Theorist of the Fediverse. I run a chatroom focused on helping to build the foundations for the Fediverse to grow. Links are at the bottom of this doc.

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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: November 7th, 2019

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  • This is different from a forum in that you’re explicitly working with a select group of others in a small team to complete a concrete task within a given time window.

    Or to put it in simpler terms: for the Summer Season we are looking for developers to both vote on and then work towards completing a two-month long project. This could be fixing a bug or adding a feature to an existing Fediverse project or creating something new.

    The benefits to the participant are:

    • They’re collaborating directly with others who also have an interest in doing whatever is most effective towards growing out the Fediverse. There’s a lot of the people in the community who want to help out and see the Fediverse grow, but don’t know where to begin. This is meant to be a place where people can pool their efforts and ideas.
    • Since we’re breaking stuff into two-month sprints, it also is intended to serve as a relatively short-term commitment which can give development experience and give people within the community a chance to know each other.
    • Since we’re putting what to work on to a vote, this is also an opportunity to put your ideas and input for what is most needed out there, and if you’re convincing enough, get others to work on it alongside you.

    The benefits to the Fediverse (and free-software as a whole) are:

    • Developers are no longer working separately on their own stuff, which is an issue which caused fragmentation. Instead, we’re focused on coordinating people’s efforts to fixing stuff where it’s most needed.
    • It helps offload work from central developers or non-profits, which could hopefully serve as a “federated” model of software development long-term if it succeeds.

    Let me know if you have further questions.















  • I think going multimedia might help, as long as it’s under the same brand. I’d say start with a central site similar to how WeDistribute was with articles, then begin linking to places like PeerTube or FunkWhale should we expand out (of course that’s very much a long-term consideration). But really it’s a matter of getting a central place, content, and the rest can be figured out.

    I’m going to be slower responding on here, we also have a Discord bridge if you’re good via Discord. I don’t get any notifications for Lemmy but Matrix/Discord I do so it’s easier to communicate quicker.





  • I think this mentality is far too narrow and can lead to problems down the road. And it’s a dangerously common one among leftists. The bigger threat right now isn’t some sort of shadowy cabal of elites, it’s market-based logic, which can manifest through the little guy just as much as the big guy.

    For example, I’m already seeing discussions of “ethical advertising” or “paying influencers” but this only raises more questions. How will we keep funding this model? What happens when we’re outcompeted by other sites like Twitter for ad revenue? After all why wouldn’t an advertiser pick the method which is more effective. Natural selection and administrative costs will slowly chip away at what distinguishes us.

    The foundations you lay now play a role in determining your future. By refusing any form of commercialization, it forces us to innovate to cut costs. This could be cutting technological overhead as with PeerTube’s WebTorrent, it could be setting a foundation for promoting/getting content on the Fediverse which isn’t dependent on constantly having to pay people to switch over.

    The blockchain-based and "free speech"platforms do exactly this and it’s why they all die so quickly. They may be little guys but they lack the patience/imagination to approach the issue in an organic fashion, end up trying to ape the big players, and never build a foundation strong enough to last. The market doesn’t think in moralistic terms, it doesn’t care how big or little you are, the only way out isn’t to compete on revenue-based grounds.

    This is why I think it’s important that in these early discussions we continue to oppose all forms of monetization/strategies reliant on large and continuous spending. It sets up a vicious cycle that’s impossible to escape.



  • I think this is a good time to remind people: these sort of opportunities will often present themselves due to a combination of factors well beyond any fediverse user’s control. Trying to force them to occur is like trying to build a house out of unpacked sand, it’ll quickly fall apart.

    What advocates need to do is to focus on building a solid foundation within the Fediverse so that these opportunities can be capitalized on more effectively each time. We don’t want it where people join then leave when the hype dies down, when they see a lack of content, or get annoyed with platform quirks. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of discourse tries to focus on marketing-first and assumes the rest will sort itself out. It’s the opposite actually.

    Relating to the topic at hand though, I agree with Eugen. Direct people to other instances. Do not let mastodon.social’s downtime dissuade people. If anything, this might be a good opportunity to spread traffic across instances.


  • I think this is a good time to remind people: these sort of opportunities will often present themselves due to a combination of factors well beyond any fediverse user’s control. Trying to force them to occur is like trying to build a house out of unpacked sand, it’ll quickly fall apart.

    What advocates need to do is to focus on building a solid foundation within the Fediverse so that these opportunities can be capitalized on more effectively each time. We don’t want it where people join then leave when the hype dies down, when they see a lack of content, or get annoyed with platform quirks. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of discourse tries to focus on marketing-first and assumes the rest will sort itself out. It’s the opposite actually.

    Relating to the topic at hand though, I agree with Eugen. Direct people to other instances. Do not let mastodon.social’s downtime dissuade people. If anything, this might be a good opportunity to spread traffic across instances.