Stephen Downes

This article was the source of the Scott Jensen post, which I just linked to. I'm treating it separate item because it's a long discussion of what it means to be a community in the fediverse. He quotes Jaz-Michael King, who writes, "the fediverse is not a place, it is the means to build a place." His vision, writes Laurens Hof, "is a million small places, each with its own governance and its own front door, connected where it makes sense and disconnected where it doesn't." Which sounds great, but as Hof writes, "The difficulty is that almost nobody experiences Mastodon at the instance level. People experience it through their home timeline, which composites content from across the entire federation." This is true - but my home timeline is composed of people I have chosen to follow. And the problem, Hof seems to be saying, is that nobody controls that. "The software has not caught up, and until it does, the community will keep enforcing its boundaries the only way the federation layer allows: person by person, reply by reply."