I suppose this is where the root of our disagreement lies. For me the technical network that links tools is not the fediverse. The fediverse is what is built on top of that network and it is inherently linked with the community

I wrote a long reply disagreeing with each of your points, but you’re right. This is our disagreement. You’re using the term fediverse to apply to a specific group of ppl/servers that share values with you and I think that’s co-opting the term. The fediverse is more akin to the web (a platform based on technology that allows ppl access to other ppl and information) and it doesn’t make sense to talk about it as a single organization.

I think trying to change its meaning like this is flawed and leads to issues like we’re having now with Bridgy-Fed. You can’t shout at everyone to use the tech in the way you want, because eventually there will be ppl/orgs that just don’t listen. Instead, I think you should be pushing for existing platforms you’re using (lemmy, mastodon, etc) to give you more control of your own data. There are ways to allow small-fedi users to create the exact type of spaces they want and anybody else to have the wide open fediverse they want, if the various project would implement them.

I’m happy to continue discussing this with you or leave it here. Either way, thanks for the chat and have a good one.

For example, free software, no advertising as a business model, not commercial, not run by big corporations and talking over AP.

None of those are requirements to be part of the fediverse. The fediverse existed long before ActivityPub was even proposed. Free software, ad free, non commercial, not run by big corporations are all just coincidence because its a grassroots effort. Even now, there’s multiple companies invested in the fediverse: Mozilla, Flipboard, Facebook, Automatic being the most obvious.

Even if you take those as given, none of those dictate any shared values. Bridgy-fed itself meets all of those requirements but clearly holds differing values. Truth Social, Gab, Spinster, etc are all on the fediverse despite being abhorrent to the majority of the rest of the fediverse.

I’m in favor of groups maintaining shared values and enforcing policies based on them. But those policies can never apply to an entire network made up of distinct projects, servers, and people all with different ideas about how it should work.

the nature and direction of the fediverse

The fediverse is a decentralized network. It doesn’t have a cohesive nature/direction. It’s made up of servers providing twitter-like experiences, servers providing reddit-like experiences, forums, personal websites, video platforms, etc. You’ll never know all the places your fediverse data has reached because the fediverse doesn’t have hard boundaries so you can’t possible measure it all.

Which is why I think complaining about other what other software does is pointless. Instead, users should be pushing their own software to adopt more features to allow them to control their experience and data.

a lot of people want nothing to do with it.

And nobody is disagreeing with their right to do that. They have the tools to curate their own experience. But they can’t demand the fediverse work they way they want it to and no other way.

Exactly. It’s also using Spring Boot, Hibernate, and Lombok. It looks just like projects at work. It might be the first fediverse project I contribute regularly to.