Complete this sentence:
"I experience #fediverse as a .."
#Poll #AskFedi #Microblogging #Mastodon #ActivityPub
- Bustling city (18%, 268 votes)
- Cozy village (70%, 1026 votes)
- Ghost town (4%, 61 votes)
- Other (please comment) (6%, 92 votes)
reshared this
Flash Mob Of One
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
M.S. Bellows, Jr.
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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?)
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to M.S. Bellows, Jr. • • •Mastodon Migration
in reply to M.S. Bellows, Jr. • • •Like Meetpoint Station from CJ Cherryh's Pride of Chanur
Mycotropic
in reply to Mastodon Migration • • •Kadsepfösch
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
Oblomov reshared this.
AutistiCritic
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Oblomov reshared this.
Oblomov
in reply to AutistiCritic • • •AutistiCritic
in reply to Oblomov • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to AutistiCritic • • •@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.
Greem (Graeme. Not Graham!)
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
Jimmy
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Crowjane
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •jz.tusk
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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."
Ω 🌍 Gus Posey
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •RolloTreadway
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to RolloTreadway • • •@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..
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
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.
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commonsRolloTreadway
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to RolloTreadway • • •Tim
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •lankum.bandcamp.com/album/ghos…
Ghost Town, by Lankum
Lankum🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Tim • • •@seufz @RolloTreadway
Nice. They certainly nailed the atmosphere. Listening now.
Guillotine Jones, Flâneur
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Darby M. Dixon III
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Darby M. Dixon III • • •Jenny Fx
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •SlightlyCyberpunk
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Duckbilled Plattypus.
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Nelfaneor 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 🫏✒️♏〽️🟤
in reply to Duckbilled Plattypus. • • •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, gotosocial.social/@nelfan/stat…, 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
CubeOfCheese
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🇨🇦 Little-k
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Bill Sharpe Gadfly
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Bill
Kibrika
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •iced_spiders
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •GLC
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to GLC • • •@glc
A refuge from hectic life then? An quiet oasis to escape the surrounding social media traffic and unwind a bit?
GLC
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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,
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to GLC • • •Pottery by Osa
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Frank Skornia
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
iwein
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to iwein • • •Ernst de Moor
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Mycotropic
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Oblomov
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Anthony David
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Dawn Ahukanna
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Dawa
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •An algo is a tool that can be used for good and the lack of one is really big problem for normies
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Dawa • • •@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..
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
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.
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commonsDawa
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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"
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Dawa • • •@fwtl
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.
Dawa
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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) video.fedihost.co/w/a1522517-7…
FediHost Video
2025-10-25 00:42:15
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Dawa • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@fwtl
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:
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
#SX #SocialCoding #ActivityPub
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-02-21 15:59:23
Nicol Wistreich
in reply to Dawa • • •@fwtl 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 .. blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/10/….
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.
Our ideas about Packs
Mastodon BlogNeil Brown
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@fwtl
> 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.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Neil Brown • • •@neil @fwtl
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: social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
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.
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-02-21 15:59:23
Asbestos
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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"
knwmoon
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •too many names
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to too many names • • •Geoff Duncan
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Geoff Duncan • • •🫧 socialcoding..
Unknown parent • • •@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 😀
Neil Brown
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •For me, it is bustling! Loads of interesting people, with lots of clever, funny, curious etc. things to say.
Best of all, the lack of content promotion / selection algorithms, and instead a simple, chronological, algorithm coupled with filters, means I mainly see stuff of interest to me.
Genuinely, the best social media experience that I've had in a long, long time!
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Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ e Oblomov reshared this.
FediThing
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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: fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accoun…
I've also done a list of all the ways to make your own account and posts more discoverable here: fedi.tips/how-do-i-get-more-fo…
How do I discover accounts to follow on Mastodon and the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tipsreshared this
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
BB
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Jagna
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Elena Rossini ⁂
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •reshared this
🫧 socialcoding.., Neil Brown, Chu 朱 e Melancholic Mediocrity reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •I totally agree with you.
Though I perceive existential threats that I have been posting heavily about the last 2 weeks. These exist for many years and are well-known, but are getting pretty urgent now. They hold risks we have not dealt with properly. Allow me to cross-ref to what I just posted in reply to @neil ..
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
The current fediverse is a marvel. What will the future fediverse be? That is the question.
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-03-02 10:36:13
Chuckles
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂ • • •mags amond
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Andy Wootton
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Scott Rochester
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Scott Rochester • • •Brad Macpherson
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Brad Macpherson • • •iloo
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to iloo • • •Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •@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.
Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •@maikel certainly not an utopia. In a chain of links weaving a social fabric 😃 I will pass on this post quote..
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
> 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.
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-03-02 10:40:20
Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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...
#Mastodon #USdefaultism
Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •@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..
codeberg.org/fediverse/fediver…
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.
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
fediverse-ideas
Codeberg.org🫧 socialcoding..
2026-03-02 09:45:29
Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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).
codeberg.org/maikelthedev/spar…
sparkr
Codeberg.orgMaikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •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 ....
Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Maikel 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 • • •@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.
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
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.
hospitality.network
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-02-21 18:19:36
tanavit
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •alfeliz
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
Fredrik Graver
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@benroyce Toronto.
A diverse patchwork of cozy neighbourhoods all cobbled together to become a bustling city.
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
kiwiWolle
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
Androcat
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Sensitive content
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Androcat • • •Stanley Jones
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
Patrick O'Beirne
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Carl Gylling
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •reshared this
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Carl Gylling • • •S★m V★rm★
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to S★m V★rm★ • • •@samvarma @_elena
In a "too much" or "now we can safely make geek jokes" kind of way?
SecondUniverse (she/her/they)
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •8
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 8 • • •8
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 8 • • •@octarine_wiggle
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.
draNgNon
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to draNgNon • • •draNgNon
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to draNgNon • • •@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..
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-03-02 11:33:18
berthold depoele 🦤
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to berthold depoele 🦤 • • •PrinceOfDenmark
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to PrinceOfDenmark • • •PrinceOfDenmark
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to PrinceOfDenmark • • •unattributed 𓂃✍︎
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to unattributed 𓂃✍︎ • • •unattributed 𓂃✍︎
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to unattributed 𓂃✍︎ • • •@unattributed
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").
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commons🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@unattributed
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 😅
unattributed 𓂃✍︎
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
unattributed 𓂃✍︎
in reply to unattributed 𓂃✍︎ • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to unattributed 𓂃✍︎ • • •@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.
#SX #SocialCoding
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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. It is a word that anchors devs in the technosphere and keeps them there.
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
aliceice
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@unattributed
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.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to aliceice • • •@aliceice @unattributed
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.
aliceice
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@unattributed
My problem with using person vor journalist is as follows:
- The Organizations are the actual, paying customers (Sales domain, but also grouping element for authorization checks)
- We have journalists on both ends of our software. *our* journalists produce news which the customers journalists use to write their news
- people are everywhere in our system. So we need words to differentiate between them
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to aliceice • • •@aliceice @unattributed
You may look at domain driven design here, the 'strategic design' parts, that is.
The solutions are to either use more specific stakeholder names than "Journalist", and perhaps make Journalist a stakeholder group.
Or distinguish the bounded contexts that define and restrict the meaning of Journalist to a particular sub-domain. Bounded contexts form consistency boundaries in the software design, and when you communicate across boundaries you can take contextual or semantic differences into account.
That is the part where tactical patterns apply, like an anti-corruption layer between the different journalistic contexts.
ECommerce is the usual example, where an Order has a different meaning to the Sales domain than that it has to Billing or Shipping. And the data model of the Order has different fields in each of these sub-domains.
aliceice
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@unattributed
I do know about bounded contexts and DDD. Our code is structured to make clear in which context we move. I guess its more of a "Ubiquitious Language" Problem when talking with people about what we need to do and what not.
Did I mention that not *all* our "users" are journalists? Some are just "consumers". So I still need a word to mean both at the same time as they are the ones to get authorized to different parts/services of our Software.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to aliceice • • •@aliceice @unattributed
Yes, ubiquitous language. I created an excalidraw copy of a diagram that you see quite often to explain the idea. I adapted it slightly for the purpose of coding.social
I can't say what are best name choices in your case, but at least I feel confident that it is possible to entirely avoid "user" and benefit from some extra clarity by doing so.
Joyful creation for the Social web
Social coding commonsAmans
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Amans • • •Amans
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Amans • • •Asta McCarthy
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •eerlijkdigitaalonderwijs.nl
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to eerlijkdigitaalonderwijs.nl • • •Een sidestep.. Het valt me op 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.
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb #CEDO
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commonsreshared this
Asta McCarthy e 🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
Fish Id Wardrobe ⁂
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
Nature Punk
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Léa (vroom era)
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Solar🌄Garden
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •kudos for your reply-reply stamina!
I keep retuning
" title="
"/> 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 !!?
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Solar🌄Garden • • •@wavesculptor
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.
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
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:
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commons🫧 socialcoding..
2026-03-02 09:45:29
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
Sean Tilley likes this.
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •@johannab
That is a good, more matter of fact characterization to all the analogies indeed. Thank you.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@johannab
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: coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commonsJohanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •@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.
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@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:
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb #ActivityPub
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commonsJohanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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: johannab.ca/theBlog/2025-10-07…
2025-10-07 More “Digital Third Space” Thoughts - Digital Meanderings
johannab.ca🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •@johannab
Oww, that is interesting. See here what brought me to the #ActivityPub fediverse ages ago on IT timescales..
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-02-21 18:19:36
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@johannab
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.
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •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!
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •@johannab
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.
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-02-21 15:59:23
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •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.
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •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. 🤣
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •@johannab
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.
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Johanna, CanCon variety • • •@johannab
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 😁
Johanna, CanCon variety
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •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.
reshared this
Rokosun e 🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Even more remarkable is the near complete absence of the #ActivityPub developer community in mingling in the social side of the discussion.
To learn how #fedizens actually *experience* this here fediverse. A #fediverse which results from them tying their apps together, to hopefully get more than the sum of individual parts. By means of facilitating #interoperability, technically speaking. But it involves more than getting that feature across the wire to the next app.
There's exists a clear gap between #sociosphere and #technosphere, where the latter must serve the former to bring real solutions. Otherwise it is all apps and not much seamless social fabric to navigate. No peopleverse anywhere in sight. Just apps and users of them.
The apps see great success, and I enjoy their use a lot. But I don't see a future for the app-centric fediverse where it comes to providing mankind the future of #SocialNetworking.
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-02-21 15:59:23
django
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •django
in reply to django • • •Within this multitude different folks have different needs and desires, some are testing the waters, some are regulars.
Even the impulse for networked sociality ebbs and flows.
@smallcircles
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to django • • •django
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •How do you see the the people verse, within ans beyond the app paradigm?
🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to django • • •@django
In a technical sense constituting a shift towards a fediverse of apps and services.
In a social sense as inter-connected spaces that are open for people to explore, collaborate, cocreate, and do all the things we do offline to the extent we can do them online too, plus all the extra's that remote connection by technological means have to offer.
But that is an exploratory design area. A vast space hardly explored. This is where Social experience design focuses. See the diagram at coding.social where SX broadens horizons by taking a more holistic approach (actually utterly holistic and boundless in scope, as SX scales from personal to societal levels).
What #SX envisions is a peopleverse. A hypothetical place-to-be in the future where our online and offline worlds are seamlessly intertwined and in services of our day to day activities and human needs.
Joyful creation for the Social web
Social coding commons🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •This is just me note-taking and cross-referencing.. weaving in public 😀
discuss.coding.social/t/rsvp-f…
RSVP Future Fediverse: ✅ Fedizens present, ❌ Devs busy cranking out code
Discuss Social CodingKhleedril
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Khleedril • • •@khleedril
Don't worry it is more a note-to-self on the forum which serves as note-taking tool. The link it includes is to the poll at the top of this thread. Other than that I have tooted all over the place on the subject matter, which is unfortunately now all dispersed and sinking in timeline history (though I kept a bunch of bookmarks).
wordsmith‽ ⁂
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •"Even more remarkable is the near complete absence of the #ActivityPub developer community in mingling in the social side of the discussion."
Once you've been here for a little longer you'll realise this statement isn't the case.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to wordsmith‽ ⁂ • • •wordsmith‽ ⁂
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Liam Proven
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Liam Proven • • •@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.
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
How We Reimagine the Social Web
Social coding commonsLiam Proven
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Hey, no biggie.
I am just not very fond of these metaphors though. It's all been going downhill since Usenet, in my book.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Liam Proven • • •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..
social.coop/@smallcircles/1161…
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..
cosocial.ca/@johannab/11616667…
Johanna, CanCon variety
2026-03-03 18:32:58
cognitively accessible math
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •The foetid actual BS of places like LInkedIn have me scurrying back here where people are bein' themselves.
Savannology
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Kristian 🌒
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Kristian 🌒 • • •@z428
Yes, a nice depiction. An intricate social networking landscape is shaping up, where our social graphs fan out to interact in many different social settings and contexts. Lovely, thank you.
Kristian 🌒
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Kristian 🌒 • • •@z428 yes, this is the focus area of Social experience experience design, which takes on the challenge of overcoming the wicked challenge of cocreation at scale in "herding of cats" grassroots environments, where regular top-down forms of organization and governance like community-building are doomed to fail.
coding.social
Joyful creation for the Social web
Social coding commonswww.retiredfromtheminternet.com 🇮🇱
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to www.retiredfromtheminternet.com 🇮🇱 • • •camulus
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •youtu.be/LNNPNweSbp8
- YouTube
youtu.beSheldon
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •I was going to answer a cozy village after seeing how crazy a place like BlueSky is whenever emotions run hot, but then I realized that effect is exactly the opposite of a cozy village.
The best and worst part of a cozy village is that you know everyone, but you can't get away from them so the limited diversity means you're always stuck on the same things. If you don't enjoy those exact same things you either keep to yourself or you leave.
In a bustling city, it takes effort to find your tribe. Even though you're in a much larger population center, your in-group can end up being far smaller than it would be in a cozy village because everyone has a much larger number of choices of groups they can belong to.
Being lost and NOT being able to quickly feel like you belong is exactly what you'd expect to experience in a bustling city.
jack
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to jack • • •Songbird
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • •Pirate ship.
Because it's full of pirates.
🫧 socialcoding.. likes this.
Corinna Ehlers
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •