The 'Fediverse' isn't the solution you think it is

Before you comment, yes I know about GNU Social and other Fediverse software made before Mastodon. I mention Mastodon as the beginning of the Fediverse because of its prominence. It essentially put the Fediverse "on the map".

In today's video, Denshi explains his stance on the fediverse as a meaningful solution to the issues of privacy and freedom on the modern web. Unsurprisingly, he is not super fond of it.

Source for social media study:

[TheCzele]

Are You really telling me that if I post something to the Internet I might not be able to fully remove it?

[minecrafter]

well, anything you put on the internet should be considered to stay there forever. Signal resisted implementing deleting messages because of this, you may "delete" the thing, but it is likely cloned on someone's machine, either some company server or someone who mirrored all your data.

All in all, before you post something, think a bit. Do you want that to come to you 10 years from now?

[CANCAN-qfrh]

I do agree everyone should run their own site. BUT the fediverse doesn’t have ads everywhere nor do they push sponsored content onto me. So far, I’ve felt more like producing and posting rather than scroll and consume. It just seems more organic. That’s just me.

[Jordan-hzwr]

The Fediverse never claims to be privacy centric. Even without federated services the posts you make on centralized platforms are still immortalized. You’re arguing a non sequitur. You’re also arguing that exercising your freedom to disassociate is somehow wrong. The fediverse allows me to not see posts from servers that allow nazis. The point is that the nazis can’t be “kicked off” the fediverse but I can tune them out if I want. You seem to be most upset that people have the ability to disassociate with shitty people and shitty ideas.

[MrJosch]

Wow ok I have to say something here. Fist let's start with why I came to this video. I'm looking into the whole fediverse stuff so I don't have an account on any instance nor do I host my own.
So what problems do I have with your video:
1. Privacy. What you are describing is not privacy. The important part is your personal information and tracking of those. And that's what fediverse fixes, if you decide to host your own instance or you have one you are trusting. Besides that, every post you make should be considered to be in the internet forever.
2. Freedom. That's why there is always the option to host your own instance. If you are blocked on let's say youtube that's it for you. In the fediverse you can host your own instance and still communicate with people.
3. Social Media in general. Yeah obviously fediverse doesn't fix the flaws of social media in general. That was never the goal though?! As with every new medium humans have to get used to it, to use it responsibly. A new type of social media never is gonna fix that.

[thefrankring]

You should ALWAYS be careful about what you post on the internet. Centralized or not.
Even if you delete any content, it most likely stays hidden on the internet somewhere.

[KayloGL]

Questions for the social media study:
1. Why only 143 undergraduates? That sounds like a very low number.
2. Was it kind of obvious already that going outside and talking to people is emotionally better than using social media with internet trolls across the web and why would there be a need for a 5 year old study in order to explain that fact?
3. Why didn't they use Twitter, Reddit, or Discord as one of the platforms? They seem to avoid the more obviously toxic ones.

[ButNoSimpler-Parking]

Ah, If I have my own website with an RSS feed, and my followers use an RSS reader that caches the blog post, then there is still a copy of my blog post, out on the internet, in the RSS readers of maybe a dozen users. More importantly, some RSS aggregator could have cached my blog post, and then it is REALLY locked into the Forever Box. Plus, building my own website doesn't allow me to control who can see it. Literally everyone on the internet can scrape a complete copy of my website.

[TotemSP]

Yeah, can we all remember that RSS is still awesome?

[ambi_cc]

I don’t really think most of these criticisms are valid; especially about data potentially never being scraped from every part of the internet and the idea that we shouldn’t change the internet cause it’s bad for mental health in the first place, both of these are kind of already expected and understood generally to happen on the internet(centralized or not) and imo guaranteeing that someone who posts something doesn’t have the power to rid the entire internet of that content is the exact point of decentralization so that people or groups who want to limit access for nefarious purposes can’t do so even if it also means that your cringe posts from a decade ago will still be public. On top of this we already deal with malicious actors in terms of content providers, so having them in the decentralized hosting network is to be expected, it’s just that you have a laundry list of other sources to avoid relying on these known malicious actors (which you can’t do in the current system where some content is locked to or most easily accessed at a shitty provider)

[tkenben]

About not being able to delete things. It seems reasonable to argue that once you opt into participating on the internet, you kind of relinquish control of anything that happens to what you say after that. I'm actually surprised that people believe that anything they say on a public infrastructure is actually private. That's kind of like thinking that you going to the local pub naked and then afterward saying I should be able to delete everybody's memory of that. This idea must have come about after Snowden, because having seen the birth of the world wide web and grown up alongside it, it never once occurred to me that anything I did on the internet was actually anonymous or private. That's a recent and silly idea. In any case, unless you are really public and/or someone is really determined to keep what you say alive, good luck searching through the internet past to find stuff that *might* be still around on the "forever box". Hell, people still have trouble finding popular stuff on the way back machine. Finding something specific that someone said on the morass that is the fediverse would be monumentally impossible. In fact, the biggest drawback about the fediverse is the very fact you can't discover or search for anything. You can't "google" fediverse content.

[cupofdirtfordinner]

i still do not know what the fediverse is, thank you!

[applecastaway]

To summarise, the problem is internet socialising not which app was used to socialise

[cc.jsullivan]

I'm glad there's at least a few younger people promoting self-published websites. Thanks for the vid Denshi

[UCjNrKLyRJI-abFAqiNoQ]

this arguments are really poor, I was hoping something more solid

[cartanfan-youtube]

I agree that instead of social media we should be pushing people to develop personal sites and learning from it, but your criticism of the fediverse felt really weak and came across as if youve never actually used it (regardless of if you actually have!). It would be trivial to program a bot to crawl the entire fediverse and log all sorts of information. Not to mention the information you could collect on your users if your an instance host! And like you said, deletions can be fragmented between server to server. These are problems with fedi that id like to see fixed, but they arent as damning as you make them out to be. I think most people would be content with, and most responsible people already acknowledge that what you post on the Internet is out there and outside of your control. The same could be said about personal websites, anyone can log your website in the wayback machine, take a screenshot, or even just ctrl+s to save it. Once again, thats not to say it should be like this! But its not enough to completely discredit the existence of the fediverse.

You also talk about defederation and censorship, which once again is a valid concern but not the damning end of fedi issue you make it out to be. Much like rss there isnt an algorithm that dictates egat you see. Its just what you follow and what the people you follow boost (you can even turn off boosts if you dont want to see them!). As well, there are instances that are extremely notorious for defederating any and everyone (cough cough .art), and it can suck if you want to interact with them but cant! This is honestly a solved issue though. Id argue setting up and maintaining your own personal instance is a step above hosting a personal website in terms of complexity. You'll have to know how to setup a database, pull stuff from git, as well as set up a reverse proxy on top of what youve learned setting up a website. Most instances will give you clear instructions, though it can be more difficult if you want to run something niche. But the payoff is huge! Allowing you to personally block (or not block) whoever you choose. Hosting an instance can also complement your personal site nicely!

Personally i dont think its as black or white as just use rss, or just host your own personal website, or that fedi is somehow inherently flawed. The nice thing about it is you have the choice to mix and match whichever tools you want. your not forced to use it if its not something you vibe with.

[synth]

Wow, you completely missed the point on all your arguments

[Bob_Games]

Stopping kids from saying first, but also being first💀

[backhdlp]

I don't know many people on the fediverse that don't have their own website and blog

[playermat]

Question - Does one server have that much power to mess up the whole system? (Like the privacy bit)
I get the impression that this can be mitigated/prevented with certain limitations on the servers.