Imagine for a moment that there was this group of people in the world, screaming that the ice is melting and the sea levels are rising. They scream and scream how coastlines will be under water in 100 years time. "We need to stop the ice melting!" their slogans say. "We need more political will to stop the melting!" they are screaming.
But then some weirdo comes and tells them...."You know that the ice melting and its impacts, are because of climate change...". He is quickly dismissed. The Ice Melting Cult marches forward, too blind to see that ice melting is just a symptom of a greater problem.
Well, this is what we are confronting nowadays via projects like TROM. The world is screaming "climate change", others say "the soil is being destroyed", some say "corruption is the problem". Plastic, waste, slavery, inequality. A LOT. But what they fail to see is that all of these are symptoms. Symptoms of trade.
Take climate change. The reason humans pollute so much and can't seem to change and move to renewables, is that...well...they have to trade. The fossil fuel industry is so huge in this trade game, that they can influence politics. Politics is a bunch of people who get a lot of money from being in those places. The other humans are too busy trading their life away to get access even to their basic needs, so what can they do. Everyone is in a race to trade, and in the process they are either destroyers of the environment (think big corporations), or numb zombies who can't even grasp these issues or do anything about them (think most workers).
So we are impotent to fix climate change simply because this trade based society does not allow it. It incentivizes humans to profit more, be mindless, consumers, etc.. Even if we switched to renewable energies tomorrow, these incentives will make humans create more and more waste, pollution, suffering, destroy the environment, and so forth. Pointless.
And so, to all of those who do not see this trade based society as the originators of most of today's problems, I am calling you out because you are in the Ice Melting Cult. And you have to wake up. Else we are all fucked. Thank you!
We re-installed TROMjaro on @Sasha 's laptop. She was using the old Gnome version. All worked great. So smooth. Only 2 errors that were not as important but we fixed them and seem to be related with calamares + BTRFS. This and this.
But yeah. TROMjaro is still maintained and improved. And works great.
Our trade-free operating system. I encourage you to try it too! :) #tromlive
Our Friendica https://social.trom.tf got updated to the (almost) latest version. We are just 1 month behind the stable releases. Hopefully all works well if not let us know. #tromlive
I remember in 2013 when I started to work with TVP and we released TVP Magazine. It felt like "we are doing it". That's it. People are paying attention. I got enough financial support to work for a few years and I was on fire. I produced lots of content and was so engaged. Then TVP died for me, and many others. That's because the closer I got to them, the more I realized it had no substance. Unfortunately. The ideas of Fresco were and are still quite important and inspirational. But they are just that, inspirational. And the organization was ran like a company plus they didn't do much anyway.
But well, I feel nostalgic at times because of that feeling of thinking that this is big. Important. Something will happen.
Since I moved away from TVP in 2016 I tried to bring that feeling back to TROM. But not artificially. It just so happened that I discovered that the entire structure of our society is based on trade, and this simple explanation provides us with a fantastic tool to try and change the society. Trade-Free.org was born. A few people got very excited. We met in 20
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I remember in 2013 when I started to work with TVP and we released TVP Magazine. It felt like "we are doing it". That's it. People are paying attention. I got enough financial support to work for a few years and I was on fire. I produced lots of content and was so engaged. Then TVP died for me, and many others. That's because the closer I got to them, the more I realized it had no substance. Unfortunately. The ideas of Fresco were and are still quite important and inspirational. But they are just that, inspirational. And the organization was ran like a company plus they didn't do much anyway.
But well, I feel nostalgic at times because of that feeling of thinking that this is big. Important. Something will happen.
Since I moved away from TVP in 2016 I tried to bring that feeling back to TROM. But not artificially. It just so happened that I discovered that the entire structure of our society is based on trade, and this simple explanation provides us with a fantastic tool to try and change the society. Trade-Free.org was born. A few people got very excited. We met in 2019. We had plans. It died.
But not for me and a handful few. Unlike in the case of TVP, who was a cloud and the closer you got the more you realized it had no shape, our new approach was like a drop of water. From distance you may not see it, but the closer you got to it the more you realized that it had a shape, a structure, a form. TROM has substance and I dare anyone to challenge it :).
My excitement got even higher, but in different ways. I realized the race is long. And it takes time to get the idea behind TROM. TVP looked a lot more attractive but it was deceiving. TROM is the opposite in all regards.
I still love the idea of TVP/Jacque. But as inspirational. And I still feel sad that I do not see excitement in anyone really....but the TROM II documentary has some potential to bring some of that back. And as long as I am alive and have some money/support, I can keep on pushing things. After TROM II will be released I have a lot of plans, I will focus a lot on more content, videos, books, discussions and debates.
It is a long journey folks. And this society is not our friend, quite the opposite. I am trying to keep myself calm and sane. We have a lot to do. And I don't care if I am to do this alone. I probably will, one way or another. But likely there will be others too, pushing this further.
TROM II. Can't wait to release it. Whenever that will be.... #tromlive
Sharing my journey into the trade world. So I am trying to use a website where you can trade your body and mind for all sorts of projects. A job-seeking website. I can do websites so I am trying that. Everyone tries to maximize their gain there, so the offers are super low. So low...Plus you have some credits on the website and to apply for a trade you need to use these. And they run out quickly so you have to buy more to apply. Imagine that haha.
Also isn't it interesting that in this society I'd rather not spend time on the TROM projects, that are free, informative, scientific, FOSS, and so on, but I should make website for cryptobros, marketers, scammers, so that I can make a buck to be able to survive. See how this society forces me, and all of you, to become prostitutes?
Please, please tell me this is some kind of extreme satire. Are you actually comparing your discomfort of building a few websites for a fee with actual slavery?
@Wu Wei :xfce: :rss: :terminal: it is slavery because you don't get a choice. You cannot survive (get food/shelter/etc.) unless you trade yourself in this society. And I think you're missing the point- @Tio does a ton of work. He works harder than anyone I know (he works all day, every day, no weekends, no holidays), but all the work he does he gives away for free. Great educational material, software, a ton of stuff- all for free because he wants to do good things. And in this society he gets punished for that- precisely because he's not trading. So instead of focusing on doing good things, this society forces him to sell things for a buck. Because he has no choice- that's why it's slavery. No choice.
Of course some people have it worse than others, but during the slave trade (for example) some slaves had it worse than others- some were whipped, others had a "nice" owner, but that doesn't mean they weren't slaves. Same today- if you're lucky, you may get to choose a nicer owner, that doesn't mean you're not a slave.
This is the old way of having slaves. Nowadays you simply rent them. So no one seems responsible for that. The slaves are "free" to jump from one owner to the other, and so some argue they are free, and not slaves. Big illusion.
My reaction to your comment is: Please, please tell me this is some kind of extreme satire.
Friend, as long as I am forced to do the things I do not want to do, and the alternative of not doing them is to starve or be homeless, then yes that is slavery. Forced labor. Can you have any argument against this?
By that logic, existance itself would need be slavery? As you would starve as well, if you don't do the work of acquiring food, water and other essentials to survive. I guess that is logically correct, but not excaxtly a widespread idea of what slavery is.
Now, we do have the technology and tools to at least lower the burden of having to work jobs we don't want to, but somehow this is not happening...
My comment is, of course, encapsulated inside the society we live in. Because it is the cause of this problem. A society in which we throw 50% of all edible food, where we have more homes than homeless people, we throw 350 cruse-ships of electronics a year, and hundreds more of clothes. In a society of abundance and waste, we force people to slave in order to survive. Did I mention that I can't just go and hunt some animals, or plant stuff, or make a house for myself!? Everything is owned already.
So I have no choice but to comply with this society's rules, whatever they are. Else I am fucked.
To me it is for sure slavery when you have to do something against your will, and if you do not, then your life is threatened because you lack access to your basic human needs. It is more modern than in the past, so it may seem different. But it is still forced labor in order to survive.
I am releasing a new project to, hopefully, make some money so that I can support our TROM project and myself. This is it -->> webape.site/
So. I provide managed instances for Mastodon, Peertube, Nextcloud, Friendica, and a few other services. On top of this I am making any kind of website in Wordpress. This is my "skill" and so I will try to make some money like this. I have to, I have no choice.
But listen.
I am not making a "business" out of this. I want to do a decent job at it, so I will only take 20-30 projects. Enough to sustain myself and have the time to focus on TROM, plus be able to properly manage these paid-for websites.
I tried to provide really cheap and very "tempting" offers, if anyone is interested, since I will only post once about this on my profile, the rest go on the Federated profile of the project -->> social.trom.tf/profile/webape
Here is what I offer:
Mastodon:
Peertube:
Nextcloud:
Wordpress:
I can setup huge instances up to 25TB of diskspace. And provide support over email or chat (Matrix).
If you think anyone may be interested, give it a share.
Yup, thanks. I am aware of it. For the past hours the hosting provider seems to have had some technical issues. Works now but not sure what the issue was/is.
You're born with wings, You learn to talk, You have no time to fly or walk, This world is empty, You're just a stock. Shut'up and listen. Now go to work!
Your time is running, You're getting old, Your wings are gone, You barely walk. There was no loss, You're just a stock, A trading value, in someone's flock.
PeerTube does it very well when it comes to the Federation-Moderation. Listen!
PeerTube allows you, the admin, to keep your instance clean. Nice rhyme! :)
You can follow any instance, channel, user that you want. Restrict the search to only these. And so when people use your PeerTube they see your curated content only, even when they search for something. While at the same time any user on your PeerTube can still subscribe, watch, and interact with ANYONE on any other PeerTube instances. That's how it should be.
A balance between having tremendous control over your own instance, but at the same time do not break the fediverse by cutting ties with other instances. Yes, PeerTube also gives admins the option to ban entire instances or users, but the fact that they give these positive reinforcers like mentioned above, makes an instance admin not want to use these "nuking" options.
This is because I and others have insisted that they provide us with these tools. We suggested to them what to implement and it works! My instance was full of crap, even after I start
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PeerTube does it very well when it comes to the Federation-Moderation. Listen!
PeerTube allows you, the admin, to keep your instance clean. Nice rhyme! :)
You can follow any instance, channel, user that you want. Restrict the search to only these. And so when people use your PeerTube they see your curated content only, even when they search for something. While at the same time any user on your PeerTube can still subscribe, watch, and interact with ANYONE on any other PeerTube instances. That's how it should be.
A balance between having tremendous control over your own instance, but at the same time do not break the fediverse by cutting ties with other instances. Yes, PeerTube also gives admins the option to ban entire instances or users, but the fact that they give these positive reinforcers like mentioned above, makes an instance admin not want to use these "nuking" options.
This is because I and others have insisted that they provide us with these tools. We suggested to them what to implement and it works! My instance was full of crap, even after I started to manage it in terms of what users can upload on our PeerTube. But after they introduced custom homepages, the ability to follow channels, instances, users and limit the trending, discover, the search and the like, to only these, since then my instance is a fuck ton cleaner. So it works.
Why in the name of the fediverse I, the admin, may want to block any other instance when I have so much control over my own!?
Oh, and PeerTube also allows any user to quickly block any user and even delete all at once all of their comments from their videos. So imagine if someone trolls you on PeerTube, with 1 click you ban them from ever posting and also delete ALL of their comments on ALL of your videos.
Give users the power to protect themselves and make it very easy to do so. And give admins the power to keep their instances clean without the need of cutting ties with any other instances, something that will affect all users and have a slippery slope effect.
Why in the name of the fediverse I, the admin, may want to block any other instance when I have so much control over my own!?
Because I, as an admin, have an obligation to my users to shield them from harassment. It's far more practical to block an entire instance from federating with mine in any shape or form, than it is to ask my users to do so individually.
As an admin, I serve my users. If my users tell me they don't ever want to hear from $X, I'll block it for them.
I cannot see how this can end up well. So are you asking all of your users when you ban an instance? How about future users? Do you make sure they understand that your instance cannot communicate with others? And why is it better to put so much weight on 1 human (the admin) when everyone can take care of themselves?
I do not ask my users. They ask me, I evaluate, and act accordingly. And yes, they fully understand that our instances will not be able to communicate in the future. That is the desired outcome. There were 0 complains in the past 4 years.
And why is it better to put so much weight on 1 human (the admin) when everyone can take care of themselves?
Because it is much easier for them if I take care of it. Future users won't even need to.
Here's a scenario: my instances are LMBTQ+ friendly. This tends to attract a whole lot of harassers which none of us here want to ever interact with. So we first report the harassment to their instance admins, and if nothing happens, we just ban the whole thing. Problem solved, for all current and future users.
If I didn't ban them, each and every one of my users would have to, individually. Me doing it also makes ME the target of any retaliation, and I'm more equipped to handle that.
I'm not saying that individuals being able to ban and mute whatever they want is a bad thing. It's great. But the admin being able to help the entire instance is also a good thing.
Care must be taken, indeed, blanket bans are a double edged sword. But sometimes it is the right call. Neither my users, nor I ever want to interact with instances full of transphobes or other hateful people. Cutting those off at the admin level is more practical than every user doing it on their own.
I understand you. However cutting instances seems an extreme approach. You cannot evaluate very well the userbase of those instances or yours. So you end up trying to battle cancer by doing surgery with a kitchen knife. The side effects of this are really concerning to me, simply because it makes admins like you get comfortable with such approaches, and you end up cutting connections between individuals. If this is your instance then I cannot see where iy makes it transparent what instances you have blocked trunk.mad-scientist.club/about…
Indeed, I cannot fully evaluate it. But if repeated harassers don't get dealt with, that's an instance I do not want to federate with. Any good people on those, can choose an instance that has admins who are willing to act on reports and not just make things worse.
If any of my users report that they are in any way inconvenienced with an instance ban, we'll figure something out. None of them did so far.
Yep, that's one of my instances, and I intentionally don't make my blocklist public.
To phrase it differently, using your metaphor: banning an instance with repeat abusers where admins join in on the "fun" may seem harsh, but I'd rather undergo cancer removal operation (which may have undesirable side effects) than tell my immune system to just work harder (which would end up with me dead).
This blocking is a blind game. I go on your instance and have no idea that you chose to not connect with other instances, The fediverse is already hard to grasp for most people, nowgo ahead and explain to them that it is not really like you can connect with anyone who has as federated account. It depends where these accounts get created. It is like XMPP server admins cut ties with other XMPP servers, and you have no clue about that.
This is a bad practice. Non transparent, confusing, rushed, unnecessary. Let the people take care of themselves and not break the fediverse.
It's not a blind game. I go to great lengths to research an instance before I block them. I explore other avenues first. My users - past, present and future - know my stance on blocking, they are aware that there are a dozen or two blocked instances. That's part of the onboarding process. This works for us fine, and has saved a lot of trouble for my users.
It is necessary, because asking each and every user to block the same stuff is not very practical. They don't want to deal with that.
Your instance has 7 users from what I see, but for instances larger than say 100 users this is not applicable. And it backfires. Also, why this need to take care of users when they can easily take care of themselves? Same way you do it for them, they can do it for themselves. You see a weird post/user, hover the name and block. Done. So the better and easier tools users have in this regards, the better will be for us all. Admins would not need to take care of these users.
For example if we would brainstorm more we could come up with an opt-in feature for users of any instances if they want to let the admins moderate stuff for them. Like an adblock list made by the admins. If I enable that then all of your blocking will protect me too, the user. But if I do not want that, let me see boobs and stuff and connect with anyone on the fediverse.
They technically can take care of themselves, yes. But it's much easier for everyone if they don't have to. Instead of 100+ people blocking the same things, a handful of them reporting to me, and me blocking is much more practical, and has the same net effect.
They see a bad post/user? They report. Done. For every single user, not just one.
I'm here to help my users, not make them do more work. It's better when they don't even see the bad.
My users are aware of which instances I blocked. The list is publicly not available, but my users can take a look if they want to, and can decide themselves whether that's ok for them or not.
And I repeat, this is the crucial point: not seeing a lot of bad in the first place, but still being able to report and/or block at the user level gives a much nicer experience than just the latter.
It's like spam filters. Your users can filter their own spam. It works better if you do globally too.
I am not talking about spam. But blocking instances because some of the users there post things others do not like. I repeat, an adblock-like list with bad actors, for each instance, is a great idea. Let users choose that protection (opt in if possible). Like a filter that users apply themselves. I would hate if Firefox would have an adblocker baked into the browser itself and I could do nothing about it. Let me decide what websites to visit, same way let me decide who to follow and connect with on the fediverse.
Good thing is: you can do that! And my users who prefer all of this to be handled for them, so they don't have to deal with it, can have it our way.
Having both options available is great. If purely user-level blocking works for you, great! It doesn't for many of my users, so I block for them. Everyone wins.
The instances I block, my users would block them anyway, so the net effect is the same, and it doesn't break fedi. It just keeps bad actors in their corner. I call that a win.
That'd still require my users to use the list one by one. They don't want to deal with any of that. They delegate the blocking and the backlash that comes with it to me.
Having the option to block at an instance level makes this possible. An admin can choose not to use the feature, and defer to users to handle blocks themselves. Users can also ask their admin to do it for them.
Both methods have their pros and cons, neither is better than the other, they're suited for different scenarios.
It is far better to have a simple toggle to opt in for the instance's list of banned users/instances. No idea how you do not see that. Maybe because you instance is made of 7 people. Mine has 600. You can't sit down and decide with 600 people. That won't work.
All my users are fine with me blocking. They wouldn't sign up otherwise. So they effectively sign up for the blocklist. Practically the same effect.
Whoever comes to my instances, agrees with the blocking. It's right there in the rules of my other servers. They can choose to go elsewhere. If they come to mine, they're fine with the status quo.
Another scenario, which happened just last week: some of my users reported an abuser, I looked into it, blocked that single person on the instance level, so they don't harass others. People from their instance - including their admin - started to dogpile on me a few minutes after. So I blocked them on my account. Then they started to harass random users on my instance, people who never interacted with them before.
So I blocked the entire instance to avoid having my users harassed.
If I didn't block at the instance level, they would've dogpiled on hundreds of users. It's not reasonable to expect them all to handle the fallout from other users blocking people as users.
This is where admins need to step in, and block the abusers hard.
The same way you easily blocked them, users can easily block them. And there won't be any collateral damages. I have blocked many users too. It is easy. Users have such great control over who can contact them, what they can block, etc..
You still don't get it. My users do not want to deal with it. They could, they choose not to. They come to my instance, becauseI deal with blocking, and the fallout.
No matter how easy it is to press a button, it has other consequences (see my dogpiling example earlier), possibly for other users too. They don't want to deal with that.
If I had an opt-in adblock, every user of mine would subscribe. So it's effectively an instance-wide block. Why bother with the extra steps then?
An adblock-like list many subscribe to does not prevent collateral damage. Those who subscribe to it, will end up blocking people and servers the same way an instance-wide block would.
All such a list accomplishes is some people not using them, at the cost of forcing everyone else into an extra step to opt into it.
Collateral damage will still be there. More burden on the users, too, and a larger attack surface. No thanks, we'll go with instance blocks, they're more practical for us.
To reiterate: instance-wide blocks aren't the be-all, end-all solution. They don't work for every server, or every user, either. But they do work for a fair number of servers & users, usually on top of user-level blocking.
Same goes for user-level blocking.
Both have their pros and cons, both have their place. Neither is inherently better than the other, because they're better for different scenarios. Having them both gives us the flexibility to set things up as we wish.
An adblock-like list many subscribe to does not prevent collateral damage. Those who subscribe to it, will end up blocking people and servers the same way an instance-wide block would.
They will, not you. That's better for whoever wants that.
All such a list accomplishes is some people not using them, at the cost of forcing everyone else into an extra step to opt into it.
Then make it opt-out. So much easier. No need for you to manage their lives.
I don't think that banning harassers is breaking the fediverse. Anyone who happened to be on a wrong instance by mistake, can easily move elsewhere, they're not tied to any one server, the protocol has a quite reasonable solution for migrating to another server to help with that, too.
Banning harassers at the instance level keeps my users happy, and on the fediverse. It makes Fedi a safer, happier place.
My users want to enjoy being here, not spend their time blocking. That's what I'm for
I do get why people ban entire instances: Requiring every user to block every spammer manually does not scale: Spamming is then cheaper than blocking spammers.
I think the opposite is true: instead of 1 human dealing with the blocking for everyone's needs, which cannot scale up (maybe some instances bother some of your users but not others), then why not let the users do your job for themselves? Users can easily block others and entire instances on Mastodon. The moment you try to become everyone's dad, you will fuck things up, because not all of your "kids" are bothered by the same things. And you end up breaking the fediverse by blowing up bridges.
If you get spammed by bots from particular instances of course no one would argue you should not block this. I am talking about unwanted content. Admins who block other instances based on politics, nudity, whatever else.
I've heard that reply many times before: if you don't like it, go somewhere else. But this is irrelevant for what I am saying. I argue that the practice of banning instances by admins is detrimental to the entire fediverse. Same way you think banning nudity is ok because you have a little community of people who are afraid of nipples, others may think that being "gay" is detrimental to their own community. And so forth. And in the name of thousands, a dozen people will interrupt the communication. Let the "gays" talk to the nudists! You know what I mean!?
And I was showcasing the example of Peertube which provides a great set of tools to keep your instance clean and safe without nuking any bridge.
Let’s replace the nipples and gays with targeted insults and ganging up on people.
Do you understand what I mean?
If you don’t like that, have a look at the tools that actually provide scaling defense against spam and such which I linked in my previous post: rollenspiel.social/@ArneBab/10…
That said, I still think having instances with per-instance rules has value.
Your argument "banning is detrimental" doesn’t quite work, because in the Fediverse you can easily have several accounts.
Look all I'm saying is that instead of using these primitive tools that are nontransparent, and decide for thousands of users, we should be smarter. Think about an adblock like list. Instance admins can have that and let users opt in in their settings or when they create an account. That list will ban all of these "bad" people for the users who choose. This way you dont have to cut ties with any instance, let the users decide. Simple.
I can imagine some people having dejavus from Newsnet server messages about mailservers. And the perks of blocking a domain (federation-level) versus blocking a user (individual level).
Cant blame Fediverse for introducing moderation at the federation level (next to the individual level).
All of what you see on an instance, including the search, can be curated yes. While at the same time if a user finds otehr peertube channels into the wild and wants to follow them from your own, they can. So you keep it clean, and also not break any connections that users may want to create.
Yes. But your users can defend themselves easily. And we can come up with even better tools to protect against that without the admin deciding for everyone else what is good to follow/interact with.
What does not not solve? If you curate your instance then you won't be flooded on that instance with nonsnese content. On Friendica for examples users can even limit whet they post to only those who follow them and such, so you don't even reach the outside world. Plenty of good tools already to keep admins and users happy. No need for a nuking solution. And more good tools can be invented if people would seek for such a solution rather than the primitive one of nuking other instances at the admin level.
But you are missing my point too. Somehow. I didn't say you should not have that. I said this practice, used by so many and for no good reasons, is damaging the fediverse. While at the same time there are better approaches like I mentioned about Peertube. We should be wiser and think further ahead for this fediverse thing, so we don't break it. If a massive instance blocks left and right other instances, and people don't even know that, then it is complete madness and breaks what we call as the fediverse.
That's my point: the practice of banning entire instances at the admin level is a very rudimentary and in the long term harmful approach. We have better tools that won't create these side effects.
Yes p2p seems to be the best approach, but this doesn't mean we should break the fediverse for no good reason. I have several instances and I see no reason in blocking the connection to other instances.
I asked for one feature for poast from @alex and @mkljczk and people still cry about it til today. they probably broke fediverse more than anyone else ive seen to date
Wouldn't the proposed federation method make a mess with MediaProxy, etc., not wanting to have CP on your server, etc.? I guess the admin would have to block them in the proxy config?
If you are bothered about what people fuck, what they believe in, or the color of their skin, then ignore or block them. And if others want to ignore idiots, they can easily block you ofc.
Even coming from the more block&ban-happy perspective, as I am, I agree with this approach. You can still nuke the worst of the worst, while keep your trending etc clean from grey area iffy stuff. On my Fedi instance (currently running a Pleroma fork) I ended up trying to disable the entire homepage for non-logged-in users.🤷🏻♀️
For those who do not see a problem when admins from the fediverse block entire instances from communicating with theirs, here's something: I have a Peertube and a Friendica instance. Thousands of users in total. If anyone decides to cut the connection with us (now or in the future) I will have no clue about that. The users will have no clue. Not those on my instances or on theirs. No one is notified of anything. We might be blocked already, I have no idea.
Let that sink in.
If you call this decentralization then you have to tune it down to: centralized and dispersed communications that are handled and managed by a few. We have multiple Facebooks with multiple Zuckys. It is better than FB by a lot, but this is not in any sense true decentralization, as long as a tiny fraction of people (the ones able and willing to have instances) are deciding for the rest of the users.
We need each user to be their own broadcaster without any middleman. No servers. No admins. You should be able to connect to whoever you want, and no one but you or the other part of the conversati
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For those who do not see a problem when admins from the fediverse block entire instances from communicating with theirs, here's something: I have a Peertube and a Friendica instance. Thousands of users in total. If anyone decides to cut the connection with us (now or in the future) I will have no clue about that. The users will have no clue. Not those on my instances or on theirs. No one is notified of anything. We might be blocked already, I have no idea.
Let that sink in.
If you call this decentralization then you have to tune it down to: centralized and dispersed communications that are handled and managed by a few. We have multiple Facebooks with multiple Zuckys. It is better than FB by a lot, but this is not in any sense true decentralization, as long as a tiny fraction of people (the ones able and willing to have instances) are deciding for the rest of the users.
We need each user to be their own broadcaster without any middleman. No servers. No admins. You should be able to connect to whoever you want, and no one but you or the other part of the conversation, to interrupt that communication. Period.
And no, it is not viable for everyone to have their own Mastodon. Meaning a server, install and manage it, etc.. That's ridiculous. Will never happen.
The problem with pure peer to peer is that it means everyone needs to be an server admin. Few people want to deal with those headaches. Few people want to learn even basic beginner's server administration.
Web based client-server applications offload the server headaches onto someone else. Federated platforms offer at least some choice, by making it practical to choose a friendly server admin without somehow also convincing everyone else you care about to also switch.
The bottom line is that pure peer-to-peer systems remain a very obscure niche, while diaspora and Mastodon have demonstrated sustained popularity over time.
No I am talking about people just installing an app and that's it. Magic happens. Scuttelbutt, Jami, Manyverse, stuff like that. Now they are not very mature but that's the future.
There's no such thing as "magic happens". Someone has to be administering security on the device.
I'm not familiar with Jami or Manyverse, but Scuttlebutt is a great example of something that's been going nowhere fast.
People like using web based applications because they don't have to install anything. They don't have to worry about figuring out software updates, or managing firewall settings, or security keys. Someone else figures out certificates and identity authentication, and discovery.
And discovery is the real rub. Scuttlebutt isn't pure peer-to-peer, of course. Discovery needs to be handled by pub servers with permanent IP addresses and a more serious server admin and such.
A true peer-to-peer system wouldn't have pubs like that. But how do you make it work? And how do you make it something people will actually want to use?
When it comes right down to it, people are more comfortable with letting that server take care of things, like in diaspora or Mastodon. The half-hearted way Scuttlebutt does things gives you the headaches of both client-server and peer-to-peer.
Someone has to be administering security on the device.
You mean on your device? Yeah, that's the user :).
People like using web based applications because they don't have to install anything.
Actually most people use "apps" nowadays. Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, and so forth. They do insatll them and it is fast.
Someone else figures out certificates and identity authentication, and discovery.
That's why you have to make the setup easy. Jami does a good job at it. Try it.
And discovery is the real rub. Scuttlebutt isn't pure peer-to-peer, of course. Discovery needs to be handled by pub servers with permanent IP addresses and a more serious server admin and such.
Yeah that's why these are not ready yet. But it can be solved with nodes and such.
But how do you make it work? And how do you make it something people will actually want to use?
Similar maybe to how the Bittorrent network works.
"Most people use 'apps' nowadays. Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, and so forth."
Haha. Interesting that you list three commercial for profit centralized systems, all owned by the same person and all for profit for the same person.
The apps you speak of cost money, because they're put into for-profit closed gardens like iOS and Google Play. The ones administering the security on those devices are Apple and Google. It costs them a lot of money to do this. In return, they get lots of profits from their closed garden app stores.
This is a pay-for-play tradeoff, which people accept because they prefer someone else to handle that stuff even at the cost of money, freedom, privacy, and security.
And even if they didn't accept that tradeoff, what choice do they have? If you want to make and receive phone calls, you're basically forced into iOS or Android.
Anyway, you're never going to see a true peer-to-peer system on something like that. It's quintessentially part of a for-profit closed garden system, so anything that doesn't fit in with their centralized con
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"Most people use 'apps' nowadays. Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, and so forth."
Haha. Interesting that you list three commercial for profit centralized systems, all owned by the same person and all for profit for the same person.
The apps you speak of cost money, because they're put into for-profit closed gardens like iOS and Google Play. The ones administering the security on those devices are Apple and Google. It costs them a lot of money to do this. In return, they get lots of profits from their closed garden app stores.
This is a pay-for-play tradeoff, which people accept because they prefer someone else to handle that stuff even at the cost of money, freedom, privacy, and security.
And even if they didn't accept that tradeoff, what choice do they have? If you want to make and receive phone calls, you're basically forced into iOS or Android.
Anyway, you're never going to see a true peer-to-peer system on something like that. It's quintessentially part of a for-profit closed garden system, so anything that doesn't fit in with their centralized control and profit system gets pulled from the app store.
In contrast, Linux, Windows, and MacOS allow any third parties to run software completely outside of the control of a closed garden. It's possible to publish true open source freeware on these platforms, with anyone distributing their own software. But this comes at a price. For most people, who are only familiar with Windows and maybe MacOS, this means a lot of bizarre headaches trying to figure out software updates, as well as figuring out whose download site to trust. And you just have to trust that whatever mechanism is used for software updates, the ones in charge are on the ball with security updates. Hopefully. With the major Linux distributions, it's different, but bluntly most people aren't using Linux.
I know very well these apps are trade-based, but this is besides the point. I was saying that people are used with apps. I never said these trade-based apps should become p2p at all. I have no clue why you interpreted it this way. I gave you examples like Jami, Manyverse, Sctuttelbut, the Tox protocol and qTox app. These are easy to use on mobile or desktop.
I mean that an open source freeware p2p can't make it on iOS or Google Play because of the money Apple and Google demand to be in their closed gardens.
Anyway, Scuttlebutt isn't pure peer-to-peer as I noted. In order to actually find anyone else, you need to rely upon fixed IP servers just like diaspora or Mastodon pods. It's completely reliant on the same sort of servers and server admins as diaspora/Mastodon pod servers anyway, just with extra client install requirements.
So, there's not actually any benefit, and significant down side.
Surprise, surprise, Scuttlebutt is a tiny niche compared to diaspora or Mastodon's user base.
If you have some idea of how to make true peer-to-peer work within the existing way the internet works ... well, that would be amazing. As it is, the problem may be intractable.
Jami is on Google Play I think, same as some Tox clients. In any case that's besides the point. I am talking about the possibility of creating such p2p apps and make them easy for all to use. Scuttlebutt uses pods is true, but this can be done like the Bittorrent network works. As far as I understand these pods never hold any of the posts, just connect people. And thus the admin of pods has a lot less responsibility than say a Mastodon admin that hosts messages, photos, videos, even remote ones. It is totally different.
It is different, certainly, but in ways that are reasons why Mastodon is popular and Scuttlebutt is not.
People don't like hosting all the content locally. People don't like needing to have their own server connected 24/7 with bandwidth consumed by others (often costing them a lot of money). People don't like having their IP address published in public.
I think people don't understand what a server is, how apps work, or even what an IP is, and most people have unlimited internet nowadays. Yes it will consume more bandwidth, but I don't think this is the reason why people won't want p2p apps. The reason is because they are not popular. If they would be, people would use them.
I remember that early on, diaspora was complex and confusing to people, who were largely using Facebook at the time. This complexity and confusion prevented a lot of people from switching over, but enough people gave it a shot anyway because of dissatisfaction with Facebook and a lack of other mature alternatives.
With Mastodon, its popularity was driven by ease of moving from Twitter to Mastodon. It had some interoperability, at least for a critical time for Mastodon to become popular enough on its own.
These two cases are pretty different, but a commonality is mass migration from a popular commercial platform.
I have to say, although I am a big fan of Friendica and how powerful and awesome it is, Mastodon is very polished. Really great job @Eugen ! Looks modern, fast, constant improvements. Looks really good.
Thanks for the info. 500GB for 100 users seems like a lot. I host Friendica with 500 users and the diskspace does not exceed 10GB. Why the diskspace is so huge for you?
I managed to calm myself down and almost finished the website that I will release to make some money. I will share it here once it is done. I am trying to, of course, keep it as honest and genuine as possible. I will provide a "service". That is: making websites based on monthly subscriptions, from Wordpress websites (these can be personal websites, or online shops and whatever else), to instances for Peertube, Mastodon, Nextcloud, Friendica and a few more. All are a lot cheaper than what I've seen on other websites.
The idea is to find 20 or so. Just that. So that it can provide me with a basic-income basically, so that I can keep myself and the TROM project alive. So that I also have the time to do these free projects.
I do not want to overwork myself, and I also want to provide quality stuff not make tons of websites and make them like shit. So anyway, soon I will share that website here and maybe I won't ever again. I will make a Friendica page for it. I do not want to talk about trades and "offers" on my personal Friendica account.
Bu yeah, it will be up and
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I managed to calm myself down and almost finished the website that I will release to make some money. I will share it here once it is done. I am trying to, of course, keep it as honest and genuine as possible. I will provide a "service". That is: making websites based on monthly subscriptions, from Wordpress websites (these can be personal websites, or online shops and whatever else), to instances for Peertube, Mastodon, Nextcloud, Friendica and a few more. All are a lot cheaper than what I've seen on other websites.
The idea is to find 20 or so. Just that. So that it can provide me with a basic-income basically, so that I can keep myself and the TROM project alive. So that I also have the time to do these free projects.
I do not want to overwork myself, and I also want to provide quality stuff not make tons of websites and make them like shit. So anyway, soon I will share that website here and maybe I won't ever again. I will make a Friendica page for it. I do not want to talk about trades and "offers" on my personal Friendica account.
Bu yeah, it will be up and running soon. Then will plan my next moves ;).
On another note, remember when I was saying that they fined us 2.300 Euros for speeding? Basically they sent the fines for a year to a wrong address because of their own mismanagement of things. And we paid a lot more because we didn't "pay in time", even tho we got no notifications. Anyway, now we got another 350 Euros fine for not paying that fine faster or something like that, who knows...God bless Spain and the entire world. Wonderful society!
Damn it is so hard to even make a website about webdesign, to "sell" myself. I am thinking how hard is it to make websites for others. I manage over 30 websites and work on a 6h documentary, I wrote thousands of pages of books, and so forth. But that's all done because I wanted to do them and I find value in them. I do not trade them. I make them for their value. But now I have to do stuff in return for food, electricity, and so forth. This society is so primitive. If from the 2nd day I feel annoyed....how am I gonna do this?! :D
I will take a break and try to push myself later on. I want do be done with this webdesign website, then I need to contact a bunch of random "businesses" to make websites for them. Likely I won't find any. But then I have to try 2 more things: work in cleaning in the weekends for the summer, and work for an "IT" company if I can and am accepted.
This society is disgusting. To be unable to focus on what you love doing, to not be able to survive unless you trade yourself. Wake up morons. The only reason you may not see the fuckery is because you
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Damn it is so hard to even make a website about webdesign, to "sell" myself. I am thinking how hard is it to make websites for others. I manage over 30 websites and work on a 6h documentary, I wrote thousands of pages of books, and so forth. But that's all done because I wanted to do them and I find value in them. I do not trade them. I make them for their value. But now I have to do stuff in return for food, electricity, and so forth. This society is so primitive. If from the 2nd day I feel annoyed....how am I gonna do this?! :D
I will take a break and try to push myself later on. I want do be done with this webdesign website, then I need to contact a bunch of random "businesses" to make websites for them. Likely I won't find any. But then I have to try 2 more things: work in cleaning in the weekends for the summer, and work for an "IT" company if I can and am accepted.
This society is disgusting. To be unable to focus on what you love doing, to not be able to survive unless you trade yourself. Wake up morons. The only reason you may not see the fuckery is because you got used to the smell of it. It is like shitting yourself and getting used with the smell.
Ok. I may rant a lot these following weeks/months but I need this else I can't continue in this society where I am forced/enslaved to do the things I do not want to do. At least I can still vent a bit here and there. #tromlive
These past days many people seem to have migrated to the fediverse and some are complaining about the limitations of Mastodon for example, since most are using that (it is the most popular). Mastodon is great, is sleek, well developed, and I'd say looks the best and is the most reliable perhaps. But some people want better features and I ended up replying to them individually. I am making this post to explain why I moved from Mastodon to Friendica and why I chose Friendica despite trying a lot of other alternatives.
The great things about Friendica:
It is very easy to use; the default Frio theme it comes with looks very intuitive. For our instance we have created custom themes social.trom.tf so that it looks even better in my view.
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, H
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These past days many people seem to have migrated to the fediverse and some are complaining about the limitations of Mastodon for example, since most are using that (it is the most popular). Mastodon is great, is sleek, well developed, and I'd say looks the best and is the most reliable perhaps. But some people want better features and I ended up replying to them individually. I am making this post to explain why I moved from Mastodon to Friendica and why I chose Friendica despite trying a lot of other alternatives.
The great things about Friendica:
It is very easy to use; the default Frio theme it comes with looks very intuitive. For our instance we have created custom themes social.trom.tf so that it looks even better in my view.
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Peertube....
Can follow RSS sources as "normal contacts". That's amazing since you can follow websites directly.
You can create huge posts, format the text (basic formatting), add inline media, and even use markdown.
You can setup any contact (even RSS sources) to auto repost their posts. For example we also have a Peertube account and I setup that so when we post a new video on Peertube, it also goes to our Friendica page. As native post or re-share, up to you. So awesome!
Has a calendar and you can schedule and organize events.
Has very well defined "news feeds": chronologically, based on activity, or based on your participation.
Auto contact discovery or random profile discovery.
Can integrate with Twitter so you can post to your twitter from friendica, or interact/connect/follow anyone on twitter.
You can setup your profile in different ways, such as a page, personal profile, or even forum.
You can have multiple profiles under 1 account.
Send private messages in a mail-like interface.
Follow search results or tags.
Ignore/block contacts.
Filter/block the posts based on language or other rules.
2FA authentication.
You can use it as your email client and receive/send emails too (did not test this tho).
Works with Mastodon's API so any Mastodon app/client should work with Friendica too.
It is developed by some very very nice people!
The not-so-perfect:
Their default theme needs some improvements in my view. People may look at that and think that this is not a very modern social network. Mastodon nails it!
Their website needs to be a lot more attractive. People going there have no clue about how awesome Frendica is.
Should handle video platform embedding better.
Maybe should add reactions to posts.
Should better handle images - how they are displayed and such.
Should have an "app"....I do not use phones really, so this does not affect me, but nowadays this can be important.
Maybe that's all. Anyone feel free to let me know if I've missed anything and I can edit the post.
You can use it as your email client and receive/send emails too (did not test this tho).
Wait, what? Do you mean any user on a Friendica instance can do that? If yes, how? Or is it an option that the admin has to activate?
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Peertube....
I think this "talk to everyone" approach of Friendica is one of its main strength, especially wrt other fedi platforms. There are two main precisions that I can bring about this
devs actually cooperate to implement other's protocols and objects. This is why it works so well with Lemmy and also why it works at all with Diaspora
the broad set of features plays a role. For example, Mastodon has a character limit and does not have downvotes, which make sense in their pure microblogging perspective but which limits the experience of interacting with Peertube
Works with Mastodon's API so any
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Very nice list !
You can use it as your email client and receive/send emails too (did not test this tho).
Wait, what? Do you mean any user on a Friendica instance can do that? If yes, how? Or is it an option that the admin has to activate?
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Peertube....
I think this "talk to everyone" approach of Friendica is one of its main strength, especially wrt other fedi platforms. There are two main precisions that I can bring about this
devs actually cooperate to implement other's protocols and objects. This is why it works so well with Lemmy and also why it works at all with Diaspora
the broad set of features plays a role. For example, Mastodon has a character limit and does not have downvotes, which make sense in their pure microblogging perspective but which limits the experience of interacting with Peertube
Works with Mastodon's API so any Mastodon app/client should with with Friendica too.
Yes, but, as you say it yourself later on, it lacks a dedicated app, something that does not just squeeze the content of your friendica timeline into a microblogging frontend. Really hope that @Fedilab Apps implements a more Friendlica-oriented frontend at some point, so as to get closer to their announced goal of being the multifunctional fediverse window :)
I really want to look into this as well, what an awesome feature. I set it up in options but fumbling around to get it to work at the moment, I assume it's accessible under the mail icon ... hmmm
Sorry if this double posts, my last one disappeared. Totally agree, Friendica is amazing except for a few things, the email client aspect looks amazing, but I haven't been able to figure it out just yet. It would be really great if there was a UI sprint or something for Friendica, it would make a huge difference in attracting new users IMHO
If/when instance admins on the fediverse decide to ban entire instances from connecting with theirs, they need to do so very responsibly and be 100% open and visible about it. And, I would argue, only in extreme extreme situations this should be done. This practice of banning instances is a very slippery slope and destroys all that the fediverse is.
When users have the power to ban other users and in some cases entire instances, then why on Earth are the admins taking such decisions that affect everyone?
I am sure that if this fediverse will become more popular it will get ruined by such practices. That's why I think the best is to have decentralized networks such as scuttlebutt.nz/ - that's a proper way of decentralizing. Not creating multiple twitters, but giving up on that idea of "a thing", but rather have people directly connect with other people.
I could predict a similar to trend to what happened with email: everyone masses on large instances, whose administrators serve as gatekeepers and block the smaller instances which are judged to be too wild and unruly.
Scuttlebutt is tempting, and there used to be (still is?) a service called Twister, which is completely decentralized, without any central server. But it would be much better if everyone one would simply get off those big fediverse servers and host their own instances - either at home or using a service like Mastohost.
Hubzilla, with its nomadic identity and channel cloning takes away some of the risk of depending upon a small server that could go down at some point.
Thank you for giving this well thought out answer. Its interesting you mentioned Hubzilla, because a while ago Hubzilla caught my eye because of this exact reason, the concept of nomadic identity and channel cloning really reduces a lot of the centralization and/or censorship concerns of federated networks. I haven't used hubzilla before but it sure looks interesting to me.......
Centralization is a threat to federated networks, just look at how centralized the email ecosystem is today. I don't know if scuttlebutt is the solution to this, but it sure looks interesting and I'm keeping an eye on it. I also like how @briar does it because they're even less reliant on servers. But there are some technical limitation with all these p2p networks - both person have to be online to connect, networks like scuttlebutt can't scale up because it relies on your disk space, etc.
The issue is that the vast majority of people won't and can't do that....maybe if these services could be converted as "apps" and somehow when installed to create an instance for that user, it could work. No idea how feasible this is but I am sure the vast majority of people won't setup their own instances.
What happens when the admin of some big instance decides to block you? You won't be able to communicate with anyone from that instance. So there is still an issue here with this approach.
So think about RSS. I can connect to any RSS source, openly. And have a stream of the RSS content in any RSS reader I want. I am not concerned that the xxx.xx website is going to restrict me from getting their content. I was hoping the fediverse is similar. If I want to connect to anyone from the fediverse, I can use my federated account (say selfhost) and connect with them. But now I may be faced with not being able to connect with others because my instance may get blocked. Since people cluster on instances, and instances can block other instances, then the connection between me and XXX can be interrupted at the admin level. That's an issue.
More concrete example: say someone on my instance starts spamming and be a jackass. And some instance admins decide to ban my entire instance for this 1 account. Now you isolate us (from my own instance, hundreds of people), from hundreds or thousands more (from those instances that blocked us). You, the admins, a handful of people, are taking a decision for thousands of others. Without them even knowing about it.
That's for sure
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So think about RSS. I can connect to any RSS source, openly. And have a stream of the RSS content in any RSS reader I want. I am not concerned that the xxx.xx website is going to restrict me from getting their content. I was hoping the fediverse is similar. If I want to connect to anyone from the fediverse, I can use my federated account (say selfhost) and connect with them. But now I may be faced with not being able to connect with others because my instance may get blocked. Since people cluster on instances, and instances can block other instances, then the connection between me and XXX can be interrupted at the admin level. That's an issue.
More concrete example: say someone on my instance starts spamming and be a jackass. And some instance admins decide to ban my entire instance for this 1 account. Now you isolate us (from my own instance, hundreds of people), from hundreds or thousands more (from those instances that blocked us). You, the admins, a handful of people, are taking a decision for thousands of others. Without them even knowing about it.
That's for sure a slippery slope. A way to hammer down any instance and sink with it hundreds/thousands of users.
Maybe my hopes about the fediverse were too high, too "idealistic", but as of right now the fediverse is clustered around a handful of big instances that have the power to nuke down smaller ones, without much transparency.
The major difference with RSS is that it is one-way so it doesn’t carry the same potential for abuse.
But let’s go back to the slippery slope. What if an instance wrongly blocks yours? Like you said, neither your users nor theirs will know about it. How can it slips down further from there? What is the fundamental difference about the network being an archipelago rather than a single island from any individual user standpoint?
And, more importantly, how is it different from regular social circles too far to interact with each other?
One of the great features of decentralized social networks is that you can create multiple accounts on multiple servers and they would all be you, with a varying potential available network for each.
Yes RSS is one way, I was expecting that comment, but the example is about that one way: to get the content from the other side. In the fediverse this can be blocked by the middleman (admin).
Like you said, neither your users nor theirs will know about it. How can it slips down further from there?
Abuse of power. Admins can shut down entire instances in seconds. I've already seen others posting about this recently, them being unable to connect with past contacts because their instance got disconnected from others @Ombra 🔵🌻 I think that was the case with you, correct?
I think there are better ways of doing this, such as removing the global timelines and/or not displaying any public posts on your instance, except those of your own users. This way your instance stays "clean" while at the same time you don't interfere with people's ability to connect with others.
It’s abuse of power, sure, but it’s abuse of a very limited power. Contrary to centralized networks where getting your account banned cuts you off the entire network, you aren’t limited to an account on a single server here. This means the policies of any given server on a decentralized network, however abusive, will never bind you personally the same way policies on a centralized network will. Is it a bummer? Sure. A slippery slope? I can’t see how, since instance blocks do not propagate automatically.
Once you start thinking about decentralized social network as an archipelago of floating islands instead of yet another big island like centralized social networks, but somehow “better”, both the advantages and the inherent drawbacks start to become apparent. Decentralized social network is a trade-off, and possibly losing connection with some of your contacts you don’t have any other ways to reach is something you have to accept.
It is worth noting that both Friendica and Mastodon provide RSS feeds for any account’s publi
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It’s abuse of power, sure, but it’s abuse of a very limited power. Contrary to centralized networks where getting your account banned cuts you off the entire network, you aren’t limited to an account on a single server here. This means the policies of any given server on a decentralized network, however abusive, will never bind you personally the same way policies on a centralized network will. Is it a bummer? Sure. A slippery slope? I can’t see how, since instance blocks do not propagate automatically.
Once you start thinking about decentralized social network as an archipelago of floating islands instead of yet another big island like centralized social networks, but somehow “better”, both the advantages and the inherent drawbacks start to become apparent. Decentralized social network is a trade-off, and possibly losing connection with some of your contacts you don’t have any other ways to reach is something you have to accept.
It is worth noting that both Friendica and Mastodon provide RSS feeds for any account’s public posts, so you still could hear from someone whose instance admin has decided to block your own domain.
The power is not very limited when you can nuke entire instances from communicating with your own. The practice itself is a slippery slope. If RSS feeds would be the same and refuse to work with certain RSS Readers, that would also be a slippery slope. Or the RSS readers not allowing you to import certain RSS feeds.
The communication between peers should be open. If some instance admins do not want "garbage" on their websites, then there should be smarter ways to deal with that. For one you can clean your instance's users, the ones that register with your website. Second it is better to simply not display any posts as public if they come from other instances. These are some ideas I have.
But to cut the connection with an entire instance and all of its users, seems extreme to me. And a slippery slope indeed since more and more admins will go for this primitive approach and we end up with a disconnected fediverse.
To say this is better than facebook, should not be a good argument.
The Fediverse was disconnected since its inception. Between the anarchists, the free speech extremists, the far-right conspiracy theorists and the 4chan edge lords, there’s no good reasons for all these groups to interact with each other. “Nuking an entire instance” carries less weight when you realize 99% of instances have 100 users or less (unverified numbers). It becomes more dramatic when we're talking about mastodon.social, of course, but it’s the glaring exception, not the norm.
And this domain block feature isn’t exactly secret, the “fediblock” hashtag has ben doing the round and yet not all admins block any instance on sight, most are very responsible and do not block domains lightly.
Is there abuse? Probably. Is it significant? Not really because users aren’t tied to a single server. Is it threatening to spill over uncontrollably? I can’t see how, each admin has to manually block each domain so far.
I would take issue with automated domain block lists like there are automated Twitter account block lis
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The Fediverse was disconnected since its inception. Between the anarchists, the free speech extremists, the far-right conspiracy theorists and the 4chan edge lords, there’s no good reasons for all these groups to interact with each other. “Nuking an entire instance” carries less weight when you realize 99% of instances have 100 users or less (unverified numbers). It becomes more dramatic when we're talking about mastodon.social, of course, but it’s the glaring exception, not the norm.
And this domain block feature isn’t exactly secret, the “fediblock” hashtag has ben doing the round and yet not all admins block any instance on sight, most are very responsible and do not block domains lightly.
Is there abuse? Probably. Is it significant? Not really because users aren’t tied to a single server. Is it threatening to spill over uncontrollably? I can’t see how, each admin has to manually block each domain so far.
I would take issue with automated domain block lists like there are automated Twitter account block lists because of the loss of ownership, but the base manual admin feature isn’t a concern for me.
Actual social spaces are fragmented, mostly for good reasons, and hoping that decentralized social media is a big happy family isn’t going to make it a reality. Social media network fragmentation is necessary and good.
there’s no good reasons for all these groups to interact with each other
A saner approach is to not decide for them, but let them decide for themselves. Maybe we should move passs the daddying of all people and let them decide for themselves.
And this domain block feature isn’t exactly secret, the “fediblock” hashtag has ben doing the round and yet not all admins block any instance on sight, most are very responsible and do not block domains lightly.
How are them letting the users know? Will the get notifications and such?
Is there abuse? Probably. Is it significant? Not really because users aren’t tied to a single server. I
The practice is very rudimentary and has large implications the more the fediverse will grow.
Social media network fragmentation is necessary and good.
Let the users decide what to block. Why wouldn't that be enough?
Friendica nodes have their domain block list publicly accessible at the /friendica path, including the reason why it was blocked. Not sure about Mastodon but I’m pretty sure they have a public page for it as well.
As for who should have the domain blocking feature, I’d say both. In social networking moderation is key, so more moderation tools is better than fewer. Admins have to deal with moderation reports out of their free time, so domain blocking is a valuable time-saving feature. Will it cause some disappointment among users? Of course, but again, once you stop thinking about an account on one server being the only account you’ll ever want or need like it is enforced on centralized social media, it really isn’t that big of a deal.
As an aside, user-level domain block is slightly trickier to implement, so that’s one of the reasons it isn’t available in Friendica yet.
That is very good for Friendica, however these decisions affect all users on an instance so should also be a notification for all users sent automatically when an instance is blocked.
As for who should have the domain blocking feature, I’d say both.
Yes both should have access to such tools, but admins should use it very responsibly and with a lot of transparency. And try not to use it at all. I still wonder why an admin may want to block an instance?
once you stop thinking about an account on one server being the only account you’ll ever want or need like it is enforced on centralized social media, it really isn’t that big of a deal.
I don't see how having multiple accounts is a good and comfortable approach. You have friends and such, interactions, etc., you can't switch that easily. Maybe what Hubzilla has that nomad identity can be an idea, but still you are left in the dark about what your instance is doing behind your back in terms of connectivity. You may not even have a clue that starting
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That is very good for Friendica, however these decisions affect all users on an instance so should also be a notification for all users sent automatically when an instance is blocked.
As for who should have the domain blocking feature, I’d say both.
Yes both should have access to such tools, but admins should use it very responsibly and with a lot of transparency. And try not to use it at all. I still wonder why an admin may want to block an instance?
once you stop thinking about an account on one server being the only account you’ll ever want or need like it is enforced on centralized social media, it really isn’t that big of a deal.
I don't see how having multiple accounts is a good and comfortable approach. You have friends and such, interactions, etc., you can't switch that easily. Maybe what Hubzilla has that nomad identity can be an idea, but still you are left in the dark about what your instance is doing behind your back in terms of connectivity. You may not even have a clue that starting today you are unable to contact 30% of your friends because they are being on an instance that yours just blocked.
As an aside, user-level domain block is slightly trickier to implement, so that’s one of the reasons it isn’t available in Friendica yet.
Like I told you, as an admin getting one report about an account on another instance is manageable, 10 or 100, much less. At some point you just cut your losses and block the domain. Beyond that there are some instances which bias is pretty clear from their name, their description or local timeline, and an admin might want to proactively block it not to expose their users to any upsetting content.
It isn’t about confort. If you want confort, Twitter and Facebook are for you. Decentralized social media needs some legwork by design and I believe this friction makes it less attractive for attention-seekers and a more friendly place as a result, even if it is less straightforward to use than the big silos.
And if you don’t have any other way of reaching out to your 30% friends you can lose contact with because of a domain block, they were just nice acquaintances and it’s okay to lose contact with them.
At some point you just cut your losses and block the domain.
That's what I don't get. Why block other instances. I get if you want to keep your instance focused on a particular topic, and manage your own users, but why block something that's outside your network? Because if you do that you block your users from reaching other users. Why is this an issue? I am truly asking this.
Decentralized social media needs some legwork by design
But we should not take that as something it will always be as such. Friendica chooses to have a very friendly interface and buttons for say formatting the text, instead of letting people use markdown for example. So you do try to make it more comfortable. This should be a good thing. It is not for the attention seekers, but for everyone.
The problem is rarely about preventing your users from interacting with another instance’s users, but the other way around, usually several users of an instance have been obnoxious replying to conversations your users started. Unfortunately there’s no one-way block possible nor I believe it is welcome.
And before the domain block, both instances are in the same network. Domain blocking separates them.
Thanks for the nod but this is just a simple post editing convenience feature. I’m talking about the first principles of decentralized media that, should they be changed to be more convenient for users, wouldn’t be decentralized social media anymore. You have to have free local policies per server (including domain blocks), and this requires getting acquainted with the server you joined, and possibly the other servers you’re interacting with through replies.
Also, policies can change, depending on your admin needs, which may not be well-aligned, or simply not anymore, people change. So there’s no way of guarantee a consistent expe
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The problem is rarely about preventing your users from interacting with another instance’s users, but the other way around, usually several users of an instance have been obnoxious replying to conversations your users started. Unfortunately there’s no one-way block possible nor I believe it is welcome.
And before the domain block, both instances are in the same network. Domain blocking separates them.
Thanks for the nod but this is just a simple post editing convenience feature. I’m talking about the first principles of decentralized media that, should they be changed to be more convenient for users, wouldn’t be decentralized social media anymore. You have to have free local policies per server (including domain blocks), and this requires getting acquainted with the server you joined, and possibly the other servers you’re interacting with through replies.
Also, policies can change, depending on your admin needs, which may not be well-aligned, or simply not anymore, people change. So there’s no way of guarantee a consistent experience on a decentralized social network because it is made out of thousands of individual nodes with their own policies and no central authority to appeal to should one get in trouble with heir local admin.
I am still left in the dark about my initial question: why admins may want to block entire instances? They can very well block the users from their own instance. The only reason is the global feed? If so, why not focus on that.
From what I’ve seen, it’s mainly about moderation streamlining. If your moderation policy states that you don’t tolerate Nazis and trolls, it makes sense to block the nazisandtrolls.social domain instead of each individual user on this instance.
But if those are not on your instance, why ban their entire instance and your users' ability to do whatever they want and contact whoever they want to!? Imagine if Firefox was banning websites, or gmail entire domains on the premise of values, so you can't reach those.
In any case, I am still of the opinion that such practices are destroying the core of what the fediverse tries to be. A way to connect with anyone from any instance. The fediverse gave a lot of power to small islands to manage their own resources and inhabitants. That should have been enough. Destroying the communication between bridges is not helpful for the fediverse itself.
Because no instance is truly independent from the other in the same potential network (non domain blocked). To avoid hammering servers with repeated requests, an instance keeps a local copy of all the contacts and posts local users are interacting with or mentioned in. So this process happens either at the initiative of local users (follows, likes, replies) or at the initiative of remote contacts (likes, replies, mentions).
So your server can end up harboring pretty unsavory stuff either because one of your users got mad at it and unknowingly imported it locally, or because it was pushed to your servers by a remote contact. Domain blocking is a way to stop both these behaviors and ensure no content from blocked domains will end up being saved locally on your server.
Search engines have to deal with this too. And so many other services. Nuking entire URLs and having the effect it has (breaking connections in the fediverse) is not at all a good approach in my view. Especially when this content is temporary. It concerns me this attitude of not looking at the ramifications of such actions/approaches. It makes instance admins not simply guards of their own backyard, but possible roadblocks of the entire fediverse network.
Recently our matrix server was banned from e Linux Matrix chatroom because of 1 spambot account that I was not aware of. Now is our matrix server a spam server? No. And so all of us from our server are unable to join that community. That's a direct example of such an approach.
At the same time, domain blocking isn't automated nor definitive, so you can always appeal to the admin of the instance you're blocked from. Both the block and the admin account are public information, so there's always a chance at resolving a potential misunderstanding. This is also an upside of the Fediverse, there always are humans on the other end. They might not unblock your domain, but at least you can try.
But this is besides the point. Why make things so difficult in the first place? The reason I know about that incident is that someone told me. Then I could not find that admin's contacts. Who knows if our Friendica or Peertube are blocked by other instances....I cannot tell that at all. And this is really sad to be honest. This should be handled in a much much better way.
The bottom line is that domain blocking is simple, it is effective, sometimes too much, granted, but it doesn't threaten decentralized social network, only the vision you share about it where everybody should be able to connect with anybody else. I agree this is sad but there's no slippery slope, on the contrary, individual domain blocks are becoming less and less significant as more decentralized social network servers are started, and potential connection opportunities keep growing despite the few domain blocks.
Simply because domain blocking is "simple" for instance admins, makes this a slippery slope of cutting off the connections in the fediverse, without having a good reason as to why they are doing this except the fact that some unwanted posts are temporarily cached on these instances. And these can also be hiddne from public viewing if the admins want that. That's the only reason.
Not worth playing around with this blind game of disconnecting the fediverse. Let me repeat: I have a few instances (Peertube, Friendica) and I have 0 clues if I am disconnected from other instances and if so why. No clue. No one notified me. There is no notification for the current users when such decisions are taken either. So we are all in the unknown.
That's the truth. You have a very optimistic view of this situation, but my experience doesn't make me optimistic. I know a girl @Cleo of Topless Topics who got banned from so many platforms because she decides to be nude.
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Simply because domain blocking is "simple" for instance admins, makes this a slippery slope of cutting off the connections in the fediverse, without having a good reason as to why they are doing this except the fact that some unwanted posts are temporarily cached on these instances. And these can also be hiddne from public viewing if the admins want that. That's the only reason.
Not worth playing around with this blind game of disconnecting the fediverse. Let me repeat: I have a few instances (Peertube, Friendica) and I have 0 clues if I am disconnected from other instances and if so why. No clue. No one notified me. There is no notification for the current users when such decisions are taken either. So we are all in the unknown.
That's the truth. You have a very optimistic view of this situation, but my experience doesn't make me optimistic. I know a girl @Cleo of Topless Topics who got banned from so many platforms because she decides to be nude. We let her post her videos on our Peertube and create a Friendica account with us. If people see her nipples on the fediverse and they know that they can report to the admins, and the admins take the decision to cut the connection with us altogether, then that's messed up.
One time I posted by mistake a Friendica event and it was sent to a dozen of people, to then almost being banned (instance wise) from some instances for my mistake. Maybe some banned us for that.
In any case, it is a sad truth about the fediverse and the fact that the people who work on such platforms or are admins, do not see this as a problem, makes me even more concerned.
I understand your position, but I don't share it. If you persist believing the central idea of social network (centralized or decentralized) is that each account should be able to connect to any other regardless of anyone else's opinion, you will be disappointed time and again.
At this point I believe it's a fundamental misunderstanding of decentralized social media on your part. You can't empower users and admins (which IS one of the goals of decentralized social media) without these arbitrary boundaries appearing. And for the overwhelming part, they are good and healthy, favoring smaller social circles where speech can truly flourish, away from the social pressure that comes from performing in public like in centralized networks.
This does close some connection opportunities and it's sad in the abstract, but the quality of the exchanges people are able to experience on the Fediverse compared to mostly performative platforms life Facebook and Twitter makes it clear that a fragmented network is a better way forward than a single big tent that ends up favoring the peopl
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I understand your position, but I don't share it. If you persist believing the central idea of social network (centralized or decentralized) is that each account should be able to connect to any other regardless of anyone else's opinion, you will be disappointed time and again.
At this point I believe it's a fundamental misunderstanding of decentralized social media on your part. You can't empower users and admins (which IS one of the goals of decentralized social media) without these arbitrary boundaries appearing. And for the overwhelming part, they are good and healthy, favoring smaller social circles where speech can truly flourish, away from the social pressure that comes from performing in public like in centralized networks.
This does close some connection opportunities and it's sad in the abstract, but the quality of the exchanges people are able to experience on the Fediverse compared to mostly performative platforms life Facebook and Twitter makes it clear that a fragmented network is a better way forward than a single big tent that ends up favoring the people looking for attention or, worse, targets.
And yeah, in the process some people like you will be disappointed, I'm sorry about that but I don't believe there's any way around it without sacrificing what makes decentralized social media what it is.
But I do understand that islands with their own owners can create curated islands of focused and like-minded people. However I still do not see a real reason of destroying bridges when no one can enter your island unless you let them. Global feeds and public posts from other instances could be hidden from the public view for example. So yah, you still have full control over your island. No need to destroy any bridge.
Ok I get it. That's what I was suspecting to be the reason. Now, don't you think there can be better solutions to this? Like say when you block an instance to have the posts coming from there not visible on your instance at all? That's what bothers you, the fact that such posts can be temporarily cached on your server, so I think the smartest solution is to deal with that, rather than killing the connection with an instance, in the name of all users.
I believe that in Germany website publishers like Montag are liable for what shows on it, including user-submitted content. So in this particular case it isn't just about inconvenience for local users.
More generally, if you believe your 100 users would want to block the 100 accounts on a specific server, it is way cheaper to block the domain (1 operation) than to let your users deal with the remote users with 10,000 potential operations to be done, while being exposed to potentially upsetting content in the process.
More specifically, knowing that a certain kind of people can't freely interject in your conversation encourages interactions, and domain blocks are a way to achieve that. The decision to block mastodon.social from marginalized community-centric instances fits into this motivation. Since m.s is very popular, it is likely to harbor a large number of people that are clueless or vaguely hostile to queer people, and the size of the instance make moderation through forwarded reports challenging. As a result some niche queer instances decided to cut themselves fr
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I believe that in Germany website publishers like Montag are liable for what shows on it, including user-submitted content. So in this particular case it isn't just about inconvenience for local users.
More generally, if you believe your 100 users would want to block the 100 accounts on a specific server, it is way cheaper to block the domain (1 operation) than to let your users deal with the remote users with 10,000 potential operations to be done, while being exposed to potentially upsetting content in the process.
More specifically, knowing that a certain kind of people can't freely interject in your conversation encourages interactions, and domain blocks are a way to achieve that. The decision to block mastodon.social from marginalized community-centric instances fits into this motivation. Since m.s is very popular, it is likely to harbor a large number of people that are clueless or vaguely hostile to queer people, and the size of the instance make moderation through forwarded reports challenging. As a result some niche queer instances decided to cut themselves from m.s which allows them to cultivate a welcoming corner of the Fediverse without having to fear mastodon.social users unwarrantedly jumping in their conversations.
I believe that in Germany website publishers like Montag are liable for what shows on it, including user-submitted content. So in this particular case it isn't just about inconvenience for local users.
If that's the case then I'd like to see Montag saying that, but what I see is a completely different attitude. And that's what concerns me. His/her attitude was that of not liking certain groups of people/content and that's why the decisions that are taken. And speaking of such laws, it is unbelievable that these folks don't realize this is not helping anyone. Only big corporations may take advantage of this because they have the means to hire a special dep to deal with these, while smaller ones do not. So yeah....another way of shutting down smaller organizations.
More generally, if you believe your 100 users would want to block the 100 accounts on a specific server, it is way cheaper to block the domain (1 operation) than to let your users deal with the remote users with 10,000 potential operations to be done, while being exposed to poten
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I believe that in Germany website publishers like Montag are liable for what shows on it, including user-submitted content. So in this particular case it isn't just about inconvenience for local users.
If that's the case then I'd like to see Montag saying that, but what I see is a completely different attitude. And that's what concerns me. His/her attitude was that of not liking certain groups of people/content and that's why the decisions that are taken. And speaking of such laws, it is unbelievable that these folks don't realize this is not helping anyone. Only big corporations may take advantage of this because they have the means to hire a special dep to deal with these, while smaller ones do not. So yeah....another way of shutting down smaller organizations.
More generally, if you believe your 100 users would want to block the 100 accounts on a specific server, it is way cheaper to block the domain (1 operation) than to let your users deal with the remote users with 10,000 potential operations to be done, while being exposed to potentially upsetting content in the process.
For one, it is an exaggeration that users have to deal with so much content. You won't see any posts if you do not follow certain people. Using the global feed is yet another thing. It is named "global" for a reason. It is so easy to curate your feeds. Second, I sure do not agree that it is better to have the admin decide to ban entire instances, same way I do not think it is better for Apple to delete child porn from people's devices, since these are a slippery slope event and will never stop at that.
This isn't about outsiders seeing upsetting content on your server, it's about your own users seeing upsetting content on your server, whether it comes from local users or remote users. So your simplistic solution about the global feed covers a non-existing problem.
Beyond that, by default remote contacts can and will frequently enter your island unless you chose to have a truly private server with no federation enabled. And domain blocking is just part of the control you have as an admin.
This attitude is going to make the fediverse a limited place of few islands that are isolated from the rest. It destroys what the fediverse had to offer: a way for anyone to connect with anyone, in the network. It is the kind of attitude that I was suspecting many admins have, and that's why I call it a slippery slope event, and concerns me what the fediverse is or will become.
Apples decided to scan and delete child porn images from people's devices. A decision that invades people's privacy. They argue it is for a good cause. But we are naive to think such an attitude won't bleed into other areas/interests/topics. Maybe piracy is next. Encryption is great, despite terrorists using it for bad purposes. Same with the fediverse, if we want to keep it great and a way for anyone to connect with anyone, we have to be careful about what compromises we make. Because if we start to ban entire instances, a decision we take for others not only for us, that will affect a lot of people, then this will also bleed out. That's my concern.
You decide what "upsetting" is, for others. This is upsetting indeed. That's one. Second users have full control over their feed. It is not like they are constantly attacked from outside, and if they are, they can protect themselves. They have the tools.
Third, remote users cannot enter your instance, they can only interact with the people on your instance, correct? And so, is up to people how they interact with these remote users.
My server is also in Germany, and yet I do not block anything and anyone. I think it is worth standing against such BS rules, made by the people who know nothing about human behavior or the technology they try to change.
Do you realize that you are defending the existence of hypothetical communication bridges by telling admins and users what to do with their instance/accounts? Now this is becoming a little concerning to me, and it may sound vaguely threatening to your own users. What if you decide not to take any moderation action when you receive a report from one of your users because you believe it's better to leave bridges open? Now this is a slippery slope that can easily be extrapolated from what you've expressed in this conversation, and I urge you to reconsider your position.
You have to be absolutely clear that you will protect your users against internal and external threats because the moment they chose your instance to sign on, they trusted you with that power, including banning whole instances if the need arises. And you dismissing this power as damaging sends a worrying signal that you may just not use the moderation tools at your disposal to favor your own conception of decentralized social media.
I do respect your opinion but I'm afraid it doesn't put you in a favorable
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Do you realize that you are defending the existence of hypothetical communication bridges by telling admins and users what to do with their instance/accounts? Now this is becoming a little concerning to me, and it may sound vaguely threatening to your own users. What if you decide not to take any moderation action when you receive a report from one of your users because you believe it's better to leave bridges open? Now this is a slippery slope that can easily be extrapolated from what you've expressed in this conversation, and I urge you to reconsider your position.
You have to be absolutely clear that you will protect your users against internal and external threats because the moment they chose your instance to sign on, they trusted you with that power, including banning whole instances if the need arises. And you dismissing this power as damaging sends a worrying signal that you may just not use the moderation tools at your disposal to favor your own conception of decentralized social media.
I do respect your opinion but I'm afraid it doesn't put you in a favorable position as an instance admin yourself, or one geared towards a specific kind of audience you may not even want yourself.
This is an utterly privileged position I will not discuss further. You have made your point very clearly, and I hope it won't put any of your users in the awkward position of disavowing their own instance admin.
I did not create a kindergarten and decided to take care of a bunch of children. The Internet should not act like that especially for such platforms like social networks and the like, that should be public spaces. Humans have a lot of tools at their disposal to defend themselves. Else you try to become the judge and jury and this never ends up well. Facebook, Youtube, and the like are all like that. And the result is a mix-bag of censorship and a lot of crap orbiting around, plus they don't fix anything.
It is not like my instance is a wild wild west, but I think is a lot more wise and smart to deal with it like I just described. There is no slippery slope for me, since there is no slope to begin with. I clearly say my instance is trade-free for anyone and it is the users' own responsibility what they post. A slope is created when you empower yourself as the judge and jury, and the more you do that, the more slippery it becomes because you have to deal with decisions (who to ban, what to ban).
If I were running a bar in analogue life, I would just as well take the right not to let people with certain opinions in. My server, my rules.
But that's what I'm trying to say, that you can manage your own bar. But you also tell your customers who they are allowed to call from that bar or not. You tell them they are not even allowed to call the other bar because you've heard there are nazis there. That's the issue that I see. Manage your bar, but don't cut off the signal to the other bars for all of your customers. That's a bad practice.
And thanks for engaging I don't want to stress anyone with these, but I think it is important to discuss such topics.
You may think that you allow for maximum freedom with your self-described style of hands-free moderation on your server, but this actually restricts it mostly to people who aren't already marginalized and who need this kind of proactive moderation to feel comfortable on a server.
You don't want to be judge and jury and deal with moderation decisions, it's up to you, but this already is a decision you made that has actual consequences. So you've already been judge and you've decided you don't want to be moderation judge, which makes your server unwelcome for people who would expect you to be the judge so they don't have to, because they don't want to be judge either.
That's a very weird judo move :D - If I let people post what they want, I become a judge and jury because I do not want to moderate their conversations!? It is like me having no opinion about gay people, and that makes me have an opinion by not having one :P.
In any case, I do not tell people how to use our Matrix chat, our Friendica instance, or any of our tools. They are tools. A service. This make them better in my view because for one it does not restrict people, and second I do not put myself in a sketchy position to manage the online life of others. Imagine if I were to remove websites from our Searx search results....or not allow people to join some Matrix chatrooms...to me this is insane to even think of managing things this way.
This was not meant to be a gotcha, but a real consequence of your decision not to take moderation decisions. And yes, not having an opinion may be considered having an opinion, and not necessarily the good one. Desmond Tutu reportedly said "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Like I said, by positioning yourself away from moderation decisions, you end up attracting users who do not need these moderation decisions while repelling users who do need you to take moderation decisions. You don't need to change your mind, but you need to be aware that your decision influences what audience your server is favoring.
All decisions have some sort of consequences, of course. But my decision is to not judge what the users posts, thus I am not a "judge" of any sort. Not having an opinion is simply not having one. "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." - this can be true in some cases, and not in other cases. It depends if you think it is a situation of injustice. If you do, and have no opinion, I may agree with that quote. May.
In my case it is not a situation of injustice. So me not wanting to moderate does not mean I encourage the trolls. I like EFF's stance on privacy and how they understand that if Apple scans people's devices for child porn images, then that's a slippery slope and we have to avoid such decisions. They understand the evolution of such approaches. And I find it similar to the situation the fediverse. The same way Apple wants (in theory) to do something good (prevent child porn), the fediverse admins want to protect their users from nazis and trolls. But their approaches are gonna bleed and expand and mutate over time, b
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All decisions have some sort of consequences, of course. But my decision is to not judge what the users posts, thus I am not a "judge" of any sort. Not having an opinion is simply not having one. "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." - this can be true in some cases, and not in other cases. It depends if you think it is a situation of injustice. If you do, and have no opinion, I may agree with that quote. May.
In my case it is not a situation of injustice. So me not wanting to moderate does not mean I encourage the trolls. I like EFF's stance on privacy and how they understand that if Apple scans people's devices for child porn images, then that's a slippery slope and we have to avoid such decisions. They understand the evolution of such approaches. And I find it similar to the situation the fediverse. The same way Apple wants (in theory) to do something good (prevent child porn), the fediverse admins want to protect their users from nazis and trolls. But their approaches are gonna bleed and expand and mutate over time, because their approaches have repercussions. It is the approach that is to blame.
Like I said, by positioning yourself away from moderation decisions, you end up attracting users who do not need these moderation decisions while repelling users who do need you to take moderation decisions. Y
Look....why Friendica has all sorts of tools to allow users to protect themselves? Because you too think that users should have these tools. Are you saying these tools are not enough?
This question is absurd, I could turn it around back at you, why Friendica has all sorts of tools for admins to protect their servers? Because we think admins should have them. Not all admins use them, you're a good example of that, so why should users have to use their tools?
I never said admins should not have the tools you provide them with. I said that blocking entire instances is a very bad practice for admins. And should be done very carefully and transparently if it is done. But you seemed to ignore that users have tremendous power over managing their own online lives. You can ignore or block anyone, even delete their posts from your face :).
Scanning users' devices for potential child porn makes the police's job easier. That's what they will say. I still think the trade-off is not worth it. Or scanning the Internet traffic for pirated content, and so on. Same here, the trade-off is not worth it. It is so easy to manage your own federated life that is not worth enforcing the practice of disconnecting the network from itself, little by little.
I can see it in myself these days when I was forced to think of how to make money, that I try to maximize my own gain, and then try to justify that I am doing a good trade and I am not a bad human at all haha. Like if I were to make websites and host them, then I see how much it costs to rent a server and add on top of that as much as possible to charge a "customer" for it :)). That's how it works.
If I were to make websites for friends, trade-free, my goal will be to minimize the costs, and make it better and more reliable, but if I do it as a trade-based service, my goal is to maximize my trade advantages. And people who believe this is not evil or that bad, or that they are still good humans because they find a balance there, they are self delusional.
Even if I march for this trade-free approach and hate this bullshit trade-based society, I will get corrupted the moment I engage in trades. But I am forced to do it. And I will make some money somehow. I need to support TROM and myself. Because one without the other, can not exist probably.
I will try to not eve
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I can see it in myself these days when I was forced to think of how to make money, that I try to maximize my own gain, and then try to justify that I am doing a good trade and I am not a bad human at all haha. Like if I were to make websites and host them, then I see how much it costs to rent a server and add on top of that as much as possible to charge a "customer" for it :)). That's how it works.
If I were to make websites for friends, trade-free, my goal will be to minimize the costs, and make it better and more reliable, but if I do it as a trade-based service, my goal is to maximize my trade advantages. And people who believe this is not evil or that bad, or that they are still good humans because they find a balance there, they are self delusional.
Even if I march for this trade-free approach and hate this bullshit trade-based society, I will get corrupted the moment I engage in trades. But I am forced to do it. And I will make some money somehow. I need to support TROM and myself. Because one without the other, can not exist probably.
I will try to not even talk about my trade-based journey here or anywhere if I can. Let's see. I feel ashamed for even thinking of doing this, of charging other humans in return for something else. It is disgusting. But I have no choice, so at least I justify it as such. Maybe after TROM II is released more people can help me financially to continue this TROM journey.
Until then, keep calm and make some money. #tromlive
@Tio You're very honest and down to earth when you speak, I like that. The sad truth is that most people don't even realize why trading is such a harmful behavior, so they never feel guilty of doing it. Someone reading this post might think you're gonna do some really corrupt thing to make money, lol, without realizing that you spend almost your entire life trying to help people understand why trading itself is corrupt. The things you describe here as "corrupt" is unfortunately the normal way of life for a lot of people, and I can't blame them when most of them are forced to do it just like you.
@Tio Its very sad to read this, but I understand why it happened when TROM is such a criminally underrated project. Seriously, if there were like a ratio of importance vs how underrated a project is, then TROM would hit number one on that list.
BTW, I really like how you handled this situation in a positive way, never giving up on TROM and keep on fighting no matter what. Honestly you are such an inspiration for everyone. I'm sure one day people will realize the importance of what you're doing, but until that day there might be many more hurdles like this we have to overcome.
Tried to force an upgrade on our Friendica. We have it via @YunoHost but their package is not updated since last October....meaning we are behind 2 important Friendica versions. I submitted several issues on their github page and contacted them via their chats. Hopefully they can update Friendica. I think Friendica is very underrated and because of that people may not give it much attention. Partially I think this is because Friendica needs a much better presentation website and theme....and I still plan to help them with that if they accept my help. I am just too busy these months with TROM stuff...
Now our Friendica is restored. Luckly I always do server snapshots because the YNH restore of Friendica fails with 504 timeout error after 1h of trying to restore the database.
All in all, everything is fine. We have backups and system snapshots. Is easy to keep our websites in a working state.
Big thanks to Yunohost for packaging such "apps". Without them I could not provide any. #tromlive
Wu Wei
in reply to Tio • • •"If this is not slavery, then what is slavery?"
Please, please tell me this is some kind of extreme satire.
Are you actually comparing your discomfort of building a few websites for a fee with actual slavery?
Sasha
in reply to Wu Wei • •@Wu Wei :xfce: :rss: :terminal: it is slavery because you don't get a choice. You cannot survive (get food/shelter/etc.) unless you trade yourself in this society. And I think you're missing the point- @Tio does a ton of work. He works harder than anyone I know (he works all day, every day, no weekends, no holidays), but all the work he does he gives away for free. Great educational material, software, a ton of stuff- all for free because he wants to do good things. And in this society he gets punished for that- precisely because he's not trading. So instead of focusing on doing good things, this society forces him to sell things for a buck. Because he has no choice- that's why it's slavery. No choice.
Of course some people have it worse than others, but during the slave trade (for example) some slaves had it worse than others- some were whipped, others had a "nice" owner, but that doesn't mean they weren't slaves. Same today- if you're lucky, you may get to choose a nicer owner, that doesn't mean you're not a slave.
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Wu Wei
in reply to Sasha • • •Being owned by someone, just like property, body and soul, makes you a slave.
Tio
in reply to Wu Wei • •Tio
in reply to Wu Wei • •My reaction to your comment is: Please, please tell me this is some kind of extreme satire.
Friend, as long as I am forced to do the things I do not want to do, and the alternative of not doing them is to starve or be homeless, then yes that is slavery. Forced labor. Can you have any argument against this?
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thisfro
in reply to Tio • • •By that logic, existance itself would need be slavery? As you would starve as well, if you don't do the work of acquiring food, water and other essentials to survive. I guess that is logically correct, but not excaxtly a widespread idea of what slavery is.
Now, we do have the technology and tools to at least lower the burden of having to work jobs we don't want to, but somehow this is not happening...
Tio
in reply to thisfro • •My comment is, of course, encapsulated inside the society we live in. Because it is the cause of this problem. A society in which we throw 50% of all edible food, where we have more homes than homeless people, we throw 350 cruse-ships of electronics a year, and hundreds more of clothes. In a society of abundance and waste, we force people to slave in order to survive. Did I mention that I can't just go and hunt some animals, or plant stuff, or make a house for myself!? Everything is owned already.
So I have no choice but to comply with this society's rules, whatever they are. Else I am fucked.
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Wu Wei
in reply to thisfro • • •"Just" being forced to do something simply isn't slavery. Slavery is quite a defined term.
Tio
in reply to Wu Wei • •Sasha likes this.