I have been scrolling on the front page for a couple of minutes now, and I was going to write that it’s literally all conspiracy theories, but that’s not true, there’s also some “sponsored” posts AKA ads sprinkled in.
What a sad joke.
If you think the fediverse is too centralized, you can always host your own instance. You get all the same “free speech” benefits (plus no free-speech ban on drugs and porn), without having to put one foot into that cesspit of a site.
Edit: oh, and that has to be the worst moderation system ever devised - at least if you are a woman or any kind of minority. Good fucking luck in finding a random jury of users who will ever, ever ban a racist or sexist piece of shit on a platform like this. Come to think of it, that’s probably the idea and justification behind the system: being able to loudly proclaim “we have a democratized ban system ensuring moderator overreach is impossible!” does make a great dogwhistle for “you can be a terrible human on here, don’t worry”
Maybe it’s not for you, no one is forcing you to use it, it is not all about you.
A woman protesting an oppressive regime with her posts may find it is the only safe place without getting her identity reported back to the oppressive state as all corporate owned platforms would do.
I gotta say, responding to “hey I think women and minorities might not be safe here” with “then maybe that space isn’t for [women and minorities]” is quite the hot take
Mastodon is only federated, this means your account is owned by the instance owner and can be banned. Bastyon is decentralized meaning there is no owner, your content can be blocked if there is a report and a random jury of high reputation users unanimously agrees that rules have been violated.
No porn and drugs but „free speech“? Yeah right, no thanks. If my account on mastodon gets banned on an instance I go somewhere else.
Of course if fediverse becomes too centralized the couple instances left might just defederate from everyone else, but OTOH what protects me from a couple individuals downvoting me into oblivion on Bastyon?
They’re both decentralized in their own way but communities have to fight against malicious actors that attack the decentralization.
If they pass a law that social media platforms need to collect ID the instance you run will have to collect ID or shut down. No single entity runs Bastyon and no ID laws can be enforced.
You do not understand the platform and are speaking out of ignorance. You do not need to run a node to use the platform and no one can stop you from joining.
If you run a node you participate in the network, your user does not reside or originate from your node it is distributed as all metadata is stored on chain.
No, it is not. Mastodon is federated, this means your account is owned by the instance owner and can be banned. Bastyon is decentralized meaning there is no owner, your content can be blocked if there is a report and a random jury of high reputation users unanimously agrees that rules have been violated.
Reading more about it, I see it’s based on a blockchain, with Pocketcoin token serving as a currency to incentivise node operators.
So, do I understand it right that every action and piece of media is distributed around all nodes, which are incentivised by crypto to keep going? And that user doesn’t normally operate a node per se, but has an account, similar to a crypto wallet, on this blockchain? Also, do node maintainer rewards come from users or the emission pool?
For now it looks to me like a terribly scalable and wasteful system with potential for monetary enshittification. Also, financing is unclear: if it’s on users, barely anyone is gonna pay for everything they publish. If it comes from the pool, even if it is diminishing like with Bitcoin, what would generate demand for the token? Governance?
Good job looking into it a bit instead of freaking out like most others on here. It is running and working and has been for over 6 years if I am not mistaken, it was named pocketnet previously.
Users do not have to pay to publish. Advertisers can pay to boost content and get visibility. There are many people dedicated to free speech and anti-censorship so they will continue to run nodes even if they are not turning a profit. At this point nodes stake coins and earn rewards, not sure of the long term tokenomics, have not gone super deep on it.
Fedi is mostly hostile to the idea of crypto, which is why such projects are commonly a no-go for this audience.
6 years is a fairly long run, so I hope tokenomics was somehow figured out.
Advertising is something commonly rejected; I too see this as a strong negative. Paid boosting of genuine content is not great, but I’ll take it.
Question: what advantages does it have over hosting your own fedi server? Anonymity? Not having to invest in hosting to get more control? Not having to build federated connections and rediscover communities?
what advantages does it have over hosting your own fedi server
Specifically in the context of this post you cannot be forced to collect any data on users or be prosecuted for not collecting because you are not hosting accounts, they are on-schain. Fedi is a very different type of platform and not really a direct alternative. Bastyon is trying to compete with twitter mainly IMO.
You do not get any special access or control by hosting a server because it is just a node that relays data. This makes the network more robust and faster as a user’s app will connect to the fastest nodes for a better experience.
The website is just a fronted, it is not running the platform. If the website is shut down you can still access the platform via the open source app, it cannot be stopped.
Good luck, we now have Bastyon, fully decentralized twitter style platform. It’s over.
I have been scrolling on the front page for a couple of minutes now, and I was going to write that it’s literally all conspiracy theories, but that’s not true, there’s also some “sponsored” posts AKA ads sprinkled in.
What a sad joke.
If you think the fediverse is too centralized, you can always host your own instance. You get all the same “free speech” benefits (plus no free-speech ban on drugs and porn), without having to put one foot into that cesspit of a site.
Edit: oh, and that has to be the worst moderation system ever devised - at least if you are a woman or any kind of minority. Good fucking luck in finding a random jury of users who will ever, ever ban a racist or sexist piece of shit on a platform like this. Come to think of it, that’s probably the idea and justification behind the system: being able to loudly proclaim “we have a democratized ban system ensuring moderator overreach is impossible!” does make a great dogwhistle for “you can be a terrible human on here, don’t worry”
Maybe it’s not for you, no one is forcing you to use it, it is not all about you.
A woman protesting an oppressive regime with her posts may find it is the only safe place without getting her identity reported back to the oppressive state as all corporate owned platforms would do.
I gotta say, responding to “hey I think women and minorities might not be safe here” with “then maybe that space isn’t for [women and minorities]” is quite the hot take
Blockchain-based social media is stupid and doomed for failure
I think you may be a bit off the mark on that prediction. Bastyon already has an order of magnitude more users than Lemmy.
https://bastyon.com/bastyon_team?s=be343ea63fce804e1aad0047d3eb3a9135f9d1afa317a44cad034d58483f1bc0
This is only the website, there are also ~100k app users.
Had never heard about it but it comes across as a very noisy place with lots of Gadsen flags and videos about Disney supplying kids to Epstein :-/
It is a place of free speech. The only rules are, no porn, drugs, or threats. You can block users if you want.
The point is that it is not owned by any corporation and it is run by a network of nodes which are not easily shut down.
No porn but ok to racism? Gee, I wonder I haven’t heard of that before. It’s not like there’s a free alternative with a Mastodon for a mascot.
Mastodon is only federated, this means your account is owned by the instance owner and can be banned. Bastyon is decentralized meaning there is no owner, your content can be blocked if there is a report and a random jury of high reputation users unanimously agrees that rules have been violated.
No porn and drugs but „free speech“? Yeah right, no thanks. If my account on mastodon gets banned on an instance I go somewhere else.
Of course if fediverse becomes too centralized the couple instances left might just defederate from everyone else, but OTOH what protects me from a couple individuals downvoting me into oblivion on Bastyon?
They’re both decentralized in their own way but communities have to fight against malicious actors that attack the decentralization.
3 options:
And you’re picking #3?
If they pass a law that social media platforms need to collect ID the instance you run will have to collect ID or shut down. No single entity runs Bastyon and no ID laws can be enforced.
You can’t even move goalposts right. If you run a server for yourself you’ve already collected the ID for its single user.
Since you’re not interested in honest discourse and are pushing an agenda, I’ll now block you. Have a great life!
You do not understand the platform and are speaking out of ignorance. You do not need to run a node to use the platform and no one can stop you from joining.
If you run a node you participate in the network, your user does not reside or originate from your node it is distributed as all metadata is stored on chain.
What are the advantages over Mastodon? Is it compatible with ActivityPub?
No, it is not. Mastodon is federated, this means your account is owned by the instance owner and can be banned. Bastyon is decentralized meaning there is no owner, your content can be blocked if there is a report and a random jury of high reputation users unanimously agrees that rules have been violated.
Reading more about it, I see it’s based on a blockchain, with Pocketcoin token serving as a currency to incentivise node operators.
So, do I understand it right that every action and piece of media is distributed around all nodes, which are incentivised by crypto to keep going? And that user doesn’t normally operate a node per se, but has an account, similar to a crypto wallet, on this blockchain? Also, do node maintainer rewards come from users or the emission pool?
For now it looks to me like a terribly scalable and wasteful system with potential for monetary enshittification. Also, financing is unclear: if it’s on users, barely anyone is gonna pay for everything they publish. If it comes from the pool, even if it is diminishing like with Bitcoin, what would generate demand for the token? Governance?
But I might not see everything
Good job looking into it a bit instead of freaking out like most others on here. It is running and working and has been for over 6 years if I am not mistaken, it was named pocketnet previously.
Users do not have to pay to publish. Advertisers can pay to boost content and get visibility. There are many people dedicated to free speech and anti-censorship so they will continue to run nodes even if they are not turning a profit. At this point nodes stake coins and earn rewards, not sure of the long term tokenomics, have not gone super deep on it.
Fedi is mostly hostile to the idea of crypto, which is why such projects are commonly a no-go for this audience.
6 years is a fairly long run, so I hope tokenomics was somehow figured out.
Advertising is something commonly rejected; I too see this as a strong negative. Paid boosting of genuine content is not great, but I’ll take it.
Question: what advantages does it have over hosting your own fedi server? Anonymity? Not having to invest in hosting to get more control? Not having to build federated connections and rediscover communities?
Specifically in the context of this post you cannot be forced to collect any data on users or be prosecuted for not collecting because you are not hosting accounts, they are on-schain. Fedi is a very different type of platform and not really a direct alternative. Bastyon is trying to compete with twitter mainly IMO.
You do not get any special access or control by hosting a server because it is just a node that relays data. This makes the network more robust and faster as a user’s app will connect to the fastest nodes for a better experience.
Here is an in-depth article about the platform
https://www.publish0x.com/at-scottcbusiness/the-guide-to-bastyon-and-pkoin-xznxqdk
How does Bastyon work? - https://bastyon.com/help?page=faq
I see, thanks!
Someone owns that website
The website is just a fronted, it is not running the platform. If the website is shut down you can still access the platform via the open source app, it cannot be stopped.
I have never heard of Bastyon before. I have an account on there. It would be helpful if it had a libre app to use.
They do, the website is just a portal to the network for exposure. Using the app is the real Bastyon.
https://github.com/pocketnetteam/pocketnet.gui/releases
or
https://bastyon.com/applications