
Thousands of Spaniards Leave Twitter for GNU Social - lelf
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/thousands-of-spaniards-leave-twitter-for-gnu-social
======
loomio
Something is going on in Spain. You can track the Indignados movement through
Occupy and now Podemos. We're seeing a parallel movement in technology there
to what's going on in politics with the Podemos movement [0] - decentralised,
grassroots, bottom-up. It's deeply exciting to track these digital and
cultural trends together and imagine a new paradigm emerging in society.

We make an open source tool for distributed collaboration, and our userbase is
now overwhelmingly in Spain. This emerged organically. It seems to be very
fertile ground right now for distributed communication and democracy. I would
advise anyone making software in this space to get a Spanish version out there
and join the wave. I wonder about how it will spread to the rest of the
Spanish-speaking world and join up with related tools and movements coming out
of South America, like DemocracyOS.

[0] [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/spain-politics-via-
re...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/spain-politics-via-reddit)

~~~
mpeg
The push for open source in Spain is often labelled as being about freedom.

Personally, I think it tends to be about money, especially in SMEs.

My friend uses an open source collaboration tool in his office of 20+ people,
because even though everyone uses evernote personally, the plan with
collaboration features is "too expensive". Might just be an anecdote, but I
keep hearing lots of those.

Spain might be great for free software, but I would stay away from it in terms
of starting an actual business.

Podemos' offer might be great for some people, but I don't think they will do
much to change some of the deeper issues of the Spanish economy. I don't think
I will be voting for them.

~~~
phaer
That's most probably a part of it, but it wouldn't explain why people migrate
to GNU Social, because users don't need to pay for twitter.

~~~
coldtea
> _That 's most probably a part of it, but it wouldn't explain why people
> migrate to GNU Social_

Do they? I don't think the article is accurate to what's happening in any
large degree. As another commenter puts it below:

> _I call shenanigans. Spaniard here, the story is completely wrong. Most of
> the 6k registered users on Quitter Spain are inactive and it has nothing to
> do with Podemos and the indignados movement (they use Twitter actively along
> with Facebook). Even the user that started this "false migration"
> (@barbijaputa) is using Twitter and is inactive on Quitter_

------
jorge_leria
I call shenanigans. Spaniard here, the story is completely wrong.

Most of the 6k registered users on Quitter Spain are inactive and it has
nothing to do with Podemos and the indignados movement (they use Twitter
actively along with Facebook). Even the user that started this "false
migration" (@barbijaputa) is using Twitter and is inactive on Quitter.

~~~
pakled_engineer
They are backup accounts, which will explode in usage if access to centralized
social media is blocked, or down for scheduled maintenance while some kind of
political emergency[1] is happening in Spain.

[1][http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/16/us-iran-
election-t...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/16/us-iran-election-
twitter-usa-idUSWBT01137420090616)

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
> They are backup accounts, which will explode in usage if access to
> centralized social media is blocked

So pretty much ... never? There is no way a country in the EU will be allowed
to block social media.

~~~
e12e
Spain has recently reintroduced some legislation that would've made Franco
proud. That said, I doubt they'll block twitter. They'll monitor it, of course
-- and they'll probably use radio jamming against demonstrations.

Free, distributed (mesh-net) solutions will only help there, if they can
somehow get around the jamming (relatively easy if only cell phone networks
are jammed, not sure how likely it is that bluetooth/wlan will/can be jammed
as well).

------
antr
It seems the title is a bit hyped.

"Quitter Spain now has 6,667 users"... apparently, from the reading, all users
came from the followers from a Twitter user that has 167,000 followers. I'll
let everyone do the math.

I'd really like to see the tweets in question, because I tend to see a lot of
two-faced individuals using the "freedom of speech" argument to personally
attack and harass others. There is a bunch of accusations in the post, but no
mention of the specific tweets that caused "Thousands of Spaniards leave
Twitter". The fact that no part of the "conversation" is published, makes me a
bit worried about the article's integrity.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
This tweet, but you can't see the image:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HdDO5m...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HdDO5mEVACMJ:https://twitter.com/Barbijaputa/status/551875190771449856+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=es)

The user filed a complaint with Twitter that the tweet contained private
information about him. He also mentioned that the person retweeted him and he
started getting a bunch of death threats from the person's followers (I think,
my Spanish sucks.) The complaining person, a conservative, was tweeting about
a protest demanding public treatment for hepatitis C, saying that a large
portion of people with hepatitis get it from intravenous drug use. this made
some people mad and they apparently went after him. Someone correct me if I
got any of this wrong.

~~~
antr
> The user filed a complaint with Twitter that the tweet contained private
> information about him.

Well, if that is the case, I don't see nothing wrong with the ban. Everyone
has a right to privacy, regardless of their political views, so Twitter's
decision to temporary suspension is certainly the right one.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
The picture is gone, so it's difficult to say what was in it. Some people file
retaliatory complaints to get people taken offline. The attacked guy seems
like kind of a jerk, but at the same time, the suspended user seemed perfectly
willing to user their followers to mob people with insults and threats.

------
zak_mc_kracken
Thousands? More like dozens. And I bet they will return to Twitter very soon
when they realize they can't do their job effectively on a social network
that's completely empty.

> The growth was so explosive that the some of the existing GNU social nodes
> were unable to handle the traffic

This would be a lot more impressive with actual numbers. Without numbers, it
just feels like the numbers went from 100 to 200 and the network is so
underpowered and badly implemented that it just collapsed.

Remember: always be suspicious of people who cite growth numbers instead of
absolute ones, they are hiding the fact that these absolute numbers are bad,
otherwise, they would be using them.

Edit: looks like it already happened. The only account named in this puff
piece tweeted just three hours ago:

[https://twitter.com/barbijaputa](https://twitter.com/barbijaputa)

and he's pretty much inactive on Quitter.

------
dorfsmay
You had me at "federated"!

The "inter" "net" started as a federation of networks, then servers using
published protocols.

It's been said a thousand times before, but poeple use to make fun of
proprietary "emails", yet don't hesitate to use twitter, hangout etc...

xmpp is one of the saddest example, there were a lot of servers to chose from
(or run your own), it was not a bad protocol, yet the big IM providers just
abandonned it (google!) or never federated (facebook!).

I'm going to give this a try!

~~~
dasil003
> _It 's been said a thousand times before, but poeple use to make fun of
> proprietary "emails", yet don't hesitate to use twitter, hangout etc..._

The problem is that back in those days you basically had the choice between
old school unixy internet power, and dumbed-down crippleware designed for joe
sixpack who had never seen a computer before (ie. AOL). It was definitely
worth the pain of learning to configure client apps for email, news, irc
because that's where all the interesting online activity was happening anyway.

But since then two things happened: the majority of people in developed
countries got online and became familiar with it, and the new generation of
walled gardens was created on top of the internet rather than as a bizarro
parallel universe.

The result is that things like Twitter succeed because A) that's where all the
people are and B) they can leverage that to create a UX that is unattainable
to distributed protocols.

This is not in the spirit of the creators of the internet, but their creation
is no longer governed by the counter-cultural geek ideals of the late 60s
either. The sad truth is the internet is market-driven now, and no amount of
principled reasoning will put the cat back in the bag. The pendulum may swing
back in the future due to political and cultural events, but mark my words, no
federated Twitter replacement is going to gain any traction any time soon.

~~~
Joeboy
My prediction is that a few years from now, the big email providers' spam
systems will have made sending email from smaller independent servers
sufficiently unreliable that few people will want to do it anymore. At that
point federated email will be a minority concern and everybody will get
migrated to email 2.0, a new and improved system with no smelly sub-billion
dollar participants allowed. Nobody will care or notice except a few out of
touch nerds from the past.

------
amazing_jose
I would like to give some context.

As a Spaniard I don't know what this article talks about. I didn't know about
Quitter.es and I consider myself someone informed. Even more, the Twitter user
that originated the "revolution" (@Barbijaputa... translated as @Beard-Bitch,
no comment) is no longer using Quitter.es anymore from what I can read.

edit: fix typo.

~~~
euccastro
FWIW, @barbijaputa is a contraction for "Barbie hija puta", which would be
literally translated as "Barbie, daughter of a whore", although it's best
understood as "Barbie the bastard". See her profile pic:

[https://twitter.com/barbijaputa](https://twitter.com/barbijaputa)

~~~
candeira
"Bastard Barbie" or "Evil Barbie".

------
nathcd
This is cool - I like reading about these sorts of open platforms having
success. It always reminds me of a thought I've had bopping around in the back
of my head for awhile: do we really need to develop new technology to emulate
what social networks have become? It seems to me that the core of social
networks are: (a) a profile/posts/wall that is a glorified RSS feed, (b) a
home/feed/stream that is a glorified (and proprietary) RSS reader, and (c) a
(proprietary) messaging system that could be filled by email or XMPP. (in
fact, your facebook messenger IS an email account[0].)

So do we really need new technologies like GNU Social/Twister to accomplish
this, or can we just repackage the above tools to look like
facebook/twitter/g+/ello, and have decentralized social platforms. The biggest
hurdle I can imagine is non technical users not knowing what in the hell to do
with an XML page when trying to follow a person, so I'd propose that a new
link type similar to <a href=emailto:address> be established -- perhaps
something like <a href=follow:myfeed.xml> \-- which would open the feed in the
follower's default RSS reader. And I could sort my feed into circles/groups,
which are really just folders in a feed. I think this could be prettied up to
look the same as and be just about as easy as twitter, with no new
technologies needed. A service could host each of these components, and thus
look just like a full social network as we've come to know them.

The fact that it's so often referred to as "microblogging" makes me wonder why
this sort of set up isn't discussed more often (unless I'm missing it). It
would also then be trivial to host your own, because really all you'd be doing
is hosting a blog, and using an RSS reader. It seems so obvious to me that I
feel like I might be overlooking something.

[0]
[https://www.facebook.com/help/224049364288051](https://www.facebook.com/help/224049364288051)

~~~
stonogo
There are two pieces missing from what you describe: one is ease of
deployment, and within that I can lump operating costs. This is the less
difficult problem to overcome.

The second, much more important problem: discovery. This is the only user-
focused service Twitter actually provides (the ability to find the accounts
you want to follow). The 'network effects' people love to throw out as excuses
for using shitty services like Facebook is not as big a deal as people around
here pretend. Email works just fine and there's no 'network effect' preventing
me from running my own mail server. Discovery is so important that just about
everyone reading this post would rather have a lock on discovery (and the
accordant ad revenue) than promote any kind of federated system. Discovery is
search, and search is hard, and searching across a federated service is damn-
near impossible, which is why there's no email whitepages any more. Much
simpler (and more profitable) to hash everyone's email addresses, or let them
pick a cute username -- whatever, so long as you hold the keys and can sell ad
space on the results pages.

Nothing like what you're describing is possible any more. There are no more
federated open standards; the IETF is merely propped up to rubberstamp
whatever Google or Microsoft wants to do next.

~~~
xorcist
Well, it's the same reason have both chose to write our comments here instead
of self-hosting it on our blogs, I suppose.

I would like to add the spam problem to your explanation. A distributed system
needs a distributed solution for spam, which is much harder.

But we also need to add a little complexity to the description. There is a
difference between decentralized and distributed systems, with email the
former and usenet or irc the latter.

Both discoverability and search are trivial with distributed systems, but also
offers the possibility of competing networks. It is interesting to note that
the open protocols actually faired worse in those cases, as it lends itself to
competititon, and a someone with access to deep pockets can leverage that
against you.

------
jkarneges
Email was a success because it predated the commercial providers. AOL started
out with a closed email network, but eventually they added support for SMTP on
the server side because it was in their best interest to join the rest of the
world.

Unfortunately, subsequent federated systems (IM / microblogging) have largely
failed because they were too late to the game. Big companies had already
established a foothold with proprietary solutions before the open federated
protocols existed. Unlike email, open IM/etc systems were never big enough to
make them worth tapping into.

The reason the big services don't federate is political, not technical.
Speaking as a developer, this is incredibly frustrating because it means no
matter how awesome your new open protocol/service/platform is, the game is
unwinnable.

Long ago, the FCC tried to force AOL to open up AIM to outsiders, by
forbidding them to add videoconferencing capability until they complied. Did
they open up their network? Of course not. Instead they waited years and years
until the FCC dropped the issue.

Google was the first to do something right by supporting XMPP. I can only
imagine this was due to the good will of the developers at the time. What's
astounding is that none of the other big companies tried to federate with
them. In the old days, you sometimes saw explicit partnerships between
companies that allowed federation (like when MSN and Yahoo became compatible).
Of course these no doubt involved meetings and contracts to put in place. And
then there was Google, with port 5269 just plain open to the world. No
contracts needed, yet nobody was compelled enough to take advantage of it.

All we needed was _one_ of the other big services to federate and cause a
domino effect, incentivizing the rest to join. I always had my hopes on Yahoo.
They were in last place, but with enough incentive to join Google and enough
size to create a formidable network in aggregate. To whoever was in charge of
Yahoo messenger in 2006: Thanks for blowing our one chance at IM
standardization. The opportunity is gone now. These days, there are so many
proprietary IM systems that it's easy to lose count.

Reflecting on all of this, I think the only way we're ever going to get out of
this mess is if the big companies start doing what's right. Like when Google
did the right thing 9 years ago, except we need more than one big company
doing it at the same time. If you're at Facebook, Twitter, etc, and you're
reading this message: we're depending on _you_.

------
TulliusCicero
There are dozens of us! Dozens!

~~~
oldmanjay
This was the first thing that popped into my head, but it felt gratuitously
negative despite being a reference to a joke.

That makes me wonder if I'm interpreting the guidelines correctly

~~~
ptaipale
To me the previous comment sounded gratuitously hilarious, in a positive
sense. Not mean, just poking fun.

------
discardorama
Good for them. Twitter and Facebook are no longer "social" networks, they are
"advertising" networks. I think that's the trajectory of every publicly-traded
"social" network: to eventually become an advertising network, driven by the
never-ending demand of increasing revenues and profits.

~~~
cordite
Sounds like any social company that has an IPO.

~~~
_asummers
Kind of begs the question... can any new social network exist and be
successful without devolving into that?

~~~
zanny
Well StatusNet exists, and has not devolved into anything.

What you want is to somehow have the tremendous amount of money to force
people onto your platform (ie, what Google did with G+, but failed) without
the profit motive to eventually turn the service into advertising media. Which
basically means you want someone or some people with a lot of money to just
throw it at userbase.

StatusNet is not "popular" for the same reason a lot of the FSF movements
efforts are not popular - there is no advertising. Firefox and VLC are
probably the most popular end user facing free software projects and they only
exist in their current form because of word of mouth. They _did_ have some
substantial advertising efforts throughout the years, more than desktop Linux
or other free software like Mumble ever has, and it takes that and just
organic growth of userbase to become popular.

And even then, they were popular due to features, not freedom, though a lot of
the features came from the freedom, and they were superior to their
competition often because of contributions from the community.

Point is, you won't have a for profit social network get popular any other
way, because your monetization options are limited when you are making it for
profit, and you can only pump the absurd amount of advertising money into it
to get a userbase by being for profit. The other alternative is StatusNet.

~~~
aikah
Firefox and VLC are popular because they had a superior UX compared to the
proprietary competition. Firefox had plugins,tabs,and had more web features
than IE. VLC,well, you don't need to care about installing codec A or B with
VLC to read video files, it just works.

A opensource solution or free software, in order to win,must not only be free,
but beat the competition in terms of user experience,ease of use,design...

------
reitanqild
Anybody knows what happened/is happening to tent.io? (I just google it and
found a github repo updated as late as 15 days ago but no blog or timeline.)

------
_delirium
I had not heard of GNU Social before. Apparently it's the continuation of
StatusNet, picked up by GNU after identi.ca stopped developing it?

~~~
A_COMPUTER
That's exactly right. status.net switched to a new engine, pump.io, which was
supposed to be more api and mobile friendly and easier to maintain. But work
on that is moving really, really slow, I don't see any activity on their
github for 10 months now. Really disappointing because pump.io is cool.

~~~
fiatjaf
pump.io has lots of servers active and seems to have many users.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
It does, but it's not nearly done if it's going to hope to compete with
Twitter and Facebook, which I think it could do someday. For instance I would
really like to see better embedding code for images, videos, etc. and a better
default theme. One of the most exciting things about pump.io was that it used
oauth to integrate with a couple web games (openfarmgame) so the game could
put updates on your feed. Ton of potential.

I may sound like I'm complaining, but it's really just because I think it's so
great. I don't feel entitled to EvanP's time, it looks like he's busy with a
startup so I don't blame him at all.

~~~
reitanqild
Late but still want to add: looks like premium kickstarter idea to me if
someone had time and skills

------
felhr
Thousands of my fellow spaniards signed on Quitter for the first time, missed
they political arch-enemies from the enemy front and went back to Twitter.

------
WaxProlix
Literally thousands!

Seriously though, it's good news for the FOSS world, and for privacy- and
individuality-minded folks. Baby steps.

------
nichochar
It would be great is someone with some neat design skills could help them make
their homepage be less bootstrappy! Especially since, you know... bootstrap
comes from twitter :P

------
ilaksh
I think eventually we will see something like GNU social or GNU communicator
or some type of app that runs peer-to-peer rather than requiring you to set up
a server to do things along the lines of Tweeting.

Projects like that already exist, they just aren't really popular yet.

I think we should promote content-centric/named-data p2p networking protocols.

~~~
fsiefken
Twister is an example.

~~~
Nutomic
Gilgamesh is also similar, but works directly between Android devices over
Bluetooth (not Internet).

[https://github.com/n8fr8/gilgamesh](https://github.com/n8fr8/gilgamesh)

------
FranOntanaya
I joined a few months ago. It's not terribly active, but a lot of the active
users are FOSS people, which makes for a very high signal to noise ratio. It's
the only network nowadays where I don't just autopost from the blog and
completely ignore it otherwise.

~~~
mahouse
I don't understand the SnR concept here where you can follow who you want
only.

------
Animats
That's fascinating. How's it working out technically? How well does GNU Social
scale, and how does it deal with spam? Those are the two big problems such a
system faces once it gets users.

------
don_draper
This probably isn't a movement. But my gut tells me somebody is going to
create a truly open and free network. And once it's established it will feel
like it was inevitable.

~~~
Joeboy
My gut tells me that people are going to continue to flock towards less open
and free networks, and we will wonder why we ever expected it to be any
different.

------
esolyt
There seems to be an SSL issue with Vinilox.

I got Chrome's "Your connection is not private" warning page when I clicked
it.

~~~
cpach
That’s because they use a certificate from Cacert, whose root certificate is
not included in the major browsers.

(See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAcert.org#Inclusion_status](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAcert.org#Inclusion_status))

