Dear Fedi friends,
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
@_elena@mastodon.social Do it!
Every voice that points out how stupid the idea is must be publicly available. -
Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
@_elena The "you need to upload a valid form of ID" is reason alone to blast it, so I very much support blasting it.
I was curious about it, but as soon as I saw that requirement, I went "NOPE".
I get the why they want to do it that way, to clamp down on bots and have traceability in case of abuse, but it's an Orwelian nightmare. Not to mention that a third party will have access to your ID photos, and we all know how well (as in, not) said third-parties handle and secure PII...
And then of course there's the advertisers salivating over the whole thing, because it's a 100% sure way to pinpoint EXACTLY who they're advertising to.
Not to mention over-zealous (to put it mildly) law enforcement accessing said targeting data...
Yes, this very much needs a major blast.
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
@_elena Honestly, I think that will only create a sense of division: "Mine is better than yours".
I don't believe that's what the world needs now. I think we need to try to find a common ground. For example, why did they choose the ATProto?
Although I would prefer them to have decided on ActivityPub, maybe they have a reason.
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@_elena No, please don't. Spend your beautiful energy and time on building and contributing to what we already have.
Don't waste a second on deconstructing, arguing against stuff we don't control.
Make more videos like you did before, the Mastodon / Fediverse intro video. It was beautiful and awesome.
That's what you should do. Build, don't destroy.
@nopatience@swecyb.com @_elena@mastodon.social When it comes to competitors, treat them like the dead: praise them — or keep it buried.
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@_elena Honestly, I think that will only create a sense of division: "Mine is better than yours".
I don't believe that's what the world needs now. I think we need to try to find a common ground. For example, why did they choose the ATProto?
Although I would prefer them to have decided on ActivityPub, maybe they have a reason.
@_elena One thing I see myself doing more and more lately is writing to companies and institutions, asking them why they don't have an account on the Fediverse and explaining how to do it. It works, but it has to be easy. One thing I'm constantly telling them is that there's a simple way to do it if they are running their blog on WordPress. I also send them a how-to I wrote.
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
@_elena Hijacking the ludicrous agitprop for a better purpose is a good idea.
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
.fr
.es
...and some others already taken
I voted «yes go ahead», but it all depends on the expected ROI
(how much attention is that w-thing getting so people would reach that alternative sites) -
@_elena Honestly, I think that will only create a sense of division: "Mine is better than yours".
I don't believe that's what the world needs now. I think we need to try to find a common ground. For example, why did they choose the ATProto?
Although I would prefer them to have decided on ActivityPub, maybe they have a reason.
@vladcampos @_elena Well, I guess a counterpoint would be that them deciding to do this thing while pretending nothing at all exists in this space in Europe currently is also creating a sense of division already.
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@vladcampos @_elena Well, I guess a counterpoint would be that them deciding to do this thing while pretending nothing at all exists in this space in Europe currently is also creating a sense of division already.
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
A couple of arguments, if I may:
1) why reinvent the wheel ???
2) why a proprietary system (as it is derived from bluesky)
3) why not simply ask every member state to put up an official mastodon instance and use that ??? That would be much simpler and cheaper !!
Good luck
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A couple of arguments, if I may:
1) why reinvent the wheel ???
2) why a proprietary system (as it is derived from bluesky)
3) why not simply ask every member state to put up an official mastodon instance and use that ??? That would be much simpler and cheaper !!
Good luck
@FrankauLux @_elena all they did was tap the EU for funding and they’re so cautious and clueless they backed it because they used the right buzzwords
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@FrankauLux @_elena all they did was tap the EU for funding and they’re so cautious and clueless they backed it because they used the right buzzwords
Well not sure they are so clueless, since the EU institutions have had their own mastodon instances for a while.
The Commission, the Parliament and the Court of Justice all have an instance.I think it is more a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand does, ie politician answering before consulting the tech guys.
But we'll see.
Luckily (in this case) things go slow and we have time to alter the course. -
@_elena I think that we need more "why/how you should join the Fediverse" rather than "why you should not use platform X, Y, W".
We (as in: the internet) spoke loudly about why not using certain type of softwares and platform and it didn't really made a substantial difference.
I think we need to focus on bringing people (and make them stay) here rather than scare them about another software or platform.
I could not agree more. The Fediverse has to convince the folks to come here not blaming other services that we even don't really know, yet.
Instead we are welcoming new folks with arguing why they have chosen the wrong Fediverse SW instead of the much better other SW. This is scaring away so many new users, and would be worth to work on.
We should keep proving that we are better not claiming that other solutions are worse.
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EDIT: Sorry, I mixed up Wsocial with Wedium https://wedium.social
New social networks are popping up everywhere these days.
@sturmsucht @d1re_w0lf @_elena Does anyone of these people (from wedium GmbH) exist in any form on an activtypub instance or atpro/bluesky?
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@sturmsucht @d1re_w0lf @_elena Does anyone of these people (from wedium GmbH) exist in any form on an activtypub instance or atpro/bluesky?
I have no idea. The short interview I heard was with Johannes (if I'm not wrong) where he talked about that trust and safety will play a huge part and that they want to achieve this with verification. They also plan to monetise it to make it sustainable. I'm not really sure which platform they will use or if they will code something themselves.
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@_elena Honestly, I think that will only create a sense of division: "Mine is better than yours".
I don't believe that's what the world needs now. I think we need to try to find a common ground. For example, why did they choose the ATProto?
Although I would prefer them to have decided on ActivityPub, maybe they have a reason.
"why did they choose the ATProto?"
The cynic in me: because it's centralized.
Governments may talk a big talk about things, but at the end of the day, they're legacy systems and they want control.
Alas, too many seem to have not acknowledged that the Internet is already an intergalactic system of collaboration and already operates at scale of billions of users with billions of packets per hour.
Legacy meatware governance is obsolete, but the transition period is going to be long and drawn out and in the interim, a lot of "reinventing the flat tire" will presumably play out, ad nauseam. ;(
We already had end-to-end encrypted realtime libre/free open source "federated" (I would use the phrase: "distributed") systems such as SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) before ActivityPub (or twitter or Facebook, etc.) was ever conceived of in the first place. But, why was it never popularized? It circumvents centralized control and the "powers that be" don't like not being able to ratchet down on others. Class warfare is their paradigm, so they prefer to perpetuate such things, rather than normalize new paradigms which make themselves obsolete. ;-/
IRC? XMPP? FTP? HTTP? Other plaintext by default protocols, very popular! Spies just love spying!
Note: SILC isn't alone, there's PSYC2, GNUnet and other libre/free end-to-end encrypted comms systems; but as much as some may claim they want such things, what seems to gain traction and momentum every time? Over and over again? Insecure, centralized, systems. If you follow the popularity and the "money" it's usually the same old dirt bags behind the scenes pulling the strings.
CC: @_elena@mastodon.social
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
@_elena
Regarding domain name grabbing: I don’t think this is worth it. I would wonder if they haven’t already reserved the domains they are going to use before the announcement. So that’s likely a waste of money. -
Well not sure they are so clueless, since the EU institutions have had their own mastodon instances for a while.
The Commission, the Parliament and the Court of Justice all have an instance.I think it is more a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand does, ie politician answering before consulting the tech guys.
But we'll see.
Luckily (in this case) things go slow and we have time to alter the course.@FrankauLux @_elena but they closed it, I deal with EU institutions all the time and they have no imagination or worldly knowledge. Estonia has the digital society they bullshit us about and this is the social network but no the have to make it as unworkable as possible. All regulation and no action, we have feet of clay and at the same time tolerate complete lawlessness when it comes to third country digital networks using the EU with no heed to any laws
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Dear Fedi friends,
I'm pretty fired up exposing the ridiculousness of #WSocial, a new social network purported to be a European alternative to X that launched at Davos (yikes).
The French press devoted many articles to it (meanwhile: crickets about the Fediverse).
Before I go full steam ahead grabbing domain names and creating a web site that shows the weaknesses of W / suggests to check out the Fediverse instead, I want to put it to you: should I do it?
@_elena I don’t think it’s worth the effort. Couple of people announced some vaporware launch and press lazily took it as ”Europes answer” to US social media without a second thought about how ridiculous that statement is. Let them build. Spend your energy on something more productive (improving fedi) instead. Press hype will die after couple of minutes of fame.
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@_elena I don’t think it’s worth the effort. Couple of people announced some vaporware launch and press lazily took it as ”Europes answer” to US social media without a second thought about how ridiculous that statement is. Let them build. Spend your energy on something more productive (improving fedi) instead. Press hype will die after couple of minutes of fame.
@0xtero I found out some really disturbing things about this initiative and I don't want to stay silent. I may write a blog post about it, collecting and sharing the evidence... so that if people appreciate what I write, they could point others to it (people looking at the initiative with interest or journalists for example).
And hey I grabbed a domain name that is PERFECT as a short URL / to redirect to my article. Sometimes staying silent on these things is dangerous
