the globe.

But the idea that there could be one single space, with very few rules, where everyone all meets together, has always been… a difficult concept to believe could work. The Mastodon/Fediverse setup of different communities, each with their own set of rules, where some servers agree to communicate across servers, is an interesting one that creates some really interesting incentives.

Mozilla has decided that they’re going to be upfront with how their instance will run, and they think that creating a welcoming community, rather than a shitposting battle royale, makes the most sense for them:

What’s most important to us is that the people who use our instance feel like their experience brings back more of what makes social great – and reduces the muck that has made it horrible.

Who knows how it will work? I think even taking such a strong stance won’t solve the impossibility problem, and they will still face very real moderation challenges should their instance start to scale. And, I think they’ll likely realize that figuring out who is violating these policies will still take a lot of very tricky line drawing, and people will get mad about where those lines are drawn.

But seeing more experiments and more attempts to make Mastodon useable for more people seems like a good experiment to try. And, I’m curious to see what a professionally run social media with a clear “no jackasses” policy looks like.

Filed Under: activitypub, content moderation, fediverse, mastodon
Companies: mozilla

Protocol-Based Social Media Is Having A Moment As Meta, Medium, Flipboard, And Mozilla All Get On Board

from the make-it-so dept

Over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of interesting developments regarding protocol-based, decentralized social media, and each time I plot out an article about it, something else pops up to add to the story, including Thursday evening as I finally started writing this and news broke that Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) is at least in the early stages of creating an ActivityPub-compatible social media protocol and app, that it considers to be something of a Twitter competitor.

Meta, the parent firm of Facebook and Instagram, is hashing out a plan to build a standalone text-based content app that will support ActivityPub, the decentralised social networking protocol powering Twitter rival Mastodon and other federated apps, people familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol.

The app will be Instagram-branded and will allow users to register/login to the app through their Instagram credentials, they said. Moneycontrol has seen a copy of an internal product brief that elaborates on the functioning and various product features of the app.

The program is apparently codenamed P92, and conceptually it makes sense. Platformer got the company on the record confirming the effort:

“We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates,” the company told Platformer exclusively in an email. “We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”

I’m at least a little amused, because I’ve had multiple conversations with Meta/Facebook execs over the years regarding my “Protocols, Not Platforms” paper, explaining to them why it would make sense for the company to explore the space, and was told repeatedly why they didn’t think it would ever make sense for a company like Meta.

How times change.

Back in December, we predicted this sort of thing, asking when ActivityPub might have its “Gmail moment” and discussing how Google single-handedly changed email when it entered the market with Gmail on April 1, 2004.

And in the last couple of weeks there have been a bunch of really interesting moves from companies with long internet histories. It started last week when news aggregator Flipboard announced not just a tepid ActivityPub integration, but that it was going to fully embrace it. Flipboard founder Mike McCue stopped by my office the day before to talk about the company’s plans, and this isn’t just a random side-project. McCue recognizes that betting on protocols is the way to bring back the promise of the early internet, and taking us away from being solely reliant on internet giants. While early on, the company has already launched its own instance for Flipboard users to sign up (if they’re not already on another instance), and deeply integrated Mastodon into the app in ways that feel completely organic and natural (to the point that I, as a lapsed Flipboard user, have begun exploring the app again).

Days later, the ever popular site for hosting long-form writing, Medium (which was founded by Twitter and Blogger co-founder Ev Williams) announced that it, too, had launched its own Mastodon instance at me.dm for members of its $5/month premium subscription.

And, just around the time that the Meta news became public, Mozilla (which had previously announced such plans) turned on its own instance, mozilla.social.

All of these are important moves, and all of them happening within a two week period suggests that momentum is building towards recognizing how important a protocol-based world is, over a centralized-siloed world.

Also, having these larger companies embrace the space will do a bunch of important things to drive a protocol-driven world forward. For starters, they will hopefully help with the onboarding process — one of the major things that new users complain about in trying to get set up with Mastodon. The dreaded “but what server should I use?” question seems to stump many — but with more recognized and trusted brands entering the space, that question becomes less of an issue.

With these companies entering the fediverse, we’re also likely to see much greater improvement in other areas as well, including new efforts to improve features and UI. We’ve already seen a bunch of mobile and web app developers creating more beautiful front ends for Mastodon, but I’m expecting a lot more of that as well.

I also expect that this will filter down into the core code and protocol. With more companies working to join the fediverse, it creates something of a virtuous cycle that should benefit the wider space. It also should allow for much greater experimentation with new ideas and features (and that might lead to busting some old myths that resulted in poor initial design choices).

There are also lots of important features — especially tools for admins — that really haven’t received nearly enough attention and development, and having these bigger companies, who understand the space and the need, will hopefully spur more development.

Of course, as noted, as I started to plan out this article, I was mostly focused on the companies like Flipboard, Medium, and Mozilla and their efforts. All three have been extremely respectful in how they’ve been exploring and entering the fediverse. All three seemed to focus on participating and listening as they figured out their plans, and doing so in a way that fits with the fediverse, rather than trying to bend it to their will (and even so, they did upset some people).

Meta, somewhat obviously, is a bit of a different beast. And certainly some on Mastodon and other ActivityPub platforms are worried. I’d argue, however, that Meta embracing ActivityPub is a phenomenal thing. First: it’s validation. It shows that Meta recognizes that something is happening. Second, everything I noted above about spurring needed improvements also applies here and Meta could provide a lot of help. Third, even as there are some who want to keep Mastodon smaller, if it’s really going to thrive, it needs to continue to grow and be introduced to more people. The nice thing about the fediverse is that you can craft it to meet your own needs, so if you really want to keep it small, there are ways for you to do that yourself, and create a smaller community.

But the biggest reason why I think it’s so important that Meta is now even willing to explore the fediverse, is because it shows (as my paper suggested) that the largest most siloed companies can absolutely benefit from moving away from that model and towards a more open, distributed, protocol-based world. The old Twitter had suggested that could be the case when it embraced protocols and set up the independent Bluesky project, which Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal intended to eventually replace Twitter’s infrastructure. But seeing Meta explore it as well is obviously even bigger. And, honestly, I’d be shocked if Google weren’t similarly playing around with something.

Of course, this is Meta we’re talking about. There’s just as much likelihood that P92 never amounts to anything. There’s also the possibility that Meta tries the old “embrace, extend, extinguish” playbook of Microsoft. However, one of the nice things about ActivityPub is that it should be somewhat resistant to such efforts. And, as such, it also creates its own incentives to keep companies like Meta in check. Because if it starts acting “evil,” then the fact that it’s easy to move elsewhere (without losing contact with everyone) acts as a natural pressure valve, creating incentives to keep even the most evil companies in check.

And, speaking of Bluesky, last week, it also opened the (invite-only, currently) doors to the beta version of its app. While I’m excited about ActivityPub and Mastodon, I’m also excited about Bluesky. As I’ve discussed, the folks working on it are incredibly thoughtful in how they’ve been approaching this, and I think that the underlying AT protocol they’ve created actually solves many of the protocol-level limitations found in ActivityPub that have frustrated some folks in the fediverse. I believe that the Bluesky team explored ActvityPub and recognized its limitations, and that was the reason it chose to work on AT Protocol instead.

I do wonder, however, if Bluesky is going to end up deciding that it somehow needs to embrace ActivityPub in some form or another as well, especially as it has been building a larger and more entrenched userbase (which may continue to grow as more companies move in). I’m still optimistic about Bluesky, because I think the approach is even better than ActivityPub, but in the end, having a critical mass of users is the most important thing.

All that said, this much activity in the last few weeks shows that protocol-based social media is having a moment. I’m not saying that it’s the moment that inevitably leads to a bigger shift in how we view the internet, because it could still all come crashing down. But, something’s happening, and it’s pretty exciting.

And it brings me back to a question I asked a few months ago: why would anyone spend time embracing/using another centralized social media service after this? This is your opportunity to contribute to a better future internet. For all the complaining about “big tech” and the lack of competition, here’s the chance to make a difference, to embrace an internet that is more about the users than the companies, where power and control are moved to the ends of the network (the users) rather than the owners of the walled gardens.

There’s a real opportunity now to help make that better future. I recognize that there’s a decent contingent of cynical people out there who keep telling me it will never work, and we’re all locked into this world of big awful companies. And, who knows, perhaps things will go that way. But, why give in to that when there’s at least a real chance for something better? Something that more approximates the end-to-end internet we were promised?

Something is happening right now, and its success or failure is dependent on what people do next. So why would we not join in and try and build something better? Join a fediverse instance, encourage others to join, or even create your own. Participate in the myriad discussions about how to make things better for everyone. Generate ideas of how the technology can be put to use for good, and then put those ideas into action.

Filed Under: activitypub, at protocol, decentralized, fediverse, platforms, protocols, protocols not platforms, social media
Companies: bluesky, flipboard, instagram, medium, meta, mozilla, twitter

Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is ‘Slumping,’ Despite Massive Increase In Usage

from the lies,-damn-lies,-and-statistics dept

There’s been this weird series of articles lately, trying to frame the rapid growth of the fediverse (mainly Mastodon), as somehow now failing. It started last month, with the Guardian’s Josh Nicholas leaping in with a provocative headline: “Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon – but many aren’t sticking around” and now Wired has a similar article, by Amanda Hoover, declaring “The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump.“

The issue, according to both articles, is that because a ton of people signed up to check out Mastodon in November and December as Elon Musk began his program of Musking up Twitter, and not all of them decided to stick around, that proves the site is a failure. Except, that’s wrong on so many levels.

Any site getting a big influx of users is going to have some number of them choose not to engage, especially something that’s new and different. But if you look at the actual retention rate for the fediverse, it’s astoundingly high. Looking at sites that track actual usage of the fediverse, we see that it went up quite a lot in November and December, and while it’s dipped in January, it’s still way above where it was pre-Musk takeover. Also, it’s worth noting that these stats apply to the entire fediverse, and not just Mastodon. While it’s common just to talk about Mastodon, the 1.4 million number that people discuss is just those on Mastodon, based on Mastodon’s own stats. But, many users move on to compatible platforms that don’t end up in that count, like Pleroma, Pixelfed, Misskey, Calckey, and the like. So, the numbers here show a topping off of active users around 4 million, and it currently being around 2.6 million, way, way above the ~600k before Musk’s takeover:

I’m not sure how going from 600k to 2.6 million in just a couple of months can be deemed “a slump.” It sure looks like pretty damn good retention overall. I mean, if we just look at Twitter, there is somewhere around 1.3 billion accounts, but only 368 million active users per month (or, 238 million monetizable daily active users) according to the last numbers pre-Musk. Would anyone say that those numbers prove Twitter was “slumping” because somewhere around a billion accounts are inactive on the platform?

Either way, actual usage of the fediverse continues to increase month by month, including through January, meaning that while some people signed up and never used it, those who are using it, are using it more and more. These are the kinds of things you’d think a journalist would cover in these articles, but they’re taking the lazy way out and simply looking at the topline number of how many people checked in once or twice and then didn’t stick around, while ignoring just how much the platform continues to grow and thrive.

There are plenty of things that the fediverse can do to improve, and the crazy thing is that many of those things are… happening, and happening quickly. Lately, there have been a lot of discussions about making the onboarding process much better, because too many people find it cumbersome. That’s fixable. And more and more developers have been moving over to Mastodon, and the launches of tons of new, easier to use clients is an exciting development as well.

Meanwhile, as EFF’s Ross Schulman rightly details, the comparisons to just Twitter are similarly misleading, as part of the value of the fediverse is not that it’s a “Twitter” clone, but that it can provide tons of useful services:

Where we disagree, is that Mastodon (as part of the Fediverse) does offer that in the form of a truly interoperable and portable social media presence. Characterizing Mastodon as a mere Twitter-clone overlooks this strength of the fediverse to be or become any social platform you can imagine. That’s the power of protocols. The fediverse as a whole is a micro-blogging site, as well as for sharing photos, videos, book lists and reading updates, and more.

Of course, inertia is always an issue. Getting people to move from one site to another never happens overnight. MySpace was so dominant that Facebook could never overtake it… until it did. Digg was dominant over Reddit. Until it wasn’t.

The fediverse might not ever get as big as these other sites, and it doesn’t need to. It’s already hit critical mass to be an extremely useful site, and the rate of development of new offerings and services to make it more useful over the last couple of months has been eye-opening. But the infatuation by the media with the belief that because it only retained a huge portion, and not all, of the people who jumped over to check it out… seems weird.

Filed Under: fediverse, mastodon, statistics

Serious Investors And A Web3 Takeover Have Come To The Mastodon World: Is That Good Or Bad?

from the Gmail-moment dept

In one of Mike’s recent posts about the radical reshaping of the social media landscape currently underway, he noted that Mastodon/ActivityPub might have a “Gmail moment“, when bigger players enter and boost the sector. Although that could be good in terms of broadening the appeal of Mastodon, the emergence of huge, dominating “instances” (Mastodon servers) might undermine the federated approach that makes Mastodon so interesting.

That’s not the only danger for the Mastodon world. The sudden emergence of Mastodon as a popular alternative to Twitter has inevitably attracted the attention of people with lots of spare money looking to invest in the Next Big Thing. The German software developer Eugen Rochko, the person who created the Mastodon software, told the Financial Times (non-paywalled version on Ars Technica) that he had received offers from more than five US-based investors who were keen to put “hundreds of thousands of dollars” into his project:

But he said the platform’s non-profit status was “untouchable,” adding that Mastodon’s independence and the choice of moderation styles across its servers were part of its attraction.

“Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter,” said Rochko. “The fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be shut down, go bankrupt and so on. It’s the difference in paradigms [between the platforms].”

Rochko runs one of the biggest Mastodon instances, mastodon.social (disclosure: it’s the one I use). Another big instance is pawoo.net:

Pawoo, operated from Japan since 2017, is the second largest instance of Mastodon. It has drawn users from all over the world including illustrators, anime fans, novelists, and music enthusiasts since its inception. Accumulating around 800K users, Pawoo has become a “place to enjoy creative activity and unfettered communication.” The Pawoo acquisition marks another milestone of the Mask team towards the building of a decentralized social network and a free, open internet.

That description is in a press release from Mask. Few people in the West have heard about pawoo.net, even if they use Mastodon. That’s because on mastodon.social and many other instances, access to pawoo.net is “limited” as a result of “inappropriate content”. The complex saga of why pawoo.net is mostly disconnected from the rest of the fediverse is described in a long post on the Ansuz blog, written by Matthew Skala. As the blog post explains, the “inappropriate content” of pawoo.net involves sexualized drawings of children, which are unacceptable and probably illegal in much of the West, but largely unproblematic in Japan, where the majority of pawoo.net’s users are based.

Rochko may not be interested in selling some or all of Mastodon and mastodon.social, but the purchase of pawoo.net underlines the fact that those running other servers may be willing to do so. Pawoo.net has been bought by Mask Network, which describes itself as bringing “privacy and benefits from Web3 to social media like Facebook & Twitter – with an open-sourced browser extension.” The roots of Mask Network are in the world of cryptocurrencies – it even has its own native token, Mask – so we may be about to see an infusion of Web3 ideas on this particular instance.

The federated nature of the Mastodon means that it is hard to stop this kind of experimentation and commercialization, even if bans are imposed by other instances that are against this shift. How all this works out over the coming months and years is one of the key issues facing the burgeoning world of Mastodon and ActivityPub.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon or Twitter.

Filed Under: activitypub, cryptocurrency, eugen rochko, fediverse, japan, mastodon, tokens, web3
Companies: google, mask network

Raspberry Pi Shows How Not To Mastodon

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

In the light of the continuing mayhem on Twitter under Elon Musk, lovingly chronicled by Mike in ever-longer posts, it’s no surprise that many people are looking at alternatives. One of the main options is Mastodon. Although offering similar micro-blogging functionality to Twitter, one of its chief attractions is that it nonetheless does certain things differently.

For example, there are no formal quote tweets, which means that users are encouraged to engage with what people are saying in their posts by replying to them, not simply to make a snarky hit-and-run comment. Its federated structure, with thousands of interconnected and interoperable “instances” – that is, servers – is part of the larger “fediverse“. There is no central point of control, and the local rules and culture on different instances vary widely.

These features, combined with the issues at Twitter, have led to a noticeable growth of Mastodon – even if the exact number of users is unclear – and of the number of instances that are available. One open question is whether Mastodon will ever be used by businesses in the same way that they now routinely use Twitter.

An early pioneer in this area is Raspberry Pi, which makes a popular series of very low-cost, single-board computers. Typically they are used to run the open source operating system GNU/Linux, so Mastodon seems a good fit for the company, since it too is open source. Even better, the federated nature of Mastodon means that Raspberry Pi was able to set up its own instance – raspberry.social – and run it on one of its own products. Everything seemed to be going well, until the Raspberry Pi account on Mastodon posted the following:

We hired a policeman & it’s going really great. Meet our #Maker in Residence @TobyRobertsPi.

“I was a #Surveillance Officer for 15 years, so I built stuff to hide covert video & audio gear. I’d disguise it as something else, like a piece of street furniture or a household item.

During all those years of working with Raspberry Pi, I never thought I’d end up working here; as I’ve always been a #RaspberryPi fan, I’m fascinated to see what takes place behind the scenes.”

A post by Aurynn Shaw, who runs cloudisland.nz, an instance hosted in Aotearoa New Zealand, provides a great summary of the discussion that ensued. Here’s a sample of how the Raspberry Pi account responded in a rather Twitter-like way to people’s criticisms of the new appointment:

• “He builds lightsabers, James. Chill.”: link
• “Bye bye now”: link
• “Yes Sebastian. And if you can’t chill, you can unfollow. That’s how social media works. Just chill.”: link
• “Feel free to block or unfollow us” in response to “if only they’d not hire cops”: link
• “people can follow or unfollow us if they like” link

Shaw writes:

As the common theme from Raspberry Pi was to tell other users to unfollow them, and blocking any criticism, the Fediverse as a whole was very quick to react.

Due to the very different power dynamics of the Fediverse, it took less than two hours from the initial post and initial harmful replies before the official Raspberry Pi instance started being defederated, noted via the #fediblock hashtag. This public hashtag is a way for administrators to co-ordinate with each other in an attempt to reduce harm to their users, and hitting #fediblock is a strong indicator that an instance is being cut off from the the Fediverse until they improve their moderation abilities.

“Defederation” is another unique and important feature of Mastodon. It means that various servers running Mastodon block interaction with a particular instance that is deemed to be problematic. It is quite an extreme remedy. Normally, there is some kind of moderator on an instance that would deal with the renegade user who is causing problems elsewhere. In the present case, the problem user and the moderator are effectively the same, so defederation was the only way for other instances to deal with the situation. Shaw notes that reversing defederation and the damage to Raspberry Pi’s brand that it has caused, will be quite hard:

Now that Raspberry Pi has hit the #fediblock, recovery becomes considerable more difficult. Not only does Raspberry Pi need to withdraw their statements and issue unequivocal apologies, they must also apologise directly to the admins who defederated them, and demonstrate an ongoing commitment to change.

This commitment can be demonstrated through administrative and moderator changes, or demonstrated over a significant period of time. Both approaches will take time for trust to be regained.

As Shaw points out, the problem arises because this is a small, self-hosted instance run by a company. She offers some recommendations for other businesses that want to do the same, including this:

Brands seeking to join the Fediverse will need to invest not just in a social media manager, but competent and long-time administration for the instance that is aware of the political dynamics of the Fediverse, in order to ensure that they are able to stay on the fediverse.

As more businesses dip their toe in the waters of Mastodon, the problems Raspberry Pi has run into here can serve as a good example of how not to do it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon or Twitter.

Filed Under: defederation, fediblock, fediverse, instances, mastodon, police, raspberry pi, surveillance
Companies: mastodon, raspberry pi, twitter