A short update on the failed alt-right social media thing
I did you all a favour and listened to a video by Vox Day about why he pulled the plug on his social media thing. It wasn’t the GDPR issue, which I’d assumed became too complex to allow the thing to function but rather another dispute with a different organisation. The platform was set up using a service from a group called Fediway — a sort of evangelical Christian version of the social-media service Mastodon i.e. a platform that’s intended to work as a network of connected hubs. I’d say more about Fediway but literally their “About Us” text is Lorem Ipsum stuff. They also run their own distinct Twitter-clone called “OneWay” that has its own cryptocurrency in an attempt to combine nuttery.
According to VD (i.e. take this with a pinch of salt) Fediway had offered their service and servers for free but then later asked for money. Also they had issues with how VD was promoting the service. I’ve no particular reason to doubt this story other than the source’s (Vox Day) habit of misrepresentation.
It is kind of curious why he isn’t setting up his own Mastodon server but is claiming he is going to build something from scratch. Are his people set in their ways and picky about what technologies they will work with? I mean, there are evidently a half dozen open source projects aimed at “decentralized Twitter”.
For Social Tennysonists – people who think that a Hobbesian anarchy – society red in tooth and claw – is a good idea, the cooperative and altruistic nature of Open Source is anathema – socialism even.
Yes, and the connection between the dots that he left out is that he had monetised aspects of the platform. Now, his spin on this was that he wasn’t charging people for additional features but rather giving rewards to existing sponsors of his tech-platforms (what he calls the ‘Burn Unit’) but either way there’s money involved. I assume this is the point on which the relationship foundered: it’s one thing to give somebody a free service so that they can run a free service, it’s quite another thing to give somebody a free service so they can make money out of it. VD was probably not up front about this.
I’ve found that usually there’s a particular way of looking at what he says and comparing it to what verifiably happened and when you find the right angle everything suddenly lines up and clicks into place. The monetization angle does that in this case.
When I looked Fediway had all of 15 accounts and 39 posts. But apparently it is a “test and demo site”, and they’re resetting their database when they do upgrades.
Fediway actually looks (to my nontechnical eyes) like it’s built on the same code base as Mastodon and some of the other microblogging services in the fediverse. So he’s actually attempting to benefit from it even as he tries to distance himself.
But isn’t the whole point of Mastodon that you can include/exclude people by whatever criteria you want to come up with? I thought Fediway was just a retread of Mastodon anyways. And there are a couple other projects that are almost the same.
In other signs of hubris, Beale has put up an extended audio sample of his self-produced audiobook for “Throne of Bones” narrated by some poor English man named Jeremy Daw who I sincerely hoped was adequately paid for his services. As said services involved reading Beale’s prose aloud and not cracking into laughter while doing so, they were not meager.
Remember–Beale writes stuff like this…
“His eyes burned like flaming emeralds, seeming to see right through to the depths of a man’s soul.”
Camestros Felapton 
17 responses to “A short update on the failed alt-right social media thing”
I suspect a ‘lie down with dogs’ situation for both parties.
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It’s supposed to be okay to lie down with dogs if you really are a dog though.
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It is kind of curious why he isn’t setting up his own Mastodon server but is claiming he is going to build something from scratch. Are his people set in their ways and picky about what technologies they will work with? I mean, there are evidently a half dozen open source projects aimed at “decentralized Twitter”.
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Mastodon are “SJWs” and worse than Twitter according to VD.
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I was going to crack a joke about VD thinking open source is part of the liberal agenda, but now I’m not sure it’s a joke
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They don’t look much like SJWs https://youtu.be/pcQug8OkbEc
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For Social Tennysonists – people who think that a Hobbesian anarchy – society red in tooth and claw – is a good idea, the cooperative and altruistic nature of Open Source is anathema – socialism even.
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There was the problem. In the World According to Beale, the grift is supposed to flow to him, not someone else.
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Yes, and the connection between the dots that he left out is that he had monetised aspects of the platform. Now, his spin on this was that he wasn’t charging people for additional features but rather giving rewards to existing sponsors of his tech-platforms (what he calls the ‘Burn Unit’) but either way there’s money involved. I assume this is the point on which the relationship foundered: it’s one thing to give somebody a free service so that they can run a free service, it’s quite another thing to give somebody a free service so they can make money out of it. VD was probably not up front about this.
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That makes a lot of sense.
I’ve found that usually there’s a particular way of looking at what he says and comparing it to what verifiably happened and when you find the right angle everything suddenly lines up and clicks into place. The monetization angle does that in this case.
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There was the problem. In the World According to Beale, the grift is supposed to flow his way, not to someone else.
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Oops, duplicate post. Remove if you wish 🙂
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When I looked Fediway had all of 15 accounts and 39 posts. But apparently it is a “test and demo site”, and they’re resetting their database when they do upgrades.
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Fediway actually looks (to my nontechnical eyes) like it’s built on the same code base as Mastodon and some of the other microblogging services in the fediverse. So he’s actually attempting to benefit from it even as he tries to distance himself.
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But isn’t the whole point of Mastodon that you can include/exclude people by whatever criteria you want to come up with? I thought Fediway was just a retread of Mastodon anyways. And there are a couple other projects that are almost the same.
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In other signs of hubris, Beale has put up an extended audio sample of his self-produced audiobook for “Throne of Bones” narrated by some poor English man named Jeremy Daw who I sincerely hoped was adequately paid for his services. As said services involved reading Beale’s prose aloud and not cracking into laughter while doing so, they were not meager.
Remember–Beale writes stuff like this…
“His eyes burned like flaming emeralds, seeming to see right through to the depths of a man’s soul.”
And I mean that. He really wrote that sentence.
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Kerrrlunkk, kerrlunk
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