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federated-social-networking.md (10321B)

 # federated social networking
 <!--[time 201907120710.27]-->
 
 like it or not, social networks are part of the Internet's evolution to
 serve our non-topical communication needs, focusing on people more than
 content, unlike newsgroups and forums. alas, while myspace and facebook
 and twitter took off, they have proven to eventually fail (in myspace's
 case) or become too big to care for their users. facebook and twitter
 regularly take it upon themselves to curate content in an effort to
 appease their advertisers, and perhaps secondarily to appease the
 political opinions of their own staff members. personally, I've never
 been a huge player in the social networking game, but twitter did catch
 my eye a while ago for being a place for me to discover people, follow
 content that is interesting to me, and of course, participate in
 discussions with a bit of shitposting here and there. a few years back,
 in 2015, I have noticed the effect of the above issues I mentioned, with
 accounts I follow gradually being picked off by twitter's moderation
 team, until finally in 2016 I simply *retweeted* someone's post and
 received an account termination for it. twitter goes far and hard for
 its advertisers, and because my retweet directly affected the reputation
 of such a business partner (well, I can only guess they were partnered
 if it came to this extreme), the platform didn't mind at all to
 sacrifice me and a few others to ensure their reputation. I will not go
 into additional detail with my incident specifically, because it is no
 longer terribly relevant, but just note that there's a reason for
 accounts to pop out of existence all the time on twitter, and it isn't
 always because people are spamming others' mentions or sharing illegal
 pictures.
 
 if that's enough convincing for you that we need a better social
 networking platform to offset twitter, instagram, and the like; good
 news, because there exists a microblogging-style social network that
 goes beyond just one domain, just one company, just one set of policies.
 **meet the fediverse**: the result of years of collaboration to provide
 an open protocol and several software implementations, to solve the
 issues inherent in conventional social platforms. I've personally been
 hosting an instance (at [anime.website](https://anime.website/)) for a
 bit over a year now, and I can confidently say it is a suitable twitter
 replacement for me. my timeline doesn't feel empty, I see many
 interesting and unadulterated discussions because people feel welcome to
 exchange their personal beliefs, and I myself don't have to worry about
 being deplatformed or holding my content hostage to a corporation who
 doesn't give a shit about me.
 
 ----
 
 as good as the fediverse is, many misconceptions have floated around,
 especially since the introduction of the Mastodon implementation of
 fediverse software. while I don't particularly like Mastodon itself
 (it's resource-heavy and hard to install, according to many people, and
 it restricts users' freedom to configure instances to their personal
 liking), this has no bearing on my opinion toward the project lead
 himself, Eugen Rochko. his motives have been clear for a long time that
 his goal isn't necessarily to promote a free (as in freedom) social
 experience, but instead to offset other platforms that he claims
 harbours <q>nazis</q>. what this means to the rest of us, is that he (on
 behalf of Mastodon) spreads his idealised view of what the fediverse
 should be, which in turn confuses many new people trying out the
 platform for themselves. essentially, he has taken something that was
 not his original idea, slapped his name on it, and tries to
 retroactively mould the fediverse to his liking. this fact alone should
 not deter anyone from using the fediverse, but it should serve to
 prepare you for the inevitable drama that incurs from this.
 
 I have my own idealisation of the platform, but I know that not everyone
 shares my opinions. since I have a history on twitter, some of the
 features introduced in fediverse software make little sense to me. for
 example, I am a vocal opponent of the <q>federated timeline</q> which
 essentially serves as a dumping ground for all posts an instance
 receives, whether or not you directly follow those users. many claim
 it's an important discovery mechanism, but given my time on twitter,
 it's apparent to me that full-text search, potentially a tagging system,
 and other discovery methods such as retweeting (<q>repeating</q> or
 <q>boosting</q> in fediverse nomenclature) are just as effective to find
 accounts that may interest me. from experience, I have seen the
 federated timeline cause more issues by attracting spam and trolls to my
 comments; which have a far less likely chance of happening had I only
 kept my exposure to my followers and to any participants in my threads.
 
 I also hold a controversial belief that per-post privacy settings are
 beneficial to the network. the way they are currently implemented leaves
 a lot to be desired, but I have made my twitter account private out of
 necessity before, and I understand the desire to limit a profile's
 exposure and allow a curated list of people who can view my content. the
 per-post privacy adds flexibility to twitter's feature, making it so I
 can make some or none of my posts completely private. I mention this
 because it's another topic you may see discussed soon after involving
 yourself in the fediverse.
 
 with all that said, I encourage you to try the fediverse out for
 yourself if you can't get the twitter impulse out of you, or if you just
 want to see what the buzz is about. plenty of people, plenty of
 interests, plenty of beliefs, all talking to one another on a robust
 platform, a platform not controlled by any one party. like E-mail, if
 you disagree with how one server operates itself, you can easily pack up
 and move to another server. nobody can <q>ban you from the fediverse</q>
 (but this is not an invitation for you to test anyone's patience).
 intelligent discussion, shitposting, image sharing, news, politics,
 personal issues – the firehose of content, the lack of curation has been
 a big reason for me to stick around, because it's always something new
 every day.
 
 if you're keen to try it but don't know where to start out, I have taken
 the time to write [a page dedicated to the fediverse](/fediverse.xht),
 complete with a table of instances that gladly take in new users and are
 transparent about their own moderation and federation policies. sadly,
 mainly due to how Mastodon gained its popularity, we see a lot of
 <q>instance blocklists</q> akin to the account blocklists on twitter,
 which serve to prevent federation between instances that disagree with
 one another's policies. while I admit, this is a useful tool to be able
 to separate oneself from spam instances, for example; it has become a
 much-abused feature, effectively censoring a lot of legitimate users and
 content, and making the fediverse more difficult to understand for new
 users.  indeed, this is enough of a barrier to entry that many people
 leave simply for all the drama and controversy these decisions foster. 
 
 ----
 
 I'd also like to share my personal code of etiquette, a set of standards
 I hold myself to and expect from others who interact with me, simply
 because it makes the most sense to me from my experiences with
 microblogging. I model anime.website's rules after my own standards
 while still giving people the freedom to be wrong. ;)
 
 I believe that microblogging (and in extension, the fediverse) should
 predominantly be a <q>pull</q> medium rather than a <q>push</q> one,
 meaning I should be able to control what I see by following and
 unfollowing people. thus, many issues should be solvable simply by
 unfollowing anyone with whom I no longer want to interact. should
 outliers exist, muting and blocking are suitable to get persistent
 people out of my mentions. this <q>pull what I want</q> mentality
 contributes to my opinion that the federated timeline is unnecessary.
 but, others (for example on anime.website) find the federated timeline
 useful, but I treat it as an unmoderated, uncurated feed, so if users
 have any issues with what they see on the federated timeline, I will
 simply tell them to steer clear of it to avoid further issues.
 
 the above attitude allows people to talk about what they want, and it
 allows others to expose themselves to that content voluntarily. this
 eliminates a need for most moderation and allows my rules to be
 succinct: I do not allow spam or illegal content, or anything that could
 jeopardise the service for the rest of my users and myself. users may
 join my instance even if I disagree with them; I simply will not follow
 their content. this makes my life *much* easier as I can be a user first
 and a moderator second.
 
 while trigger warnings (dubbed <q>content warnings</q> by the Mastodon
 crowd) have been introduced into the fediverse, I personally only see
 them as a hinderance and an antifeature. again, on twitter I have never
 had a problem as long as I follow the right people. I understand that I
 may not agree with all content presented to me, but I'd like to think
 I'm able to ignore what I don't like. content warnings operate far too
 much on trust; I have to entrust that everyone will share my idea of
 objectionable content, and that is simply an unrealistic goal. and while
 some people find such warnings useful, they impact those who see them as
 a distraction, as out of place, as an additional step to click through
 someone's content. while much software (including Pleroma) allows these
 warnings to be expanded by default, and people are working on new
 potential solutions to the issue, I believe it will always be an
 imperfect addition in fediverse software.
 
 and lastly, should you decide you want to follow me on the fediverse
 once you've made your own account and gotten comfortable, be aware that
 I post about a lot of things and publish all types of images and media.
 if you find anything objectionable to the point you think less of me, I
 ask that you simply do not follow me, rather than trying to suggest that
 I change what I say. I made my own instance to *get away from* being
 told what I can and cannot say; I understand my actions and words have
 consequences but chances are I won't be receptive to any content
 policing.