Notices by Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social), page 11

@obsolete29 Good topic! Honestly, I don't have a favourite genre. Instead I'll present a list of singers/groups:

Judas Priest - Metal
Nirvana - Grunge
Velvet Underground - Alternative
Sex Pistols - Punk
Joy Division - Post-Punk
Starflyer 59 - Shoegaze
Run DMC - Rap
Bauhaus - Goth
Black Flag - Hardcore
Johnny Cash - Country
Chuck Berry - Rock N' Roll
James Brown - Soul & Funk
Jimi Hendrix - Blues
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Post-Rock

BOOM! Nextcloud just announced they're investing in greater social functionality to make it a full member of the Fediverse. https://twitter.com/fkarlitschek/status/1518678584524685313

As a messaging app, Delta Chat looks a lot like WhatsApp or Telegram. But it's really just a souped up email client.

Because it's just an email client, Delta Chat is not running any messaging servers. The company doesn't store any messages. It's end-to-end encryption is GDPR compliant.

Delta Chat is built on Push-IMAP. That means a lot of privacy-focused email providers, like Protonmail, won't work Delta Chat because they don't support IMAP for receiving email.

Using email protocols for social apps has big benefits. But there's a catch.

Delta Chat also uses Autocrypt. This is problematic because not every email provider supports Autocrypt -- if yours doesn't the messages won't be encrypted.

Fediverse has flaws, big flaws.

Example: basing any decentralization of the Internet on a centralized structure like DNS is problematic.

Yet, I'm going all in on the Fediverse. Here's why. https://blog.peerverse.space/why-im-all-in-with-the-fediverse-even-though-i-have-gripes/

First, let's talk about alternatives to ActivityPub.

SMTP, XMPP, SIP—the Fediverse could have been built on these protocols. They've been battle-tested. They're well-documented. They work.

Lots of folks are rediscovering the value of SMTP, especially as big corporations realize that newsletters outperform Facebook in terms of engagement. Good for email!

But just like social media, email has become centralized.

SMTP, XMPP, and SIP could be great standards to build a social network upon. I hope someone does it.

But where are they now?

XMPP is probably the best messaging technology today—better than Matrix, Signal, and Telegram. This is why Google, Apple, etc. continue to build tech on top of XMPP.

But do you know anyone in your social circle that uses XMPP clients?

Google dominates email. As of 2019, Gmail had 1.5 billion users. If Gmail were a social network, it would rival Facebook.

As far as decentralization is concerned, email is not in good health.

XMPP seems like a protocol companies use to build centralized messaging apps upon. Federated XMPP apps have comparatively little adoption.

To sum up:

1. SMTP: popular but centralized
2. XMPP: Good, lacks network effect, used for building centralized apps
3. SIP: Good enough, has stuck around, might have a second Life

Either centralized or doesn't have a good network effect.

Now let's consider SIP. I remember lots of clients back in the 2000s, but widespread use was little. Why? Because of Skype.

There's still hope for SIP via Jitsu, but most people use something like Zoom—and Zoom is centralized.

But what is decentralized and has a wide enough network effect? What collective protocol(s) have momentum?

The Fediverse!

But also, let's consider this Mastodon (@atomicpoet) account and compare it to my Twitter profile.

On Twitter, I have 8,600+ followers. On Mastodon, a little over 300.

Yet, I get more interactions happening on Mastodon.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how easy it was to build a network effect with a new Pixelfed instance. I'm experiencing interactions that rival when I had an Instagram account. Did I get lucky? Am I an edge case? https://blog.peerverse.space/my-pixelfed-instance-is-a-bigger-success-than-i-could-ever-have-predicted/

I've spoken to other people who have recently joined the Fediverse. They report the same thing. The Fediverse may have a smaller userbase, but more interactions.

This means the Fediverse has something important: momentum.