All this has me wondering. Lemmy and other fediverse sites should be resistant to enshittification. But how could American corporations screw that up? Could they start their own servers and instances, and somehow make them dominant? Or would that not be worth it to them?
It seems to me that capitalism has pretty much been trying to take over everything, with a lot of success. So I find myself wondering if it could happen here.
Google Chat and Facebook Messenger used to do XMPP. You could message each other cross platform, as well as host your own service. Then when they got big enough, they pulled their interoperability and messaging only worked inside their platform.
With the European DMA coming into effect soon it’ll be harder for big companies to fuck up such networks (in fact, they will have to allow external access if they’re of sufficient size) but it has happened before and it will happen again.
Apple’s iChat (precursor to Messages.app) used to do XMPP, too. I don’t think it federated, or if it did it was very short-lived, but all the big tech companies with chat services got their start with XMPP. It’s almost like it’s a great set of tools for communicating, which, sadly and ironically, open source tech seems to have moved on from. To be fair, I far prefer Matrix’s JSON to XMPP’s XML, but it’s a little disappointing that everyone forgets about XMPP.
WhatsApp started as an isolated XMPP server as well. It was the best protocol to base a new app upon and even today it’s a good place to start (if you implement the hundreds of optional extensions).
I think XMPP’s protocol and federation design is better than Matrix’s, but XMPP suffers from many clients not implementing all the necessary extensions to provide a decent experience. I don’t really care about JSON vs XML.
The IETF is working with several services on a cross-platform protocol, probably in part because the DMA will force companies to open up their networks anyway. I think the Matrix project is working on implementing MLS as well.
Theoretically some large company could use the “embrace, extend, extinguish” model to take over “open” standards. Microsoft was famous back then for using this strategy. It would look something like this:
Embrace: large company creates a really stable and well moderated instance that federates with almost everything to attract users
Extend: large company adds custom features to the instance that are incompatible with other instances
Extinguish: people stop using other instances as incompatibilities start impacting user experience. Big instance might also stop federating with other instances, so users are forced to use their instance to see content. After this, big company starts making the platform shittier to make more money.
We’re kind of already seeing it with Mastodon. The official app strongly pushes people toward mastodon.social which is a radioactive dumpster fire. And this isn’t even corporate America, it’s just the folks who own the name.
The biggest issue is that they don’t really moderate, so hate speech and bigotry have a greater presence there. I specifically remember a situation where multiple people were reporting things and it took them days (maybe a week or more? I can’t remember, but certainly several days) to take it down. And this happens pretty regularly.
There are several good mastodon instances, just not mastodon.social. Moderating is hard and you have to actually do it and not be afraid it’s censorship. Oh, and not being a fascist helps. I’m beginning to wonder about the mastodon.social admins.
I am not at all qualified to make a recommendation for an instance for you to join, I’m sorry! The server list on the Join Mastodon site has some good servers, some bad.
Mastodon had to pick a default instance because so many people complained about the server picking process. People are used to “one service, one app” and backed out when they had to make a choice.
And, as any social network has shown, if you gather enough people on a platform, your platform will turn to shit. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a relatively small yet vocal part of humanity being absolute assholes.
Your points are valid and you’re not wrong, but it’s exacerbated by the poor / lack of moderation as I commented elsethread. You can have a large number of users and still have a tolerable, even useful and pleasant, experience–r/askhistorians is my favorite example of internet moderation.
Reddit has attracted plenty of moderators but on the fediverse those moderators are often lacking in my experience. Some servers have strict moderation (which I’m a big fan of) but there are many people who consider their abuse being removed an infringement of their freedom of speech.
With the fediverse working across servers, every server needs moderators or you’ll have trolls or general shitheads moving from server to server, ruining the experience for everyone. I’ve set up an instance just for myself and I’m already considering writing a script that syncs up the blacklists of various Lemmy servers because I don’t want to deal with that crap every time I open a thread.
All this has me wondering. Lemmy and other fediverse sites should be resistant to enshittification. But how could American corporations screw that up? Could they start their own servers and instances, and somehow make them dominant? Or would that not be worth it to them?
It seems to me that capitalism has pretty much been trying to take over everything, with a lot of success. So I find myself wondering if it could happen here.
Google Chat and Facebook Messenger used to do XMPP. You could message each other cross platform, as well as host your own service. Then when they got big enough, they pulled their interoperability and messaging only worked inside their platform. With the European DMA coming into effect soon it’ll be harder for big companies to fuck up such networks (in fact, they will have to allow external access if they’re of sufficient size) but it has happened before and it will happen again.
Apple’s iChat (precursor to Messages.app) used to do XMPP, too. I don’t think it federated, or if it did it was very short-lived, but all the big tech companies with chat services got their start with XMPP. It’s almost like it’s a great set of tools for communicating, which, sadly and ironically, open source tech seems to have moved on from. To be fair, I far prefer Matrix’s JSON to XMPP’s XML, but it’s a little disappointing that everyone forgets about XMPP.
WhatsApp started as an isolated XMPP server as well. It was the best protocol to base a new app upon and even today it’s a good place to start (if you implement the hundreds of optional extensions).
I think XMPP’s protocol and federation design is better than Matrix’s, but XMPP suffers from many clients not implementing all the necessary extensions to provide a decent experience. I don’t really care about JSON vs XML.
The IETF is working with several services on a cross-platform protocol, probably in part because the DMA will force companies to open up their networks anyway. I think the Matrix project is working on implementing MLS as well.
Theoretically some large company could use the “embrace, extend, extinguish” model to take over “open” standards. Microsoft was famous back then for using this strategy. It would look something like this:
Embrace: large company creates a really stable and well moderated instance that federates with almost everything to attract users
Extend: large company adds custom features to the instance that are incompatible with other instances
Extinguish: people stop using other instances as incompatibilities start impacting user experience. Big instance might also stop federating with other instances, so users are forced to use their instance to see content. After this, big company starts making the platform shittier to make more money.
They should officially add a fourth “E” to that model - Enshittification.
We’re kind of already seeing it with Mastodon. The official app strongly pushes people toward mastodon.social which is a radioactive dumpster fire. And this isn’t even corporate America, it’s just the folks who own the name.
Why is mastodon.social so bad?
The biggest issue is that they don’t really moderate, so hate speech and bigotry have a greater presence there. I specifically remember a situation where multiple people were reporting things and it took them days (maybe a week or more? I can’t remember, but certainly several days) to take it down. And this happens pretty regularly.
Here is hoping lemmy is easier to moderate and doesnt end up like that.
There are several good mastodon instances, just not mastodon.social. Moderating is hard and you have to actually do it and not be afraid it’s censorship. Oh, and not being a fascist helps. I’m beginning to wonder about the mastodon.social admins.
I was thinking about experimenting mastodon too. What server so you recommend?
I am not at all qualified to make a recommendation for an instance for you to join, I’m sorry! The server list on the Join Mastodon site has some good servers, some bad.
Mastodon had to pick a default instance because so many people complained about the server picking process. People are used to “one service, one app” and backed out when they had to make a choice.
And, as any social network has shown, if you gather enough people on a platform, your platform will turn to shit. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a relatively small yet vocal part of humanity being absolute assholes.
Your points are valid and you’re not wrong, but it’s exacerbated by the poor / lack of moderation as I commented elsethread. You can have a large number of users and still have a tolerable, even useful and pleasant, experience–r/askhistorians is my favorite example of internet moderation.
Reddit has attracted plenty of moderators but on the fediverse those moderators are often lacking in my experience. Some servers have strict moderation (which I’m a big fan of) but there are many people who consider their abuse being removed an infringement of their freedom of speech.
With the fediverse working across servers, every server needs moderators or you’ll have trolls or general shitheads moving from server to server, ruining the experience for everyone. I’ve set up an instance just for myself and I’m already considering writing a script that syncs up the blacklists of various Lemmy servers because I don’t want to deal with that crap every time I open a thread.