You know how if your email app stops working you can just install another one and still communicate with anyone else with an email address? The fediverse is like that except it's not email it's twitter and reddit and YouTube all rolled into one. So if twitter was part of the fediverse when Musk bought it and destroyed it you could move to another server with a better moderation policy and pick up where you left off.
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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Quite on point! But I would get rid of the "all rolled in one" because they'd get the impression it's one app that can do everything.
Something like: "Some parts are like Reddit, others like Twitter or YouTube. And they can all talk to each other."
Think about your audience and the specific features that will potentially appeal to them.
Depending on who that user is, the same feature/quirk can be either a pro or a con.
There's lower user numbers here compared to something like Reddit, but the people involved tend to be of an average higher tech literacy.
So there's not as much noise, but there's also not as much signal.
As a user, you can spin up your own instance, which gives you complete control... But it also introduces a financial and moderation expense, not to mention inherently leading to fractured communities.
Just look at the Android discussion, it's occurring on at least:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
etc etc
An elevator pitch should be 30 seconds max, and if you’re pitching an fediverse project, it should be both novel and something that either solver a problem or addresses a need— again, in a novel way.
Since it’s an academic endeavor, bonus points for FOSS projects. Maybe think of needs in the developing world or those disadvantaged close to home and how you could develop alternative, federated services to meet needs currently serviced ineffectively by for-profit corporations.
So the assignment says 2-3 mins max, I'm aiming for ~90s. I'm not sure 30s will be enough to explain the concept well enough and might leave the audience more confused.
Maybe you can draw an analogy between decentralized services and decentralized government. The world has largely shifted away from monarchies and oligarchies in favor of democracies that intentionally spread power out among many people. You can argue that our economy needs to make the same shift for the same reasons. An Elon Musk or Tom Cook is analogous to an oligarch, with wealth at their disposal comparable to a nation-state.
The feature you are pitching is the distributed nature of the fediverse. It soöves the lock-in problem and the resulting absolute power the big social media companies have over your content and qhat you see.
Content manipulation is still a problem and there are several services that work dosrributed these days so its not the perfect pitch.
Still a worthwhile pick in my book.
Federation is a fairly tricky concept to explain in one minute, I know I didn't get it when I first heard about it.
I was thinking to lean more on the open standards point (which naturally leads to the concept of federation)
Imo the easiest way to think about it is different servers that send each other messages to sync all the content between each other.
You connect to one of those servers, but it doesn't really matter which because the content is the same and you can contact people on all servers. For the same reason it doesn't really matter if one of the servers goes offline, and if one goes rogue the others can just not sync with it anymore.
It's like email, you have a bunch of different providers who all talk to each other but are run by different people Or phone/text, everyone's got a different provider but everyone can message everyone
Is the assignment to pitch something that already exists? Or is the idea that you would pitch for the adoption of it?
No specific requirement around that. It could even be a fake product probably.