https://mathewlowry.medium.com/all-my-toots-gone-e844f7c5f255 Exactly one year after publishing "Am I on the right Mastodon instance?", I discover that I wasn’t: "I’ve lost everything — posts, follows, followers, the lot.... the admin confirmed that he’d shut it down because donations were insufficient and he could no longer afford to pay the server costs from his own pocket". No great loss: "months ago I’d concluded that Mastodon wasn’t fit for purpose. I only returned this week to find that the Israel-Hamas issue had turned Mastodon into Twix... Social infrastructure needs to deliver content as a basic minimum... [which] takes time, money and professionalism. A better business model is required".
https://mathewlowry.medium.com/social-knowledge-graphs-for-collective-intelligence-75c436889320 The second in my "1/1/2023 bundle of 5 posts" exploring collective intelligence looks at the role of decentralised social networks: "A personalised, decentralised Social Knowledge Graph for each user multiplies the knowledge available to them via a trusted network of Followers and Friends, and creating collaborative possibilities more akin to wikis than blogging".
https://mathewlowry.medium.com/am-i-on-the-right-mastodon-instance-a0aee14ca00f My second post following my personal #twittermigration: "the other users on your instance create its collective intelligence — the nearest thing you have to a content discovery algorithm". Not that I like algorithms, but "Apart from hashtags, ,,, your server’s Local and Federated timelines [are your] primary discovery channels when you’re getting started." So can instances become echo chambers, and how can ew avoid simply projecting the Brussels Bubble into the Fediverse? Read on...
https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf Those who've read Doctorow's books and blogs on the collective action problem stopping people leave the established social media walled gardens may not find anything new, except for the quite brilliant link he makes with "the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof ... the Anatevkans can’t just pack up and leave: they are being held hostage…by each other... They love each other. They need each other. And despite that, when it’s finally time to go, they can’t all agree on where to go next." Hence the advantage of the Fediverse: "You don’t have to convince your friends to join the same server as you... so long as your friends choose servers that your server connects to... . And if the people who run your server make life intolerable ... you can switch to another server and your messages and links to your friends will follow you there." (although I think only the friends, not the messages, follow - tbc). Of course, you still can't "talk to ... the people they leave behind on ... Facebook and Twitter", hence the need to legislate interoperability.
https://mathewlowry.medium.com/welcome-to-the-fediverse-starry-eyed-noob-twittermigration-day-3-57b99350414 I discovered the Fediverse as I kicked MyHub.ai’s shiny new tyres in early 2020, and I’m kicking myself now for not diving in then.
https://mathewlowry.medium.com/building-collective-intelligence-from-social-knowledge-graphs-e3a465852e8b Writing a chapter for a book on Personal Knowledge Graphs made me rethink MyHub.ai, and led to a new collective intelligence pilot project with the founders of massive.wiki.
https://medium.com/@mathewlowry/from-personal-to-social-knowledge-graphs-a-vision-statement-draft-fc86ef4f7022 I've been invited to write a chapter for an upcoming book on Personal Knowledge Graphs (PKG). My chapter will encompass each user’s PKG, the Social Knowledge Graph created by networking them together via the Fediverse, Solid hosting, AI writing tools and Decentralised Autonomous Organisations. This post provides a first draft of its Introduction, in the hope of crowdsourcing some ideas to make it better.
https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/ I suspect this will be a canonical text for me moving forward with myhub.ai. Mike Caulfield in