Krafter's Thoughts

Here in the good ol' United States of America, we have a dangerous culture that is leading the world (well, mostly the Western World, or maybe just ourselves) into a place of desolation and despair. We waste food, money, resources, and land. Why? Because we're 'Muricans, and the world can't tell us what to do.

But before I get into this, let's step back for a moment. Recently, I visited London, Paris, and some smaller towns in between. I've never been to Europe before, and I have to say I fell in love with it. Now I'm not claiming that London & Paris is a full taste of the entirety of a continent — just that I loved what I saw. As an American, I was amazed by a few key things. First, the compactness of everything. The streets, the cars, the buildings—all the space was used so well and effectively. Even that cute little garden across the Thames from Westminster serves to tuck away a parking garage underneath it.

The second thing I loved about my short excursion in Europe was how, even in subtle ways, there is (or it at least seemed like there was) a push to maintain, upkeep, and better the world we live in. Like how bottle caps are attached to the bottles so you don't loose the lid somewhere and can recycle it. Or how there are plastic bottles made of 100% RECYCLED PLASTIC. I could almost guarantee you that if you walked up to a random American on the street they would confirm that you can't make 100% recycled anything, because it “doesn't hold together” or whatnot. But that's clearly just not true.

The last big thing I noticed is the thoughtfulness. So many little things seemed so thought out, things that here in the States people would either just live with, or our two party system could never stop fighting long enough to amend. From small things, like the striped poles at the “zebra crossings”, to big things, like the quality of the public transport.

But why am I saying all this? Because we need to do better. If you look at the United States today, we're tearing ourselves apart in many ways all at once. For starters, we've been doing this “urban sprawl” thing where we have everybody spread out. Well, that seems to work well for only one group, in a country without public transport, and that's the automotive industry. For the everyday person all this does is require them to invest in this huge financial liability, a car, and have to learn to drive it, and upkeep it, forever. This means many cars on the roads, which is dangerous for everyone (especially people outside of said cars).

Even then, with everyone driving on our roads, most of them aren't super well designed. NotJustBikes points out in various videos on his channel how these dangerous “stroads” are ugly, don't solve traffic flow, and are dangerous for pedestrians trying to cross them.

How do we solve this? We need to convince people that things can be better. We need to push for quality public transit systems that make sense, and then get people to use them. We need to design our roads better, so people drive safely on them. We need to make our cities walkable, so people can walk for short trips instead of taking their car. We need to fix this, like the rest of the world did. If anyone really intends to “make America great again”, I can't imagine a real way to do that which does not include actually fixing these problems with our country.

In order to make America a truly beautiful place (in terms of how we live in it), I believe we need to take heed of what has started in Europe, and take better care of our environment, make our cities usable without the mass polluters that are cars, and generally use what we have more wisely.

Note: I wrote most of this awhile ago, and only just finished up and posted it now, because I realize I have several posts I've started but never finished. My trip to England and France took place in Spring this year (2024).

Where are we Going?

Recently, I've found a new side of the internet has started to emerge. It's not entirely new, as it's very reminiscent of the 'old web', but it's new to me (and probably many others in my age bracket). This new internet encompasses many things, but in this post we'll just focus on the Social Media side of things.

In the past several years, many open source solutions for social media have matured (and continue to do so). Solutions like Mastodon, PixelFed, Peertube, and others. But we must start at the beginning —the current corporate-backed internet— before we can delve into current 'Fediverse' solutions, and why I think they will inevitably overtake their centralized counterparts.

And there are so many of these centralized social media sites. Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter (or X) to name a few. People have flocked to these sites for years, and with good reason too. Because there are so many people on any one of these given sites, you're practically guaranteed to find your niche. Also, pretty much all your friends are on such sites, as it's the societal norm to do so. Those who aren't are often seen as outsiders or not in-the-loop of what's happening. Users run from the fear of missing out.

However, in recent years, we've seen how this centralized social media model does in fact make people 'miss out'. As I'm sure everyone is aware at this point, proprietary social media is designed to be addictive. While hiding under the mask of connecting people (which is a good thing, that it does do) they use various methods to ensure the user stays hooked. They employ algorithms to keep feeding users content that they will watch and interact with— keeping them on the platform for as long as possible. Since these users interact with peoples' content, they are naturally given incentive to continue creating/posting content on these sites. However, with the recent (near) falls of sites like Twitter and Reddit, the average user begins to see the other fatal flaw in these platforms. That being the leadership and purpose of such social media services. Modern, proprietary, centralized social media is typically lead by a singular individual, whose purpose is to make more money for a investors or themselves.

But what if there was another way? Let's suppose, for a moment, that we could have an ecosystem of social media platforms that are completely averse to that described above. Lead not by a singular individual, but lead by many individuals with their own ideas, methods, and interests. Purposed not to server the investor, but intended to serve the user, and designed to cultivate relationships between one another— rather than a slavery towards a platform. And most importantly, a platform that doesn't collapse due to the whims of one. That platform is the Fediverse.

The beauty of the Fediverse lies in that architecture. Because this ecosystem is not limited to one site (owned by one person or corporation), we instead have many sites (called “instances”) that work together (or are “federated”) to connect people and create our platform. On the Fediverse, we (the community) have the freedom to use whatever platform we wish, all without 'missing out', because, thanks to ActivityPub, we can follow whoever we want to from wherever we choose to be! There is no fear of missing out, because you don't need to spend time mindlessly scrolling on every platform under the sun, to dig through the algorithm until you find the posts you really care about. That's the other thing— the algorithm, or lack thereof. The Fediverse has no algorithm. Most sites, like Mastodon, simply have feeds sorted by new. While it may seem this lack of content curation would make the site boring or uninteresting, it frankly does the opposite. The lack of an algorithm means the user has to put in an effort to fill their feed with users who post content that they are actually interested in. Because (back to proprietary social media) that's what the alternative lacks. The algorithm feeds the user not with content that they like, or want to see, but with content that makes them stay on the platform. Content that keeps them scrolling. With federated social media, the users themselves curate content that is meaningful to them. In this way, we actually accomplish the premise that the centralized model fails to fulfill. We connect people in an intricate community of those who want to be together. And while it takes time to find the right people to follow, once you find them you are better off because of it.

And this revelation, of an internet where the community itself is the focus, is an amazing and powerful thing. I believe, as more and more people discover the beauty of the Fediverse, the corporate-backed, proprietary, centralized social media model will die off. Because, the user will realize that they don't want to fall victim to the whims of some billionaire.

So where are we going? Hopefully to a more decentralized, open internet.

But alas, only time can tell.