I still think it ought to be possible to create something like a public, open-access social media site, just for the purposes of keeping up with people & tracking unfolding events.
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I very much like the concept and principal, we would need some form of guardrails. Who sets the guard rails? How are they enforced? I repeat I like the concept very much in principle.
Something like this should occur across industries. When innovative products become normal, necessary parts of every day life, no good comes from allowing people to sap the profits of their creations indefinitely. The tech bro to oligarch transition is only a recent example of this problem.
Yeah, something that supports ActivityPub (like, as you say, Mastodon) would allow the government - or anyone else - to set up a totally sovereign, completely public and entirely self-hosted service. The EU has started down that path, I believe.
Does Mastodon rely on people (or orgs) donating their server capacity? Is that sustainable if say the same amount of traffic as FB had to go through those servers free of charge? Who would build the new server farms? Who decides on what content is allowable? Not trying to be combative, just curious.
Many servers do rely on donations, like the one I use, but the answer to your questions are basically "whatever the server owner wants". They could charge a subscription fee to join. They could defederate from any users/servers with "bad" content.
You could join a server with collective ownership and share in these costs and decision making, or you can join someone else's server whose judgment you trust, or make your own. No single server will ever be at the scale of FB. You don't have to build your own hardware, cloud hosting exists.
Exactly. There's no universal correct scale. Like all good federated systems (including email) the instance can be as big/small, private/public, censored/permissive as the owner sees fit and, if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere or spin up your own without detriment.
I think we should break the cable Monopolies wide open by setting up public WiFi. Run it through the US Postal Service, which is already local everywhere, let people know that they are being monitored, and moderated while on the PubAccNet, but let it be free or as close to free as possible.
Mastodon and Lemmy are bouncing and are fully part of the Fediverse. I sincerely hope BlueSky ends up supporting full federation in time like they both do.
Sheesh. You sound like Ben Franklin…public libraries, public fire departments, public roads, public schools… public speech unfettered by corporations? What a concept.
HE and his cronies will seek revenge. Every person or organization hit by dubious accusations, inquiries, etc, from the Government should have a safe place to report it. Abusers' power depends on the silence of the victims. Remember how McCabe and Comey were audited by the IRS .
What about following RSS feeds of people/projects/communities? What aspect doesn't translate? If the ability to reply were integrated, could a standard feed reader that updates regularly be a proxy to the single source that social media ostensibly provides?
SARCASM: Yes - have an organization like the DOJ oversee it so their will be no abuse of the rules (laws) and all contributors would be equal. What could possibly go wrong?
They can't even do that with existing, centralised social networks, but with a presence on the Fediverse (aha) they'd have complete control of their own presence without relying on, let's say, a billionaire foreign fascist oligarch.
It would be nice but the reality is that public and open access means an open-cesspool full of trolls, orcs, bots, cybercriminals and other unwanteds. Have you ever visited any of the "chans"?
It's "public" in that it's open to everyone, but not publicly owned. It's still dependent on some unsavory investors that will want a return sooner or later
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https://www.thecrimson.com/column/a-time-for-new-ideas/article/2020/3/18/gilbert-myth-of-taxpayer-money/