humanetech

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1230183

Just gave my satyrical take on The Splinterverse. Grassroots movements adopt an implicit "Divided we will be conquered" approach, where big corporate newcomers can easily disrupt with Big Marketing™ followed by an Eternal September by their user influx to the Fediverse. The Muskening™ already gave a taste of that.

Currently new channels are abuzz with the Reddit shenanigans, and there's potential for another influx. People are inventing names like "threadiverse" for forum-like federated apps. There's a broader vibe where people come to the realization that enshittification on proprietary walled garden platforms is inevitable, and that the old web is re-emerging with blogs and webrings. And the heterogenous Social Web with countless alternative federated/decentralized apps where there isn't a single gatekeeper. That opportunity certainly exists (as Meta likely know all too wel also).

The common name that has stuck is "Fediverse", or affectionally spoken the "fedi". Many say it is a bad name, and maybe it is. It is a name you get used to, though, and it is not easy at all to introduce a new name in a grassroots movement.

But that is NOT what I find important at all ..

The Fediverse has slowly matured during many years. That slow growth has shaped an all-important aspect: A vibrant culture. This is what all growth-hacking enterpreneurial minds easily overlook. There have been a shit ton of social media launched.. and failed. The big ones we have have their solid position with FOMO and network effects. Those who say social media is easy have survivorship bias.

"It is the culture that matters, stupid!"

I love all the quirky aspects of the Fediverse. The diversity and inclusion. The weird angles. And also, weirdly enough.. the friction. Friction to get on the Fediverse has also served as a filter. We now have 'competitor' decentralized social networks with Nostr and Bluesky. "Nostr is developing way faster.. come to us!" --> This is a purely technical viewpoint. Wait till you see what culture that creates. Technical buzzwords like "encryption", "censorship-resistance", "micropayment", etc. that seem like features may see all the wrong types being attracted to those networks.

What I feel is the biggest thing that is missing on the Fediverse is a shared vision, a common notion of where we are headed, where the potential of the Fediverse is, what we might achieve collectively.

It is "App focus". App app app app app ... Apps are siloes!

Related to "marketing against Meta" it was asked "Where is the Mastodon branding agency?" --> They branded an app, not an ecosystem / online environment. And them being successful means we have this big confusion now, where people "Join the Mastodon". We should get rid of app focus.

The vision that appeals to me, and I am advocating for quite a while is that of a Peopleverse to emerge.

• Fediverse (technical) --> Peopleverse (social)

The Peopleverse is NOT a name.. it is an abstract idea, a vision of how things might be. The Peopleverse is where people find value online. Where they interact with others in a way that is enriching to their lives. It is where online and offline worlds are seamlessly intertwined.

Considered like that means that this Peopleverse will also have implications for the technical perspective, when looking at the Fediverse technology landscape and ecosystem. It highlights the amount of socio-technological support that is needed. It highlights a technology vision that encompasses the Fediverse's full potential.

As Reddit's enshittification reaches new heights their attempts to suppress attention for alternatives, like federated Lemmy, has the opposite effect as this Hacker News discussion shows.

In reaction to the surprise announcement of the creation of Gitea Ltd and the transfer of domains and trademark to this company, worried members of the Community have written an Open Letter to the elected Owners of the project.

The request is to return the assets and manage them by a community-led non-profit organization and furthermore improve the community organization, so that the Trust and Health of the project is restored.

The Open Letter can be signed by sending a PR to the Codeberg repository.

Some very early announcement of something very noteworthy that is happening on the Fediverse right this moment. Currently most of the discussion still takes place under the #weblite hashtag only.

As you know the current Web specifications have become very bloated. They serve established browser vendors, which operate monopolistically and dominate the (corporate) internet. For new FOSS browser projects it is nigh impossible to start from scratch and implement crisp and modern web rendering engines. The complexity and scope is just too high.

Existing standard bodies such as WhatWG, W3C and IETF move slowly and are beholden to Big Tech lobbying and influences, who want to keep this the status quo.

But there's nothing that withholds the free software community to derive their own open standards that are lightweight and intuitive. So it happened, only yesterday 15 October, that some fedizens decided to pick up that glove.

Adrian Cochrane and Alexandra kicked off the Weblite initiative. Adrian has been working for a long time on two very cool greenfield browser projects, Odysseus and Rhapsode, an auditory browser. From this many insights on what #weblite specifications should and should not contain was gleaned and hopefully and with collaboration from many others this will be transcribed into Unicode chars in some initial drafts. So, if you are interested, then don't hesitate and lend your helping hand.

You'll notice that the linked repositories on Codeberg are still mostly emtpy as of now. Yep, it is indeed that early. On Fediverse you always learn the cool things first 😜

As posted by Adrian these are the principles of Weblite:

• Simplicity
• Vendor, platform, and device independence
• Forwards and backwards compatibility
• Maintainability
• Flexibility
• Richness
• Accessibility

Note too that with these principles Weblite is somewhhat different than what ProjectGemini aims to achieve. Gemini strips to absolute essentials and has more in common to Gopher, that came before the current web.

Join forces, Lemmy people! Let's bring lite where now darkness rules.. (Don't forget to add a #weblite hashtags to your fedi toots)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/71208

You 💖 love Fediverse, right? It's vibrant unique culture and the lovely people you meet. You want to protect it, increase its beauty, see more applications interoperate seamlessly. You know that you are part of a 'reimagining of social networking' that is much needed, as traditional social media are destroying the fabric of society.

What you may not know is that:

• The Fediverse is still incredibly weak. That it has a tiny community of technologists that evolve it, and that this process is stalling as people are absorbed in their own projects. ("The Tragedy of the Grassroots Movement?")

• That what Fediverse currently offers is just the tiny tip of the iceberg. That humongous potential still lies dormant, waiting to be explored. That we can go way beyond microblogging features that dominate the fedi now.

• That YOU are instrumental in tapping this potential, and that you don't have to be a techie to help with that.

At SocialHub community we come together to improve the Fediverse, evolve its standards and the ecosystem. And regardless of your skills and expertise we need all the help we can get to move forwards, to progress this thing we love.

Throw off your individualism and become a fedi builder. It's a win-win for all. We are 'United in Diversity' and should build together. Join SocialHub as member and interact. And also join Fediverse Futures on Lemmy to brainstorm on exciting ideas.

We are Spiral Island still, and can become a sprawling archipelago.