@_elena its probably better not to sabotage EU alternatives, but by grabbing domains the fediverse could be injected into the news cycle, if done with a coherent message to the media.

@nopatience @_elena I second this

@d1re_w0lf @_elena

EDIT: Sorry, I mixed up Wsocial with Wedium https://wedium.social

New social networks are popping up everywhere these days.

@_elena@mastodon.social Do it!
Every voice that points out how stupid the idea is must be publicly available.

@_elena The "you need to upload a valid form of ID" is reason alone to blast it, so I very much support blasting it.

I was curious about it, but as soon as I saw that requirement, I went "NOPE".

I get the why they want to do it that way, to clamp down on bots and have traceability in case of abuse, but it's an Orwelian nightmare. Not to mention that a third party will have access to your ID photos, and we all know how well (as in, not) said third-parties handle and secure PII...

And then of course there's the advertisers salivating over the whole thing, because it's a 100% sure way to pinpoint EXACTLY who they're advertising to.

Not to mention over-zealous (to put it mildly) law enforcement accessing said targeting data...

Yes, this very much needs a major blast.

@_elena Honestly, I think that will only create a sense of division: "Mine is better than yours".

I don't believe that's what the world needs now. I think we need to try to find a common ground. For example, why did they choose the ATProto?

Although I would prefer them to have decided on ActivityPub, maybe they have a reason.

@nopatience@swecyb.com @_elena@mastodon.social When it comes to competitors, treat them like the dead: praise them — or keep it buried.

@_elena One thing I see myself doing more and more lately is writing to companies and institutions, asking them why they don't have an account on the Fediverse and explaining how to do it. It works, but it has to be easy. One thing I'm constantly telling them is that there's a simple way to do it if they are running their blog on WordPress. I also send them a how-to I wrote.

@_elena Hijacking the ludicrous agitprop for a better purpose is a good idea.

@_elena

.fr
.es
...and some others already taken

I voted «yes go ahead», but it all depends on the expected ROI (how much attention is that w-thing getting so people would reach that alternative sites)

@vladcampos @_elena Well, I guess a counterpoint would be that them deciding to do this thing while pretending nothing at all exists in this space in Europe currently is also creating a sense of division already.

@ikuturso @_elena Sure it is! And that's my point. The more we as humans embark on this division, the worse things will get.

@_elena

A couple of arguments, if I may:

1) why reinvent the wheel ???

2) why a proprietary system (as it is derived from bluesky)

3) why not simply ask every member state to put up an official mastodon instance and use that ??? That would be much simpler and cheaper !!

Good luck

@FrankauLux @_elena all they did was tap the EU for funding and they’re so cautious and clueless they backed it because they used the right buzzwords

@humanhorseshoes @_elena

Well not sure they are so clueless, since the EU institutions have had their own mastodon instances for a while.
The Commission, the Parliament and the Court of Justice all have an instance.

I think it is more a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand does, ie politician answering before consulting the tech guys.
But we'll see.
Luckily (in this case) things go slow and we have time to alter the course.

@ed
@_elena

I could not agree more. The Fediverse has to convince the folks to come here not blaming other services that we even don't really know, yet.

Instead we are welcoming new folks with arguing why they have chosen the wrong Fediverse SW instead of the much better other SW. This is scaring away so many new users, and would be worth to work on.

We should keep proving that we are better not claiming that other solutions are worse.

@sturmsucht @d1re_w0lf @_elena Does anyone of these people (from wedium GmbH) exist in any form on an activtypub instance or atpro/bluesky?

@aslakr

I have no idea. The short interview I heard was with Johannes (if I'm not wrong) where he talked about that trust and safety will play a huge part and that they want to achieve this with verification. They also plan to monetise it to make it sustainable. I'm not really sure which platform they will use or if they will code something themselves.

@d1re_w0lf @_elena

"why did they choose the ATProto?"

The cynic in me: because it's centralized.

Governments may talk a big talk about things, but at the end of the day, they're legacy systems and they want control.

Alas, too many seem to have not acknowledged that the Internet is already an intergalactic system of collaboration and already operates at scale of billions of users with billions of packets per hour.

Legacy meatware governance is obsolete, but the transition period is going to be long and drawn out and in the interim, a lot of "reinventing the flat tire" will presumably play out, ad nauseam. ;(

We already had end-to-end encrypted realtime libre/free open source "federated" (I would use the phrase: "distributed") systems such as SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) before ActivityPub (or twitter or Facebook, etc.) was ever conceived of in the first place. But, why was it never popularized? It circumvents centralized control and the "powers that be" don't like not being able to ratchet down on others. Class warfare is their paradigm, so they prefer to perpetuate such things, rather than normalize new paradigms which make themselves obsolete. ;-/

IRC? XMPP? FTP? HTTP? Other plaintext by default protocols, very popular! Spies just love spying!

Note: SILC isn't alone, there's PSYC2, GNUnet and other libre/free end-to-end encrypted comms systems; but as much as some may claim they want such things, what seems to gain traction and momentum every time? Over and over again? Insecure, centralized, systems. If you follow the popularity and the "money" it's usually the same old dirt bags behind the scenes pulling the strings.

CC: @_elena@mastodon.social

@_elena
Regarding domain name grabbing: I don’t think this is worth it. I would wonder if they haven’t already reserved the domains they are going to use before the announcement. So that’s likely a waste of money.