"You cannot complain about Facebook collecting your life’s history, while at the same time complaining that diaspora* cannot find your former classmates. You cannot complain about WhatsApp collecting your address book, while at the same time stating you do not use eMail because exchanging addresses is too cumbersome. You either get a system that knows who you are or a system that does not."
https://overengineer.dev/blog/2020/01/01/2010s-alternative-social-media.html
#privacy #DataFarming #SurveillanceCapitalism
The 2010s and alternative Social Media: A decade full of work, hope, and disappointment - Dennis Schubert
Looking back at the decade of 2010 and developments in the internet, in Social Media, and inside alternative Social Media projects.overengineer.dev
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •"I do not get the impression that the majority of users who complain about “bad privacy practices” have understood that point yet."
Dennis Schubert
https://overengineer.dev/blog/2020/01/01/2010s-alternative-social-media.html
I disagree with Dennis on my many things, including the false dichotomies in the paragraph I quoted in the previous post. But I do agree that given the choice between software that respects their human rights and software with maximum convenience, a lot of people who don't really understand digital tech pick the latter.
The 2010s and alternative Social Media: A decade full of work, hope, and disappointment - Dennis Schubert
overengineer.devStrypey
in reply to Strypey • • •"I hope that we, as in “the entire internet”, eventually find our ways back into a place where we can argue with rational arguments instead of disliking someone’s opinion just because you so happen to dislike the person arguing."
Dennis Schubert
https://overengineer.dev/blog/2020/01/01/2010s-alternative-social-media.html
I very much agree with this sentiment. But I reject Dennis' assertion that the critical responses to his carping about ActivityPub were motivated by dislike for him personally, or for Diaspora as a project.
(1/?)
The 2010s and alternative Social Media: A decade full of work, hope, and disappointment - Dennis Schubert
overengineer.devStrypey
in reply to Strypey • • •People disagree with him because he misses the point with pretty much everything he says about ActivityPub, and the projects using it to be compatible with each other. Because he claims to care what non-geeks want from alternative social networks, but ignores the one thing they want most of all; more people to talk to. Because he offers no constructive alternatives to AP. Nor does Diaspora illustrate any better way forward, with its barely documented fork of the obsolete OStatus protocol.
(2/?)
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •So for all those reasons, It's hard to read Dennis' takes on ActivityPub as anything other than NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. Methinks the developer doth protest too much.
(3/3)
hamish campbell
in reply to Strypey • • •this is the #closedweb Vs #openweb debate, that has no debate as they talk past each other.
An example of the #geekproblem
Strypey
in reply to hamish campbell • • •@hamishcampbell
> this is the closedweb Vs openweb debate
How so?
Incident Creator ❎
in reply to Strypey • • •Strypey
in reply to Incident Creator ❎ • • •> With *Diaspora I ended up with a system that didn't work
Ae, for all Dennis's carping about AP and it's implementation, the UX of Diaspora is worse than pretty much all of them, and always was. It's devs do exactly what Dennis projects onto AP devs; designing a system that works for its devs and their fans, regardless of how useless it is to the general public. See my rant following that post.
pavi
in reply to Incident Creator ❎ • • •I guess #Diaspora as the first famous project of #Fediverse has reached end of life. 😒
Strypey
in reply to pavi • • •@pavi
> I guess Diaspora as the first famous project of Fediverse has reached end of life
That was a given once they refused to add AP, even after SocialHome demonstrated it was trivial for a package federated using Diaspora protocol to support both. Even more so when they dropped the XMPP chat support, which almost made Diaspora capable of becoming the FB giant-killer it originally set out to be.
@vik
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •@pavi
FWIW dropping XMPP chat support is a classic example of Diaspora ignoring what people want from a social media UX, while claiming to care about it more than the devs of AP apps :/
@vik
maegul
in reply to pavi • • •@pavi @vik @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
On the other hand, I followed this thread back to Dennis Schubert's *diaspora account (https://pod.geraspora.de/u/denschub) which is full of a bunch of ActivityPub hate ... and I'm kinda here for some fediverse critique.
On their lemmy/kbin <-> Mastodon interop issues, they're on point: https://pod.geraspora.de/people/4ce5b01a9e3a1b18d700000a
Strypey
in reply to maegul • • •@maegul
> I'm kinda here for some fediverse critique
I'll all for critique that's constructive and useful. That gives credit where credit is due, and at least sketches out potential approaches to solutions, rather than only banging on about problems. I've never yet seen Dennis do either of these things in his posts about AP.
@pavi @vik
Strypey
Unknown parent • • •@volkris
> help break some of those dichotomies
I see I'm not the only one spotting Dennis' false binaries. I mentioned this in a follow-up post.
> letting a platform have a hashed* version of an address book
... is something @dansup is proposing to implement in PixelFed.