Bonum Certa Men Certa

No Need for a Diaspora Away From JoinDiaspora, as the Pod Looks Like It'll Survive After All

Video download link | md5sum 0f2481707b0c14e5db0efe443bc0173c Looks Like JoinDiaspora Will be OK Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: There's technical work/discussion and apparently advanced diplomacy/negotiation underway to pass JoinDiaspora to new hands, giving this very important pod (over 316,000 registered users; the video erroneously says "316") a new lease of life

TO understand the choice of the name diaspora one needs to understand the roots and the motivation of the project. It was initially about people fleeing Facebook, which had become far too evil for a lot of people. Even more than a decade ago! Funds were raised to make Diaspora happen. Now it's free for all of us to share! More than a decade later... we're still here.



"It was initially about people fleeing Facebook, which had become far too evil for a lot of people."Last week I wrote about the JoinDiaspora situation because it looked like JoinDiaspora was in serious trouble, with possibly just 18 days away from permanent shutdown. It takes 14 days to decide on succession in a sort of vote on whether to pass it to another "podadmin". That's according to what Lukas, the current "podadmin" (whom I am eternally grateful to!), has told me. Now that we're 14 days away from the deadline I'm happy to quote Dennis Schubert as saying: "Don’t worry about the March 1st timeline - even if our preparations are not done by then, everything will be fine. Please refrain from spamming Lukas, me, or anyone else. That doesn’t make things go any faster. Make yourself a hot chocolate or something and relax."

It seems like they're working things out. Schubert already said 3 years ago: "Happy to take over joindiaspora.com immediately - regardless of the hosting platform and the state it’s in - as well as covering all expenses from my personal account as a temporary solution until account migrations are ready for prime time so that joindiaspora users can distribute more evenly. Lukas, you know how to reach me."

"It's not "just another pod", it's the "original" pod with lots of historic value and over 316,000 registered users."They're now in active discussions (probably of a technical and legal nature) and Schubert says: "I will write a comment here in this thread saying as much on Sunday, Feb. 20th."

That's next weekend.

The bottom line is, we've quite likely found a new "podadmin" (implicit assurance; quite a few people got involved), whom I trust based on his track record at Mozilla and elsewhere. As noted in the video above, we should fully support whoever takes over. Lukas is being a bit picky as he wishes to ensure the pod is left in responsible hands with long-term commitment. Let's wait patiently for next Sunday. So much of my advocacy (and hundreds of thousands of posts from "Linux"/"Tux Machines") did depend on this pod. It was where a lot of my posts originate from (including "tweets"). It's not "just another pod", it's the "original" pod with lots of historic value and over 316,000 registered users. See some of the comments in the active thread; the pod means so much to so many people!

Yellow daffodilsDiaspora is not a dying platform. The dying platforms are Social Control Media 'bubbles' such as Google+ -- a bubble which itself resulted in Pluspora with 15,722 users and over a million comments. Let's keep federating because if the main alternatives to that are centralised garbage (such as YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft LinkedIn), then even a "lesser evil" (not self-hosting but federation) is worth defending. Here is what Schubert told me when JoinDiaspora had technical issues and Lukas was in Japan.

Happy to take over joindiaspora.com immediately - regardless of the hosting platform and the state it’s in - as well as covering all expenses from my personal account as a temporary solution until account migrations are ready for prime time so that joindiaspora users can distribute more evenly. Lukas, you know how to reach me.



Image licence: CC BY-SA 3.0, photo source.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
 
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025