Interesting article on decentralised social media:
Good to see recognition of the funding by @EC_NGI and of course nice to be quoted by the kind folks at Forbes. Now all we need is for them to join the Fediverse ;)
He he, yes it is true. Yet as others have remarked, they have a peculiar way of describing the #Fediverse:
> An estimated 4 million more use the largest social protcol, Mastodon, which supports 60 niche social networks, with a rapidly growing pool of blockchain competitors in the works.
Forbes hot take on the fedi :D
@humanetech @NGIZero @EC_NGI
"Two months after Trump launched Truth Social, the European Union followed suit...."
The way the presentation of this information on the EU Mastodon projects was phrased is bizarre, vaguely slanderous.
There is an agenda behind this piece but I'm not sure what it is. I'm not convinced that Michael del Castillo of Forbes staff knows what it is either.
@keith @humanetech @NGIZero @EC_NGI the way that is written just feels rather off... the similarities between eu voice and truth social begin and end with being based off of mastodon and having ties to politics, they are otherwise entirely different with very different purposes
(truth social isn't even a part of the fediverse last i checked, it doesn't deserve any mention in an article about decentralised social media)
and yet they seem to insinuate that eu voice was created in relation to truth social?
really the whole section about mastodon in that article reeks of somebody who doesn't actually understand the fediverse, and honestly it feels like they are trying to downplay mastodon in favor of projects with more money behind them (which tbh is probably what their agenda is, they're interested in where the money is, and fedi is not where the money is)
@jande @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI
Agree. Either intentional misdirection, or the most sloppy text-writing to just create some filler content.
As for where the money is, idk how corporate world looks upon the concepts behind fedi. Maybe they are starting to get a hunch of where the money could be, and this is part of the play to get it out.
There are the DSA/DMA regulations by EC that force consideration of interoperability. And there are 'hotshot' projects with big names behind them (Jack), etc
@humanetech @jande @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI Do keep us updated :)
@aral @jande @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI
Looks part of ongoing lobby, to make open source look a black sheep. I was passed another paper dating back to 2020 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3717031
One of the authors works in the IP and patent law business. https://www.4ipcouncil.com/network/contributors/michele-herman
@humanetech @aral @jande @NGIZero @EC_NGI
Trying hard to wrap my head around this one:
"If an SDO’s OSS project becomes fundamental to the way standards are implemented in the marketplace, the lack of participation from these innovators may (i) deprive the community of valuable contributions, and (ii) skew the resulting SDO-approved OSS implementation in a way that is no longer vendor neutral."
I wonder what counts as participation and contribution in the mind of the writer. Only €€€ ?
@keith @aral @jande @NGIZero @EC_NGI @webmink
Indeed. This seems just like crazy to me. Total opposite of that seems to be the positive influence of basing the SDO's effort around an OSS core. Have transparency be at the heart of the standardization effort, and level playing field for anyone to contribute to that discussing in all openness.
These papers are sort of eye-opener for me, as for the kind of "substrate formation" that is needed for a healthy Fediverse.
@humanetech @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI
if i were to speculate i'd think they mentioned it because it's too big to ignore but they don't actually desire for the fediverse to succeed
because fedi has kinda grown into a thorn against big money social media, having already proven itself to work just fine without the big money, and having grown to where it is out of pocket scale money for servers and domains
which isn't desirable to vulture capitalists that want the next big thing to be something they can milk money from and leave to wilt away when it stops growing
but decentralization has gained too much traction already, so if i had to guess I'd expect to see attempts to co-opt decentralisation, and snuff out what we already have in favor of similar looking platforms tweaked to be more favorable to money
(tbh i think crypto was already an attempt at this, noting crypto social media, but it turned out people don't actually want social media built entirely around money)
@jande @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI
> but decentralization has gained too much traction already
I don't think this is what they think. I gave a bunch of arguments on another branch of this discussion on how fedi is still fragile and weak.
But they may see fediverse as an *rising* early threat that the corporations can co-opt or stamp out before it grows much further.
@humanetech @jande @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI fediverse is a rising threat to the megacorps in the same way that Linux was a rising threat to Microsoft. They will try to coopt it, and they might use similar tactics to the past, such as creating a corp-funded foundation to support fediverse development, analogous to the Linux Foundation.
@humanetech @keith @NGIZero @EC_NGI i was more meaning the concept of decentralization was too big to ignore, not necessarily the implementation had too much traction to be unseated
(i had initially written a longer version of that but i ended up trimming it down to keep under 1000 char)
i wasn't intending to insinuate that fedi was secure in its position, just that fedi is big enough to sustain itself and grow on its own with even government organizations having instances now, and due to the nature of decentralisation you can't just wish it away as people will just keep running it, thus too much traction to be ignored
but i don't disagree fedi could be at risk, as if you know it's likely to keep growing and you don't want it to be fedi but can't shut it down, you might try co-opting the decentralised point from fedi, which if you got a critical mass could allow you to overshadow fedi with a more "preferable" option and at least stop fedi from being the first option new people go to
@keith @humanetech @NGIZero @EC_NGI Since it’s Forbes, I’m going with “pushing fedi competitors with big money behind them”.
Money is the only thing Forbes cares about.
@keith @humanetech @NGIZero @EC_NGI After Mudge's testimony to congress about what is going on at Twitter, every politician should be thinking about spinning up her own Mastodon instance.