It turns out that Meta’s Threads.net platform is building a groups feature that they curiously named Loops, and we feel the need to polish the app and Loops platform further so we can maintain the communities expectations.

Ugh. Already being bad neighbors in the fediverse.

loops.video

Wow, first I’ve heard of it! Super excited.

This was a longstanding fediverse complaint, which was quite remarkable to me. It was described as a “missing” feature even though you never had this ability anywhere else let alone the fediverse.

If you get a new email address, it doesn’t bring your contacts or your history of emails with you. If you make a new twitter account, same thing. And of course, don’t even think about trying to port, say, your facebook stuff into a youtube account. But if the fediverse can’t, then it’s a dealbreaker.

If you truly want to channel the limitless depths of human creativity, give a Comment Section Skeptic ™ every fediverse feature they say they want. Then wait and watch as that creativity goes into action, as [insert new feature] is now the new dealbreaker. It is and always will be an endless game of whack a mole.

This feels like a basic misunderstanding of how the fediverse works. There are instances that embody your preferences and you can sign up for them.

One of the most important reasons I believe it is so useful to have a federverse that allows defederating is because ever since 2014 and 2015, and growing since then, there’s been a phenomenon of rabid online trolling and hyperpoliticization that’s had tendency to take over and destroy whatever pre-existing culture and norms existed, and the people doing it have leveraged bad faith free speech arguments to attempt to expose more platforms to their behavior, often making the same copy paste echo chamber argument that you are right now. I found the people making this argument to be operating from really shallow understandings of what intellectual diversity really means, because these people tend to ignore important components such as the paradox of tolerance, they tend not to believe that trolling or harassment campaigns are real, they tend not to be able to distinguish between “echo chamber” and the high level of discussion that’s possible when you found a community based on a common interest or shared set on principles, tend not to understand that you’re actually reducing the diversity of ideas by destroying each communities and turning all communities into the same thing, and tend to think of the full range of human ideas is represented in the unfortunately narrow framing of left-right spectrum which is most pertinent in American politics.

And for the fediverse, it calls the bluff perfectly, because for people who are concerned about echo chambers or “exposure to ideas” (yeah, which ones??), such people are able to join an instance that gives them the thing they say they want. But what they really tend to want is unmoderated unfiltered exposure to a captive audience, and the tangled contradictory mishmash of arguments about free speech and being open to ideas are just a means to that end. And so, they tend to be completely empty-handed when you ask them to explain why they feel specific instances need to federate or de-federate, you just get vague nothingburger speeches.

To be clear I don’t think that everyone making the argument thinks that way, I think some people are unwittingly doing the work of bad actors without meaning to. It’s just that I’ve seen this argument made over and over, and I feel like there’s some sort of boot camp we should all put ourselves through that involves understanding the history and some core ideas, because it could save everyone a lot of time.

Well they aren’t blocked at the fediverse level. They are blocked at the instance level which is the fediverse working as designed.

So fwiw, if you are looking for feedback here, I have ended up walking away from Lemmy in part because I think there’s a population of antagonistic users who effectively game the rules by being antagonistic up to the limits of what’s tolerated. My belief is that trolling reinvents itself every few years, and right now Lemmy is in a spot where it isn’t catching up how modern trolling works.

I think this is an excellent idea, a worthy project, and I applaud you for putting some real thinking into practical steps!

My federated X wishlist had social media, reddit-like thing, instagram-like thing, and a youtube-like thing. A federated IMDB alternative would be awesome.

Yeah, they get watered down and there’s a curation problem. I like stuff like Wirecutter where the idea is (a) that someone is curating for you and (b) you have some reason to believe they have good judgment.

I don’t think you necessarily have that reassurance when it comes to, say NPR’s best music list or best books list which I think is probably just a bland echo of what other places are already saying. But it at least helps to cover for blind spots, if you care about keeping up with the cultural conversations that are happening.

But what I really want is something that is opinionated, that has personality, like Fogus’s list of Best things And Stuff from 2021, which is what gave me the original idea.

Awesome!

Regardless of whether it’s wanted or not, I bet this will be regarded as the flagship instance, and choices made for who gets on the allow list will serve to set a precedent that others may follow in how they decide to federate.

I’ve always said I thought the Nutomic did a great job setting the tone for what was and wasn’t expected/allowed here, and I think it carries on the very excellent standard set by other activitypub projects like Mastodon and Funkwhale in terms of not being open to toxicity. I think the allow list can help with that as well in terms of setting a standard.