I loved this line, cause I hadn't looked at it from this angle before:
"For some reason, people who would never read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Procter and Gamble acquiring a new shampoo company will devour content about Microsoft acquiring a tech startup they’ve never heard of."
This is so true. I've known people who get this instant passion for an area they know nothing about, if it brushes up against an area they do know something about, and want to start analyzing it like baseball card stats or something. But they're basically reading a card that's a square kilometre in size about a sport they have never played or watched for any amount of time longer than it takes to momentarily look at, and then flip past, a PBS cricket match (if you're North American and have no British relatives).
edit: Only modification I would make to the article would be to emphasize that not only does Mastadon work in a way that is antithetical to contemporary understandings of how the internet works, it more importantly embodies the way that the Internet worked before capitalism showed up.
I gave up on slogans as a means of social change decades ago, but I would love to see "Protocols Not Platforms" get more traction in the zeitgeist.
I'd say that's because shampoo is a commodity and has next to zero side effects for most people. I'm sure there's people out there with very special needs who care about whether a given brand dies or goes multinational, but that's a very niche thing.
But take say, Facebook buying Oculus. Oculus revived an effectively dead technology. Facebook gave them the ability to build much better tech, sell much more of it, and then coupled it with Facebook's love for sucking in private data. It absolutely had a huge effect on that part of the industry.
No normal person cares about either of those things except insofar as it affects them. That’s the point. Facebook acquiring some startup is as relevant to the life of a heavy FB user as P&G acquiring a consumer goods company is to a heavy user of P&G products. Oh, it’s virtual reality. Who cares? If it ever becomes genuinely relevant it will show up in real life. If not reading about it is a waste of time.
Remember, most people care about friends, family, work and things that come up relevant to those, and they mostly don’t care about work.
Before capitalism? As in pre-AOL? The internet was the exclusive purview of the monied elite and the highly motivated tech nerds. The motivation was needed to spend so much money as everything was so expensive. The only way I could afford entry was by repairing old equipment. What ruined the culture for me was the Eternal September and I’ve been complaining about that ever since. The people yelling get off my lawn need to get off my lawn. Personally I’d like a BBS front end to Mastodon (does one exist? I haven’t checked) so my experience of the internet can go full circle and end up where it started.
Mastodon (and potentially other ActivityPub-based Fediverse services) has Toot (https://toot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html) which is a CLI/TUI interface that probably looks like you want?
(I know there's also at least one other project for Pleroma + forks specifically called Pleroma-CLI too...)
Interesting, thanks. I did look it up after writing the comment and it appears that I’m not the only one getting BBS vibes. I do wonder how much the ability to post images changes the culture and if a text only for everyone social network could be an alternative.
I find that comment funny too. Internet has only gotten more accessible.
I do miss when it seemed almost everyone you talked to was a hacker in their own way but at the end of the day... you have everyone from kids on tablets to your grandma being able to use it now.
I feels ya buddy. I just said to someone yesterday that it's kind of a Law Of The Internet that it got ruined basically a short time after the subjective "you" onboarded, and the longer you're here, the more grumpy you get about it. This is true of me and anyone I know who thinks of this place as a figurative home.
There are endless high-profile examples, such as the time that Stephen Fry, having just recently achieved some major follower milestone (million I think), got very upset about being called out on some faux pas or other - in retrospect, a minor offense and a failed attempt at cancellation, if it was even an attempt - and decided to leave the internet, with this long almost-crying essay about the internet he had gotten onto, which made it sound like some sort of Victorian fairy glade where the air was laden with cocaine and he got to make out with Oscar Wilde, vs the stinky plebian unsubtle and bestial place it had become. It was an overreaction worthy of Chris De Burgh, and one he obviously didn't follow through on in the long run. But even as I was loling at the tone of his rejection letter, I also recognized an emotional stream of my own in it.
I have a somewhat different view of AOL than you. I was firmly middle class, neither monied elite nor genuine nerd, but my family could afford to buy me a C64 and as a young adult I bought myself a 386, strictly for the fun of it. I also started out on BBSes and was a sysop on both 8-bit and 32-bit systems, but I did have an uncle who logged me into the local U's mainframe as a kid, and I found my way to the early, command line internet before the WWW was born, though I mostly just hung out on irc, I was no leet hackz0r.
But once the winsock era ramped up and that "invasion" of AOL kiddies happened, I have to say, I had a very good few years in alt.music.ween as well as some groups centred on my local community. a.m.ween had quite a few great contributors from AOL, actually, so for that group, it was a net benefit. The band also pioneered direct interaction by participating in the group, at one point doing an all-request livestream (this is maybe 2000 I'm talking about, very early, and it was awesome) which newsgroup members voted on. Deaner, the guitarist, was especially active in internet fan engagement, and would phone in from on tour using AOL as an easy onramp. Nothing salesy or memey, he'd just do your typical "tour diary" letters like any band of the time might have done for a fan club, which we more or less were.
Perhaps places with too wide a net, such as rec.pets.cats, took the brunt of it in ways that niche bands or interests didn't have to. I recall a great war between them and alt.tasteless, many casualties.
I was also put in a room once, this would be in the late 90s, to see if I could in any way help a woman who had complained some time previously to local media about porn on early usenet, and it ended with a newsgroup created by trolls called alt.sex.herlastname; mostly I had to reassure her, after looking at the content of the group, that there was no troll army keeping tabs on her movements, it was a totally dead group that someone probably created in a moment of f-you energy and never looked at again, but the internet never forgets.
Not that I could have done more than that anyways, other than maybe send emails to every usenet admin I could find begging them to blacklist the group. But that incident, which I could definitely dig up some receipts about but I don't want to revive that part of her life for her, there are some undeniable resonances with Gamergate, are there not? The truth is, this place is exactly the same place it always was, just bigger and more dangerous, and that was inevitable when people came.
That being said, I would say that there was definitely a pre-capitalist Internet, which had a certain culture and - say it with me - netiquette. I don't know, and could not begin to speculate, where the line is between the pre-capitalist internet and now. If I was going to put forward a candidate for when Capitalism "arrived" here, I think one good candidate would be, whatever day it was that Joshua Quittner handed over mcdonalds.com to the McDonalds corporation.
My initial experience of the internet was much more private and ephemeral. Basically an invite only private IRC like terminal where most people knew each other in real life first. The experience was tied to those friendships, many which still exist today, but I don’t know how I could recreate those circumstances again to make new friends, or even if I want to.
I said something wrong once and was mortified by it so I’ve avoided public forums ever since. If I do post it’s anonymously. So I’ve always watched the broader internet culture from an outsiders perspective.
The Eternal September was no surprise, the thing people said was going to happen happened. For me the internet took a noticiable turn for the worse when Facebook opened up and absorbed so many niche communities. These days I lament the intentional manipulation of search, it’s like I’m being algorithmically gaslit.
Yep. I actually was a big fan of Facebook early on, and I remained a fan for as long as I was able to set my feed to show me "what my friends post in the order they post it."
At first they made you manually select it every time you loaded the screen (user hostile design intended to corral you into accepting their algorithmic Ludivico Machine), and eventually they eradicated it entirely, and that is when the problems really started - only took a few more years before Steve Bannon was ready to make his move.
Crucially, PBS member stations[0] run a lot of international—-often British—-shows, so it’s one of the few places you might possibly find cricket on American TV. Otherwise, your only bet might be one of the niche cable sports channels: not the main ESPN, but maybe ESPN2 or something.
[0] PBS is more like a network (the S is for ‘service’) that provides member stations with a common identity and a shared pool of programmming. They’re usually non-profits, and so would not be able to afford a national news bureau (etc) on their own.
As Geoduck put it, PBS stands for Public Broadcasting Service, which is a publicly-funded and viewer-supported network of highbrow and foreign content that's been around for my whole life, not sure if or how much longer than that. It's also the primary way that North Americans have consumed British culture for my whole life, until the internet brought widespread, umm, "availability".
So all through my Canadian youth I would flip through channels and periodically happen upon a Dr Who episode, or a British sport like Cricket, and wonder at the strangeness of my ancestral line (I'm extremely British, genetically speaking, and my family were both heavy socialists and also kind of cryptically proud of being part of the Empire. But they never admitted that, even to themselves I think...).
It's no surprise that it was hard to key into why Dr Who - for one example of a show I came to love as an adult - is so cool. I would read about it in Starlog, here and there, and the doctor sounded like a real badass on paper, but when I came across Tom Baker for the first time, he was no Han Solo, shall we say. Which is great, cause there are aspects of Star Wars that I kinda hate now (mostly the fans), but maybe not so much when you're 8 years old and have been watching laser blasts and ships exploding and whatnot. Even godawful tripe like Jason Of Star Command was more captivating at the time.
It does really, and that's why it doesn't work as well in this current environment.
Mastadon is a DIY app/platform, which constitutes one of any number of implementations of ActivityPub, which is the underlying protocol, and can speak to any of the other implementations without limitation, save those imposed by the protocol and self-imposed by the two implementations currently speaking to each other.
There are multiple types of SMTP/POP/IMAP servers out there, but they all implement the same protocols, which means that my email client can reach your email client no matter what our clients, or the servers we connect to, look like. This is how the internet works; platforms will always be a limited subset of this fundamental reality. It's also how ActivityPub works, you can wrap whatever user interface you want around it, Mastadon or otherwise, but the protocol, not the platform, defines what is and is not an ActivityPub packet.
Platforms, FB, Twitter, Tiktok, Insta, none of these work this way, they are closed platforms that you enter through secure gates and must play according to their rules, and they will always decide who gets amplification and who does not based on what makes them money, and good luck taking anything back out to the open internet with you, even if it's 100% your work. If you put it there, don't expect to get it back easily, and forget about control. It is a fundamentally hostile user relationship that cannot be improved without removing the profit motive. There have been other recent posts on HN about User Hostile software design. It's a thing and it's a bad thing.
Mastadon is... tofu dogs. Mastadon is an attempt to feed healthy, protocol-based internet food to people who have been subsisting on bad, algorithmically-manipulated corporate internet food (the aforementioned user-hostile platforms) in a way that feels familiar to them while they get used to the idea of not consuming the internet equivalent of Twinkies and Pork Rinds and Liquor for the rest of their lives.
It doesn't taste as good as Twitter, sure. Maybe that's not the most important thing.
> Mastadon is... tofu dogs. Mastadon is an attempt to feed healthy, protocol-based internet food to people who have been subsisting on bad, algorithmically-manipulated corporate internet food (the aforementioned user-hostile platforms) in a way that feels familiar to them while they get used to the idea of not consuming the internet equivalent of Twinkies and Pork Rinds and Liquor for the rest of their lives.
Mastadon is hand-rolling cigarettes instead of buying them at the gas station. Brewing gin in your bathtub, instead of going to a liquor store.
Change the likely-to-permanently-blind-you bathtub gin to delicious homebrew ale, and I'm with you.
Cause in the end, the endless-scroll mode of internet use should really just be looked at the same way we look at Crack: sure, some people can handle it, but ultimately, why does anyone do this anyways?
“Health” food made with one of the most common subjects of severe food allergies, and which tastes like crap compared either to what it imitates or well-made, less-allergy-producing, plant-based food that doesn't attempt the same imitation?
More or less. When I first encountered Mastadon, I hoped that one day I could jump from FB to that and not lose everyone I know. Now I'm kinda past the whole "scrolling" thing entirely so I don't think I'm gonna use Mastadon at all. I do think I'll eventually put up some sort of activityPub blog or something though.
For me, "Mastodon" more closely resembles the BBS-with-Fidonet experience, which I suppose might be similar to UUCP/Usenet to a degree "before capitalism".
I never had a Twitter account and so never migrated from Twitter to Mastodon, and hadn't checked it out otherwise either.
But this comment is the first thing I've heard that makes me think I might love it. I loved the message subs on bbs networks.
The fact that an ordinary user/commenter conveyed that useful essential impression that all those journalists never did in the years since it's been newsworthy, would seem to fit right in with the article's point.
This article itself also finally presented some useful "what is the point? why might I want this?" points too about no algorithm manipulation.
Mostly all I've seen are vague stuff that it's not Twitter and that it's federated kind of like email. But that really doesn't say anything useful. If it's like email, we already have email. How is email an alternative to Twitter and Facebook? They really have failed to write effectively about it.
On ‘slow’, this is very instance dependent; perhaps try another. My original one was pretty painful, but my current one is fast, certainly faster than Twitter of late.
A lot of people have forgotten just how long it took for Twitter to get the mainstream appeal it has, and for a long time just how confusing all @, # and RT stuff was, and how hard it was for people to find good people to follow etc. Twitter has been working hard on that for many years with all the onboard and the algorithmic stuff.
> "For some reason, people who would never read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Procter and Gamble acquiring a new shampoo company will devour content about Microsoft acquiring a tech startup they’ve never heard of."
Good point, I'll grand you that, but I'm on the other side. I don't want to hear less about Microsoft acquiring tech startups, I want to hear more about Procter and Gamble acquiring shampoo companies.
My guess is that journalists that write such articles exist, but possibly they publish in specialist journals / magazines...?
Can you go on the WSJ front page and point out to me one story that's like the "Procter and gamble acquire something obscure"? The WSJ send to be to be exactly like regular news, but themed to look like business, as opposed to what I'm looking for, actual business.
Protocols Not Platforms - like Bitcoin which is mostly traded on a few exchanges, or email which is mostly handled by a few giant services?
Mastodon will be no exception with high likelihood. Choose it over eg Twitter if you prefer where it's going _as a platform._ I actually prefer where Twitter seems to be going, but to each his own
ActivityPub is sort of the protocol though. Mastodon is just the platform incorporating it that is becoming the twitter replacement. Maybe not for everything, but programming andtechwise my mastodon feed sure is more interesting than any of my other social media feeds in the wake of Elon.
I think it's hard to say where things are heading though. We had RSS before, and that didn't stand up to American tech giants. I have my doubts this iteration of ActivityPub and the "fediverse" will, but I do think we need a decentral protocol like it if we want an interesting internet going forward. I mean, which of your centralized social media feeds are interesting in 2022? Even HN is becoming a page I visit on a weekly basis rather than on a daily basis, and this is the SoMe I use the most aside from mastodon and LinkedIn. Maybe I'm just the oddball, but at least in my circle of influence things like Facebook are now solely used to arrange things like Blood Bowl tournaments.
I think thing the biggest threat to mastodon will be the “mods” and “admins.” It’s a matter of when, not if there will be drama and it’ll be interesting to see how that is handled.
A lot of subreddits went so far as to make a bot that will ban users for posting on other subreddits. With mastodon that’s more or less “built-in.”
You’re right though. Social media in general seems to be going downhill. Can’t really put my finger on “why” but “uninteresting” being a word I wouldn’t disagree with.
Oh I don't doubt that. I'm referencing the fact that some subs will run a bot that checks your post history and will ban you if you have previously posted in a sub they don't agree with or like.
I've personally been "mass-banned" from a string of local sub reddits because I had an argument with a mod about the weather. (not global warming, literally about humid vs dry heat)
I am very politically aligned with the reigning opinions in the sub centered on my hometown/nearest urban centre. Nonetheless I managed to get shadowbanned for reasons that remain unknown to me. Being that that is the only place where local matters get discussed, that was the beginning of the end of my relationship with the site; any place where whoever happened to get there first is able to erase whomever they want with no accountability is a non-starter as a public square of any sort.
> I mean, which of your centralized social media feeds are interesting in 2022?
Don’t you choose who you follow? I’m not sure how that is related to decentralisation anyway, other than the revelations in the Twitter Files about manipulation of the network. Still, the Mastodon network isn’t free from that kind of censorship either so it seems I’m still at a loss.
> Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).
> a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information under section 2702, 2703, or 2704 of this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information
$3M out of about $5,000M worth of annual revenue, and again, it’s reimbursement.
To me, 3 million dollars worth of record requests seems like more than would be optimal given the FBI’s purview.
I mean, I’ve seen some terrible tweets, even some that I’d consider criminally bad. But 3 million dollars to police bad tweets doesn’t strike me as the optimal way to allocate citizen’s money.
And it’s fair to ask, what results were achieved with that 3 million? If it were not a misallocation, certainly they could point to a high profile criminal, cartel or gang that they’ve prosecuted as the result of those record requests.
But we don’t hear that. We hear crickets. Their response seems to be, “how dare anyone ask!”
Certainly law enforcement is important. I think so. Most citizens do.
But shouldn’t we hold law enforcement accountable? Ought not there be public oversight when millions of dollars are being spent, millions of dollars spent, supposedly, on our behalf?
Perhaps you believe in more unchecked authority. Maybe crime has gotten so out of control that we should loosen some of the strictures put in place by the constitution. These are dangerous times. There are plenty of bad guys out there.
Personally, I think the citizens deserve to know, and have some say in how millions of dollars are spent. Absolute, unconstrained authority tends towards abuse. It’s quite well documented.
In the context of mastodon, an interesting question is, will the FBI pay the same amount, if anything? Will there be any legal “speed bumps” at all when it comes to overreach from the long arm of the law?
Presumably, a large company with high paid lawyers who are former FBI, like Twitter, Facebook, etc. would be able to pushback against quasi-constitutional requests. Clearly the FBI was able to get their way with Twitter, despite the big guns in the legal department.
Will they be paying mastodon “operators” (or whatever they’re called) the same amount?
I don’t watch tv if that’s the question. I prefer reading news, and seeking out journalists and topics that interest me rather than passively consuming entertainment or ad supported “news.” Generally I prefer primary sources but there are a dozen or so journalists I like, some on sub stack some who write for wsj, nyt, wapo etc…
What’s the saying, “if you get it for free, you’re the product.”
"For some reason, people who would never read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Procter and Gamble acquiring a new shampoo company will devour content about Microsoft acquiring a tech startup they’ve never heard of."
This is so true. I've known people who get this instant passion for an area they know nothing about, if it brushes up against an area they do know something about, and want to start analyzing it like baseball card stats or something. But they're basically reading a card that's a square kilometre in size about a sport they have never played or watched for any amount of time longer than it takes to momentarily look at, and then flip past, a PBS cricket match (if you're North American and have no British relatives).
edit: Only modification I would make to the article would be to emphasize that not only does Mastadon work in a way that is antithetical to contemporary understandings of how the internet works, it more importantly embodies the way that the Internet worked before capitalism showed up.
I gave up on slogans as a means of social change decades ago, but I would love to see "Protocols Not Platforms" get more traction in the zeitgeist.