humanetech

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1230183

Just gave my satyrical take on The Splinterverse. Grassroots movements adopt an implicit "Divided we will be conquered" approach, where big corporate newcomers can easily disrupt with Big Marketing™ followed by an Eternal September by their user influx to the Fediverse. The Muskening™ already gave a taste of that.

Currently new channels are abuzz with the Reddit shenanigans, and there's potential for another influx. People are inventing names like "threadiverse" for forum-like federated apps. There's a broader vibe where people come to the realization that enshittification on proprietary walled garden platforms is inevitable, and that the old web is re-emerging with blogs and webrings. And the heterogenous Social Web with countless alternative federated/decentralized apps where there isn't a single gatekeeper. That opportunity certainly exists (as Meta likely know all too wel also).

The common name that has stuck is "Fediverse", or affectionally spoken the "fedi". Many say it is a bad name, and maybe it is. It is a name you get used to, though, and it is not easy at all to introduce a new name in a grassroots movement.

But that is NOT what I find important at all ..

The Fediverse has slowly matured during many years. That slow growth has shaped an all-important aspect: A vibrant culture. This is what all growth-hacking enterpreneurial minds easily overlook. There have been a shit ton of social media launched.. and failed. The big ones we have have their solid position with FOMO and network effects. Those who say social media is easy have survivorship bias.

"It is the culture that matters, stupid!"

I love all the quirky aspects of the Fediverse. The diversity and inclusion. The weird angles. And also, weirdly enough.. the friction. Friction to get on the Fediverse has also served as a filter. We now have 'competitor' decentralized social networks with Nostr and Bluesky. "Nostr is developing way faster.. come to us!" --> This is a purely technical viewpoint. Wait till you see what culture that creates. Technical buzzwords like "encryption", "censorship-resistance", "micropayment", etc. that seem like features may see all the wrong types being attracted to those networks.

What I feel is the biggest thing that is missing on the Fediverse is a shared vision, a common notion of where we are headed, where the potential of the Fediverse is, what we might achieve collectively.

It is "App focus". App app app app app ... Apps are siloes!

Related to "marketing against Meta" it was asked "Where is the Mastodon branding agency?" --> They branded an app, not an ecosystem / online environment. And them being successful means we have this big confusion now, where people "Join the Mastodon". We should get rid of app focus.

The vision that appeals to me, and I am advocating for quite a while is that of a Peopleverse to emerge.

• Fediverse (technical) --> Peopleverse (social)

The Peopleverse is NOT a name.. it is an abstract idea, a vision of how things might be. The Peopleverse is where people find value online. Where they interact with others in a way that is enriching to their lives. It is where online and offline worlds are seamlessly intertwined.

Considered like that means that this Peopleverse will also have implications for the technical perspective, when looking at the Fediverse technology landscape and ecosystem. It highlights the amount of socio-technological support that is needed. It highlights a technology vision that encompasses the Fediverse's full potential.

"Hey, are you on Mastodon?"

"I joined The Mastadon network if that's what ya mean."

"Wait an instance. You are both using the Fediverse protocol."

"Ha. Well.. I joined the Threadiverse and like that way better."

"Is Lemmyverse connected to that?"

"Dunno. Let's ask at ActivityPub."

"Yay, beer 🍻 It is Friday."

"ActivityPub isn't a real pub, it is a community of sorts."

"Hi there.. dialing in from the #Pixieverse 👋 Can you see me?"

#Fediverse #ActivityPub #Threadiverse #Mastadon #TheMastodon #Lemmyverse #Pixieverse #Vidiverse #Web69

You can help by boosting my toot, but when offering help, the SocialHub forum discussion is the best place to do so.

As Reddit's enshittification reaches new heights their attempts to suppress attention for alternatives, like federated Lemmy, has the opposite effect as this Hacker News discussion shows.

Copying some of my thoughts from forge federation chatroom:

Hmm, I have bumped into repl.it in the past, marked it as "interesting" for myself, and moved on. Yesterday https://replit.com became the hot thing on HN (though on AI topics). Just again navigating the site now.. and here we see another platform operating on a breadth of services, that may just give Github folks a cold sweat. It is not all smooth.. there are quirks in the site. But they are highly innovative, it shows. And apparently raking in investment money. Here we have another one-stop-shop integrated experience offering "Help with Software Development". I wonder what this disruptive trend will mean for FOSS code forges in the future.

We are moving towards this:

• Most devs: "We develop in Github / Replit / JetBrains / Gitlab.. it great. Highly productive."
• FOSS folks: "Use our tools. We have a huge patchwork of them, and you must configure them all, copy/paste between, have manual processes, and who needs that slick UX, right?"

(Actually this is already the current situation)

The tagline on Replit is interesting (highlight mine): "Build software collaboratively with the power of AI, on any device, without spending a second on setup"

We are so used to the way we develop software now, that we think that setting all the infra, CI, docker/k8s, what-have-you, and then configuring/tweaking, documenting it in README and Docs comes with the job. Well, it does not. It is a huge time-waster and the low-hanging fruit of increasing productivity. Any platform that removes all that from the picture, turned into some point-and-click UI, selecting from a marketplace of dev environments, etc. will give any manager 🤩 eyes.. and competitive advantage. And that's only the start. There's so many other common chores to be taken out of the equation on one-stop-shop automated online platforms.

In this trend I also expect Git to die eventually. It is very powerful tool, and lovely to do common things. But devs hate it when more advanced Git things need to be done. In the one-stop-shop future, git is implementation detail abstracted away deep in the platform. You don't need to be aware of it, even when developing locally offline. Because you will do that based on a full-blown "dev environment" package that you obtain from the platform.

• "I want to develop offline" --> sync local all-in dev package --> start package, code in package's IDE offline --> syncs back automatically when online again.

• "I want to contribute to this other project with other infra/techstack" --> click & code --> done.

I might also highlight the "collaboratively" in the same tagline. Replit already offers collaborative coding where - similar to Google Docs - you see the other people's cursor and activities. But this collaboration will of course be scaled to include the needs of any type of stakeholder involved in the Software Development process. That this will happen is a no-brainer. Most software projects fail because of all the handovers between stakeholders with poor collab and communication barriers. The idea behind Social Coding and the Free Software Development Lifecycle (FSDL), is that we in the Free Software movement should spend time to fill the gaps in this regard, where the FOSS movement is even weaker than corporate IT world with our tech-mostly focus.

With Fediverse going mainstream and corporate interests aplenty, it is very important to promote SocialHub and the FEP process, so that there's higher chance of keeping the fedi open and accessible to anyone. Anyone can help in this regard.

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/588553

Eternal September is when influx from some other (often shittier and collapsing) platform overwhelms the unique culture that existed before, and in time fully replaces it. Destroying what existed before.

🧠 💭 Figure out strategies & actions in comments below .. participate!

For example, I introduced 2 hashtags for awareness:

• #AvoidEternalSeptember Raise attention to the culture clash.
• #DonateToFediInstances Help admins and moderators withstand the influx and give them your support.

We want to be gentle, welcoming to newcomers. Show them around. But also keep having the nice chattering and culture we had before, and maybe give those some extra boosts to exemplify and spread the vibes.

Here's a poll to make newcomers aware that taking Twitter culture with you on the Fediverse is just weird.

Fedizens... Be strategical in how you toot to help avoid that from happening

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/568420

In reaction to the surprise announcement of the creation of Gitea Ltd and the transfer of domains and trademark to this company, worried members of the Community have written an Open Letter to the elected Owners of the project.

The request is to return the assets and manage them by a community-led non-profit organization and furthermore improve the community organization, so that the Trust and Health of the project is restored.

The Open Letter can be signed by sending a PR to the Codeberg repository.

In reaction to the surprise announcement of the creation of Gitea Ltd and the transfer of domains and trademark to this company, worried members of the Community have written an Open Letter to the elected Owners of the project.

The request is to return the assets and manage them by a community-led non-profit organization and furthermore improve the community organization, so that the Trust and Health of the project is restored.

The Open Letter can be signed by sending a PR to the Codeberg repository.