Dear god, do you do anything but constantly bitch?! Why are you even on social media if you hate it so fucking much?!
A little bit about me. I am a Computer Scientist and I have recently had contracts for developing apps for both the AT protocol and The Activitypub protocol. I am saying this to get ahead of the annoying nerd culture of the fediverse.
I am going to be honest. I am tired of the bitching about Mastodon. You guys act as if you don’t have other options.
In 2023-2024, Zuck decided he would pull a google and subsume the fediverse. So he “federated” (but not really) with fediverse, allowing Threads users to READ what mastodon.social (ugh) server would show. Can’t TALK to fediverse users, just see their posts AND CONTENT (must… feed… LLM…). That was followed by a bunch of idiots following Dorsey, and his VC techbro funded “BlueSky” twitter-reborn. Sod as “DeCentrAliZed aND fReE”, it is centralized as fuck, EVERYTHING passes through their ONE cluster of servers, controlled by their choices. Even if you pay them tubes (no, seriously), and run a “hard” PSD server, you are still controlled (account, permissions) by central BS server. That douchebaggery also tried to subsume the fediverse, by “bridging” it. Same deal as Threads.
Now, the users of those are seeing the nazifying of both, and eyeballing the fediverse they can mostly read but not interact with, and getting buyer’s regret. BUT, they want to bring the bullshit they are used to along.
So we see “Starter Packs” talk, basically a large file containing thousands of accounts that are either available for download OR THAT THE INSTANCE PUSHES TO YOUR ACCOUNT AUTOMATICALLY. TL;DR they control the start of what you see and who you can read from and talk to… exactly like xitter, threads, linkedin, facebook, bluesky… all the Big Corp controlled platforms.
As an aside, I think it is duplicitous and disingenuous to post the above text I extracted as an image without a CW. First, it circumvents people’s filters. Second, it makes it harder to quote the text. So, I tacitly believe you’re operating in bad faith, and part of me thinks you are purposefully conflating Mastodon with the ActivityPub protocol in the same way it is common to conflate the Bluesky app view with ATmosphere. It kinda sounds like left-wing accelerationism to me, though I admit I might be reaching with that.
But yeah, this is exactly why I am self-hosting. Since this is my site, I can choose to defederate or federate with any other instance, provided they don’t defederate from me first. In my opinion, Mastodon consumes way too much of the fediverse, so for anyone who doesn’t like starter packs, I would recommend just not using Mastodon. I have been developing stuff on the AT Protocol for the last year, so I am a bit rusty on what’s going on the Starter Packs for Mastodon, but to my knowledge, it is not going to be protocol-specific. I could be wrong, so if I am, correct me and cite the technical documentation.
I am blunt because, like I said, I am tired of the constant bitching. If you don’t like starter packs, don’t use Mastodon. If you disagree with the federation decisions of an ActivityPub instance, find another one. And if you can’t find any run how you want, run your own. The issue is that you don’t want certain people here, so you can run your own instance and determine who you want there. I’m not the pot calling the kettle black because I own this, lol.
For example, I am not posting from Mastodon, lol. Mastodon is to ActivityPub as Bluesky is to the AT Protocol. ActivityPub and the AT Protocol were made for more than just microblogging, but because people have a tacit expectation that everything should plug into microblogging, here we are. Your points are valid, which is why I don’t use Mastodon and have my own instance. You’re not chained to Mastodon. See all the cool formatting tricks I’m able to do in this post and my unlimited character length. Yeah—that’s not Mastodon.
Edit:
I just looked into it. The “Fedipacks” are conceptually a directory, not a record. See here:
https://fedidevs.com/starter-packs
When you create a Starter Pack on Bluesky, the system writes a new record into the app.bsky.graph.starterpack field of a user’s repo, which is the decentralized data layer Bluesky is built on. This record lives inside a user’s personal AT Proto repository, just like posts, likes, follows, and lists. app.bsky.graph.starterpack represents the metadata for that Starter Pack: its name, description, included accounts, feeds, and other configuration details. Once created, it is addressable via an at:// URI and identified by a CID (content identifier), just like other AT Proto records. Here is an example:
The proposed “starter packs” for the fediverse and the starter packs for the AT Protocol would be implemented in totally different ways. From a very quick look at how Starter Packs in ActivityPub are supposed to work, the starter packs app is given permission to act as an actor on your behalf and follow accounts, which is entirely different from what happens with Bluesky. Y’all really need to cool it with the insane insular culture. All of that is besides the point: you just don’t want a particular group of people in the same networks as you. That’s fine. Spin up your own instance.
I don’t care either way about starter packs, because they are just explicit models of the implicit social connections people already have. It is not the starter packs that you have an issue with; it is the relationships and the culture that you have an issue with. You do not want people with social connections to other platforms here. Just say that. Again, I’m not a fan of Mastodon, so I am not using it to speak to you.
Your larger point is that you don’t want people of a particular type or culture over there, and you are not fond of Starter Packs because you believe they are a bridge. That is valid. So what you do is spin up your own instance, pick which servers you do or don’t federate with, and choose software that doesn’t implement those features. You’re essentially, tacitly telling administrators what to do in their own space when you can make your own space and invite or disinvite who you want.
For example, the Bluesky bridge and Threads are blocked for my site, so it doesn’t matter if another instance is federated with them. I’m not disagreeing with your main point. I’m saying you keep expecting people to conform to your judgments instead of setting up a space that fits your values, which is just wild to me.
