EnglishMobster

I'm aware of the history - I used XMPP myself, for a long long time. I'm mad it's effectively gone.

Heck, on my Windows Phone once upon a time I could have chats with SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Google Hangouts all without leaving the stock native texting app. One by one they all broke and faded away.

But my point is - is the fedipact a better outcome?

My thought is no, it isn't. The intention of the fedipact is to split the fediverse in two - the side that federates with corporations, and the side that doesn't.

But the issue is that in splitting the fediverse when it's still so young and fragile, you're going to inherently kill it. Even if people maintain accounts on both sides of the divide, time is finite. People will make a choice to participate in one side of the fediverse or the other, knowingly or not.

My gut tells me people are going to want to go where the network effect is strongest. They're going to go where they know the people, where Wil Wheaton or Arnold Schwarzenegger might randomly pop up in the replies to a post.

And this is going to cause people to choose the side of the fediverse that gives them that interaction. Some may still choose to stay true to the fedipact - just as people do still use XMPP and IRC - but if the fedipact goes as intended, the fediverse will splinter and most people will go to the side with their friends.

I don't see how that world where the fedipact is successful is any different than the option 2 you laid out. The fedipact has caused 2 fediverses: one that has lost the network effect and is beginning to decay; the other dominated by a corporation. The fedipact side will have few people left because everyone left to talk to their friends on Meta.

The only way forward is to hope for option 1. Is it foolish? Maybe. Meta is a corporation that wants money. XMPP died a bad death. You can even argue that email is dead as an open protocol now - ever try sending an email message on your own server?

But we can hope for a situation like what we're seeing with ZigBee/Matter where an open, clear standard is maintained. And maybe that'll change in a decade, but the only thing the fedipact does is remove any hope for that at all.

But if you go to https://kbin.social/d/threads.net (obviously doesn't work yet), then you can block the whole instance, yourself, for your own account. It has the same effect as the server defederating, but it only affects you.

The only reason why that solution wouldn't be acceptable is if you believe so strongly against the very concept of Threads that you want to make that choice for everyone else. You want to forcibly hit that button on everyone's account and push your beliefs and opinions onto others.

If you simply don't like Meta, that's fine - I get it. I want to use FOSS stuff to see my friends. I want my friends to appear in my feed, and I want their hashtags to be sorted into my magazines. My wish to see my friends is just as valid as your wish to not see anyone from Threads. While Threads has some questionable people, they aren't the majority. It's much better for me to block the individual accounts that cause problems than it is for me to lose the ability to talk to all my friends.

Kbin gives you the power to go to the domain and block it yourself; this isn't Lemmy. Why do you want to take that choice away from everyone who is okay with people from Threads in their feed?

So. In 1 day, Threads has gotten more users than all of Mastodon combined. My friends are on Threads. They're not coming to Mastodon. I've tried. I couldn't even convince my fiance to join me on Mastodon for longer than a day, and we live together.

How would you suppose I talk to my friends? By joining Meta? Or by staying with FOSS on the fediverse? Because when you say "everywhere needs to defederate from Meta" you're also saying "You shouldn't talk to your friends here, nor should your friends be able to talk to you."

Quite frankly - I really enjoy that I can both be here and still be in contact with my friends. Meta can't track me here (as much, I'm aware they can still siphon data but they could do that regardless). I'd much rather stay here if I can. But if given the chance to choose, I'm going to move to somewhere that federates with Threads. Not because I like Meta - I hate Zuck almost as much as I do Elon, which is quite a lot - but because I'd rather see and talk to my friends than be locked in with a bunch of rando control freaks jumping at shadows.

If the fedipact had it their way, anywhere that federated with Threads would in turn become defederated. This will create 2 separate fediverses. People will have to choose which one they spend time on - even if they have accounts on both sides, one will always be the "primary" account.

I posit that for many people, the "primary" account is going to be the one with their friends and interests. It's going to be the side with the influencers they follow. Simply, it's going to be the one that federates with Threads. The other side will slowly wither and die, as all the content dries up and people move to where the network effect is strongest.

You can argue that we need to defederate because of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Tell me: what is the end result of EEE? A diminished fediverse, where most people use the single app that has all the people and all the content. How is that different than the splintered fediverse caused by the fedipact?

It's really not much different at all. If Meta goes for EEE, there is no stopping them. If the fedipact takes hold and rabidly defederated anywhere that glances at Meta, then the fediverse's network effect will shatter. The fedipact will simply backfire and shoot themselves in the foot as people choose the side with the larger network effect. It's ridiculous that the idea has gotten as much traction as it has; the fedipact's best-case scenario is worse than the worst-case of EEE.

If a bunch of people want to live in small segmented communities, that's on them. Beehaw is right there if you want it; that's what Beehaw aspires for. But large, general-purpose instances shouldn't bow to the whims of a loud minority that don't even realize the repercussions of their agitations.

The fediverse is at its strongest when we federate. That's what makes this place special. We've agreed that walled gardens are bad, and the one time that we have a chance to get a bunch of "normal" users on the fediverse everyone panics because they're afraid of EEE.

The fedipact isn't going to stop EEE. If Meta wants to do EEE, they're going to do it with or without the fedipact. We don't even know for sure that EEE will happen - it's true that Meta is a business, but there are plenty of open protocols you use every day that never got hit by EEE. L

All the fedipact will do is hurt people who want to use free software to see their friends so this loud minority can exercise their control over everyone.

You have the power to block the domain here if that's what you want to do. Please don't let your personal fears ruin the experience of others.

Yep, a lot of my old friends and co-workers aren't on Mastodon. I'm seeing them pop up on Threads.

I really want to be able to follow my friends and interact with my friends and - from my perspective - it's this vocal minority loudly saying "YOU DON'T NEED TO TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, LET'S SPLIT THE FEDIVERSE".

It makes no goddamn sense. If the fedipact holds you're just going to have two separate fediverses now and users are going to fragment. I'd rather interact with my IRL friends than a bunch of nerds talking to each other on Mastodon about the last time they showered. I get that they're trying to avoid "embrace, extend, extinguish" but splitting the fediverse into 2 is actively worse.

EEE is all about a corporation making a product that (to an average user) is better than the free alternative, and making it hard for the free alternative to keep up and maintain parity. Over time, people will leave the free version and go to the corpo version and the free version will have nothing on it but diehard nerds.

Defederating from the corpo instances is literally identical. All these people are just going to shoot themselves in the foot. You are giving people the option of "talk to all of your friends and celebrities" or "talk to us, a bunch of overbearing control freaks who jump at shadows". Of course people are going to choose their friends and leave behind the strangers they hardly know. If the fedipact has its way, Mastodon's core users will dwindle and dwindle until it's just the hardcore. Note that this is the exact same outcome as EEE, but Meta didn't have to lift a finger.

Don't mistake me for someone who likes Meta, mind. I hate the Zuck. Not as much as I hate Elon, but I do not like Zuckerberg. But I'm given the chance to use FOSS stuff to talk to my friends? I can use apps like Fedilab and swap between Threads and Mastodon? I can follow Threads users from here on Kbin? Threads users can subscribe to my magazines and make posts?

I'd much rather make Facebook work on EEE than do it to ourselves for free.

I swear by Doc Martens.

They're painful at first but once you break them in they are incredibly comfy and last years. I've had my shoes for a decade now without issues. They've been with me from my first customer service job, all the way through college and into my current desk job.

It's about time for a new pair but these guys have seen it all.

You're the one who chose to post it without fixing it yourself to make it readable. ChatGPT didn't paste it into that box and hit the "add comment" button.

Sometimes. It seems to be inconsistent.

Kbin tags work the same way. Every person you see in the microblog tag is directly followed by someone on Kbin.

I have purposely been going out and following interesting Mastodon accounts from Kbin to ensure that they're being brought over into the Kbin feed and put into the proper magazines.

!wizardposting

In the pandemic, I wanted to support struggling mom-and-pop restaurants instead of big conglomerates. So I went out of my way to order from places with names I didn't recognize, both to try them out (you never know if "Alberto's Tacos" has the best taco you've ever had in your life) and to make sure that tiny places could stay afloat.

I still remember the first time this came to bite us in the ass. We ordered from this cute little shop called Thrilled Cheese. They had cute little sandwiches... that both looked and tasted horrible. I was wondering how on earth they had stayed in business with food like that and so I looked up their address from the app.

It was an IHOP. Specifically, an IHOP that we purposely avoid because it's a terrible IHOP that got a "B" from the health inspector and once gave us food poisoning.

Now we have to triple-check that the little family-owned place is really a little family-owned place. Too often it turns out that it's an Applebee's or an IHOP or a Denny's or something. (We did discover some great local restaurants though. Shout-out to "I Heart Pancakes" in Santa Ana, CA - best pancake place ever.)

Beehaw has very strict moderation, like a traditional forum. They want a small, closed community where they can look out but nobody else can come in. (They've even mentioned they would switch to an allowlist if it could be made one-way.)

Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works had easy sign-ups and Beehaw said the ease of sign-ups were responsible for a lot of trolls and bad actors. So Beehaw defederated from both those instances until they made sign-ups harder.

The pension thing got fixed last year.