this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2022
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What is so regressive about federation?
Federation is like living off the grid because you don't like cities and their administration. Blinded by their privilege, they argue that everyone should follow them and their methods are the future. Sitting in their log cabins in the middle of nowhere, they lament about the crisis of cities and how tearing them down is the way of progress.
When you examine the history of the internet, you can see how centralization transformed the inefficient federated services accessible only to the privileged as toys into utilities that positively impacted the lives of the masses. The remaining prevalent federated services, plagued with the curses of federation like email, are systematically stripped of their federation features to make them fit the needs of the modern world.
The fediverse advocates are like the above mentioned primitivists, who, while correctly identifying certain problems with cities or modern civilization, suggest the regressive path to primitivism as a solution to them without realising that we have been there and even if you somehow managed to achieve it, we will still, by historical necessity, come back to where we are today.
How come you compare centralized corporative social media sites with cities? How does that even work? Given that cities are interconnected to other cities and you can move freely from one to the other.
And what is this whole conversation about privilege? What's so priviledged about community funded federated services, made by the people for the people. In that sense, the whole goddamn democracy is an act of privilege.
How is the fediverse anything like living off grid? Given that the whole point of it is interconnectivity?
The rest of the non-analogical criticism is just technically false. Not just incorrect, its just false. But as you said, I too have a huge chunk of text in my mind. Couldn't be bothered to create an exposition for reactionary comments.
Please stop jacking off to the mirror.
Calm down, dude. This is why I didn't want to write a lot of text all at once. The analogy made perfect sense to me, but only when someone else read it did I realise that it might not be the best way to describe it.
There are many ways to interpret an analogy. I guess it's my mistake that I didn't properly guide the reader to the intended interpretation. Obviously, I'm not talking about the connectivity of cities. At the end of the text, you can see me using the term city synonymously with the modern world.
Fediverse claims to be "for the people by the people," but if you examine any real Fediverse project, you can see how it's actually "for the system admins by the programmers." Federation is just a toy feature for its developers and other software enthusiasts to play with.
Why do you think all of the Fediverse has the same boring demographic of privalaged keyboard warrior programmers pretending like they are leading the revolution against big tech? And why is it that whenever another demographic arrives as refugees, they immediately demand defederation or die out immediately?
The open for everyone approach made sense in the early days of the internet, when everyone capable of using the internet was also able to develop and improve it (to some extent). But the modern internet is not like that. It has people from many different backgrounds. They can't host millions of instances of Peertube to watch cat videos. Centralized software makes internet communication accessible to the masses with unprecedented efficiency that doesn't force my grandma to own and maintain servers.
Sometimes I self-censor words like "capitalism" to appeal to certain audiences. I guess it would have made more sense if I said that the solution to capitalism is not abandoning the productive forces it gave us to go back to primitive communism or arguing that everyone should become capitalists by owning enough capital.
Going back to the off-grid analogy, arguing that everyone should host their own instance because you don't like some corporate policy is not any different from arguing that everyone who is upset about landlords should abandon modern apartments, cities, and all their comforts to go back to nature and start engineering mud houses.
Centralized social media is a superior and progressive technology that makes internet communication accessible to the people. Sure, it is not made by the people, but it certainly is made for them. And trying to solve that contradiction by considering everyone who isn't involved in the "making process" as not "people" is regressive.
Good point.
Wouldn't that be a sign that the Fediverse is still in an early adoption phase rather than a feature of federation itself?
Do you have example of people demanding defederation because they are non-techie?
From the top of my head, these are 3 examples of stable communities that do not focus on tech :
I fail to understand what your proposed solution to capitalism is in this case. You seem to imply that the solution to capitalism is to forget that it is a problem. Am I missing something?
Centralized media are easier to understand, and so are more accessible. The need to chose an instance is also an obstacle from a responsibility perspective : if I join a small instance, am I a burden for whoever runs it?
Should I donate? When I encounter a problem, should I bother the admin.
I do think that it would help the fediverse to have some ad-based instances where people can join without that kind of difficulties, of questionment, of guilt of being a user rather than a contributor.
I would not consider this a problem as long as it still federates.
As long as it only shows its ads to its own user but allows them to communicate also with ones that do not want to submit themselves to the ad-model.
That is the freedom that I think the Fediverse is built around : being able to use a platform without being trapped.
I do not see the advantage in them being walled gardens.
I think them being closed is the result of them abusing the power that their large userbase gives them, rather than a feature that is good for the users.
To take a specific example : Facebook Messenger did not drop XMPP because they had to, they dropped it because they could afford it.
well i guess you missed the latest drama on lemmygrad where they where asking to purge all the liberals from lemmy.ml.
And no i don't think this is an issue of adoption stage, because federation is a useless feature to the general public, the only people who will ever need federation are software enthusiasts and even then just as a toy to play with.
The solution to the contradictions of capitalism is building socialism. Do we throw away the progress of industrialization because it was done by capitalists? No, we correct the contradiction of ownership of capital by seizing it from them. Centralization, like industrialization, is a very important and progressive step that transformed internet communication. You can undo this step, but you will always end up learning the bitter way that centralization is an inevitability for any social media of the masses.
you probably misunderstood primitive communism
The dogmatic view that there can be no freedom without federation is not healthy, the real source of the supposed freedom that federation gives is open source. there are freedoms that federation provide but those are only relevant if you actually host an instance, otherwise what is the difference between a regular open source reddit alternative and lemmy? you can checkout hexbear.net which runs an older version of lemmy without federation, they are just as active if not more than lemmygrad (very similar userbase) the only difference is that they don't have to deal with the inherent problems of federation and their admins can actually focus on building the community instead of wasting their time trying to reinvent ways to prevent spam from randomly popping up servers.
If we want to challenge mainstream media, we must address the real issues that users of mainstream media face, reach out to them, and understand their genuine dissatisfactions. Is this what fediverse developers do? They all get together and decide that the problem people have is a lack of federation and go on to write walls of code without any consideration for the general audience. They never seek feedback from the people. They get all their validation from their peers who also believe that lack of federation is the problem. This is what I described as a cult. It might be a little harsh, but I couldn't find any better words.
This complete alienation from the real users is what makes you believe that writing a federated tiktok will materialise into anything more than a graveyard of instances. If the fediverse developers actually understood the needs of the people, Peertube would already have something similar to YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. Facebook and Google might be evil, but they actually have to build software that matters to people or they will lose the users they have. The Fediverse has no real users except the developers themselves, so they can build whatever nonsense they want. In your example, you are assuming that the Facebook userbase actually cares about the messaging protocol. I'm pretty sure they don't even know what that is. Many issues you may have with social media are non-issues or mild inconveniences for the majority of the population.
I do not understand what makes centralization analogous to industrialization rather than to centralization of the means of production.
What is the point of being able to replicate the software if you cannot use it to connect to your friend's network?
In fact, federation is what enable to centralize the network (arguably the mainstream media's strength) without having to centralize the power (arguably their misdeed).
If, in your opinion, the problem of big tech is not the centralization of power within a few hands, please explain what it is.
The Fediverse has 5 millions of users. I don' t think more than 100 of them are developers.
Sure, if the goal is to build a filter bubble, then having to communicate with external users can be a problem. To add to this:
Lemmygrad users do not complain about the rest of the Fediverse speaking only about tech and federation, they complain about them disagreeing with their view.
When did I say anything of the sort? Why would they have to drop a functionnality just because a lot of people do not care about it? Before, people with no Facebook account could communicate with Facebook users via XMPP. Now they have to create a Facebook account for that. Facebook did not remove the feature because it was convenient for some users, they did it to trap more users in. This is the thing people want to escape with federation.
My bad. I meant that the people who actually make use of federation are almost exclusively programmers. The rest of the users don’t benefit from federation.
The problem is not the centralization of power within a few hands, but the contradiction between the needs of the users and the needs of these few hands. It's okay to let a few hands hold all the power, as long as their interests align with ours. Your philosophical disagreement with this concept has very little effect on reality. As long as big tech can meet the needs of people, they will keep using their services. Federation is a tool that will make meeting the needs of people very hard, if not impossible. There are areas where the interests of big tech are in direct, irreconcilable conflict with those of users (e.g., ads; users want as little as possible, big tech wants the maximum). If you want to solve the problems of users, you should first figure out irreconcilable contradictions like this and then solve them without hurting the needs of people that are currently being met by big tech.
This is what the people want, everybody trying to use social media want filter bubbles, federation adds a huge and unnecessary obstacle to this, there is a thread now on lemmy where people are discussing ways to block entire instances.
That's not what i said, like mentioned above i was trying to show you why filter bubbles are a necessity for anyone who is not an idealist fediverse advocate.
Which people are you talking about? The majority of the people don't have any problem with this, why should they change their ways because some nerds decided that making a facebook account is a sin?.
Curious to see what numbers you are basing yourself on. I think most users use federation, as in communicate with users on other instances. As a fapsi.be user, don't you mostly communicate with users from other instances?
What effect on reality does your agreement have though? If you want to trust benevolent dictators to stay benevolent and choose benevolent successors, let's agree to disagree.
It was suppose to be an example to the statement :
Lemmygrad don't want to defederate from a population of "keyboard warrior programmers", they want to defederate from "libs", by which they actually mean anyone that is not both ML and anti-west.
Except that, because of network effet, people will keep using the service no matter how bad it becomes, as long as it keep a few basic functionalities? I use Facebook, not because I like the way it is, but because:
What is implied in your message is that is people keep using the service, it means it is a good one, as if there were no other constraints. How is this not an apology of capitalism?
The majority of people don't see a problem in capitalism either, does it mean one should stop advocating against it.
Facebook is a company that harvests users' data and attention, under the hood of some social networking capabilities. Having a facebook account is not a sin, but it is exposing oneself to that, as well as pressuring one's friends into doing the same, as I mentioned above. Federation aims at providing alternative for that.
The fact that all successful big tech apps have ads is not because nobody had the idea of providing alternatives that are lighter in ads. It is because at some point they reached such a big size that network effect would be sufficient to keep users there anyway. Is your solution to that just hoping that someday one platform will be created that will be free of ads even when it reaches such sizes?
Federation aims at that, by allowing to build a big network without a single person being able to impose marketing choices over the whole network
This is the problem. You are projecting what you consider bad to the majority of users. What you call "a few basic functionalities" is all that people want; they don't care about the rest. They are not staying there because of "network effect", they are staying because their "few basic functionalities" are satisfied.
They will demand change only when these "few basic functionalities" are violated (for example, ads that make it impossible to watch videos). This is inevitable, but big tech will try to delay it with subscriptions etc.
Unlike your argument against Facebook, the advocacy against capitalism is not a moral one; it is a recognition of the irreconcilable contradictions that arise from private ownership and socialised labour. The majority of people will eventually find themselves in a position where it is necessary to fight capitalism. In the same way, the majority of social media users will find themselves in a position to advocate for better alternatives once the contradictions deepen. And when they look for alternatives, federated social media will always be inferior to centralised solutions.
People leave reddit for lemmy because their "few basic functionalities" were violated. Moving to a federated solution can somewhat solve it, but only at the cost of problems inferior federated software brings. Nobody is willing to tolerate them, except tinkerers who want to play with federated software.
It's not the evilness of capitalists that will bring the revolution, but the internal contradictions themselves.
I don't outright reject the idea that network effects exist; they do. However, if your argument about network effects is correct, it means that big tech will never be replaced; no amount of alternative federated software you write will be able to replace the "network." This would imply that big tech has found this small trick that solves all other contradictions and they have reached an ideal stage with no contradictions like communism, in reality the network effect is just a side effect that you observe because of the differences between your needs and the needs of the majority.
Nice dream. But in the real world, the majority of fediverse users are centralised on a few servers, and a minority of admins decide the shape of the network. You have become the same thing you wanted to destroy.
I did not use any definition of "bad" here. I said that people staying there is not a sign of their superiority wrt federated network. The preexisting large userbase suffices to explain why it keeps being large.
Except that the few basic functionalities (posting, commenting, reacting, following) are not what sets them apart from their federated counterparts.
You are stating this like a fact, yet you have not explained what the big advantage of centralization is. You actually start from the hypothesis that centralisation is the core thing that everyone wants, even needs.
Yes, and that went pretty fast. A few comments ago the majority of users were the developpers themselves, and suddenly they are a crowd whose fate is decided by a restricted elite.
Again, what is your better alternative?
I'm really fucking tired of reading accusations after accusations in this conversation without a single goddamn philosophical justification. Quit your bullshit and stop using words like "cult" lightly.
The amount of ad hominem in everything you're saying, I could make a house out of it. "Boring Privileged keyboard warriors", okay how are they keyboard warriors, how are they privileged?
Also the code for every federated social platform if publicly available, how else do you think we have so many instances? And if you do have problem with having different instances, why are you on lemmy? Please have even a glimpse of coherent philosophy. People should make their own instance because they can, stop comparing it to the shelter problem. The fediverse ain't your real estate. It has no parallel to it. A server is a host of information, a house is of your body. No one's even trying to host their own instances all the time because we dont really need to, that's been proven with several federated software and is a prime example of good moderation. The fact that we even have so many diverse set of people on a single server is a goddamn testament to it. I'm a brown liberal, for one. No, your granny does not need to goddamn host her own server, quit your straw man bullshit.
I have no clue what capitalism has to do with your argument given that hosting fediverse means dealing with capitalism, in terms of hosting and money transfer methodology when it comes to funding the servers and the developers, so idk where you're getting at with that.
What goddamn authority are you even talking about? Just spin your own instance? And if you dont know how, how is that an issue of the programmers, have you managed a FOSS project at the scale of the fediverse? Server development and management is a tough goddamn job, people get paid millions of rupees to do it.
Just admit it goddamnit, you're a corporate shill who's resentful about anything that tries something different. I'm so fucking disgusted by the way you use your language. I've given you three opportunities to make an exposition and all I've got is ad hominem. Be better, stop being so narcissistic. I'm tired that you're attacking not the movement but the people behind them. Just shows how shallow your goddamn worldview is, grow the fuck up and do something about what you dont like Instead of shitting on community work.
I think you are abusing the word "ad hominem" here : the words she uses to describe techie freedom enthousiasts are quite hard, but she does have a point that the Fediverse is mostly made of them, as opposed to the more general audience of centralised platforms.
In fact, I am getting much more "ad hominem" vibes from your comments.
Justifications for the accusations please.
While I was rude asf, which I admit, there is infinite amount of evidence that justifies my reaction in a sense that every argument given was a non-starter and implied an inherent disdain for the fediverse. I got nothing, absolutely not a single proper argument out of them. What angered me what more of an accusatory position that the conversation began with without any justifications for them even after asking for an exposition on them thrice. My bad for being rude asf.
Understandable have a nice day