Delyo's garden

What the fediverse might be to the web

In which I raise concerns on how we build the social web.

Disclaimer: I am not a member of the fediverse's development community, or even a collaborator on their projects. The underlying technology and mechanisms in place are too far down the rabbit hole for me to even understand. As such, I speak for myself and my own point of view as a user only.

The move to the fediverse and its limits

When Xitter was acquired, much like tech companies like to do these days, by a technocrat techbro and avidly hated person, a lot of people started chanting for a switch to Mastodon. Similarly, when Reddit had its blackout in protest of raising restrictions making it difficult to create and maintain custom apps ofr its network, many users pointed out they could switch to Lemmy, a decentralised Reddit-like discussion board application. I've yet to see anyone from Instagram suggest a move to something like Pixelfed instead of complaining about Meta's very transparent shadownbanning without doing anything about it other than catering to the algorithm.

What ensued was that most people comfortable enough with technology, or convinced enough to jump the gap, fled to those networks in search of a better social web, with less arbitrary censorship and disgusting profit-centered tactics like this one. The rest of the people, those less tech-savvy or those who didn't even use those networks enough to warrant a switch to other platforms, were left behind in some ways. What follows is a hypothesis.

Precisely why that split happened I can't say. All I can think of is that the fediverse, this decentralised and much more small-scale project, scared some people away, if only by its phrasing. To join Mastodon, find and apply to join an instance, a server. Despite its heavily guided process of onboarding (that term disgusts me but is useful) and its very well-made familiar interface and friendly mascots, the process remains scary, and those at fault are difficult to pinpoint, because there isn't anyone in particular. We're all at fault, and for different reasons. Suffice it to say, the fediverse truly isn't that easy to join, at least having in mind that habits of centralised social media have accompanied us to the transition. More experienced users at ease with technology will tell you it's a no-brainer. But not everyone using a computer knows how it works, or even what the Web truly is: Survey on Internet knowledge by HighSpeedInternet

And while that's not necessary knowledge in order to use the fediverse, it certainly helps in understanding what one is using and consuming. Particularly so when the fediverse community promotes the fact that you have more control over what you see, and that decentralisation is even a thing. being confused by those concepts is scary, and can lead one to believe one is not prepared enough to make the jump. There is a gap, we can see it. Browsing through Mastodon, the biggest share of accounts seem to be from people who write some code, have written some code, or at least interact with tech topics daily. And while I certainly fall into that statistic, and while those accounts do not necessarily mainly post about technical things, one thing is clear: there is a technical know-how gap between those who join, leaving behind For You Page monoculture, and those who stay in the surveillance silos of the giants of the web, for lack of courage to cross the leap of faith.

Did we fuck up? Where did we fuck up? How can we un-fuck up? Forgive the swearing, but it conveys the mesage clearly.

Centralised media destroyed our brains, let's build them back

This toot by a mastodon user seems to suggest at least one thing might be responsible for the proverbial fuck-up: centralised media. TLDR: the user suggests you can't keep your habits from centralised media when you join decentralised media. What many people tried to do when creating instances of alternatives to Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Discord was re-creating the entire general-purpose network. And because of the decentralised nature, many people ended up creating many servers doing many similar things, instead of centering each one on a specific community, demographic, or topic. This makes the choice of an instance terribly more complicated, because there's no easy way to know which one is best for you, since they're all similar. This also makes maintaining and taking care of one instance particularly difficult. There could have been one instance for art, one for music, one for all things sci-fi, etc. And the beauty of it all is that joining one instance doesn't cut you off from the others, because this is the federated universe. We like eachother, we link to eachother.

Yes, i just paraphrased the toot. :)

I for one think he's right. At least he's right for part of the problem. You can't remake a giant of the web when creating an instance with three other friends. Nor is this the idea of the Fediverse and the independent and open Web. And yet there might be more to it.

Against information overload, meditative offload

This other user's toot in French suggests something different. Translatio momentum: In a response to a user's perplexed feeling about finding Mastodon doesn't immediately give them a lot of content, user number 2 responds:

The beating heart of Mastodon is on #mosstodon and it's representative of what mastodon is to the internet: a poetically meditative parenthesis that can't be recuperated by productivism or represent anything "useful". The web, minus the dopamine: not wanting to stay on it much is not a bug but a feature.

Whether the claim of it being resilient to productivism and usefulness is true remains to be seen, I'm looking at you Meta. Nevertheless, I hope that person's right. I really very much hope she's very right. And whether not wanting to stay is a feature that will persist, only time (and more people joining in) will tell.

There's something to be retained there however: the vibe, experience, whatchamacallit that Mastodon and the Fediverse give off is kind of what off-white is to white. Yes, it's still a social network, it's still users sharing text and images and favoriting and reposting and reacting and commenting. It's still following, bios, private messages, and and and... But it's no machine. There is no For You Page, at least as we envision it. The algorithm doesn't pick a post because you recently liked similar posts, or measure your viewing time of a specific image, or measure how much you interacted. No one is shoving content in your face, and you retain control of what you would like to see, in a much more unintrusive way. As such, Mastodon and ultimately other fediverse apps, as they adhere to these principles tightly, are not rivals to the silo-ed web of the social media giants. They don't aim to kill them off, only suggest an alternative, with a completely different philosophy: let's be social, not performative.

Yes, you will miss some things, you will have a harder time finding content, but you'll be the one looking for it, and not the other way around. And if you can't find content, go out, read a book, make a nice meal, or write a blog post (why do you think I'm writing this?).

There will be some features you won't have access to, and you'll miss out on some information. But after all, a quieter web was the reason we switched to the fediverse, right? You can't complain one moment that you're bombarded with irrelevant information left and right, and complain that this other space you tried doesn't have enough information to overload you.

All in all, the old habits of centralised media will follow anyone who grew up with it for a big while. Then they'll fade off, if one resists to the cravings. And federated, decentralised social media can give us just that: the idea and reality that we're not losing touch with society, nor do people think we don't exist. We just connect when we truly feel like it. And that's what the Web should be.

It's not over: new developments in the fediverse

As I said, it remains to be seen what Meta's push towards accessing the fediverse with their half-assed Threads app will do. We've got some time until it's fully integrated in the ActivityPub technology that makes the fedi what it is. But is this a minutes-to-midnight countdown scenario?

The anarchist in me tends to think it's at least a minutes-to-eleven thing, and then a push-and-pull for the clock's arm to either stay in its place or fully engage in the independent web doomsday plan. Yes, the anarchist in me has learned not to trust whoever operates on a profit motive. I reckon we're facing some sort of high-tech land-grab, or as a best-case at least a gain de cause (winning the case, winning face) to discredit the fediverse as something that people aren't interested in.

This is largely the fruit of my imagination, if only because of Threads officially "enabling" the fediverse in their app, but not by default, and nto going the full mile towards adopting it. Then, when users fail to even notice they even can interact with the fediverse, it can say "Did you see? They prefer staying on our network. We can't be that bad if people still want to stay here". But yes Meta, you can be. Your apps hardly have any alternatives, considering your users are prisoners there because you walled-off any communication and visibility only to be available for those who signed up, accepted your terms which by the way no normal person without a lawyer's degree can read. Anyway. Keep out of there, get out of there.

Elsewhere in the universe, in the land of Pixelfed (a sort-of Instagram alternative) there's a new development: Loops by Pixelfed, essentially Reels or TikToks for the fediverse. What do we make of that?

I'll admit this news is what prompted me to write an article instead of a series of toots on Mastodon. There's virtually no information on what it is, other than a TikTok alternative. A few posts on its Mastodon account spotlight the development of its user interface. A few corporate-style illustrations bring some insight into what it is. I suggest you go check out the mastodon account for yourself. But this recent event made me think about what the fediverse represents.

I have nothing against corporate-style general purpose illustrations in themselves. They cater neutrally to a large group of people without inciting a specific demographic or style, and are useful for general-purpose projects. I have nothing against short-form videos in and of themselves. They can be fun and informative, and definitely take a load off of you after work.

What I'm worried about, and maybe I'm incredibly wrong on this one, is what a fediverse app for short videos, especially one that markets itself as a TikTok alternative, would mean for our way of consuming the web. It's not exactly rocket science to figure out many people including myself might be staying over at Instagram partly because of their Reels - a nice way to unload after work or when you have free time, but not enough to watch a TV show or listen to a podcast or read in a meaningful way. It's not a conspiracy theory to assume this is why Pixelfed might be working on Loops - filling the void of something that's missing in the fediverse. But even if it's missing, should we miss it?

As expressed above, the fediverse, because of its principles, might be a safe haven for a freer and more open and honest web. And that means letting its quirks be - there's a time when it's quiet, or when you need to purposefully search a bit more to find something worth reading or interacting with.

But the underlying aspect of short-format video apps is that the scrolling never ends. There is no quiet time, and there's much less searching. If Loops aims to become this monstrosity about which many are complaining and on which they are pinning - rightfully so - their addiction to phones and apps, I'm afraid I can't approve of it in any way. If the goal is to make a decentralised TikTok, it doesn't make any difference. But you can choose your server! Who cares when it creates more addiction than it's worth?

If on the other hand, Loops treads very carefully and creates a fun platform on which one can unload and simultaneously avoid the negative aspects of infinite-scroll, short-form, immediate dopamine rush with one feature or another, then hooray, so be it, may it prosper. Yet I'm afraid, because that's a fine line to walk on.

Also, we haven't even done a good job promoting PeerTube, a decentralised general purpose video application for any videos. We aren't even done on that front. Is this an Icarus moment? I dare not say I have the answer.

I just hope the open web doesn't discredit itself.

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