Does #FediverseHouse sound interesting? At least a little bit. The "A Better Web Is Possible" talk by Molly ( @molly0xfff ) sounds interesting at least, though it's a shame that only fifteen minutes appear to be allocated to it. Kit O'Connell ( @oconnell ) is part of a talk titled "Publishers: Audience and Autonomy" that also sounds interesting. On the other hand, you've got folks from Threads and Bluesky acting as a bright blinking "CAUTION" sign.
Do I live close enough to Austin to be there in-person? I suppose. It's a three to four hour drive from Fort Worth.
On the other hand, it all feels very, very corporate. Very bourgy, networky, startupy. And all in the worst ways. Corporations hawking their walled gardens^W^W bespoke, artisanal feeds with only the best free-range, organic advertisements sprinkled in (sparingly, of course). The general strategy seems to be "see all of the fediverse through our app," a blatant and bold Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish play if ever there were one, only this time, sold as an act of "unifying" the oPeN SOciAl WeB.
Maybe I'll be there. Maybe I won't.
RSVP: "What company do you work for?" Fucking gag me -__-
"Startupy" is my new favorite thing.
Agave Startupy > High Fructose Startupy
@aspensmonster @molly0xfff @oconnell
While you're thinking about it, why not visit FediDB?
Specifically the software section...
Mastodon: 9.4k servers
Misskey: 1.1k
Pixelfed: 644
PeerTube: 1.1k
Lemmy: 491
Writefreely: 527
Microdotblog: 1
Bridgy-fed: 1
Mobilizon: 101
Pleroma: 596
Bookwyrm: 84
Fedibird: 4
Loops: 1
WordPress: 4.6k
NeoDB: 7
Sharkey: 392
Hometown: 127
It's a jungle out there in the Fediverse!
Yeah, it's fine that it's there, maybe even a good thing, but I see Fedi as a bottom-up (heyooo) thing, and not really the domain of people who are flying to Texas to hobnob.
Some companies want to be the gateway to Fedi and that's compatible with the open nature of it but it's not very enticing to me. Fedi wearing a suit.
@aspensmonster @molly0xfff @oconnell - I am planning on attending it (I live in the Austin metro area and I have a Recording Academy event I am attending later that day as well, plus friends are in that day too, so it's all good). Seems one of the people repping Bluesky there is going to be Mike Masnick, who does great journalistic work for Techdirt. Anyway, it would be nice to have some more folks from Team Mastodon to politely put in counterpoints during any q&a or after talk discussions.
@TotalSonic @aspensmonster @molly0xfff If you are going to be around for SXSW, you might check out this alternative calendar of events which are the opposite of corporate BS: https://austinautonomedia.noblogs.org/smashxsmashwest/smashx2025-calendar/