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B-Rock001 t1_j1n8gm3 wrote

Reply to comment by MetricVeil in Tech Journalism Doesn’t Know What to Do With Mastodon by psychothumbs

How is any of that solved by decentralization? Now instead of one service you don't know whether you can trust you have hundreds. Unless there is a way to encourage "good" content and discourage "bad" content built in to the platform (which it doesn't) it's going to have all the same problems. Just like sub Reddits or discord servers it's going to depend a hell of a lot on quality of moderation. I'm sure some Mastedon servers will rise above the rest in that regard, but I fail to see how that would not result in either re-centralizing on the "good" servers or just pushing people farther into echo chambers of servers they "like".

The problem with social media is not the centralization, its the perverse incentives we put on "likes" and "attention" that preys on our human nature, which then companies have learned to turn into profit. You have to solve the first part if you want to have better online discourse and I don't see anyone doing that and mastedon is only focused on the profit side of things... and I'm not sure it's user friendly enough for mass adoption. It's like telling everyone to just build their own website... try telling that to grandma.

Edit: or maybe more aptly, it's like telling grandma to go look at a bunch of existing websites to find one they like and if they don't find one to build their own. That's too much choice for the average person.

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MetricVeil t1_j1nbaq6 wrote

>Now instead of one service you don't know whether you can trust you have hundreds.

Well, lets build on end-to-end encryption, and go from there. :D

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>... and mastedon is only focused on the profit side of things...

Where does this idea originate? Do you understand the idea behind the Fediverse?

As for 'Grandma', it's like telling her that it doesn't matter which service she uses, they all do the same thing and just as safe as each other. :D

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B-Rock001 t1_j1ncnfv wrote

Encryption doesn't tell you wheter you can trust the source, just that you are who you say you are. A conspiracy theorist can get an encryption key.

How do you tell grandma which server to pick? Either you ask grandma to trust someone or make her do her own (likely uninformed) research.

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ArekDirithe t1_j1ni53n wrote

How did she pick an email service to use? The choice of mastodon instance is just about as meaningful as which email service you sign up for since they all work on the same interoperable standard.

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B-Rock001 t1_j1nrg83 wrote

Not sure what point you're trying to make.... I don't think people put as much thought into which email clients to use as you're implying. She picks the most popular, easy to use one which typically is going to be a giant corporation who can make a slick feature rich interface for low cost/free because they have the money to do so, possibly by harvesting and selling your data.

I mean how many open source/"ethical" email clients do you see in the top lists: https://www.litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-february-2022/

I'm all for the shift to move away from free=good, but that's a big social shift that's going to take more than decentralization to do that. Saying you have so many choices now kinda misses the point... people like choices to be easy and that's one of the allures of a centralized service.

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ArekDirithe t1_j1nsmx6 wrote

> Not sure what point you're trying to make.... I don't think people put as much thought into which email clients to use as you're implying.

This is the point. There’s really no reason to put as much thought into which instance you sign up for as what people think, because like with email, you can still see and interact with everyone who uses different instances. And if unlike with email, if you decide to change the service you sign up for, you can easily migrate and all your followers go with you. No need to tell people “hey I got a new email address. Now it’s…”

Edit: By the way, I specifically said email service, not email client. Just in case you missed that, because the discussion you were having was about telling grandma which server to join, not which mastodon app to use. Grandma will probably just use the web version or the “official” mastodon app.

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B-Rock001 t1_j1nx0kb wrote

> There’s really no reason to put as much thought into which instance you sign up for as what people think,

Why not? How do I know the server I sign up for isn't going to harvest my data and sell it on the side? Or that it's run by lunatics that promote crazy content? Or that it will collapse because the hoster can't afford hosting? Or that it's going to get hacked?

Every concern you could raise about centralized social media could be raised about an individual server. Yeah, I'm sure you could migrate to a new server if you find out the one you picked sucks, but that's extra work grandma isn't going to want to do... she just wants something that works.

So mastadon kinda addresses a couple problems (like centralized profit) but doesn't do anything to address deeper issues with current social media... all in a package that is objectively more complicated than current offerings. Bringing it back to the article, that seems like a good reason why reaction has been lukewarm to mastodon... not because "tech writers can't understand it".

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ArekDirithe t1_j1o0ull wrote

You can literally say the same thing about any email service - which was the point I was replying to.

But you seem to want the fediverse to instantly solve all issues. I don’t think anyone is proposing it is the panacea of social media. Just that it’s far better than corporate-owned for-profit social media.

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B-Rock001 t1_j1ofeb6 wrote

Yeah we're taking past each other. I'm not suggesting it has to solves all problems, but everyone is acting like it does... and even the problems it does proport to solve still needs proving at large scale. I mean there's a reason you don't see that many open source platforms becoming mainstream... money talks.

I have my doubts it's going to scale like people seem to think it will... and it doesn't solve the problems inherent to social media, so yeah, forgive me if I fail to get excited about it. The original article was trying to suggest tech writers just don't get mastodon... seems to be like it's just reasonable scepticism that this is going to be all that revolutionary.

Anyway, there isn't much more to say. Cheers.

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ArekDirithe t1_j1o12xh wrote

Oh also to clarify your misunderstanding from someone previously: end to end encryption would mean the server hosting your data has no actual access to the content, only you and the recipient can read it. That’s the whole point of end-to-end encryption.

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