I’ve got an interest in the decentralized protocols and have written about them before, so I’ve got a bit of a disorganized treasure trove of articles, opinions, and blog posts I’ve gone through at some point. As a side note, shutout to the single file plugin for Gecko & Chromium based browsers, it’s a great way to grab an archive of anything you might want to reference later.

I went through my list of archives plus a few things that came to mind that I’ve read/watched, below are things that (at least in part) take a more critical look at Activity Pub as a protocol or community.

Blog Posts & Articles:

• How Decentralized is Bluesky really? - A post by Christina Webber who goes over pitfalls of both AT and Activity Pub
• ActivityPub - one protocol to rule them all? and ActivityPub - Final thoughts, one year later. - two posts by Dennis Schubert, the Diaspora dev, on why Activity Pub was not integrated.
• Mastodon is fun and easy, except for when it isn’t
• Mastodon is dead in the water
• Community is not enough - A post about funding issues
• Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! - Mastodon starts DDoSing servers if your link goes viral
• Microblogging Protocols Compared v2 - My own post comparing the big three protocols. Be warned, it was supposed to be a smaller updated & corrected version of an older post, but it ballooned in size.
• Mastodon isn’t decentralized and won’t be the next big thing
• Something About The SWF Makes Me Feel Icky - The Social Web Foundation has taken on some big corporate donors and it’s leader has a very protectionist/anti-other-protocols position.
• Fringe Mastodev - A collection of thoughts regarding what Mastodon developed into
• Nostr is Identity for the Internet - A post discussing the values of Nostr’s identities (and decentralized identities in general) as beneficial over other alternatives (such as Activity Pub’s server controlled identities)
• Scaling Mastodon is Impossible
• Twitter rival Mastodon rife with child-abuse material, study finds
• Linux Elitism…Again - Guy is nearly bullied off the fediverse for saying it should be tolerant of Windows users
• Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didn’t quite pan out

Lemmy Threads:

• What made everyone move to Bluesky or Threads instead of Mastodon?
• Why is Mastodon struggling to survive?
• Why are people preferring BlueSky over Mastodon?
• Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem
• Do you think the mostly limited range of political views is a strength or a weakness of Lemmy? - Post discussing Lemmy’s echo chambery-ness
• Off-topic flamewar about US domestic politics - There were a bunch of low effort political bots discovered on Lemmy (key word: discovered; meaning high effort bots are probably flying under the radar). I was unable to find the original thread, it may have been nuked but most likely I just couldn’t find it.

Vids, Social Media Posts, & Misc:

• Cristina Webber thinks Activity Pub as it is now may collapse
• Technology Connections left Mastodon - the comments are particularly not nice to Activity Pub
• Child Safety on Federated Social - A study on child abuse materials permeating the fediverse
• Chris Titus leaves Mastodon for BlueSky
• Activity Pub doesn’t handle usernames or migrations well

Regarding UI/UX, that’s definitely a major issue. UI will improve, but the nature of instances/federation will always be stumbling block. The only thing I can think of is recommending people join lemmy.world (because lemm.ee doesn’t block hexbear/lemmygrad by default, lemmy.cafe could also be an option if it gets bigger more/mature). There is also a need for on-boarding and something akin to starter packs with active communities). Lemmy community search return a community with most subs, but that’s not always the one that’s most active.

The presence of tankies is a major turn off for me personally. Even if you block hexbear/lemmygrad, you still get ML users and even lemmy.world users who spout things like “the USSR’s invasion of Europe in collaboration with nazi Germany was a good thing!” Major instances really need to adopt a “no tankie” rule and some of the active software communities need to migrate off ML.

Many admins are unprofessional. I personally got into a debate with a (US-based?) admin of major instance that started with him calling posters in that thread “shit eating lemmings who don’t understand anything” for being skeptical of the US judicial system. I am not from the US, but I have lived there. I made a snarky remark (while clearly stating that I am from a different country) referencing some of my own experiences living in the US. We got into a debate, I did not find his arguments convincing. We were going in circles I asked him what exactly does he want me to admit or say. He replied that I need that “I am stupid, I am wrong and that he is right”. I told him to fuck off and that he is a shit eating lemming. This not how an admin should act (even if he thinks I am wrong/ignorant).

I’ve also seen examples of admins of major instances being unprofessional and tolerating and encouraging mods acting in a very biased manner.

I can see how the capitalism stuff can be off-putting for many people. Personally I don’t see it that often (more than on reddit of course). I would say there are certain advantages to this tendency as well. I moderate a technology hardware community. I really like how people appreciate technology, but still take a critical look at all tech companies. Even the Apple community on lemmy is level-headed. Reddit is rife with corporate shills doing volunteer PR work. Any criticism of Apple (even legitimate like saying they cannot be trusted because they censored content critical of China and AI on Apple+) gets instant downvotes (not even on the Apple subs).

The issue that I see is that people don’t distinguish between “big C Capitalism” - American-style PR-focused oligarchy, corruption and criminality and “small c capitalism” - commerce, trade, competition. “Small c capitalism” has existed for thousands of years and will continue to exist after american-style corruption runs its course.

All people need to do is replace the word “capitalism” with “oligarchy”; I think this would go a long way to making their discourse more acceptable to least some percentage of the wider community of social media users (not all, or even most). Easier said than done of course.

I do agree there are massive problems with the Threadiverse/Fediverse. Some of them, like the lack of professionalism, software immaturity, lack of growth/on-boarding strategy can only be addressed with a serious budget. Others (like the abrasive, counterproductive, anti-capitalist sentiment) are arguably out of scope for a mere social network/forum.

That being said, what other alternatives are there? Threads/Zuckerberg is no go. He is downright evil; just another tech oligarch. I wish BlueSky all the best, but I do think they will eventually speedrun into a Twitter/X. I hope I am wrong. So even with all of the Fediverse’s problems, what is a viable next step if you don’t want to deal with FB/Reddit/Twitter and are skeptical about the long-term viability of BlueSky as a user-focused platform?

Hello,

I mostly had a look at the Lemmy posts, seems like most of them are 10 months - 1 year old. Lemmy has evolved a lot since then, user-level instance muting was a big change for instance.

The most active communities being on other instances than .ml is also a notable change.

imho (50+ years old dude that is not much of a geek and understand not much either), the main issue and one that is shared by most if not all social media but is more annoying on Lemmy, is the fact that by default a new or a potential user is supposed to be reading the full flow of content. And then we’re surprised most run away screaming in disgust?

It’s a bit like entering a restaurant and being expected by the owner to take a bite or two of every single plate on the menu, and dessert, before being asked what it is we wanted to order.

Be it Reddit, or Twitter, or Lemmy if the default content is of extremely low value and often extremely low effort, qnd when it’s not it’s still content most people just won’t be interested in. So, why force it under everyone’s eyes?

The default/new user access to content could have been made opt-in, instead of op-out. Instantly muting most of the noise, trash, and low value content.

Imagine the home page empty of any content by default, save a selection of the most ‘popular’ tags or community names, say with a description, that the user is still expected to select from before the timeline starts showing them any related content, and then an option to search for more (more specific) communities.

I know a few people my age that have tried Lemmy but could not stand being asked to swallow the constant flow of politics, or memes, or anger, or whatever. Those are legit content to anyone interested in them, just having them the default experience for everybody may not the best idea?

Once again, it’s the same on reddit. But reddit had two advantages for people like me: we already had an account and we knew how it worked, so it was obvious how to escape the numerous type of content we did not want to see. It’s much less obvious on Lemmy, and even less so if one has not yet created an account… which is the most likely.

Would be nice if you could sort these by date.

Ain’t this the truth. Great work pulling the actual conversations on this.

Predicably if you say this in comments you are then sent 10 messages calling you a bootlicking schil asking you why you are even here.

Bluesky and threads understood to get people of interest with something to say rather than focus on the disenfranchised angry folks that came here. This place basically is an rss feed for doom scrollers.

Should I cross post this to !fediverse@lemmy.world?

Here’s one: https://lemmy.world/post/19004972