Federation and Fandom
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Federation and Fandom |
| Creator: | Impertinence |
| Date(s): | December 8, 2018 |
| Medium: | Dreamwidth post |
| Fandom: | Pan-fandom |
| Topic: | Fandom migration, the Tumblr NSFW Content Purge, Federated fandom |
| External Links: | https://impertinence.dreamwidth.org/699092.html (Archived version) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Federation and Fandom is the title of a meta essay by Impertinence. It was published to Dreamwidth in early December, 2018 in the midst of the Tumblr NSFW Content Purge and a few days after Tumblr announced that it would officially be banning all adult content from its platform.
It discusses the following topics:
- Fandom migration and "fandom in flux"
- Purges of fannish content from platforms, including Tumblr
- Federation and its potential benefits for fandom
- Owning the servers
Context
This article or section needs expansion. |
Excerpts from the Essay
Fandom is, once again, in flux. Anyone who's been around for more than a few years knows the signs have been building: deleted accounts and new terms of service, followed by talk of moving elsewhere, fracturing communities over multiple platforms, sometimes breaking communities entirely. It's a common pattern a lot of us have come to see as an inevitability, just something that happens every five or ten years. But of course there is a cost, archival as well as communal. That chatfic you loved gets deleted. The old homepage of your favorite vidder goes down. Entire fandoms' discussions disappear forever.
We've all been there at least once, Or we're about to be there, because again: it's happening with Tumblr. People won't all leave at once. The demise of LJ was measured in years, not days. But eventually, even if it's still up, it won't be what it was.
I also agree with the problem statement, which I've seen repeated again and again, that fandom should be more distributed - that no single (especially not corporate-owned) social network should be the point of failure.
So. Let's talk about server federation.
Federation would solve a lot of fandom's current problems. For starters, there is a huge variety of roll-your-own federated services out there. There's Peertube, which is focused on video hosting; Pixelfed, focused on image hosting; Mastadon and other microblogging frameworks; Friendica and Osana, which are focused on social networking; Hubzilla, which is focused on all-purpose social networking, file storage, and wiki management; and Nextcloud, which is focused on file storage. This network of frameworks is incredibly powerful, and some of them are very easy to set up.
Ad revenue, subscription, angel investment, it doesn't matter; eventually, some C-suite douche will look at all our wonderful weirdness and ask why they can't pull in influencers instead. We know we need to get out ahead of that garbage; that's why AO3 exists. My proposal is we build on that by joining the ranks of people who know decentralization is the answer to passionate, fractious communities staying together. It's time for fandom to join the fediverse.
Fan Comments
I'm having serious flashbacks to the days of BBSes and private BBSes now - but yes, this has to be the best way forward, given the tech we have now.
Honestly, I don't think it matters which highway we use as long as we'll all in the same mall together to see the movie.
So, I'm understanding this as a capital (servers) and labor collaboration, where it's not who has the most toys wins, because having too many users in the same instance gives you the sad plant red condition.
From Arpanet to a network of Walters.
[tei]
Here via yourlibrarian! This is super interesting, and I had no idea about any of this stuff before reading it, but it certainly sounds like a better bet than handing over fandom to any one website.
I have a bunch of questions, feel free to answer only some (or none) of them!
[snipped]
2. I'm also curious if you have opinions on how instances should be organized, if fandom in general did start moving to a federated system. If an instance is just a bunch of data all stored in one place, it seems to me that tolerance to various levels of adult content would be the logical defining factor between instances-- is that how you see it? Or would there be an advantage to fandom- or ship-specific instances?
[impertinence]
2. I think it depends on the fandom! Adult content vs none seems like an obvious delineation, but I've definitely been in fandoms where the ships were either super separate or would've preferred to exist separately. And while federation isn't silo'd, obviously you could set up your own server where the rules were you can only call Spike "that motherfucker" and Angel "the one" if you really wanted. :D So - it depends and I have no super strong opinion, aside from generally agreeing that small-ish instances are better. Most of my opinions are on the infrastructure side - I think the one place centralization would be useful would be in helping with backups, DR (disaster recovery) plans, etc.