Complete this sentence:
"I experience #fediverse as a .."
@smallcircles Cozy village, mostly.
Having non-standard opinions on some things sometimes gets me into tussles with people, but that's very rare as I'm quick to block people who are jerks or don't approach in good faith.
@smallcircles To me the fediverse feels like an accidental but useful overlap of only-slightly-convergent universes – a region where aliens can go to communicate with each other before returning to their own dimensions.
(Really, that's how it feels. How else would you describe a place where antipodean flaneurs can hold convos with Dutch furries about toaster repair?)
@smallcircles A city.
There's too much different stuff for a village. :)
Also the Left and tbe Green party of my country are here which would sadly be pretty unusual for a small village in my parts.
@smallcircles @Tattooed_Mummy …a bustling convention about topics I don’t fully understand and I’m the only one not cosplaying. 😰
@smallcircles Like a massive space habitat where beings of all types from everywhere in the universe come and go as they please, and are permitted to Just Be.
Rather like Iain M. Banks' Culture civilisation, but less manipulative.
@smallcircles A metropolis; I was born in London, not far from the Docks, and my MastoNerds are all different people unlike the sausagemeat populace of Meta etc. There are quiet corners and bustling thoroughfares here for choosing where you are comfortable.
@smallcircles
You know how Charles Shultz let us know that happiness is playing the drum in your own school band? It’s like that.
College dorm, freshman year.
Various freak flags are fully let fly, and there's a lot of "OMG you too? I thought I was the only one."
@smallcircles Fedi (feeee diiiiii) is coming like a ghost town. All the clubs have been closed down.
@smallcircles
I experience the Fediverse as a stimulating conversation by witty, engaged, interesting, and often atypical people.
@smallcircles Mine's gotten a bit *too* busy...so I've started muting the folks who never add alt text :)
@smallcircles A strange fascinating party with lots of different pods with wildly different conversations or lectures or readings or music or gallery shows or cooking or comedies or what have you all going on, and everyone welcomes you in.
@smallcircles agora. It's not where everyone is at, but it is concentrated and focused and where important discussion is happening
@smallcircles
A cozy village that has a too many idiots sometimes. But at least they're funny idiots.
@smallcircles My social bubble. It's cozy village + my interests + a few foreign eccentrics.
@darby3 in a good way, though? In an extracting-myself-from-the-ratrace casual walk kinda way perhaps?
@smallcircles More like a train station or airport. I'm passing through and see many other people I wouldn't otherwise. Some people spend much more time here than others and it shows.
Pedestrian zoned street with a bunch of cafes, in the downtown area of a polluted city.
@smallcircles digital subculture for nerds, weirdos and other misfits.
@smallcircles I see it as a busy city with cozy neighborhoods.
I generally live in my home feed, so I'm really only seeing and interacting with what I aim to follow and the various communities there.
Occasionally I'll look at the public timeline and see all the bustle and activity but will find something new to follow, like going downtown and finding a new restaurant or hangout spot.
A refuge from hectic life then? An quiet oasis to escape the surrounding social media traffic and unwind a bit?
A cozy village with fiberoptic internet and a whole bunch of interesting people with fascinating expertise who retired here or some!
@smallcircles I went with village, but it actually sirens. Sometimes it is more of a city, with much more traffic than I can reasonably follow
Interconnections of villages that I consciously and selectively build.
@smallcircles
Community of interest/hobby/makers pace with “coffee conversation”.
@smallcircles How is ghost town only at 4 % ? the lack of an algo mean i got a lot of things i don't like in my tl bc of hashtags i follow and only get 1 in 8 post that i actually like. The rest of the time it's really quiet. i stay here bc i like the project and there are people i like here but to follow the news from where im from and in the world i need X bc nothing gets recommended to me.
An algo is a tool that can be used for good and the lack of one is really big problem for normies
@smallcircles
Some type of con that was going on in a city I am visiting and I just turned a corner and there were all these people all dressed up some as a thing and some cosplaying.
People are speaking all types of shit and I'm sneaking off to look up the slang I don't get.
My friend turns to me and says "Holy shit, the geek level here is higher than the nerd quotient. Don't even get me started on the gender/orientation stuff." "This is a seriously abnormal group of people"
Not really. There are lively discussions going on in most, often involving politics, in particular. Some similarities with Vienna in 1933. More than one would like, but that's just because 2026 is more like 1933 than one would like.
In some of the cafes they are just playing chess, admittedly, but you make your rounds. Actually the most effective way to keep up with what is going on.
Occasionally a drunk has to be thrown out and someone is monologuing to himself in a corner,
@fwtl yes, I'm quite positively surprised at all the good social experiences people have.
> An algo is a tool that can be used for good and the lack of one is really big problem for normies
I don't think that is necessarily the case, more so than that we are dealing with different social networking paradigms. And when people do not realize that, their expectations are off. I call this paradigm #PersonalSocialNetworking..
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
Hopping from #twitter to #mastodon is not just switching to another microblogging platform, that happens to be decentralized. The lack of algorithm gives an opportunity as well as a responsibility in order to get the most out of the fediverse: you are in control and should curate your own feed. By choosing who you follow, you shape your own village, and over time you may nurture it into a bustling city you are part of.
Algo's may help, but it is more Starter packs and app websites that can do a better introduction to fediverse social media.
@smallcircles I hope you do a follow up survey for anyone who voted ghost town
It would be nice if we could help those people find their way or see what can be done in Masto to help
@mikeymikey thank you. Yes, I will do a follow-up. The poll runs for a full 7 days, and has a delightful response thus far.
@smallcircles
I experience the fediverse a bit like riding public transit: often you meet interesting people, occasionally you meet hostile people, sometimes you meet people in crisis, and you have a nodding acquaintence with some folks almost every time you ride. Most people are buried in their phones. You hear bits of conversations (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot), the infrastructure is uneven and often confusing, and every now and again there is a flood, storm, fight, or someone pulling a weapon.
@geoffduncan an interesting analogy to common day to day life activities, thank you.
@benjamincox @smallcircles @Tattooed_Mummy hot damn I hope you find your people here
@oblomov @smallcircles @Tattooed_Mummy I’ve found some. If I were better at socialising, it would help. 🙂
@benjamincox @oblomov @Tattooed_Mummy
You are doing well, and attracted a sizable village to be part of together, looking at your profile. Thank you for your input.
@Netraven I would not express it like that, but I know what you mean.
Mastodon.social can be compared to a large metropole, and it becomes not much different than Twitter platform's megapole in terms of social dynamics and culture. It's a New York that has its charms, but also many unsafe back alleys and ghetto's that are best avoided at night :)
@smallcircles everything you said can still be achieved with a customisable algo or litterally two tabs in the app : one with the chronological algorithm (still an algo btw) and one with the customized feed with your interests.
Without the second one the app is dead unless you build your feed yourself, that's really bad and explains why people got into bluesky instead of mastodon.
Also if you want to have mass appeal you don't expect people to have a boring app and understand the "new paradigm"
@RolloTreadway thank you.
That poses the question if that is just at the town where you are at, or all across the fediverse countryside.
The analogy with towns, villages and cities breaks down here. On the fediverse we have this social fabric we weave ourselves that determines the city or village we want to live in. By carefully curating our own following and followers. I call this Personal social networking..
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
It would be an interesting experiment if by doing some curation and turning it into habit to garden your connections, you can arrive again in the village or city that is to your preferences.
What is mass appeal though? In our little analogy we might call it Urbanization. And to the extent that that applies, it does not have only positve effects, on the contrary.
Algorithms are railways and highways, and while they may bring what we call 'modern life', there's a cost to that. Urban life, the rat race, not knowing your neighbor, pursuit of vain things and status, following the latest trend just to feel you still belong, are a player.
Algorithmic support to our new and diferent social networking landscape will come, but it may be good if that happens by slow growth and gradual evolution, so the culture can catch up and not deteriorate rapidly by inrush of city dwellers all over the country side and littering it beauty with trash, so to speak.
@smallcircles I'm sorry. I was making a joke reference to the Specials song Ghost Town. My brain mostly thinks in songs.
@smallcircles i recommend this video explaining my point. (search on peertube even in the app is still so bad when it's such a good platform it's a shame) https://video.fedihost.co/w/a1522517-704e-44a3-aa0e-5c4e7d49e7d1
Note btw, that for the most part algorithms are not causing the issue of bad integrations between apps. These are due to the pragmatic nature in which our current app-centric fediverse evolves, i.e. by means of post-facto interoperability. Here app developers focus on getting app features on the wire, and whomever first succeeds in making their new custom protocol extension to become popular, becomes the de-facto standard for that feature. And everyone else should "follow the leader" or push themselves out of mainstream fediverse adoption, into their own app niche.
This is not a sustainable path, and I am among years-long advocates that we should do better in how we collectively evolve the fedi, so that it can truly become the social networking of the future. See also my posts from last week, like:
@smallcircles cozy village when I interact with my server or closer servers, more or less a small group of people, bustling city when I explore all the rest
@smallcircles "I experience the Fediverse as the original promise of the internet" : genuine human connections without the interference of corporate interests (or algorithmic manipulation)
@smallcircles A big village with highly motivated and sometimes obsessive communities with specialist interests but plenty of shared fun.
> I'm quite positively surprised at all the good social experiences people have.
Really?! This surprises me, but then perhaps I am biased precisely because I am one of those people.
Don't get me wrong. I am one of those people too. My social experience is a cozy village, and I love to be on the microblogs, roam the timelines.
But there is also an ugly underbelly to our onlline cultures that is not properly acknowledged and discussed, let alone deep reflection on how to bring improvements. The fediverse is first of all a technosphere. Tech is created, rolled out, and culture must adapt accordingly. Externalities and unwanted side-effects are to be dealt with later, which is not easy in an app-centric fediverse where individual devs are in the lead of making feature decisions.
As an aside see this toot: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116109447243110037
Just below the warm and fluffy surface of the cozy fedi culture there are parasocial tendencies and behavioral anti-patterns that make fedi a de-facto unsafe environment. If you don't know the mine fields and eggshells to walk on in certain areas, you may face harsh unexpected consequences, fedidrama.
We can do much better.
@_elena I totally agree with you.
Though I perceive existential threads that I have been posting heavily about the last 2 weeks. Allow me to cross-ref to what I just posted in reply to @neil ..
https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116159137251812698
The current fediverse is a marvel. What will the future fediverse be? That is the question.
@smallcircles Growing town in a country that could do with better public transport options (i.e. more natural links between the different applications).
@brad yes, I agree. In particular the natural and organic aspect. Revolution by evolution. Thank you.
@smallcircles I had to think for a moment but I think I'd call it a space station. A place kinda out if this world ( as it's in direct violation of the corporate model of profit above all else). Where all kinds of fabulous aliens can exchange tips, ideas and convers on many different subjects in a mostly calm and civil manner while they wait to refuel ;)
Nice. They certainly nailed the atmosphere. Listening now.
@smallcircles people obsessed with US politics when they don't even live there. That's how I experience it.
@maikel I think you can't blame them with US being a global superpower and all, and how the world order is radically changed by all this. Difficult times, and it seeps very broadly in all timelines. I think in other social media it will be no different.
If you'd curate your feed to only include people who deliberately shun the political debate, might bring good improvement I think.
@Iloo travelers on an adventure together shuttling back and forth. I like your description.
@smallcircles I don't see any mention of US politics at all, in Instagram. Not once.
People can be worse than algorithms.
I'm not saying elsewhere is better. What I'm saying is the fediverse is no utopia.
My feed is very carefully curated, and yet it still filters in.
@maikel certainly not an utopia. In a chain of links weaving a social fabric 😃 I will pass on this post quote..
https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116159153490621069
> My feed is very carefully curated, and yet it still filters in.
Yes, the tools we have can be much improved to offer more support for Personal social networking.
@smallcircles @benroyce Toronto.
A diverse patchwork of cozy neighbourhoods all cobbled together to become a bustling city.
@smallcircles … as a vehicle that puts the meaning of social media back in its rightful place.
@smallcircles the problems are
1. Pics of Trump face with no trump text, so filters don't work.
2. Pics of Elon face with...see point 1. Like that all other US rage-producing club of billionaires or MAGAs.
3. Using tags as "USpol" requires manual intervention, nobody does.
4. Mastodon follows BOOSTS of whoever you add by default, instead of making those opt-in
5. People don't use alt-text so filters at least filter Trump face becaus eof the alt-text.
6. The worst one: people use other names instead to call them so filters don't work.
What commercial media gets right:
1. They have the power to guess...
...to guess what's on a picture, and add it, so when you tell them "I'm not interested in Trump" it actually filters him forever.
@maikel that is a great list of points. I won't boost, or you get more of what you don't want, but you might consider filing a fediverse idea..
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fediverse-ideas/issues
Some of these can be mitigated by nurturing cultural habits.
> 6. The worst one: people use other names instead to call them so filters don't work.
This one in particular. Besides references to toxic people you see it too with folks saying Gaggle, GMAFIA, Farcebook, etc.
Often these names are used in someone's "activism package", but using them is imho more performative to an existing in-group than that they constructively appeal to others and persuade them to join the good cause.
I posted something related to this today. See CALM culture in..
The acronym also litterally means that our social media culture becomes calmer, and there's better separation to where there's activism, and where the natural talk of the town.
@androcat aha, do you mean you find it hard to get information and connections around your interest areas?
@maikel thank youl. I am fascinated by this intersection between social and technical, and the ability to collaborate at scale in grassroots environments to make that be more seamless.
@smallcircles Cozy neighborhood within a bustling city.
Aside from a few Mastodon instances (two topical and one location-based), I haven't yet explored the rest, e.g. Lemmy, PeerTube, etc. even though I'm aware of their presence, which makes the Fediverse feel bigger than a village.
@smallcircles
A scattering of one-off housing built like the Hut on Fowl's Legs.
@smallcircles I'd probably say a city, but more wide than dense, and a bit like Morrowind's map if you have played it. In the beginning, all of it looks empty and locations become visible when you discover them. You'll find more and more people, interesting posts etc. Though if you have niche interests and those who share them (if they exist) haven't moved to the fediverse yet, you might still be talking to the void a lot.
@Carl_Gylling oh yes, did I play Morrowind. Love the comparison, thanks :)
@smallcircles relatively quiet respite near the bathrooms at an overcrowded music festival when I can still hear the music from the stage but I'm not interested in the acts right now, and people are having semi private conversations around me that they've been wanting to have all day but waiting until they could hear each other, and the people chatting are here to see the same bands as me.
@smallcircles Fedi feels like a permanently disrupted meeting in which everyone is shouting, trying to get everyone else to listen to Their Very Important Point
@draNgNon that sounds a bit like influencer-style social media then. Is it a cacophony in a good way, or not? Would a Google+ like Circles functionality, such as Bonfire are bringing to the fediverse, bring solace?
@smallcircles "... mad scientist's urban planning experiment"
@smallcircles I think you and I have some common goals. I was doing this over Christmas, then stopped because I realised I didn't want to build one for just LGBTQ+ but any minorities (eg: AuDHD). I want any minority to be able to support their own while at the same time, share a "town square".
Non-negotiables
1. Federated and decentralised tech.
2. Opt-in network-wide discovery without centralisation of an index (this is the hard one).
3. Protection in places where we're beheaded for existing (strong e2e is a must and sharing data like absolute location coordinates is a definite NO).
@smallcircles first it was about LGBTQ+, then I started to think about autistics, adhd, neurodivergencies, then about BAME.
Most of it, mimics algorithms I have already in my head about minimising the cost of a UK Nat Rep survey (e.g.: the more rare a participant is, the more expensive it becomes in e.g: Cint) for a previous job.
But each layer has to be carefully thought to be the most respectful and inclusive possible.
(part of why I'm preparing for a psychology degree to get some specialisation into Social Psychology).
The goal is, a dating / support app (the fact it is both things is key) where you can find people ....
...like you, no matter how weird you consider yourself to either date or build a support network when you live in a place where that's absolutely necessary for survival.
@maikel this is a very cool and relevant direction that explores new social networking use cases and areas, and where reflecting deeply on the social side of the equation will probably pay good divident when it comes to implementing the supportive technical side.
I posted the other day about the social networking direction I am most interested about, which requires healthy ecosystem and inclusive commons based collaboration.
https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116109998586728783
SX considers your applied research area to be exploring the Personal social networking paradigm, which in a more general sense also facilitate the notion of what it means to be "working in commons" on things that are "commons based".
Trust and safety are major concerns, I gather. I am not sure what is the status today, but the Open Hospitality Network at one point was investigating an ActivityPub based platform similar to CouchSurfing, where these aspects were also of key importance. @mariha hosts this community.
@smallcircles I experience it as a web of interconnections that span the globe, and across my many intersecting and diverting interests.
@unattributed I like that imagery, thank you. That aligns with the notion of a peopleverse/ Forming a road network that connects the offline and online worlds.
@PrinceOfDenmark do the square quotes indicate we aren't there yet? A collective sounds to me like it is very tight-knit. Shouldn't it be plural?
@smallcircles Exactly, it's kind of like each person has their own topography of what the Fediverse looks like based on who they are interacting with, and the nodes of interests where they intersect.
I call thinking about how people would experience such a network and taking their needs in account to be examples of Personal social networking in a new paradigm that differs to how we now think about social media (which is in a very technical sense characterized by "people are users").
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
On that last bit..
"If as a developer you call your people users, you just lost the first battle of a great solution design."
-- Some dude on the fediverse 😅
@smallcircles 70% cozy village ! My... expérience is so different of obvious majorities ! Even here
@smallcircles Well, there are a couple of potential negative connotations to the word user. First, "user" was frequently used in the 90's for the customers that purchased some software products.
Then there is also the connotation of "drug" users.
Maybe the Fediverse is better thought of as groups of participants in communities that may or may not overlap.
@smallcircles Just re-thinking this a moment... What if it can be seen as individuals that define their own communities (which may / may not overlap).
@unattributed exactly.
I practiced myself in avoidance of the term, and found that to be refreshing and lending a different perspective.
"Users" carries an aspect of depersonalization, but also implies an ownership relationship that creeps into the developers thinking, and even where the noble ones say "I serve MY users" it has consequences to the entire dynamics around software dynamics, and how the solution deliverable is able to serve the needs of different stakeholder groups.
Social experience design focusses on needs-based development and starts to consider problem statements first for all identified stakeholders in the solution delivery process.
@amans happy to hear that! There are a lot of fedi villagers on this thread, which is delightful. 😃
Note that once you are conditioned to avoid the term "User" after a full career of addictive use of the word in that dev context, you start to notice how weird and awkward it really is.
You don't notice that while still addicted to your daily dose of saying "user" in broad generalization and technical abstraction. Devs think it is practical to use the word, pragmatic. But it is not. It is a technical word, and the use is similar to when a dev says "JSON" for instance. It is depersonalized, and that depersonalization seeps deep into the codebase over time.
@smallcircles happy to read this also
Well, let's try to cross more often the ocean then to join your social village-like (i understand "good-will-and-possibly-kind") communitieS
@smallcircles A friendly global village, although a bit white.
@smallcircles I should mention I was trying to capture my experience as an anonymous user. I would still guess the town analogy is generally apt.
Ik merk dat bijna niemand op de fediverse meer boost. Een boost is een schaars goed, en op zich is dat een gunstige ontwikkeling die aansluit bi het Personal social networking paradigma van SX. Maar voor orgs en mensen die een goede boodschap willen overdragen naar een groter publiek, zoals ook CEDO, is het geen goede zaak. Er moet een goede balans zijn, waarbij ook non-profits en actie groepen het gevoel hebben nut te behalen dmv campagnes i.p.v. tijdrovende friend-of-a-friend netwerk opbouw.
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
That is a nice thing the fediverse offers. Note that if you enter a descriptive email in your account registration, or talk about personal matters in fedi direct messages, then technically you are pseudonymous as the instance admins have access to that information if they wish to.
@smallcircles Bustling city where everyone says hello and folks are mostly nice … so, not a real city and not entirely "bustling"
@pattykimura
This is not far from my own experience but I would just add the Fediverse is obviously supposed to generate other places of interest with new unknown forces and expressions.
So, to my previous description with an analogy to the harbour, https://gotosocial.social/@nelfan/statuses/01KJN0JGW7EES2ANFKWBB0ZRJF, I would add this is obviously a starting point for those who have good ideas to go further and find other convenient places to build new harbours.
@smallcircles
If anyone's Fediverse timeline is too empty, I've tried to do a list of all the ways to discover accounts and posts here: https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends
I've also done a list of all the ways to make your own account and posts more discoverable here: https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-get-more-followers-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse
@fwtl @smallcircles there’s a third path to avoid empty timelines vs ‘build your own’ and ‘algorithm’ - packs, which is what the Mastodon team are focussing on .. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/10/our-ideas-about-packs/.
Because I saw your post and thought ‘oh but my timeline isn’t quiet’.. but rather than you having to find those 100s of accounts to follow to make it interesting, a pack supports different lists of accounts based on different interests. If they get it right (as they’ve got quotes right imho) then it could be really nice, and still no algo.
@smallcircles A cosy village with a bustling public transit system bussing in interesting people to see people I like who say hello with a cheery wave as they pass by.
@smallcircles kudos for your reply-reply stamina!
I keep retuning 
to be any one of those things and more, depending on my prevailing energy/focus here/mood ... that's the beauty -- if frustration at the time it takes -- of being your own algo-creator.
[edit] -- notices "Automated" in the profile. Wonders ... HOW automated !!?
Thank you!
An insight of this thread, also indicated in your post, is that everyone creates their own social experience and can foster good habits to improve it. Fediverse allows us to do that. It enables us to be more social online and improve our 'cyberspace' cultures. A paradigm shift towards Personal social networking.
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
PS. It is really me, a person formally known as @humanetech at mastodon social. The 'automated' indicator was first of all a tease (a hedonic driver), but also the intent to use this account as an organization channel for Social coding commons, operated by a group of people. Which didn't happen thus far. Things move slow, and time moves fast. There's no automation, just plain masto web UI and me typing :)
That said, given the huge disruption we face today with AI et al, much more pondering of the risk and impact are in order, than the random firings of complaints into the ether I see so often. See:
What would be an alternative to the word User?
In my dayjob we have Organizations aka "Customers" with groups of "Users" who use our service for their journalistic work.
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When speaking in a general sense, you can substitute with people, person, human. "The user" becomes "the person", and "user-centric" becomes human-centric or people-centric, whatever fits best in context.
More interesting when not just defaulting to saying "user", is asking the question: Whom are we serving with our software? Who is the audience, who are stakeholders and stakeholder groups that have Needs that must be addressed by our solution?
"Joyful creation", the SX formula that envisions cocreation at scale supported by the social web, discerns between Creators and Clients stakeholder groups. If we apply this formula to Software develpment, then creator might be a Dev, but also Tester, Technical writer, etc. People switch stakeholder hats: A dev being client of an upstream project.
In your case you may have Journalists in a News Media domain. And that "Customer" stakeholder name, may indicate a Sales domain. Or may be a stakeholder group, really.
@smallcircles your question is a cognitive dissonance for me.
Firstly, I've only ever experienced Google+ circles in an environment where the participants are similar to LinkedIn, posting about professional topics and/or corporate syncophacy. They are a good way to seal yourself into an echo chamber/bubble, even within that type of discourse
Secondly, influencer social media always feels more like people pitching their point of view or hot take or maybe just themselves. It's about collecting follower count for credibility. Fedi mostly isn't like that but there are some.
Lastly, I'm in the US, right now with political situation there is necessarily disruption and shouting and points to be made. (Some of them might even be correct!). But it does affect social media experience; it would probably make matters worse to increase the echo chamber effects.
@draNgNon thanks, some very good food for thought.
I think the crucial point is that we do not know and do not offer proper ways to deal with different modes of communication, esp. if the only medium channel constitutes a stream of sticky notes, such as we have here in this #microblogging space.
On the first point, when is something an #EchoChamber vs. a healthy interest area, I think depends how well one is able to cross the 'membranes' of all the various social contexts and information spaces one navigates online, as it were.
There should be a place for 'influencing' to an extent if only to reach your crowd and build community and such. But all in balance and proportion and clear social context preferably. Non-profits and #activist groups want to influence, we may want to be informed.
To the last point. There's urgency to address the dark world situation, and either organize or lose. #SX defines #CALMculture as a way to engage in constructive #activism..
Other: loosely-bound meta-network of more tightly-bound community or topical networks.
I *describe my experience* using all kinds of analogies such as the other options in this poll.
That is a good, more matter of fact characterization to all the analogies indeed. Thank you.
What I particularly like in your definition, is that it makes clear that "fediverse" by itself indicates a pure technosphere. It enables social communication, and merely facilitates it. What people do on that channel, the way they communicate and how they interact with others then determines the social experience.
SX starts to consider a social experience from the most personal perspective, where a person has individual needs wrt their online participation. Then using the "Pyramid of perspective" this scale up to consider inter-personal relationships, and at the top of the pyramid and at the largest scale we shape the constructs of society together.
(Note that SX is a universal solution development methodology, even though it starts with a focus on social web and software development.)
See also: https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#pyramid-of-perspective
Awesome!
I hope my response didn't come off snarky, as that wasn't how I meant it - at worst I intended to be a bit pedantic. And relatable analogies are *always* at my fingertips when talking to the inexperienced or "non-tech" social network users, for sure.
But *eventually* we need to draw people in to a little more media- and tech-literate understanding.
I'm bookmarking your blog post, thanks - this is a topic in my current academic modules and my hoped-for masters capstone
@johannab No, not at all snarky. 💕
What is so interesting is to discern between the technical and social, and I think that most people have a very functional-technical perspective of what it means to communicate online, so to say. Consider it merely as extra channels to interact with others, more choice to connect.
But of course our online social network is much more than merely a channel, and we have to 'project our social' somehow over these thin copper and fiberglass wires, while we try to make sense and interpret the social signals that come from other remote places.
I think we underestimate the impact of communicating online, and the narrow 'social bandwidth' that our current networking tools support. Then we translate online situations to how we would behave offline and get wrong expectations, misconceptions, and subequenctly miscommunications.
We are still all youngers online, still all learning the ropes, while we do social networking offline for 1,000's of years already.
@johannab I for my part are very happy you find this interesting. Addressing the social side is not the most popular among developer-heavy crowds :)
Feel welcome to participate in our matrix channels or forum. The latter serves as a note-taking tool, or - under SX definition - as a commons based prosperity vault, aggregating value over time as people leave their 2 cents.
Note the SX Mindfulness principle of Social coding commons.. the movement moves, or it pauses awaiting value aggregation by the next participant. Timeless. Everything hinges on proactive participation (and on the basis of intrinsic motivation following Hedonic peer production principles).
I am mentioning, as at the moment the movement is slow-moving, since I am looking for income to sustain my work in the commons. In other words I must let the SX Sustainability principle prevail now :)
Here a link to the core principles of Social experience design:
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#core-principles
What no one has remarked thus far, is that this #poll has a serious flaw. Sure, if you're in a village or city you can find roads and highways that lead you to answer the question above.
But if you are in a Ghost Town out in the wilderness, the poll likely won't pass by your timeline. And warp the outcome of this little #fediverse survey.
Boosts are appreciated so the poll has more chance to find the outer reaches of our fedi universe.
@smallcircles As a mildly annoying social network website, and thanks to the rising number of polls like this, the levels of annoyance are growing as well.
@lproven ouch, I am sorry. At least it serves the goal of making social networking better. And the results thus far we are a long way on the road towards a Personal social networking paradigm shifts that provides you more control in finding the crowd you're most comfortable with.
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
@smallcircles Hey, no biggie.
I am just not very fond of these metaphors though. It's all been going downhill since Usenet, in my book.
that last line - that's exactly it. I've been mostly under-the-radar blogging my thinking on this again lately (having started making these observations in 1989-90).
My current interest is (re)connecting real-world, localizable communities and real-world Third Places, using digital social tools as *tools* for those human social networks to get their needs met.
This ramble a few months ago was one related thought: https://johannab.ca/theBlog/2025-10-07+More+%E2%80%9CDigital+Third+Space%E2%80%9D+Thoughts
@lproven yes, I can understand that, and when e.g. we compare with LinkedIn, then it is all full of "add your like" polls that are not more than influencer growth-hacking. We should not get there.
Note that I posted this against a backdrop of warning for existential threats that the fediverse also faces at the same time. The top of this thread and onwards gives a good summary..
https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116109447243110037
The thread has many forks that delve in the interesting underlying social dynamics that we'd benefit from if we better understood them, and able to support them in our tools.
For example the discussion triggered by @johannab in this response..
Oww, that is interesting. See here what brought me to the #ActivityPub fediverse ages ago on IT timescales..
Read the blog post, and these are astute observation and valuable way of thinking about the networking environment, both offline as well as online, and how they interact together, how they intertwine. #SX envisions a peopleverse (which is a concept, not a name), a hypothetical space where the interaction is seamless and technology unobtrusively serves our day to day needs.
#PersonalSocialNetworking is a powerful instrument to design better social experiences.
Often the talk of the town in the #ActivityPub dev circles is about some feature or other, an app functionality and the extent to which it can be made interoperable. Technical implementation details dominate the discussion. And drama ensues on the broader #fediverse if social impact and other externalities are overlooked in an app design.
When comparing #microblogging we have today, it really is like sticky notes on the fridge, which fall off or are removed by people. And we project all communication modes onto them.
@smallcircles I very much think you and I have arrived at the same space, perhaps from different directions and with different vocabularies - I'm still very much learning how to communicate my terminologies and I hope it's OK that you've prompted me to shift into some of yours!
My paid-work background is +/- 30 years in "tech support", but much involved roles with titles related to "integration" , "deployment" and "client care". Good tools are made when we start with UX/SX and work back.
@smallcircles Oh, yeah.
I follow Evan, and Julian, but those threads sometimes cause me to glaze over - I've never been "a coder".
That said, I just re-read that one and holy cow, I'm seeing lots of analogies to problems with the DICOM protocol which DID drive my tech services/deployments work for decades.
One of the hardest challenges in keeping a human patient's medical records in order, and secure, is that different stakeholders need different relational connection to different components
@smallcircles I'm now a (hopefully temporarily) unwaged grad student in an interdisciplinary urbanism/planning/systems program mashing that all up with community-first technology planning.
I have a seminar discussion tonight on a recently assigned "The Mayor's Brief" paper, and I took the approach of presenting and argument that Cities need to own their own social technology tools.
Remains to be seen how well I did that!
Totally! Cities should have their own tools. I find the whole #SmartCity trend to be dystopic #SurveillanceCapitalism driven, from what I've seen of it. Large corporations in the driver seat, plenty #BigTech, and a general 'drive for control' by technical means, rather than creating and evolving vibrant and safe living spaces by social means and encouragement of close participation of local residents in sustaining that.
It is hard to find sustenance to focus on the important applied R&D in the more social areas, with most #funding and support reserved for the cold hard tech side. While tech can only ever be supportive of "true social". It must address people's needs.
I'm biased but think its urgent to #fund initiatives like Social coding commons and #SX for fedi to stave off existential challenges. I approached @nlnet among others. Current #EU mandate by @EUCommission for @ngi results in a tech-first "code it and they will come", not a peopleverse.
@smallcircles DICOM data structures get crazy twisted, because every element in a recordbase could potentially be the point which is seen as the "root" from which everything branches.
Radiologists view Images, which have attributes including the Study, the Order, and the Patient.
Clinical care delivery people need Reports, which derive from Studies but also include Orders and Patients as attributes.
Primary care physicians are concerned with Patients, who come with 1:n relationships with attributes such as Orders, Studies, Reports, referrals, results, diagnoses....
Patients don't give a shit about having any attributes at all, they want to feel better and get the hell away from anything to do with medical technology!
I can see AP being at least as ridiculous as DICOM, though social networking is probably slightly lower-stakes for most. 🤣
I think what you will find interesting, and what immediately leads to a sort of mindset shift - which is required to fully grasp the holisitc approach that SX follows - is that SX defines #SocialNetworking as follows:
"Any direct or indirect human interaction between people."
Period. That's it. It encompasses that vast scope, which includes both our offline and online worlds (handy, to focus on that peopleverse).
A healthcare system is a complex mulitplayer environment, where many people in different stakeholder roles work with sensitive data. That is the technical perspective.
On the social side, it is a social network, for which you can apply SX as the evolutionary solution design methodology.
@smallcircles Absolutely.
I'm out of it now, but wow, it would be immensely beneficial for a patient to truly *own* their medical data lake and just exchange the relevant records when needed.
It would also be several lifetimes' work to do that correctly, I fear, and there are eleventy-million and one startups making their own wrongheaded attempts at it with "patient portals" and "AI health" and other such malwares.
Just start small and 🍀 evolve. A good example is the Netherlands where I live. In the 50s it was as car-heavy as any US state today, but by following a consistent policy we turned it into a bikers' paradise. And that is now an exemplar for other cities and even countries across the world. An export product :D
@smallcircles hahaha - your example appears somewhere in my world almost daily - urbanism studies, active transportation folks I follow, and in my fediverse-urbanism interconnections all the time.
It's amazing what we can transform if we get the entrenched and unimaginative status quo out of the way.
@smallcircles @lproven LOL I have the ability to keep scrolling.
The foetid actual BS of places like LInkedIn have me scurrying back here where people are bein' themselves.