@lain @realcaseyrollins @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron
>AP is too expensive
is this true? I'd imagine that a centralized store would be cheaper

@fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins well, not federating is less taxing than federating, but it's really not too much. you can run pleroma on the smalles vps on hetzner. they also said that federation only brings in 'lispy queer pink shit', so i suspect that the decision is not purely technical.

@lain @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins sure. I mean about AP not pleroma. Wouldn't a proprietary format be lighter and thus less expensive?

For guys who are concerned about costs they sure do spend a lot of money on engineering stuff over and over again

@fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins you could make a lighter format, surely, but there's not much point, the data you need to send is somewhat verbose but compresses very well. it's not worse than xmpp, and nobody says that is too slow.

@lain @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins in any case, it's pretty clear they weren't benefitting from federating with us. I would have made the same decision on his end, having seen the "welcoming" other mastodon instances gave them.

I bet Torba was advised by someone that fedi would have welcomed him with open arms as a fellow rebel against big tech. I wonder if the same guy advised america that iraqis would welcome them as fellow lovers of freedom.

@fluffy @cyber_ruffy @lain @foxhkron Yeah, the problem was Rob Colbert basically rewrote #Gab, deployed the new software without testing it, and realized the Federation code was super broken. So he decided not to fix it it, and get rid of the feature altogether.

@cyber_ruffy @fluffy @lain @foxhkron I'm not aware of this, I just knew that they rewrote it a few weeks ago, didn't test it, and then they got plagued with these issues

It was awful at first, man, people couldn't even post pictures

@cyber_ruffy @realcaseyrollins @lain @foxhkron tbf this was not a bad call on their part. Mastodon is not just software but also has a lot of branding baggage. I would have done the same thing. I just don't know how they could have possibly fucked it up.

@lain @fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins I think they meant it's "expensive" in the sense that they kept breaking shit and people were expecting them to fix it, and "time is money." But working with them, I saw a lot of slacking off, lack of focus and poor planning.

They also moved to new servers recently, and faced challenges migrating Mastodon:

1. The database. Millions of RSA keypairs making it extremely slow to export, copy, and import.

2. Media uploads. Terabytes of remote image uploads containing content Gab users will likely never see.

What they don't understand is that Mastodon isn't ActivityPub, and you can have a server without storing remote media. The RSA keypair issue is legitimate, but maybe they should have planned for this instead of just reacting when something goes wrong. I was able to omit keypairs from my Migrator, making the export about 300x faster (not an exaggeration).

I strongly believe they ended federation because they felt someone deserved to be "punished" for this. They refuse to punish themselves, so removing federation is like a way to "punish" Mastodon for their site being down for 4 days.

@alex @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins @lain @cyber_ruffy @fluffy

Their own words on ending the federation entirely:

https://noagendasocial.com/@PaterSnape/104258726643293161

@PaterSnape @alex @foxhkron @lain @cyber_ruffy @fluffy oof

I love how all by himself, Gleason somehow got everything to work and even migrate to #Pleroma, and fix all the issues #Gab was experiencing and complaining about, and #Gab couldn't despite being an entire company with a team and financial backers.

@realcaseyrollins @PaterSnape @foxhkron @lain @cyber_ruffy @fluffy It makes me look good, but I'd say it's more a testament to how bad they truly are. Any Pleroma dev could have done this.

@alex

The dev team must love your quips, lol :)

Good developers are exceedingly rare these days.. Its not just the pleorma devs to be honest.

@foxhkron @realcaseyrollins @lain @cyber_ruffy @PaterSnape @fluffy

@alex @lain @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins
>I strongly believe they... [removed federation as] a way to "punish" Mastodon

utter fantasy on their part.

80% of the network blocks them if not 95%+. Hundreds of people actively seek out and harass anyone who doesn't. At best they are tolerated. What sort of a punishment can it be to defederate? I didn't even notice they were gone. It may be months until most people are aware. Some punishment.

do these guys live in some complete fantasy? I don't believe it, that is rarely the case, usually "these guys are crazy" is lazy wishful thinking. It must be something else.

@fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @lain @realcaseyrollins I really do believe they live in a fantasy world.

To elaborate on the "punish Mastodon" thing, I think it was a way for them to feel like it wasn't their own fault their site was down for 4 days. By getting rid of federation, it's their way to deflect blame. This way they avoid having to take a hard look at themselves.

@alex @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @lain @realcaseyrollins oh, in that case, yeah, it makes sense.

They were blocked by everyone so they lose nothing but gain an excuse for what is certainly a real crisis for a social media platform (4 days down). They turn what could have escalated into a serious crisis about their competence and leadership solidarity against some external entity.

If you put it that way, it seems like a pretty smart move on their part.

I don't know about this whole punish mastodon thing. You'd know best of course.

@alex @fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @lain @realcaseyrollins

What I see, They were not able to solve those error fast enough,

Federation didn't helped to get some exposure which they were expecting 99% people mention user on there own server

Migration is alot of work that also contribute to the issue

When there site was down for 4 days it simply come down to run the site again stable atleast and the fastest way for them to shut federation down. And remove the goddaam code

They have quite big user base, think about if they start moving somewhere else Gab don't want that

@fluffy @alex @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @lain @realcaseyrollins man you dont understand, when you got 750k to spend in salaries marketing and research, you dont relly care about what others on bleroma think,also when you have ppl that lend you 250k for just beeing up,all you say dont matter
imagem.png

@11112011 @alex @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @lain @realcaseyrollins unironically correct.

Unlike nearly everyone else on the fediverse they actually are not totally broke and they actually hope to gain serious traction with their platform. Everyone else is happy with the status quo. I can't hate them for this.

@fluffy @alex @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @lain @realcaseyrollins you right they are not broke,you can trust me on this, as far to gain traction, i think/sure they dont really care

@alex @lain Gab is on automatic pilot. Storing their own cache of remote images dates from the scandal when they allowed remote image embeds from ANY server - that is, instant IP traps for antifa to set. I had to explain this exploit to them, and they got rid of remote image embeds and allowed Gab image uploads. This was on Gab 1.0, pre federation.

However the whole site is now loading remote content from Haaretz and other sites that have no love of Gab users, so why stop there?

'Remote images off' default and explaining the problem in settings would have done it. But that requires understanding the reasons for the original decision.

Rob wasn't even there so he is oblivious to the concerns that led to the 'local images only' policy, and he violates it in every feature he rolls out himself (Gab trends uses images from news sites, the source of the Haaretz pic mentioned earlier)

@lain
< they also said that federation only brings in 'lispy queer pink shit', so i suspect that the decision is not purely technical.

Huh?! LMAO that's ignorant as fuck...

@fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins

@bigl0af @foxhkron @lain @cyber_ruffy @fluffy That's insane considering that @a knew me well enough to block me 😝

@lain @fluffy @cyber_ruffy @foxhkron @realcaseyrollins

It absolutely can be personal or ideological. That said, who wants to see 'lispy queer pink shit' all the time on fedi when you already see it on the surface net all the time.