A response to Evan Prodromou’s “Big Fedi, Small Fedi”
These pieces are deeply authoritarian. Trying to take personal responsibility for command control of everyone’s words and thoughts and actions must be taxing, especially when there isn’t actually any mechanism for implementing such control.
Adolf Hitler himself could rise from the dead and start up a new instance running a trans furry port of mastodon or lemmy and there isn’t much to do but block and move on. That’s because it’s libre software. If you want somewhere you can lobby and totally control, you don’t want a decentralized libre platform like the fediverse, you want big tech.
Me: “fedi would be better with fewer Nazis and fascists”
sj_zero: “these pieces are deeply authoritarian”
It’s always nice when authoritarians can paint whoever they disagree with as the great Satan to justify their authoritarianism. It only happens every single time.
And yet if the Fediverse were to take off, you would not be able to blink twice before it’s all commercialized and controlled.
Unfortunately, it’s the paradox of liberty that to be free you need to also give freedom to people you don’t like who will do things you don’t like.
In spite of that, libre is an ideal worth pursuing. Otherwise everyone might as well just go right back to big tech now.
In one of the comments in the original Big Fedi, Small Fedi
by Badri December 27, 2023 at 1:06 am
@evanprodromou this is interesting! I think I agree with many of the points on both the “Big Fedi” and “Small Fedi” sides. It would be interesting to list them as a sort of multiple-select quiz (maybe without the big/small fedi headings) and see which combinations of points people end up selecting.
What I really hope is that there’s some way for people from both clusters (and those stuck in between) to coexist. Can the Big Fedi people connect with everyone they want to, while the Small Fedi folk keep their comfortable distance and protect their safe spaces?
I think most of what Evan listed as Small Fedi aren’t really about the small, they’re about the sense of trust and the trust that we can defederate successfully if things go terribly wrong. I really don’t have any opinion about any of the others trying to join except the known shitty, evil companies.
I also agree with the bolded part. Do we have a way to take polls and mix up all that everyone wants? It would be interesting to see what is most important to most fediverse users.
It’s a good comment, thanks for sharing it here! On the bolded part, yes, it’s possible to do polls on Mastodon … it could be very interesting to do a series around these questions. But of course a lot depends on who’s doing the poll. Evan for example has blocked a lot of people – which is fine, there is nothing the matter with blocking people, but it skews the poll results. And a lot depends on how the poll questions are phrased. Still, it’s a good idea and I’ll think about whether there’s a sensible way to do it.
I agree that some of what Evan characterised as Small Fedi isn’t about small for small’s sake, it’s more about the view you describe – what L. Rhodes calls “networked communities”. Of course, the consequences of this result in slower growth than the Big Fedi view, so a smaller network in the short-to-medium term, so from his perspective I can see why I chose this framing.
And from the comment:
Can the Big Fedi people connect with everyone they want to, while the Small Fedi folk keep their comfortable distance and protect their safe spaces?
Yes, I think a schism’s likely to happen – “Meta’s fediverse”, instances that federate with Threads, will be more attractive to Big Fedi people, and the “free fediverses” that don’t federate with Threads (or other surveillance capitialism companies) will be more attractive to people who don’t buy into the bigger is better view.
I agree that some of what Evan characterised as Small Fedi isn’t about small for small’s sake, it’s more about the view you describe – what L. Rhodes calls “networked communities”. Of course, the consequences of this result in slower growth than the Big Fedi view, so a smaller network in the short-to-medium term, so from his perspective I can see why I chose this framing.
I can see why he chose it, but I still don’t agree with it. It’s not a forgone conclusion that it will end up small if someone doesn’t federate with threads. It’s still growing slower, but it could hit huge now that all of the kinks are getting worked out. One more x fuck up and tweak to mastodon that makes it more user friendly, it could take off. I think people are okay with it taking off, just on fediverse terms, not evil company terms.
Yep, totally agree!
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