#occulture — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #occulture, aggregated by home.social.
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@cloudskater wrote:
Some instances are run by bad people. Hell, a few projects like Lemmy and Matrix are DEVELOPED by assholes, but the FLOSS and federated nature of these platforms allows us to bypass/fork them and create healthy spaces outside their reach.
Nope, that is actually what is killing the fediverse. I just explained here:
The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.
Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.
That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.
https://neon-blue-demon-wyrm.x10.network/archives/16932
FYI, I’m not doing culture wars or political debates. I’m just saying this idea of “forking away” from them is literally breaking the fediverse’s distributed network and creating all kinds of issues with semantic interoperability. Yes, federation is still happening at the delivery level, but the semantic issues are out of fucking control. You are a federation by the very sheer skin of your teeth.
The reason why developers are leaving the fediverse is because you folks don’t take criticism. You respond to criticism with — I’m being so serious right now — political manifestos and harassing developers. ActivityPub developers and authors oversold you folks on the capabilities of ActivityStreams. They flat-out lied to y’all.
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ActivityPub Server’s Custom Reply‑Control Extensions Undermine Federation
It seems like Activitbypub developers are extending ActivityPub with optional metadata to fix a lot of its issues, but that is still problematic. Trying to add moderation tools and user control to threads seems to be the ongoing battle. I am fascinated by dumpster fires, so I’ve started looking at the ActivityPub protocol in detail. I tend to become fascinated with things that are going down in flames.
As a brief recap of the problem:
So, one of the very popular features on Bluesky—also popular on Twitter—is the ability to select who can reply to a post. A major issue in the Fediverse is the inability to decide who can reply, and once you block someone, their harassing reply is still there. I honestly thought it was simply a case of them choosing not to add or address it for cultural reasons. What is clear from that thread is that they were always aware that the ActivityPub protocol and most Fediverse implementations don’t provide a universal way to control reply visibility or enforce blocks across instances.
An ActivityPub server that has reply control is GoToSocial. ActivityPub, as defined by the W3C specification, standardizes how servers federate activities. It defines actors, inboxes, outboxes, and activity types (Create, Follow, Like, Announce, etc.) expressed using ActivityStreams 2.0. It also specifies delivery mechanics (including how a Create activity reaches another server’s inbox) and how collections behave.
The specification does not include interaction policy semantics such as “only followers may reply” or “replies require manual approval.” There is no field in the normative vocabulary requiring conforming servers to enforce reply permissions. That category of rule is outside the protocol’s defined contract.
GoToSocial implements reply controls through what it calls interaction policies. These appear as additional properties on ActivityStreams objects using a custom JSON-LD namespace controlled by the GoToSocial project.
JSON-LD permits additional namespaced terms. This means the document remains structurally valid ActivityStreams and federates normally. The meaning of those custom fields, however, comes from GoToSocial’s own documentation and implementation. Other servers can ignore them without violating ActivityPub because they are not part of the interoperable core vocabulary.
Enforcement occurs locally. When a remote server sends a reply—a Create activity whose object references another via inReplyTo—ActivityPub governs delivery, not acceptance criteria. Whether the receiving server checks a reply policy, rejects the activity, queues it, or displays it is determined in the server’s inbox-processing code. The decision to accept, display, or require approval happens after successful protocol-level delivery. This behavior belongs to the application layer.
These are server-side features layered on top of ActivityPub’s transport and data model that are not actually part of ActivityPub. The protocol ensures standardized delivery of activities; however, the server implementation defines additional constraints and user-facing behavior. Two GoToSocial instances may both recognize and act on the same extension fields. However, a different implementation, such as Mastodon, has no obligation under the specification to interpret or enforce GoToSocial’s interactionPolicy properties. These fields function as extension metadata rather than protocol requirements.
The semantics of GoToSocial are not part of the specification’s defined vocabulary and processing rules for ActivityPub. They no longer operate purely at the protocol layer; it has become an application-layer contract implemented by specific servers.
Let’s use the AT Protocol as an example. Bluesky’s direct messages (DMs) are not currently part of the AT Protocol (ATProto). The AT Protocol has nothing that specifies anything for DMs, so DMs are not part of the AT Protocol. The AT Protocol was designed to handle public social interactions, but it does not define private or encrypted messaging. Bluesky implemented DMs at the application level, outside of the core protocol. DMs are centralized and stored on Bluesky’s servers. What is happening with servers like GoToSocial is sort of like that. The difference is that the AT Protocol was designed for different app views; ActivityPub was not.
The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.
Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.
That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.
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I'm liking my feed so far but ngl I need more occult/esoteric/witchy accounts to follow. Feel free to give me @ suggestions in the replies or boost if you post stuff like that!
#occult #occultism #occultist #esoteric #esotericsm #witch #witchcraft #witchy #magic #magick #druid #druids #spells #mystic #mysticism #astrology #astrologycommunity #tarot #TarotCards #TarotReading #oracle #oraclecards #medium #mediumship #spirit #spirituality #spiritual #spirits #spiritualgrowth #spiritualawakening #occulture #modernwitch
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The urge to be petty and post a screenshot is really strong, but I will not since I’ve been saying a lot about that particular lot for years now. If you know, you know. Look, folks, if someone sits down at a table with Nazis, you have two Nazis and not one. Twitter is that table. Any white person who is still on Twitter is probably a Nazi, has implicit antisemitic beliefs, or enables antisemitism. I could be very, very petty and drop a screenshot of a well-known occultist defending antisemitism aimed at an autistic person who had to get off Twitter because of antisemitic conspiracy theories, but I won’t.
Instead, I will just tag their cabal in the hash tag. Fascism did not swallow anyone whole. They were always fascist.Too many occultists enabled bigotry for far too long. With that, I am logging off the internet and will be enjoying my husband’s boneless, skinless BBQ chicken thighs. Cut off anyone who is still on Twitter because they see what is going on and have decided to still be in that space. Again, anyone who sits down with Nazis is a Nazi. Twitter is the dinner table. The same goes for substack.
#anarchism #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #antisemitism #authoritarian #autism #autistic #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #DKMU #fascism #fascist #magick #Nazi #Nazis #occult #occultism #occulture #pagan #paganism #paranormal #politics #Reddit #substack #Threads #Twitter #uspol
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I don’t do conspiracy theories, period, at all—the end. From the left or the right.
If you log onto Mastodon, you see non-stop political discourse that is increasingly becoming radical from the left. If you log onto Twitter or Reddit, you see anti-Semitism, fascism, and Jesus Gets Us ads.
There is no moral equivalence, nor am I arguing that. However, the existence of fascism doesn’t justify spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories to counter their conspiracy theories. In fact, it should be even more of a motivator to be meticulous and rigorous when laying out a persuasive case.
While I am a magician and an occultist, I am fact-based and data-driven. If there is not a significant amount of data or if what you are asserting does not have enough empirical support, I will categorize it as speculation, conjecture, a counterfactual, and thus fiction.
I don’t know if it is because it is an election year, but social media has become a dumpster fire of misinformation, conspiracy theories, antagonism, and non-stop political discourse. On a personal level, I resent it when people try to manipulate my opinions or beliefs.
Again, there is no moral equivalence to fascism, but people should stop and evaluate the tactics they, themselves, use. Fascists spread conspiracy theories as a Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) tactic. I am seeing FUD spread all over Mastodon from people on the far left. It is an appeal to fear by creating paranoia. If you do this, you’re participating in Machiavellianism and expressing the same cynical view that is the slippery slope down into fascism. It could always be you. Most monsters don’t start off that way.
A lot of people who do horrible things do so because they believe it is for a good cause. Most people end up in cults because they believe they can recognize when something is a cult, and since they would never join a cult, it isn’t a cult. In addition to that, very intelligent people are more likely to believe misinformation if it comes from peers and their peer network that they have strong relationships with. That’s why misinformation spreads like wildfire through highly connected social networks.
Using Machiavellian approaches, for whatever reason, is implicitly the same type of cynical justification that fascists use. I’m not so naive to think that these random posts most people won’t see will change anything. I am just simply stating I’m logging off from social media because the conspiracy theories from all sides are too damn much.
I’m backing up this site as I type this, moving a live site to my local host, and I will continue to express my thoughts privately. Thank God, all of my RSS feeds for reputable news and peer-reviewed research are set up on my smartphone and via Thunderbird. I have YouTube carefully tuned for only STEM stuff, and I have disallowed it to make recommendations for me. People have lost their damn marbles. As someone who deals with the esoteric and arcane and the spooky, I’ve always largely ignored conspiracy theories, but this is getting out of hand. I will not drink from a poisoned well. Time for me to log off.
#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #antisemitism #Biden #BlueSky #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #disinformation #DKMU #DonaldTrump #fascism #fascist #fediverse #JoeBiden #liberal #libs #machiavellian #Machiavellianism #magick #Mastodon #misinformation #Nazi #Nazis #occult #occultism #occulture #pagan #paganism #paranormal #progressives #propaganda #Reddit #RSS #RSSFeed #RSSFeeds #socialMedia #Threads #Thunderbird #Trump #Twitter #uspol #witch #witchcraft #WordPress #YouTube #YoutubeAlgorithm
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We really need to stop calling obvious schizophrenia, manic delusions, and psychosis ‘unverified personal gnosis.’ A person whom I knew 15 years ago has persistent beliefs, regardless of facts, that they knew me in a past life and we made some pact to alter the future to save the world from Nazis. It’s insane, but everyone in the occult Discord is nodding their heads and validating it.
A delusion is a persistent belief regardless of facts. This person has dreams and hallucinations that they believe are gods, spirits, and telepathy. In these hallucinations and delusions, the spirits tell them who random strangers were in a past life. A lot of these delusions are obviously paranoid and inevitably roll into a conspiracy theory about Nazis. This is very terrifying. This means, based on a random occurrence with a person, they will create a parasocial narrative that manifests as them knowing this person.
Most schizophrenia delusions emerge from noise and thus have no actual information. You can uncover that it is a delusion by asking the person for details. For example, if they make a claim about remembering a past life in Egypt, you can do the equivalent of asking them who the President of the United States is now. I did that with this person. They were claiming to have known me and other people in a past life in Egypt 3000 years ago, so I looked up what was going on around that time. I asked them who the high priest was, who the pharaoh was, and what they remember happening around that time. All of it was wrong.
That caused most of that Discord to jump all over me and imply that it was fine because it was their personal gnosis. To be clear, this person is creating parasocial relationships and narratives based on delusional narratives that they are applying to random people they meet.
Phrasing things as they happened in a different reality or a past life is a way to avoid the falsification of and is a way to rationalize the delusion. Claiming that you knew a person in a past life is a way to justify the parasocial relationship. It is not unverified personal gnosis. It’s mental illness. There is nothing magical about mental illness. If I had a nickel for every time a schizophrenic occultist spun up a delusional narrative to justify an adversarial parasocial relationship with me, I’d be rich. This is a major problem.
#anarchism #anarchists #anarchy #animistic #Astral #astrological #Bipolar #BipolarDisorder #ceremonialMagic #ceremonialMagick #chaosMagic #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cult #cults #Discord #divination #DKMU #Egypt #fascism #gnosis #magic #magick #Nazi #Nazis #occult #occultism #occulture #pagan #paganism #paranormal #pastLife #pastLives #polytheism #psychic #psychosis #Reddit #reincarnation #schizophrenia #schizophrenic #spirits #spiritual #Spirituality #Theism #Thelema #thelemites #Threads #Twitter #UnverifiedPersonalGnosis #UPG #witch #witchcraft
