deadsuperhero ,

I wrote a counter-point to this a while back: https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/forking-mastodon/

I'm not saying "don't do it", but realize that the amount of commitment required to make a hard fork even moderately successful is vast.

It's telling that the biggest project in the space is barely able to pay more than a handful of people to work on it, and it still develops at a snail's pace. Notably, those are the people who deeply understand the system and its internals. While it's not impossible, you have to be realistic about how much further a group can get when they don't have the insight or technical chops required to take development further.

Zaktor ,

This is unhinged. Someone building the mainline of an interoperable communication service should absolutely be helping others making software trying to interoperate with it. Complaints can be made about Rochko rejecting PRs, but complaining that other people's time is going towards a thing they don't want is insane.

"So they reached out to us and we had conversations about what they want to do, how they can do it, and we had more detailed conversations about how to do X, how to do Y protocol-wise. We helped them resolve some issues when they launched their first test of the federation because we want to see them succeed with this plan, so we help them debug and troubleshoot some of the stuff that they're doing. Basically, we're talking with each other about whatever issues come up."

But from the perspective of hundreds of instances have signed the anti-Meta FediPact, and hundreds more are blocking Threads without signing the pact, any resources devoted to to improving the Threads/Mastodon integration are wasted.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Even ignoring the ideological reasons to not want facebook integration: There are only so many hours in the day and so many dollars in the donation bucket. If an open source project is dedicating a disproportionate percentage of that on a feature that a significant part of the community actively do not want: That is exactly WHY you fork a project.

And once we consider the ideological and safety related reasons to not want facebook and giant corporate interests involved?

I have a lot of issue with the people who decide the answer is harassment and hate. But if enough development and organizational energy want to fork this? Fuckin' A.

Flax_vert ,

The Facebook scare is absolute ridiculous. Threads integration can mainstream the fediverse. Basically everyone on Mastodon doesn't want anything to do with Meta, There's no way Threads would suck up a good enough amount of Mastodon's target audience for an extinguish to do enough damage.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

If you want a super secure platform for private communication use Matrix for fucks sake, this is a media aggregator and social network.

Use the appropriate tools for the appropriate use-cases.

Everything on Mastodon gets publicly posted. Like, what even is this?

Security and accessibility are always at odds with each other.

You don't increase security and safety and also increase accessibility. No, by increasing security, you have decreased accessibility.

Security and accessibility are a balance. If it's easily accessible, it's not secure, if it's secure, it's not easily accessible.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

One thing that might be nice is if there could be a standard for user IDs that would allow multiple systems to work seamlessly together.

You could have Mastodon continue to focus solely on being a completely open media aggregator and social network, but also have some other completely independent and secure private messaging system that uses the same user ID system. Then if you want to send a private message to someone who's made a Mastodon post you can use that and it "just works."

Creating a universal user ID system that would work across all of this is challenging, of course.

poVoq ,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

ActivityPub and XMPP can use the same ID system just fine. You can reach me on XMPP on the same ID as this Lemmy account.

Lost_My_Mind ,

I say DON'T fork it. Heres the thing nobody in communities wants to come to grips with.......security is not the way to grow a very new platform. "Normie" users will not give one shit if you are super secured with 87 point encrypted authentication. Super secure? Don't mean shit.

You know what normie users DO care about? Marketing. They want one concise marketing vision. They want one baseball brand. One football brand. One basketball brand. One twitter. One facebook. One instagram.

Now. There are times that those dominant platforms can be disrupted. If oh.....I don't know.......some dipshit decided to spend 44 BILLION dollars and spend the next 2 years changing it from the dominant name in microblogging, to a right wing facist supporting echochamber where differing ideas are stiffled, blocked, and shut down.

That would create the need for a secondary dominant microblogging platform that allows for freedom of ideas to be posted and not deleted due to political stance.

Enter Mastadon. It fills that void nicely. It's still small as the majority of the userbase of twitter has no idea Mastodon exists. However it's undeniable they are losing massive numbers of users. Not because they don't like the twitter concept, but because they don't like what it's become.

With more marketing, mastodon COULD be the new dominant twitter, thus rendering that 44Billion dollar purchase even MORE stupid than it already is, if 90% of their userbase leaves.

But where you'll lose them is if they have to make a choice. Mastodon 1 and Mastodon 2??? Well twitter was just twitter......this must not be twitter.

And just like that, you've confused and lost the new user. Forget the fediverse. Forget instances. Forget security. Forget federation. The normie user doesn't know and doesn't care about ANY of that. Instead just say "its one mastodon. It's like twitter without facism"

Boom! User influx. This is already happening in spite of lack of marketing and the fediverse existing. Thats how badly people want a twitter clone. If someone else makes another non-fediverse clone, with no facism, and big money marketing, mastodon won't grow to its full potential.

But for gods sakes! Don't shoot yourself in the foot to spite yourself.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

They want one baseball brand. One football brand. One basketball brand. One twitter. One facebook. One instagram.

Why's everything need to be so complicated, anyway? Can't we just have on sportsballgame and one twitgramface?

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

The problem is Mastodon's shittiness will be spread across the Fediverse regardless of what other forks you make.

If I were to make a new platform, I would not federate with any Mastodon servers.

It's bad enough when they come around here.

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

What's wrong with just blocking/defederating from what you don't want to see in your feed?

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Because Mastodon comprises like 90% of the fedi

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

Only if you federate with those instances. You could defed from them, and Mastodon could make up 0% of your Fediverse.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Yes that is what I said.

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