@interstellar is being developed for Android, and Lunar is working on Kbin support for iOS. Still a good ways to go tmk, but we’re getting there!
some guy sharing his thoughts
pretty cool places that I moderate:
@interstellar is being developed for Android, and Lunar is working on Kbin support for iOS. Still a good ways to go tmk, but we’re getting there!
If I’m not free to join the Fediverse from the server of my choice, whether that’s mastodon.social or threads.net, is the Fediverse truly free?
Joining the fediverse is just a matter of using a platform that implements ActivityPub (the protocol that lets servers communicate with each other. If Threads implements ActivityPub, it’s part of the fediverse, and the people on Threads can interact without any instance that chooses to federate.
However, instances don’t have to federate with Threads. That’s part of the freedom of the fediverse. If an instance admin decides that they don’t want to deal with an influx of hate, don’t want most of the content their uses see to be from Meta, or just don’t want to federate with a for-profit company that has an awful track record, they should be able to defederate. If a user of that instance really wants to see Threads content, they should be able to move to an instance that lets them, but defederation doesn’t make the fediverse or ActivityPub less free.
Let me try to explain a bit better.
Let’s take an instance called Instance A. Instance A is currently on the fediverse, which we’ll say is pretty evenly distributed. No instance has a large enough portion of users whereby others would have problems with activity loss if they defederated, which is good. If any instance starts doing things that Instance A doesn’t agree with, they can defederate, and less activity won’t be much of a concern with defederating from that single instance.
But now, let’s take Instance B. Instance B is planning to implement ActivityPub and join the fediverse, and when it does so, it will control 80% of the activity. In other words, it has as much activity as the rest of the fediverse combined.
However, Instance B isn’t particularly trustworthy. They don’t value the open web like the rest of the fediverse does, their moderation is extremely poor, and they haven’t cared for general well being in the past if it meant raising profits.
Here, Instance A and instances like it have two options: defederate immediately, or wait and see.
However, let’s say Instance B starts having moderation issues (e.g., widespread hate speech and more-than-usual spam) as everyone reasonably predicted. Instance A now wants to defederate.
In other words, if people on Instance A come to rely on Instance B for the activity they’re used to, way more people will join the camp of “I’m leaving if you defederate with Instance B” then if Instance A just defederated from the get-go.
Let’s take another example. Instance B wants to try to grab a bunch of users, so after some time, they stop federating at all.
In short, defederating immediately has much smaller consequences than trying to defederate when whoever you want to defederate from controls most of the activity that your users see.
That’s because I’m not fully sure on how people should act in respect to this Threads situation (which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place). In the recent past, I was all “defederate defederate defederate defederate,” but now considering that multiple large platforms (like Flipboard) will be joining in, it’s less likely that one company will control a majority of activity. Of course, you don’t need a majority for there to be a problem — just a large enough portion for other instances to have issues defederating due to the amount of content they’d lose — but a mere large portion and not a supermajority may not be reason to defederate. Of course, there are other things to consider as well, and I’ll probably make yet another wall of text with my new thoughts on how instances should handle this in the near future. For now, this thread is for me to share the ideals that I think people on the fediverse should prioritize and for others to discuss what they think on the matter.
Of course, these platforms have only federated a handful of accounts, so the “chaos” right now is in the reaction and discourse. However, I don’t think it’s unjustified.
I’ve outlined my main issues with Threads federation here, and while I’m not as sold on preemptive defederation as I was when I made the post, I still find it reasonable to be concerned about about for-profit companies controlling a vast majority of the content, especially when (A) the users making that content may be unaware that they’re on the fediverse to begin with and (B) companies like Meta have a terrible track record and would have incentive to grab a ton of users by defederating if they’re able (though with so many other parties joining in, whether they’ll be able to pull something off like that is becoming more questionable, hence me being less sure of the need to defederate).
Nah, just some teen making very inefficient use of his time
Well, looks like I’ll just stick to using Invidious.
Hmm, fair point. I can see how increased ball velocity and decreased reaction speed could make an injury more likely. Nevertheless, I still have these doubts:
Unless there really is some big safety concern, still seems absurd to ban people on these metrics and tell people that you’re protecting the other players by doing it. With the evidence I’m aware of, it still seems minimal to me, and we’ve seen BS reasoning for banning trans women in other women’s competitions (e.g., chess). While I can’t say with confidence that there’s no decent argument in support of a ban, I still don’t think safety is part of it.
Again, we’re talking about throwing “essentially rocks” at speeds that are insanely fast no matter who’s doing the throwing. When you’re talking hard objects being thrown at such high speeds towards people in protective gear, the difference in danger (even if that danger is significant) is going to be minimal. If women “are far more likely to be exhausted” at the end of a match, they’re more susceptible to really bad injuries from any cricket ball moving at such a high speed. A trans woman throwing the ball isn’t going to pose much more risk, definitely not enough for safety to be a factor in banning trans women from women’s cricket.
I think there’s definitely a discussion to be had in regards to what’s fair and how we approach fairness and sports in a world that’s accepting of trans people. However, the moment you go out and pretend that there’s some safety risk posed by trans women in sports, you unjustifiably paint them as threats to cis women, and that’s completely unacceptable.
100%, but the hardness of a cricket ball doesn’t change with who’s using it. A really really hard ball moving really really fast is still a really really hard ball moving really really fast, so it’s not like there’s some significant difference in danger posed. And even if there was such a big danger posed by someone assigned-male-at-birth playing cricket, why would it still be perfectly fine for men’s cricket?
Safety of the players? How do trans women playing cricket endanger cis women?
They’ve been mostly resolved in my experience. Kbin.social has been working great.