I’m not sure who is pushing #GlobalSwitchDay probably won’t amount to anything, some of these platforms are certainly not ready a massive migration. The #RedditMigration was rough enough on Lemmy, it actually murdered #Kbin; #loops #PeerTube and #Friendica don’t have nearly enough well-maintained instances to support any sort of massive migration. And Signal, well its better than WhatsApp, and its mostly Free Software, but it doesn’t really align with all of the others that are, or at least intend to be in the case of Loops, federated services based on ActivityPub.
The migration was rough on lemmy? There were some growing pains for sure, but personally I was actually surprised how well the major instances handled the massive influx.
Having them all switch on a single day is a big ask and, quite frankly, naïve.
I don’t think anyone expects them all to switch. It’s literally just advertising, and it’ll probably convince at least a few people to switch.
Here’s hoping! 🤞
It would be fun though watching all major platforms experience loss of activity at the same time, followed by a frantic spawning of vots to “keep the conversation going”
100%. I want this more than nearly anything.
Back in the 90s I hoped that being online would raise everyone’s game and we’d all become more technical, in general, and adapt. Sometimes, now, it feels the opposite.
None of the reddit user diasporas made a dent on reddit’s usage, but people did start using other platforms.
Like tiktok’s ban: it’s not going to move people anywhere else because most people have multiple social media accounts thanks to marketing and that’s what this is.
I agree it woudl be a big ask even if the platforms could support it. I don’t precieve anytime that it would even be a good idea to directly encourage such behavior. The #twittermigration and #redditmigration where natural occurences that hit the 'verse hard. I believe they were a net good for ActivityPub and Free Software as a whole, but for many users the hiccups at that time where enough to sour them to “decentralization.”
a big ask
Don’t forget: once you’re off the car lot, you don’t say ‘the ask’ any more. “A big request” happens to be English and also valid for the context.
it upgrades to huge ask outside the car park
dont’ be a pendantic grammar commie.
- The extent to which Signal’s server software is open source has been a point of contention.
- Loops isn’t open source.
Is Loops open source?
It will be! We plan on open sourcing the platform after it reaches a stable and easy to maintain state.
The use license on https://loops.video/legal/terms-of-service appears to actually violate all four of the essetntial freedoms.
Had to say that service != Software. The service indeed put restrictions, but, once released, loops can be perfectly libre software while keeping these restrictions within the service.
Pinky promise.
The same was true for the official pixelfed app and the source was eventually released. Not great, but I think it is fair not to assume malice in this case.
do you know how long between first release “open sourcing” occured? It looks like the current version of Pixelfed is published under the AGPL which is a strong Free Software licesne that all but requires an online open source development model in additon to protection of the four esssential freedoms.
I don’t remember exactly. Maybe a year or so.
hey what about Reddit->Lemmy? lol
what’s the source on this? They should probably do each one on a different day?
edit: https://networkcultures.org/geert/2025/01/30/join-global-switch-day-on-february-1st-2025/
https://slrpnk.net/post/17878668
Maybe there should also be one for Bluesky->Mastodon lol
naw, Bluesky users have already turned down mastodon. Lets pick another one they haven’t heard of yet Bluesky->Misskey
Or you could do all of the above ->Nostr
I like the idea of Nostr, but it’s filled with way too much cryptocurrency garbage.
I and lots of other people are actually using both platforms. That’s why apps like Openvibe exist.
“Signal is better than WhatsApp” is certainly faint praise. Signal is centralised, and has historically been hostile to third party developers who dared play in their sandbox. Signal likes to flaunt their FLOSS and privacy cred, but it’s basically built as another data silo, and pretty aggressively protecting their “brand”.
The only instance of being hostile to a 3rd party developer was when they used their name (a trademark) open signal I think it was?
MollyIm has been alive and well for years. Are there other instances I’m missing?
Other than that, yes signal is definitely better than WhatsApp with the amount of data they collect.
It was LibreSignal. That was a small scale but public meltdown from Signal’s founder, however. “Signal” is already a common term and as such hard to claim sole rights over.
In the same github thread he, Moxie Marlinspike, also insisted that LibreSignal abstain from using Signal’s servers, which sort of defeats the purpose of a third party app. Signal’s initial federation with other servers was rolled back, which again paints an image of a budding data silo.
You’re right, Molly seems to have navigated the third party relationship better, perhaps because Marlinspike has been replaced with new leadership as well?
My ¢2 is this: At this point, with tech leaders making hard right political turns, or just idiosyncratic attacks like Wordpress’ Mullenweg, trust in centralised services should be at a minimum.
Signal already foisted a cryptocurrency (that, incidentally, Marlinspike had consulted on) on their users. Controversial self-serving isn’t new to the organisation, and with full control of a significant share of the private/secure IM market, it’s only a matter of time before their stewardship veers of track.
I agree with your points. I’d much rather a decentralized solution would pop up that would be easy to onboard “normies”.
As outlined in this mastodon thread, you can see a few pain points mentioned, a solution offered, but then there’s a glitch in fluffy chat that doesn’t allow for uName/PW sign up.
Decentralized alternatives are great in theory, but in order to gain the critical mass of users needed for a successful migration, there needs to be a happy middle that results in better/easier UX. Mastodon is much more fleshed out than matrix in this regard IMO as you don’t need to deal with key mgmt, yet you still see users migrating to a less mature platform, Bluesky.
Dessalines also has a good write up on a few of the other alternatives here. https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html#abandonment-of-open-source
Matrix, however, also exposes metadata that can be used to link who is talking to who
GNUNet seems promising
Almost seems like astroturfing to me. This would wreck everyone’s perception of the apps if they all go down from traffic and DDOS.
What devs would ever consider such a clearly bad idea?
Apparently its from a group called the Insitutie for Network Cultures, which at least looks like its been around since the earliest days of what we used to call decentralized microblogging https://networkcultures.org/geert/2025/01/30/join-global-switch-day-on-february-1st-2025/.
Reminds me a lot of leftists who speak of “when the revolution comes” for decades and never even try to organize their workplace.
What devs would ever consider such a clearly bad idea?
None that have any experience whatsoever. Maybe a college intern with more ideals than smarts.
Wow, reddit migration killed kbin? Did all of them just flocked to a single server?
It was more like, the single kbin dev couldn’t deal with the stress of maintaining and scaling the software, so he just quit. Mbin was forked from kbin, though, and seems to be doing fine.
