@idan@vis.social It's also working on compat with #indieweb technologies like mf2 and webmentions because that movement also rolls with the single user instance ethos so if you're not familiar with that crowd it's worth taking a look at indieweb.org
Ok let's be honest. I like the fediverse because it caters to me. I have huge technical privilege. I've been writing code and making games and building computers and setting up websites and all those sorts of things since I was a child — and I find doing all those things fun. For me I've set up microblog.pub as a single person activitypub/fediverse/mastodon instance because then I can play with it. I spend hours tweaking my css to make the site look how I want. I contribute patches and discussions to the help build, improve, and add features to the microblog.pub software that I use. All of that is a source of joy for me. But that's me.
Most people don't have my technical privilege. Most people just want a social media platform that will do the job of connecting them to their networks and showing them the content they're looking for.
And I can yell and shout about how #indieweb or fedi/masto/AP is better than platforms for this that or the other reason. And I do genuinely believe in those open platforms for those reasons. But those reasons aren't why I love them. I love them because the open systems are empowering to me, specifically, because of my technical privilege and because they provide a space for me to play in the way I like to play.
What sucks, though, is that this is about community. There are plenty of things in life where if you want to do things your weird way that's different to everyone else, you can do that and have your fun and it doesn't actually matter what other people think. But that's not true for social networking. If everyone else has different wants, needs, and priorities from their social network and thus chooses to do something else from what your wants, needs, and priorities direct you to choose, then your experience of doing the thing you choose is lessened by the fact that your communities don't join you.
So I'm left stressed. I deeply love open platforms. I love the web. I want other people to love it too and to come join me playing there. But I also totally understand why the touted benefits of those platforms don't even remotely make up for the poor UX to people who just want the social media to work. It's all well and good to be invested in the community project of building the network but not everyone has the desire or the resources to be part of that kind of project. So I'm anxious because I know that it IS better for most of my friends to use something else. It makes more sense for them to go to a platform that is all owned by and managed by a single legal entity because that is what provides the most value for the least cost (difficulty of use). But then my playground is lessened. And I recognise that that playground was only ever fun for me and not most of my friends, because of that technical privilege,. But it still makes me anxious and it still makes me sad. Cause I want to keep playing.
@abid@abid.cc #indieweb has indieauth but that requires you to have your own personal domain.
This shit is why I'm more pro #fediverse and pro #indieweb than pro Mastodon specifically
@aral@mastodon.ar.al how much contact have y'all had with #indieweb folks? You seem pretty aligned. Indieweb.org is all about that self hosted life.
One of the fascinating problems with trying to create non-corporate social media, alternatives to Twitter etc, and online life in general is that eventually someone has to decide who gets an account. Who gets a username, a domain name, etc. That has to be controlled by someone at some level to manage bad actors. For services like twitter, masto, etc, it's the person who runs the server. For domain names, which is the basis for identity on #indieweb that's done by registrars who use the fiscal cost of registration to manage who gets what, so then it's pay-to-play or piggyback off someone else's domain and thus you're beholden to someone else again. There's no equitable technical solution. A social solution is required.