Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future | TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
external-link
Consumers are hungry for a new way of social networking, where trust and safety are paramount and power isn't centralized with a Big Tech CEO in charge...

"the company looked at the history of social media over the past decade and didn’t like what it saw… existing companies that are only model motivated by profit and just insane user growth, and are willing to tolerate and amplify really toxic content because it looks like engagement… "

Hirad
link
fedilink
English
-1610M

It’s always amusing when someone say fediverse is good for the users, when fediverse gives zero right to the users. Pretty much every service in it is made with giving 100% of control to the admin. Admin can suspend and take down anything and any account without notice or explanation and user has no way of asking for an appeal. I mean yes. Fediverse is nice. I even run my own mastodon and Pixelfed instances. But please, let’s not fool ourselves. About Mozilla, they’re just being what they’ve been in recent years. Hypocrites. The company that claims to care about privacy, but implement privacy invasive settings and services (pocket) by default. And now they just want to create a platform focused on censorship. Thats why they’re interested in fediverse.

unalivejoy
link
fedilink
English
710M

Forum moderator? Mastodon admin? Same thing really.

Shifting the power from a CEO to an instance admin is a massive improvement.

One has autocratic control over the entire site, potentially hundreds of millions of users, investors breathing down their neck, server infrastructure, and other systemic pressures; meanwhile, a fediverse instance admin has autocratic control over nothing but their own instance, a few thousand users at most, with the only money and hardware involved being their own.

The fediverse is incredibly more horizontal and decentralized than any corporate social media, the improvement is massive. And i’m a believer that vertical structures and concentrations of power are at the root of a lot of problems in society, so this is gravy to me.

But yes, it’s worth remembering that it’s not completely decentralized, and admins still have absolute power over their instance. My Mastodon instance admin doesn’t want us to use the name GIMP to refer to the open source image manipulator; they say “gimp” is a slur aimed at disabled people, which i’ve never heard before in my life.

@Spore@lemmy.ml
link
fedilink
English
2
edit-2
10M

Difference is that YOU CAN BE THE ADMIN whenever you want while still being able to talk to others. Over.

@jbk@discuss.tchncs.de
link
fedilink
English
610M

Basic telemetry that users can easily opt out of after install is privacy-invasive to you?

qaz
link
fedilink
English
9
edit-2
10M

You can pick your own instance and switch later. It thus allows you to choose an admin/moderation team, something that’s impossible with traditional social media.

Midnitte
link
fedilink
210M

Not to mention you can self host and be your own admin.

Create a post

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

  • 1 user online
  • 279 users / day
  • 589 users / week
  • 1.34K users / month
  • 4.55K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.5K Posts
  • 70K Comments
  • Modlog