poVoq

ajsadauskas , 7 days ago to Fediverse

Time for an ICQ for the Fediverse?

Looks like ICQ is finally shutting down, just as interest in retro internet tools is growing.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/25/24164579/icq-shut-down-june

@fediverse #ICQ #Fediverse

poVoq , 7 days ago

For XMPP and ActivityPub it already exists as part of the Libervia project.

poVoq , 7 days ago

I have been advocating for a while how easy it is to integrate a lightweight XMPP server with fediverse instances. The accounts can be easily linked and the user address is the same.

Here on slrpnk.net for example every member automatically also has an XMPP account.

poVoq , 7 days ago

"Look bro, I can do the same thing we can do now, but slower and worse!”

Best description of Matrix (in relation to XMPP) I read in a while 😎

poVoq , 7 days ago

offtopic

Ainda estou a aprender português.

poVoq , 7 days ago

Every modern XMPP server supports XMPP over HTTPS (via BOSH or Websockets) and it works just fine.

But I wasn't actually taking about integrating it in the UI of the fediverse instance itself. Which would be nice to have, but really not vital at all if you have a nice mobile chat client.

poVoq , 6 days ago

https://f-hub.org/Solarpunk/ejabberd-auth-lemmy

It has some smaller issues, but overall it works well.

poVoq , 6 days ago

You are very outdated in your info about xmpp. Most of the stuff you mention is available these days.

poVoq , 6 days ago

Gajim will have some more of that in the next version, Monocles or Cheogram have more modern features than Conversations and Siskin is very outdated feature wise and you should probably replace it with Monal.

That said it is not true that the three clients you mentioned have none of that. Sure they don't have all of it, and there is some feature mismatch between them, but you are making it sound much worse than it is.

Oh and you can always use Movim which has most of the features you mentioned.

andrew , 1 month ago to Fediverse

Mastodon establishes non-profit in the US, while Germany revokes their nonprofit status

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/04/mastodon-forms-new-u.s.-non-profit/

@fediverse

poVoq , 1 month ago

while Germany revokes their nonprofit status

For unknown reasons, and those tax authorities are pretty well know for revoking it wrongly.

maegul , 3 months ago to Fediverse

Decent Decentralisation

https://berjon.com/decent-imaginaries/

Good counter to the focus on protocols.

> a protocol needs to achieve two things: it needs to prevent the accumulation of power imbalances between parties … and it needs to make it easy for users to cooperate in building the the rules they want for how the protocol's operation affects them … the success of decentralisation and … of a democratic digital world rides not only on liberation but also on organising.

@fediverse

By @robin

poVoq , 3 months ago

This text has some good thoughts, but it fails to conceal the authors apparent dislike of the ActivityPub model that recognizes instance infrastructure as part of the community over the BlueSky model that has a gaping blind-spot there.

As a result the article barely looks into instance level efforts for democratic governance and rather treats the infrastructure as some nebulous existing quality on which users can interact with each other and cooperate.

The cynic in me thinks this blind-spot is intentional in the communication around Bluesky and its proponents, as it allows the owners of the necessary (cloud) infrastructure to retain a hidden power over its users.

poVoq , 3 months ago

You can't realistically separate a instance from its users, just like you can't separate a city (and its governance) from its inhabitants. This atomicity is a result of the real world infrastructure imposing itself on virtual communities. You can argue about "right granularity" all you want in that regard, but in result it just obfuscates where the "capture" happens and likely not for the better (as in the case of BlueSky).

poVoq , 3 months ago

Making servers a commodity is a convenient illusion that cloud vendors invented for marketing purposes.

To stay with the real-world metaphor: it is a bit like suburbs. They are sold on the illusion of individual freedom in your own home but with the required car ownership as the capture point and an endless list of negative externalities and expensive hidden infrastructure requirements making them entirely unsustainable.

poVoq , 3 months ago

Federation solves that issue as it allows server inhabitants to "shop" for all their multiple needs by visiting other servers.

poVoq , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Usually that decoupling already takes place on the level of VPS providers who are really good at providing a commodity service, but personally I think it is in the best interest of any slightly larger community to run their own hardware servers.

Yes it takes some effort to do so, but only when running your own servers can democratic governance of an instance really work, otherwise you are always beholden to various limitations of the VPS provider and its pricing structure.

poVoq , 3 months ago

True, but they are marketed as such, which is my point. Commodification is nearly always an illusion to vendor-lock or capture you in other ways you don't suspect, which is exactly what ATProto seems to be designed for as well.