Keith Whyte @keith@tic-ac.org

Posts that completely misunderstood the #fediverse

From April 2017:

Six reasons Mastodon won't survive
https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive

@homegrown

I think i remember being told to get on facebook, it's fun. 😛

You might have a point though, maybe lying to people is justified when you are trying to cure them from dangerous addictions 🙂

I was going to write up a list of alternative ideas, then I found this post. It'll do as my closing argument: https://medium.com/geekculture/fixing-the-broken-web-alternatives-to-dns-and-the-web-3-0-3adc3ef3f620
albeit hosted on a dns dependent, social media related, content monetising platform.

@homegrown

I think saying DNS is "fun" is a little like saying that the "A" in ADSL (and paying through the nose for upload bandwidth from your domestic ISP, if you can get it) is "fun".

Granted, in many parts of the world the asynchronous bandwidth is not such a problem as it was a few years ago when a domestic ISP wanted your 1st born for more than 128k Uplink.

@homegrown @kranzkrone

Of course DNS is not a reason to use corporate internet value extraction services! There's no question of that.

I'd still object to promotion of the virtual real estate game on DNS as "fun". It's not fun. "owning" or "choosing", then "needing" your own dot whatever is a stupid idea that has been promoted since the dawn of the commercial internet, because it's extremely lucrative, and it promotes unsavoury practice like domain squatting for example.

@homegrown @kranzkrone

My point would be rather that there has been a lack of "improvement" and no solution to solving this particular concrete problem, which I don't think needs vague analogies to be understood::

How to host decentralised communications services over which one has maximum control and minimal exposure to a 3rd party's ability to effect DoS. (for whatever reason)

BTW. Totally support what you want to do, as I said, no desire for a discussion over this to get antagonistic.

@homegrown
Ultimately, I don't believe that the creative minds that design everything we have right now in digital networks could not fix the "problem" of DNS.

There is just no will, because most people don't perceive it as a problem. And it's not as long as you have resources aka $$€€.

But it's not "fun".

@homegrown
Of course using IP numbers is not an alternative. I mean, imagine IPv6.

This is not a new question, it's been around for years!

There have been various different proposals, on all kinds of levels.

One way of looking at it is that the DNS + SSL Cert + URL is fundamentally broken and everything we have is shitty patches to this brokenness.

Or.. the DNS + SSL Cert is EXTREMELY lucrative (Mark Shuttleworth for example) so why change it?

@homegrown
I'd like to say, in a non antagonistic way, that I do not find domain registration fun at all.
The external dependency, the economic cost, the general ethos of that industry of renting virtual real estate and holding people to ransom is a big problem and a threat to growing and hosting your own services.

@liwott @humanetech@mastodon.social
Re: good and bad ways.
There is one aspect of fediverse vision, thinking and promotion, and I'm not going to call it "bad", but maybe detrimental and best avoided.
It is when the fediverse is placed in the frame of response, alternative-to, replicating-but-fedi... same same but different, - of existing mega platforms.
Don't do that. Don't follow the lead of the corporate internet. Think first what you really want and implement that.

@shiro
Yes! Phone numbers as primary identity providers is simply a terrible idea. Especially prepaid. However, the industry just keeps trying to "fix" it. (anti sim swap attack measures etc)

I don't think you mentioned it in the thread, but the other side of this problem is that the new owner, in this case YOU, with that new SIM card in your possession, potentially also now own the accounts associated with it. (depending on 2FA or maybe other policy associated with the accounts.)

@bhaugen
A SIP phone would be via some existing internet connection, yes. $15 is ok. I saw higher prices on their website.