Recent searches
Search options
#fediverse hot take.
As valuable as (de-)federation is as a moderation or community building tool … it’s been disproportionately emphasised to the point of being a distraction.
Richer platforms better at building communities, forgoing big-social’s doom scrolling habits, nourishing richer formats and content, and providing better options to the user for curating their Internet diet.
These could have been a bigger obsession. And arguably a better one. Instead we have faux Twitter & Reddit?
1/
Instead of “new social”, the fediverse has focused on replacing big-social but with instance based moderation control.
The tension there is perhaps self evident in the simultaneous calls for more user growth along with (decried?) episodes of Fedi-drama and HOA culture.
But … big social style platforms + instance-driven-moderation = Fedi-drama.
More users only amplifies the dynamic, while the Fedi is unlikely to ever get to the size of big social.
So what are we doing and what for?
2/
The missing piece IMO is actually aiming for “new social”. Platforms that aren’t clones of big social and which are focused on community building rather than “feed building”.
That big social designs targeted engagement and rage-bait and addiction seem to have been forgotten. Enabling instance moderation seems like a poor Band-Aid. To then advocate user growth is perhaps blind/foolish.
It’s the platforms and how they frame and foster human connections! Where’s the obsession over that?!
3/
Another way of putting this might be with the “no algorithms” narrative. The fediverse does not have algorithms. And that’s mostly correct but also technically not but also who cares.
Well …
“what if I told you the whole platform is an algorithm”?!
Just as capable of manipulating your engagement and Internet diet as anything else?
Its insistence on feeds, following people, boosts and likes, char limits and plain text, opt-out federation, on not having groups or local only posts etc.
4/4