In the end I don’t think internet users in rich powerful countries are the users most likely to benefit and invest their time into in the fediverse. They might be the ones with the most free time, money and privilege around computers which makes being on the leading edge of niche technologies far easier, but I don’t think using the fediverse vs commercial social media is thattt crucial of a difference for most (add a million qualifiers here except if you are black, queer, trans etc… I am talking in relative terms here) livimg inside the borders of colonial powers like the US, France, Germany etc…
Speaking as a hetero white dude who grew up with a decent amount of privilege the fediverse isn’t for the countless versions of me living within the borders of colonial powers…
It might have been programmers living within the borders of colonial powers that did most of the labor to create the fediverse, and most of the early users might have come from within colonial powers but I think it is important to recognize that the gift that the fediverse represents to the world is the capacity to empower people living outside the borders of colonial powers to own and run their own social networks instead of having some random Facebook employee who doesn’t have the time or basic knowledge of a country to make major decisions about what news accounts to moderate as dangerous spam and what to allow.
From a 30,000 foot view, speaking in broad terms and specific values and priorities, what do you think are the best strategies for flipping the script on the fediverse being mostly a tool used by people within the borders of colonial powers to one used by without and within?
I wonder about the capacities of fediverse software being useful as a compliment to HOT open street mapping type initiatives in the wake of disasters and just in general?
(Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing? I don’t really know)
its about mature infrastructure.
small, less mature countries have shit for internet resources.
Yes but I admire OP’s optimism in challenging the Fediverse to somehow deploy probably the largest and most complex human endeavor ever conceived to quickly achieve economic parity between non and former-colonial powers. That’s like the Principality of Sealand saying they’re putting a man on the moon. I love it.
small, less mature countries have shit for internet resources.
Isn’t US internet memetically bad (in particular the rural one) compared to a “shit country” like Chile, one of the ones the US got paid to sabotage with military dictatorships?
Our data centers and backbone internet/Tier 1 internet providers are basically the best in the world. The US Department of Energy maintains a network with 46 Tbit/s connections between its labs.
no
What do you mean in as precise of terms as you are capable of by the term “mature” in this context?
I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to my original question.
a mature infrastructure… redundant fiber optic/satellite connectivity to Tier 1 providers, power generation and reliability, etc.
basic shit
satellite connectivity LOL
In terms of internet infrastructure, I think the biggest opportunities here are local grassroots municipal/community government spearheaded build outs of high speed internet that completely bypass the concept of the western business and foreign aid structure that involves pulling in some for profit or “”“non-profit”“”" company with a complex set of incentives that mostly don’t align with the communities they are ostensibly there to help build infrastructure for.
I suspect how effective or ineffective globally this method of funding internet infrastructure development is will have a major impact on the long term future of the fediverse as a whole… since it isn’t within the borders of colonial powers where the inherent freedoms to the internet will be defended. It will ultimately be the “periphery” states and states far beyond the borders of colonial powers that shore up safe heavens for internet communities. Seeing where the US is going, I can only hope that my country will not block my access to those communities down the road…
I worked with and still know people living in Africa, let me tell you, if you think you have bad, expensive internet, go back a decade or two. The people I know work in tech companies or are otherwise somewhat affluent and even they struggle getting a stable internet connection to have a video call. An office building of an ex-coworker had a single 20Mbit line with multiple companies inside.
The people I know have to make due with 1-2Mbit home lines. The cell connections are better, but only marginally.A former employer even worked with the governments of some African countries and they couldn’t get a datacenter up and running. People were stealing the bricks and wires! The government was trying to move their infrastructure away from the previous colonizers and back home, but their own countrymen and women didn’t understand the importance.
Also, it’s not only internet infrastructure, but infrastructure in general is messed up there. South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa and has (had?) to content with rolling blackouts for years! Service operators struggle to keep their services running and have to move them abroad, which of course isn’t great.
The reasons are diverse, but a large factor by far is corruption. Physical colonization with non-native governments are a thing of the past. What’s trendy now is economic and legal colonization. Pay off as many people as possible to make laws (and also keep it that way) allowing all the riches (labor and resources) to be extracted from the country at laughable prices - which end up in the pockets of the wealthy and corrupt. Anybody who doesn’t fall in line is merc’ed.
Boeing killed off a whistleblower or two and the government exiled another? That’s cute! Politicians get shot while campaigning for a better future. The press isn’t free, and fair voting circumstances are a dream. Controlling parties can own the voting booths and reward voters in broad daylight for checking the “right” box.Anyway, while I do support the thought behind asking the question, IMO the only ways to expand the fediverse into ex-colonies are:
- making the fediverse so popular that it’s “so hot right now” and the trend swaps over
- paying a trusted party to set up a server there and pay for everything (including bribes) to have a stable connection, then tell as many locals as possible
- going there, doing it yourself, teaching about it, and handing over the reigns to somebody there with the same vision and passion
That’s of course if the circumstances are right for people there to even want it. Many foreigners have “gone down there” to “show 'em how it’s done” without understanding zilch about their culture, needs, wants, and modus operandi. Only to leave a “white elephant” behind.
Anyway, while I do support the thought behind asking the question, IMO the only ways to expand the fediverse into ex-colonies are:
making the fediverse so popular that it’s “so hot right now” and the trend swaps over paying a trusted party to set up a server there and pay for everything (including bribes) to have a stable connection, then tell as many locals as possible going there, doing it yourself, teaching about it, and handing over the reigns to somebody there with the same vision and passionThat’s of course if the circumstances are right for people there to even want it. Many foreigners have “gone down there” to “show 'em how it’s done” without understanding zilch about their culture, needs, wants, and modus operandi. Only to leave a “white elephant” behind.
There is no set of “only” that can be defined here. There are a million ways to contribute to a momentum in a positive direction here. The biggest is probably contributing labor for translation of documentation into languages that nobody has bothered to translate for yet right? Another is making sure the development community isn’t an opaque discord clique where asking naive questions gets you immediately harassed for not using discord’s awful search function and that somebody from a very different life experience, culture and language can hack together what your documentation means even if they can’t speak your language.
I think there are as many solutions to this power imbalance as there are dimensions of the power imbalance.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I was thinking in terms of “fediverse is popular in ex-colonies now!” level. But small steps first. Getting off of goddamn discord is definitely one.
Supporting other languages in the dev community is hard though. In my mind it kinda creates a split in the community, so one would need members that speak both languages well and glue the communities together.
Maybe a good step would be hosting per country instances and trying to promote them on proprietary social media.
Supporting other languages in the dev community is hard though. In my mind it kinda creates a split in the community, so one would need members that speak both languages well and glue the communities together.
I think this is a bulk of the hard work that most people in a similar position to me can do (though I only know english and a littttle bit of spanish, but I am referencing my perspective not my life skills). It is hard work, it takes constant people skills and people management. However, I also think the product of that work will undoubtedly have a force multiplication effect on the future growth of the fediverse to more diverse contexts, communities and languages.
As a thought experiment, lets dial this line of thought all the way up to 11. The fediverse would be perfect for hosting say a mastodon instance where all the communication is in a particular endangered language. The community could begin as a place to use an endangered language in conversation, and thus a great place to read and learn the language as well. It could also be a hub for information about classes and events related to the language as well. I believe there is already an Esperanto lemmy community on the fediverse, which is something along vaguely similar lines. Think about it, if somebody with the knowledge, time and skill to set up a lemmy or mastodon instance contacted a teacher conducting classes for an endangered language and offered to set up a community on their lemmy/mastodon server (or help set one up with the intention of handing over control eventually to people in that language community) wouldn’t the result be in many ways simpler from that language teachers perspective than trying to hack something together with commercial software? I think along many metrics it would.
Sure, a companies product for that would be slicker but what about custom character support for languages, what about autocorrect for that language built into the lemmy/mastodon server, what about specific features that are critical to the nature of the language, what about moderation policies that take into account the current and historical experience of the people who kept the language alive? Is a massive corporation run by a bunch of astronomically naive techbros mostly from california really going to care about meaningfully prioritizing implementing features for niche communities like this? …maybe sometimes??
I am disappointed people immediately attacked the details of my question, and focused mostly on the difficulties of constructing any kind of answer that meaningfully predicts the future of an incredibly complex intersection of variables… instead of taking my invitation to think broadly about the future of the fediverse and what the biggest, more direct actions that we can all take to help it grow and become more diverse.
I see where you’re coming from and I like the idea of using the fediverse for endangered languages! Providing a forum (lemmy/mbin), audio platform (funkwhale), video platform (peertube), and short form blogging (mastodon or on of the the others) + long form blogging (wordpress? pleroma? …), could help keep the languages alive through engagement.
Maybe somebody will the find the time for that. I unfortunately am working on other stuff rn.
I am disappointed people immediately attacked the details of my question, and focused mostly on the difficulties of constructing any kind of answer that meaningfully predicts the future of an incredibly complex intersection of variables… instead of taking my invitation to think broadly about the future of the fediverse and what the biggest, more direct actions that we can all take to help it grow and become more diverse.
IMO you should’ve led with the question, then provided context. The context was too long to read to get to the actual question.
IMO you should’ve led with the question, then provided context. The context was too long to read to get to the actual question.
Hey, thanks for the response and honestly that is a great point. I can’t be upset at people for wanting a sentence to end in a reasonable amount of time lol.
I think GDP in this case, but yeah, same idea. It makes sense that wealthy countries with good infrastructure are going to be high on the list.
Country (nominal GDP rank)
USA (1)
France (7)
Germany (4)
Japan (3)
Finland (47)
Canada (9)
Netherlands (18)
Russia (8)
UK (6)High-GDP countries that are notably missing are China (2, users are limited by the Great Firewall) and India (5, still building their infrastructure).
I wonder why Finland is so high on the list? Good for them, regardless.
Things you can do in finland: tango, fight with knives, computer stuff.
Nice mix of mental stimulation and high risk hijinks
China entered the chat
ok fair state probs won’t allow it idk?
India entered the chat
Hell fucking just Mexico City and the surrounding metro/megalopolis not even including the rest of Mexico entered the chat
just a casual 32mil
Sao Paulo is here representing the rest of Brazil but the rest of Brazil couldn’t fit into the chat
I think you’re overthinking this, and extrapolating limited data way too far.
For one, of course historically rich countries are going to be hosting more technology. Tech is expensive, and less developed countries are called that because they’re less developed, which includes electricity grids, internet, economic power, and so on.
Another issue is that just because a Mastodon server is hosted in a particular country, doesn’t mean only people in or from that country can make an account there. Sure, there are some servers that want to keep their communities specific to their local area, but the vast majority have no restrictions. Anyone from anywhere can sign up.
If you’re trying to figure out how to make it so historically poor countries have the most servers instead, you’re going to have to figure out how to fund and manage infrastructure expansion.
It feels like you’re coming at this with the assumption of “every country has the resources to spin up hundreds of social media servers, but they’re just not interested”, which is kind of a weird conclusion to come to after recognizing the historical impact of colonialism and the privilege differences it’s led to.
It feels like you’re coming at this with the assumption of “every country has the resources to spin up hundreds of social media servers, but they’re just not interested”, which is kind of a weird conclusion to come to after recognizing the historical impact of colonialism and the privilege differences it’s led to.
Do you realize how your rhetoric is boxing my opposing viewpoint into being an oversimplification? Nowhere in my language did I imply this was a simple question with a simple answer nor did I request a precise answer of any type.
I acknowledge all of your criticisms, this is a difficult question and I would welcome your input and knowledge if it is along a positive axis not a condescending one that attempts to frame my question as naive and thus fundamentally unserious (independent of whether the details are right or wrong).
The leaders of countries such as the PRC, Modi’s India, Putin’s Russia, ans Iran might not like the idea of decentralization.
Indeed, they might not like the internet itself.
looks out my windows the corporate fascist hellscape of the US
Ommm yeah I genuinely not saying this to detract from the seriousness of oppression within the countries you are speaking of but…. nobody with real power in the US likes the internet either?
Did you see what Elon Musk did to Twitter? It wasn’t less a business acquisition than a public execution of an entity that subverted the ability of state sponsored propaganda to be effective all over the world (including specifically… Saudi Arabia and the countries it has business interests in). I mean I don’t know if Elon knows this or not, I really don’t care. The people that gave him the money to pay for the execution on the other hand I am more convinced knew exactly what the general impact of their “investment” was going to be.
What I find quite annoying is how people created these monopolies.
50 years ago, there were 3 (arguably 4) American car companies—still a de facto oligopoly, but 3 is better than 1. The Japanese and VW added to it.
Today we essentially have one search portal, Google; one social network site, Facebook; one video-hosting site, YouTube; and one micro-blogging site, Twitter/X.
If people spent perhaps 1/10th of their micro-blogging time on other sites, Twitter might not have been as attractive to Musk and his backers, but they chose ease over choice, and now they’re wailing over what he’s doing with it.
I’m off-topic.
I mostly agree with your statement. Maybe Amazon likes the internet, but probably most others in big business in the US don’t: it might account a bit for the shitty websites of many of them.
There are obviously a million reasons for this, greed and corruption being obvious touchstones but I also think culturally we weren’t raised to think this state of affairs was grotesque.
A lot just comes down to how people perceive the fediverse, is it just an alternative, another tool you can use that works just as well as corporate social media (lots of handwaving here) or is it a niche community for specific subsections of tech-ish nerds that becomes successfully codified as a tertiary, unimportant place by pop culture?
You don’t have to use a local server though.
True!
My intention was to make it clear that my reference to these numbers was back of the envelope, I know there is a huge amount of complexity to this question.
Do you begin solving physics problem by making sure you start from answering the most complicated version of a problem including simulations of every single little expression of friction and wind resistance etc…. No you say the cow can be abstracted as a sphere and start from there. The question isn’t whether to abstract the cow or not, it is over the quality and consequences of the abstraction.
With that in mind, yes I do think it is worth asking the question of whether the best path forward is for fediverse servers within colonial borders to build open communities that users from without colonial borders can join and use or whether the better path forward is to instead directly help build local fediverse instances hosted outside of colonial borders. I don’t know, it is a massively difficult question to answer, I guess I should keep repeating that so people don’t keep assuming I am naively thinking this is a simple question and I have absolutist all or nothing views of things.
Yeah… those leeches from underdeveloped countries should be hosting fediverse servers with all that expendable income they have.
What a shit take.
Please point to where I insinuated this? If people living outside the borders of colonial powers want to host their own servers great, if they want to join US, French, Japanese etc… servers then… also awesome! How on earth are you taking from my read that the point of this line of questioning is to criticize underdeveloped countries or the people that live within their borders?
the whole point of this post is to ask about what ways we can best practically help those people without perpetuating the same structural power imbalances that got us into the present day problems and suffering we face
If you had interacted with my post in a genuine way you would have realized an essential part of my question is how best to help propagate the fediverse outside of its narrow niches, do you build fediverse servers in your own country and make them friendly to foreign users? Do you try to create resources and gather money to help people in those countries just host their own fediverse server?
What are the practical real world advantages and pitfalls of both strategies with respect to the fediverse in particular?
I think I responded to the tone and then you see premise that insinuated that colonial oppressors are just using their advantage to once again oppress the poor indigenous people of wherever in yet another way. Which I don’t agree with.
The concept of the fediverse seems to be that admins host instances and are pretty welcoming to new communities… So if someone from I dunno Togo would setup a lomé or togo-politics community it would be supported. Meaning anyone from anywhere can use the infra provided to setup and moderate their communities.
If anything the system allows people more advantaged with resources (time, money, know how) to provide an open space that can be used by everyone (within reason). Without being beholden to big tech and her hidden profit driven agenda.
I would be more concerned about accessibility and usability from the perspective of a lot of people. As many countries that are still developing have limited time and access. And I don’t know if the current state of the fediverse in it’s development is of much help.
I’llIncreasing the usability of the whole ecosystem with improved clients, moderation tools etc (the stuff that fediverse users are requesting, and those devs are working on) will help.
Once it is mature, more will come. And like with tech, financed by early adopters this seems similar.
In the mean time I see people from all over the globe post stuff about many things, including national interest stuff that would otherwise have passed me by.
And I don’t see stuff posted in languages I don’t comprehend because my profile filteres them out. I don’t know if there are any Swahili/Papiamento/Mandarin/Indonesian posts on lemmy, but Lemmy supports many languages so that might be a thing.
Lastly the whole us vs them (colonial powers, oppressors etc etc) might be applicable to a lot of the world, however, garnering support for a cause by making accusations against the fediverse and the current generation of hosts and users does not help. I would advise a more constructive stance in general. If you see people actually being as you describe call them out and tell it like it is by all means, but this was not the way to get the ball rolling.
I’d probably gone with something like: the fediverse is growing, how can we help it develop in a direction better serving people in developing countries. To get them out from under the power hold and monopolies of the big tech conglomerates. … or something.
In that case I would have stuck with an answer like above… we need to foster and nurture it’s growth so it becomes a good alternative and the people will come. Plus… you know… ask people from these countries or maybe even get devs from there involved using stuff like patreon. Getting feedback from people not using your product… and finding out why they don’t is hard.
But Lemmy for example already did a solid by making sure the platform supports a looooot or languages “out of the box”.
Hope that’s better :).
For the record, I did not downvotes your reply as it deserves an actual response.
Lastly the whole us vs them (colonial powers, oppressors etc etc) might be applicable to a lot of the world, however, garnering support for a cause by making accusations against the fediverse and the current generation of hosts and users does not help. I would advise a more constructive stance in general. If you see people actually being as you describe call them out and tell it like it is by all means, but this was not the way to get the ball rolling.
I am a random fool with an internet connection, I have no power to define anything, and on the contrary I think the only way to get us on the same page is to just came out and say it how it is.
Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing?
They are cheaper. Locations outside US/EU and very few countries in Asia are sometimes called “exotic” and can be a bit expensive. Lemmy also has this issue where servers that are distant from each other lag behind.
I m happy that France is just behind the USA knowing that we are way less massive in number of people. I think that s cool , let democratize the fediverse nom Mather where you are ;)
I think it is definitely something to be proud of! It really speaks to France’s long (of course complicated) history with leftism.
Dude.
Yeah, fuck those colonists with their colonial powers! 💪
the US
France
So, not sure what you mean by this
So, not sure what you mean by this
Nothing, do you honestly think I am watching what is happening right now in the US (where I live) and NOT thinking it is utterly terrifying?
Yeah the manufactured hysteria around TikTok doing the same shit western social media companies do is pathetic and absurd (and like, if republicans are up in arms about manipulation of kids, what about tobacco companies???).
What about the usage demographics within each country?
In underdeveloped/exploited countries, internet usage is more likely to be concentrated among the economic elites who formerly benefited from colonialism—so if increasing adoption in those countries just follows the pattern of other internet use, it could have the opposite effect from the one intended.
Yeah that is what makes this shit so exhausting, at every step where you solve the immediate expression of a systematic problem you have to step back, evaluate your solution and shake your head at how clearly your biases tried to recreate the same problem in your solution.
I agree that we should always be asking questions like you are because this could easily be a future timeline the fediverse goes down.
How do you think we can reduce the chance of this happening?
Also, the interface between the oppressors and the oppressed is always multidimensional and unbelievably manifold. The daughters of ultra powerful oppressors funnel money to the oppressed in shades of moral complexities that are difficult to pin down as righteous or not. This is the way history has always been, what matters is the results, and how much members of the ruling class are willing to betray their class for the greater good of humanity shrugs.
A good strategy is for you, and you specifically, to donate a lot of what sounds like your likely massive white-privledge trust fund to a tech charity of the country of your choosing.
Maybe…? As many have reminded me on this thread, be wary of your kneejerk assumptions.
Yeah your original post came off as pompous and offensive. Even though your intent was to be hopeful, optimistic and productive, you come off as arrogant and ignorant in your writing. Please do not take this as a non-sequitur, I’m simply calling it as we see it here.
I think that is a fair criticism, I appreciate your honesty and straightforwardness!
Apologies that we all came at you with swords. Keep at it, we can work together and find a solution.
Keep at it, we can work together and find a solution
I would say with -30 votes and 50 comments that I am clearly not part of this “we”
I think I am done participating here
Ok bye.
This fails to solve system error.
Yes Lemmy is a form of wealth. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a wealthy country
Then how do we most effectively fight wealth inequality along the axis of software, fediverse software in particular?
Braindead
You can’t drop a mean comment like that and not expand on what you specifically mean by it.
What makes my post brain dead then specifically ?
