This is a 4-months old blog post ( https://lemmy.ml/post/40940343 ), any reason to bring it up now?

Upvoted because its a high effort blog post, but honestly it reads like deranged nonsense.

In a communication network, you hurt the trust in the whole network if you create clients that arbitrarily drop messages, something that Pixelfed is doing deliberately

At least they admitted this was a wrong line of thinking. You can hardly call pixelfeds message dropping arbitrary. Its clearly based in whether there’s images. Tf did they want it to be like? Just another mastodon instance?

There were people like me, often above 40, who like sending emails and browsing old-fashioned websites. We think of ActivityPub as a “communication protocol” between humans.

It objectively is

And then there are people like Dansup, who believe that ActivityPub is a content consumption protocol.

Here’s where the nonsense really kicks in. Content consumption protocol? Wouldn’t any content consumption protocol intrinsically also be a communication protocol? But they say later that the users are the ones creating the content that gets consumed:

They are entertainment platforms that delegate media creation to the users themselves the same way Uber replaced taxis by having people drive others in their own car.

So let me get this straight… The content we’re consuming is… Messages… Produced by other people. And then we produce messages… Consumed by those people. So… Communication? Seems like the author thinks that just because the word “content” is used in thr activitypub description that somehow excludes communication. Nonsense.

But aren’t social networks also communication networks? That’s what I thought. […] But that was a lie. Communication networks are not profitable. Social networks are entertainment platforms, media consumption protocols. […] The point was never to avoid missing a message sent from a fellow human being. The point was always to fill your time with “content.”

How does communication networks being unprofitable imply that social networks aren’t communication networks? Just because corporations want social networks to function as content consumption doesn’t mean that its not still communication. Last I checked, every social media platform will make sure to let me know about every single DM, comment, @, retweet, reblog, repost, whatever that happens to me.

Like when I talk to someone IRL or attend a conference, by this bizarre logic, I’m just a consooomer of the audio CONTENT that they transmit over the air “content consumption protocol” to my ear interface.

My own interpretation is that social media users don’t mind losing messages because they were raised on algorithmic platforms that did that all the time.

The platforms don’t do that

It’s not Dansup who is missing something. It is me who is unadapted to the current society.

Never have I read something so humble yet so smug

The main problem with reliable communication protocols? It is a mostly solved problem. Build simple websites, read RSS feeds, write emails. Use IRC and XMPP if you truly want real-time communication. Those are working and working great. And because of that, they are boring. Communications protocols are boring. They don’t give you that well-studied random hit of dopamine

IRC and XMPP are unfathomable to the uninitiated and objectively more of a pain to use, so no, they don’t work great. People use WhatsApp and Telegram and Signal and Instagram DMs because it’s much easier. It’s crazy to say the problem with “communication protocols” is that they’re boring when people use them constantly. People also constantly communicate in the IRL protocol, perhaps this author hasn’t heard of it.

The problem with communication protocols was never the protocol part. It’s the communication part. A few sad humans never wanted to communicate in the first place and managed to become billionaires by convincing the rest of mankind that being entertained is better than communicating with other humans.

What problem? This whole piece goes on and on about “the problem” with communication protocols, but what is it? Its that more people aren’t using it? More people aren’t using… Email? Yeah… Everyone I know uses email. You can complain that they aren’t “at inbox 0” and therefore not using it in the Holy Way you want, but they’re still using it. People use SMS and phone calls too. And the people who communicate on proprietary apps, via DMs, what’s the problem there? I guess that it’s proprietary? But if thats the case the problem is that nonproprietary protocols are either complicated (irc, xmpp), in their infancy (activity pub) or both (matrix). The problem isn’t that they don’t have addictive dopamine mechanisms. If that was the case than the eviiiiil demon Pixelfed should be doing way better, since it’s another of these sinful modern content consumption demons.

We believe that a communication network must reach a critical mass to be really useful. People stay on Facebook to “stay in touch with the majority.” I don’t believe that lie anymore

Oh, okay, so the problem isn’t that more people aren’t using email and IRC. There’s actually no problem?

I may be part of an endangered species. It doesn’t matter. I made peace with the fact that I will never get in touch with everyone.

Again with this unbearable enlightenment attitude. What endangered species, bro? People who wanna talk to other people? Hate to break it to you but you’re not special for that. Everyone wants to talk to people, and they do it, constantly, via multiple channels. I’m sorry its not using your preferred channels. I also prefer decentralized channels, of course. But all this means is that the problem is that people aren’t using decentralized stuff because its too daunting. Not that people are lowly sheeple who only want to consoom without connection. It’s such an unjustifiably haughty way to interpret things.

Two Incompatible Universes

There were people like me, often above 40, who like sending emails and browsing old-fashioned websites. We think of ActivityPub as a “communication protocol” between humans. As such, anything that implies losing messages without feedback is the worst thing that could happen. Not losing messages is the top priority of a communication protocol.

And then there are people like Dansup, who believe that ActivityPub is a content consumption protocol. It’s there for entertainment. You create as many accounts as the kinds of media you want to consume. Dansup himself is communicating through a Mastodon account, not a Pixelfed one. Many Pixelfed users also have a Mastodon account, and they never questioned that. They actually want multiple accounts for different use cases.

There must be at least three universes, because I’m not a part of either one of those.

I’m well above 40, and have certainly been online longer than Ploum. And I hate email and always have. To me, it’s too invasive - too demanding. An email says “You must take note of me and deal with me in some way.” I don’t like that being done to me and I don’t like doing it to other people.

A forum on the other hand - I get to write out my thoughts however seems best to me, then I just toss them out into the void. If others read them, great. If not, I still got to write them out, which is the part I enjoy most anyway.

My first experience with online forums was usenet, on which old posts are constantly falling off of the board as new ones are added. My first experiences with internet forums were the same. It wasn’t until later - years after I first went online - that I found myself on a forum that didn’t delete older posts. I found that to be intriguing and novel and relatively welcome, but I still dont see it as a necessity.

I’ve always created as many accounts as possible on as many different sites as possible. Entirely contrary to Ploum’s inexplicable assessment, I’ve never seen that as something I was locked into by monopolistic sites, and in fact, always saw it exactly the opposite To me, a single account is an artifact of monopolistic social media (and of the posters who are trying to create a brand). From the very beginning, in my experience, accounts were things I just created under whatever name tickled my fancy at the moment, so that I could post on whatever particular forum had just caught my attention. I might never use that account again, and that’s fine.

So when I went from my one and only account on Reddit to a couple of dozen accounts scattered hither and yon on the Fediverse, I saw that as reclaiming a freedom I had had to give up for monopolistic social media.

And while I certainly do my share of doomscrolling, I also post regularly. So basically, at least in my case, the entire passage:

…who believe that ActivityPub is a content consumption protocol. It’s there for entertainment. You create as many accounts as the kinds of media you want to consume

is wrong, and not just in part, but entirely, from start to finish.

My own interpretation is that social media users don’t mind losing messages because they were raised on algorithmic platforms that did that all the time.

In my own case, I don’t mind losing messages because I was here when messages, pages and even entire sites could fall through any of the myriad cracks in the wilderness of the internet at any moment, and that was just the way it was, so we didn’t let it bother us.

It wasn’t until later, when the summer children and the profiteers who were drawn to them invaded, that structure and permanence and identity and brand became important.

The main problem with reliable communication protocols? It is a mostly solved problem. Build simple websites, read RSS feeds, write emails. (emphasis mine)

Ah… yes.

The mention of RSS does more to ckarify exactly what type of netizen Ploum is than pretty much anything that came before.

I’ve never been the least bit interested in RSS.

To me, it’s something for the sort of people who get in their totally enclosed car in their totally enclosed garage, drive their fixed route to their totally enclosed parking garage, then ride a totally enclosed elevator to their totally enclosed office.

I’d rather get out and walk.