Tagesspiegel Background Nov.2022

DE,ES Fri, 13 Jan 2023 21:11:18 +0100

hi-u@zapalot.in-eu.net

Dank Elon Musk erlebt die alternative Social-Media-Plattform Mastodon den bislang größten Nutzer*innenansturm ihrer Geschichte, analysiert Stephan Dörner. Durch seiner Twitter-Übernahme verschafft Musk der Vision eines dezentralen „Web0” neuen Aufwind – als Alternative zum „Web3“ der „Krypto-Bros“. Sie lesen einen kostenfreien...

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 21:25:07 +0100 last edited: Fri, 13 Jan 2023 21:29:48 +0100

Hilmar R (u-zapalot)

hi-u@zapalot.in-eu.net

Deepl Translation EN

One to zero for the Fediverse

Thanks to Elon Musk, the alternative social media platform Mastodon is experiencing the biggest user rush in its history, analyzes Stephan Dörner. With his Twitter takeover, Musk is giving new impetus to the vision of a decentralized "Web0" - as an alternative to the "Web3" of the crypto-bros.

Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, chaos has reigned there: first, half of the workforce is laid off. Then numerous freshly laid-off employees are phoned after because it is realized that they are needed after all. The once highly coveted blue authenticity hooks are being sold off for 8 dollars without any verification, which makes them lose all meaning. Accounts with millions of followers leave the platform or are blocked because they have renamed themselves Elon Musk. In short, there are numerous reasons to turn your back on the social network with the blue bird - and many are doing so.

The most popular alternative to Twitter is Mastodon, which was founded in 2016 by Berlin-based programmer Eugen Rochko and is a service for the decentralized Fediverse. And that brings us to the term that makes the hearts of many IT enthusiasts and open source fans beat faster.

What is Fediverse, anyway?

Because Elon Musk's chaotic takeover has not only given a big stage to a Twitter competitor, but also to the concept behind it. Mastodon is only the most popular service of a concept called Fediverse - a federation of networks - that has been growing in popularity for several years. Fediverse not only operates alternatives to Twitter, but for all the major popular services of the web - from Instagram (Pixelfed) to Facebook (friendica) to YouTube (PeerTube).

The Fediverse is an implementation of the idea that services of the Internet should not run centrally on the servers of a platform like Twitter or Facebook, but on many decentralized servers that can be operated by any person, company or organization. All of these different servers then communicate with each other via open standards and protocols - creating a platform of equal servers without a central authority, all connected to each other. Anyone who does not adhere to the common rules is kicked out and blocked by the other instances.

The decentralized nature of Mastodon is also bulky.

For the users of these services, this means a change. Before the Musk Twitter refugee can make his first post on Mastodon, he has to make the first difficult decision: Which of the many possible Mastodon servers should it be? Currently, a lot of people decide for the biggest server mastodon.social.

This runs counter to the original idea to a certain extent. If the majority of new users use the same server, Mastodon loses at least part of its decentralized structure. In addition, users must also trust the server operator. Musk may behave like a dictator on Twitter, but on Mastodon there are many small instance dictators who not only have full control over the content, but also technical access, for example, to the messages that are exchanged among users.

The decentralized concept also initially puts a few obstacles in the way of users: searching for users and content across instances is less convenient than on Twitter. Following users from other instances is also more complicated than on Twitter in some cases.

"Eternal September" at Mastodon?

Above all, however, the mass influx of Twitter users is a culture shock for the Mastodon community. In recent years, since Mastodon first gained noticeable popularity in 2017, a very unique netiquette has developed there. And even though Mastodon founder Eugen Roschko points out that there is no one consensus on what content should be hidden behind a warning, for example, the widespread use of such "content warnings" alone is a culture shock for many Twitter exiles.

U.S. journalist Adam Davidson, for example, already noted that he would like to be a "good neighbor" in the Fediverse, but that some people would like a content warning for upsetting news. As a result, he said, some servers have already begun blocking the journalist instance journa.host. The admins of each instance make their own rules, so there is already no unified Mastodon. Clearly right-wing instances are blocked by almost all servers - but the boundaries are very different. Only on Friday the instance octodon.social blocked the whole instance social.tchncs.de because a user there had written that he was not sure if it was a problem if people prefer certain ethnicities when dating.

The fact that Internet communities permanently change their character after a mass increase in users is not a new phenomenon, by the way. As early as 1993, Usenet users were talking about "eternal September" after major Internet providers like AOL in the U.S. allowed their own users easy access to Usenet forums. Many a long-time Mastodon user therefore now sees the beginning of an eternal September for this network as well.

The sudden popularity of Mastodon is also a technical challenge. Programmer Aral Balkan describes in a blog article how a popular post of his brought the server of his own Mastodon instance to its knees - a problem that gets bigger the more instances and the more content there is. Especially in Germany, there are of course legal issues to consider when running Mastodon instances.

But despite all the problems: Just as celebrities made Twitter big and attractive, well-known personalities from Greta Thunberg to Stephen Fry to Jan Böhmermann are now ensuring that Mastodon is experiencing unprecedented popularity - and with it the Fediverse concept behind it. This is good news, especially for many IT enthusiasts and large parts of the open source scene.

Left and Right Visions of a Decentralized Net Future

If there is one thing that nerds - whether in the libertarian crypto scene or in the left-wing Fediverse - agree on, it is that decentralization is good, while large and powerful platforms are annoying.

The most popular concept in recent years, which was supposed to replace the GAFA world (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon), was called Web3 by its supporters in the libertarian crypto scene. A network based on encryption, secure data transfer and cryptocurrencies, in which everyone has sovereignty over their own data, which is protected by a crypto wallet. A network free from the influence of large platforms as well as from states and regulation, because data stored in blockchains can hardly be deleted.

In this vision of the network, almost every interaction becomes a transaction of cryptocurrencies and thus takes on a commercial character. Unlike in the current Web 2.0, however, it is not large and powerful central platforms that monopolize access and data that are to profit from this, but each individual user.

The supporters of Fediverse share the dream of decentralization - but want to achieve it by exactly the opposite means: No commerce, no advertising, no trackers - and above all, no blockchain. The Fediverse, on the other hand, relies on classic open Internet standards, such as those already used for the web and email. Mastodon, for example, uses ActivityPub, an official web standard of the W3 consortium, under whose leadership other web standards such as HTML are also developed. Fediverse supporters therefore also call their concept Web0 in distinction to Web3: "Web0 is Web3 without all the right-libertarian Silicon Valley bullshit," they say in the web0 manifesto.

So far, none of the many Web3 applications, so-called dApps, has ever achieved the kind of popularity outside of crypto trading that Mastodon has now achieved thanks to Elon Musk. In the battle of concepts for a possible decentralized network after the GAFA world, it is 1:0 for Web0.

Stephan Dörner was a tech journalist for a long time and is co-founder of the impact tech communications consultancy fph. You can find him on Mastodon here: https://social.tchncs.de/web/@doener