[HN Gopher] Searchable List of Mastodon Servers
___________________________________________________________________
Searchable List of Mastodon Servers
Author : vyrotek
Score : 117 points
Date : 2022-11-05 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (instances.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (instances.social)
| defulmere wrote:
| On Twitter I've seen a lot of criticism of the whole idea of
| "choose a server" when joining Mastodon (and the fediverse in
| general).
|
| Instead of lists of servers, I wonder if a better onboarding
| workflow would be...
|
| - What username do you want?
|
| - What are your interests? (click, click, click)
|
| - Backend checks availability of username on matching servers
|
| - Pick one of these: @username@abc.social, @username@def.org,
| @username@xyz.social (with a description of the community
| associated with each result).
|
| In my opinion this could make the process feel more like choosing
| an email address which, again in my opinion, could be more
| familiar than "choose a server".
| dane-pgp wrote:
| That's actually a fantastic idea, and I assume that the main
| barrier to implementing this isn't a technical one, but the
| coordination problem of getting enough instance admins to opt-
| in to appearing on this system, and finding some neutral third
| party to maintain it (potentially the same people as run this
| instances.social site).
|
| Splitting your user story into smaller tasks, it seems like the
| technical side could be implemented as follows:
|
| - An agreed API / JSON format / microformat for instances to
| list the top 3 user interests that distinguish them from other
| instances (ideally using Wikidata Q identifiers[0], to create a
| consistent cross-language taxonomy) and maybe a paragraph of
| text to give a fuller description of the community
|
| - An agreed API for checking whether a username is already
| taken on an instance (and maybe a standardised query string
| format supported by each instance, which allows a third party
| site to send their visitor to that instance in such a way that
| the visitor is presented with a sign-up page where the username
| box is already filled)
|
| - A site with a neutral domain name like "join the fediverse .
| party" (or just re-use instances.social if that's catchy
| enough), with the UX you describe
|
| - A way for new instance admins to submit their instance for
| inclusion (which triggers some automated checks like "is this
| instance online?" and "which parts of the fediverse does it
| federate with?")
|
| Actually the hard part is probably preventing Sybil-attacks,
| since some attacker could create millions of dummy instances
| that have only one user on (though the instances will no doubt
| lie and claim to have billions of users). Maybe there does need
| to be some cabal or union of instance admins who can be trusted
| to give estimates for how many genuine users are probably on
| the smaller instances they federate with (reporting "0" or
| "negative infinity" for instances which they block).
|
| [0] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43649390
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://instances.social/ already has a wizard that does a good
| chunk of this, though not, I believe, with username
| availability checking. There are a lot of different entry
| points and they don't all pursue the same polish, for better or
| worse.
| allenu wrote:
| I feel like the fact that there are different servers out there
| has made zero difference in how I use mastodon. I follow some
| people and that's it. I hardly ever view the local feed. I
| suppose the problem is I didn't really shop around for a specific
| server that matched my needs, but when you're starting out, what
| do you even know what you're looking for? And how do you know
| what difference it will even make?
| mattkevan wrote:
| Mastodon is interesting as like a lot of open-source projects it
| focuses on solving a technical problem over a user-experience
| problem. And it's why, even if Elon drives Twitter into a ditch,
| like a Tesla on FSD, it'll never become the replacement.
|
| The problem being solved with Mastodon is 'like Twitter but open
| source and without central control'. Federated! Decentralised!
| Instances!
|
| Great for people who are interested in that sort of thing, but I
| can guarantee that most Twitter users couldn't give two shits
| about any of that, just as they don't care about Twitter's
| infrastructure.
|
| Things people do care about are ease of use (do I have to spend
| more time thinking about how to post than what to post?) and
| audience (are there things to see and will my stuff be seen?).
|
| With Twitter the answers are clear, but with Mastodon the
| emphasis on solving a particular architecture problem has led to
| a host of usability issues that each add friction to the
| experience.
|
| People who care about federation and ownership and all that may
| be willing to push through, but I'm not sure most would.
| remram wrote:
| This lists a lot of instances that are not accepting new
| accounts. I am not sure how useful that is.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Mastodon evokes feelings of "year of Linux desktop" in me. Yes,
| Linux is a great desktop but no, I don't think people are ready
| to just up and move.
|
| Mastodon is probably great, but I don't think people are ready to
| move there.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I don't think Linux desktop has had its "Windows might implode
| and randomly shut down in the next year" moment yet. I can kind
| of see why Mastodon is getting discussed here again.
| chc wrote:
| Yeah, we don't have Nadella publicly screaming about how
| left-wing advertising execs are about to destroy Microsoft,
| begging celebrities for money, and laying off half the
| company with no warning. Twitter genuinely looks in need of
| replacement at the moment.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's a lot more usable than I thought it would be when I joined
| up. And it has a lot of features Twitter doesn't have that I
| really appreciate... The fact that I can use markdown is pretty
| great.
|
| I don't think it will be for everybody... The federated
| discoverability is going to be a turnoff for a lot of
| individuals. But it's well cleared the bar of of "this will be
| constant pain if you sign up."
| schoen wrote:
| As other people have said, it's kind of scary to think about
| getting an account somewhere and not understanding that that
| "place" has a specific culture or political orientation that ends
| up making me a bad fit for it in a way I didn't understand.
|
| And I guess imagine there are some potentially significant
| incentive problems about the way that instances talk about
| themselves and their communities.
|
| How does the federation part work in practice when people run
| their own instances?
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Most people don't (and won't) run their own instances, either
| because they lack the skills or resources (including time).
| skybrian wrote:
| Filtering on policy is somewhat useful.
|
| How long ago it launched, whether the software is up-to-date,
| uptime, latency, and what datacenter the server is running in
| would be signals of whether the sysadmin is serious about
| maintaining the server. (Weak signals, but better than nothing.)
|
| Also, who is the admin? Are they anonymous?
|
| On my third server now. After the first two stopped working, I
| decided to stick with mastodon.social.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I am liking Mastodon a lot, and digging the general vibe and
| liking the smaller server I'm on. But can't help but feel that
| we're just a bit of time and marketing away from somebody _"
| professional"_ coming along and creating a massive instance that
| federates into it, and tries to fill the Twitter niche more
| directly. Mastodon.social got overwhelmed, and it's interesting
| that there's nothing else to fill that niche of "I don't care
| which server, I just want to be where the crowd is"
|
| Maybe some ex-Twitter employees should fork Mastodon and go from
| there?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Does this list include controversial instances that have been
| defederated?
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Not sure why this is light grey ("downvoted") -- it's a legit
| question.
| maxbond wrote:
| I don't think it was downvoted because people think it's an
| illegitimate question, but because it's generally seen as an
| imposition on people's time to ask a question that could be
| readily answered by clicking through to the site in question
| and having a look. That is, after all, what anyone else would
| do in order to answer the question. (I didn't vote on this
| comment.)
| Normille wrote:
| >it's generally seen as an imposition on people's time to
| ask a question that could be readily answered by clicking
| through to the site in question and having a look
|
| That's not going to help anyone know if there are other
| Mastodon servers out there, which aren't on the list.
| Unless that person is already aware of the existence of
| said server in the first place.
|
| Anyone remember when Gab had the biggest Mastodon instance
| by far, by user numbers, but all the Mastodon indexes were
| pretending it didn't even exist? The myth of the Fediverse
| as some libertarian promised land free from censorship and
| heavy handed control is just farcical.
| commoner wrote:
| Freedom of association is an essential part of freedom of
| speech, and is one of the core principles of
| libertarianism. One of the main features of Mastodon is
| that individual instances have the option to either
| federate with or reject other instances to curate the
| character of the community they want to build. Unlike
| Twitter, which puts everyone on a single instance, people
| on Mastodon can choose to be in a community of people
| with shared interests and values, hosted on an instance
| with rules that they agree with. The decentralization
| makes individual Mastodon instances more pleasant and
| less divisive to their users. Forcing instances to
| federate with others would be compelled speech, not free
| speech, and would take away from what makes Mastodon
| different from Twitter.
|
| In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would
| not be free speech. (Gab disabled federation, so it is
| not actually part of the fediverse anymore:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012558.) Gab still
| exists as a service running on free and open source code
| derived from Mastodon because Mastodon is AGPLv3. Anyone
| who wants to sign up for Gab can just do that.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Understood. I took it also as a statement, people seem to
| be up in arms about free speech and Twitter but from what I
| seen Mastodon will gladly announce their silencing of
| opinions which seem to be anything not democrat adjacent.
| As a squarely middle of the road voter why would I want to
| use something like Mastodon?
|
| Edit: fuck it maybe I'll setup an instance for people
| similar to me and see what happens. I don't buy fully in to
| either side and it's hard to find social groups that feel
| similarly.
| yborg wrote:
| >Mastodon is one person
|
| People really seem to completely miss the whole concept
| of a federated ecosystem, Mastodon is just a tool, like
| vBulletin, the whole point of it is that there isn't a
| "Mastodon" that announces things.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Unless I already know what instances to look for, how could
| I search for them?
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I've seen a couple "free speech" instances in the list, yes.
| socialismisok wrote:
| The link is there, go try it and report back.
| nixcraft wrote:
| It would be best if you had users and followers to broadcast
| messages. Right now, mastodon feels like a ghost town. But who
| knows? There was a time when MySpace was king. Only time will
| tell ..
|
| Also, Twitter works because of eyeballs. However, with so many
| Mastodon instances, people need to learn and find out who the
| real @nixcraft is. Sorry to say this, but I don't think so; we
| have an actual Twitter replacement right now. In another six
| months, someone might build it, or Elon will make it better or
| send it to /dev/null.
| yogthos wrote:
| It's kind of weird to me to say that a platform with millions
| of users on it is a ghost town. I have both twitter and
| Mastodon accounts, and I find the opposite to be true. I have
| roughly the same number of followers on both platforms, and I
| find that I see far more interaction on Mastodon than I do on
| Twitter.
| berkes wrote:
| If you feel strongly about claiming the real nixcraft, you can
| host your own instance at nixcraft.com. or get one for approx
| the price of that infamous blue-check.
|
| Only a person in control of nixcraft com can have an account
| like @nix@nixcraft.com.
|
| Something extremely powerful and for free through federation.
| E.g. journalists or politicians who "require" a validated
| checkmark, would benefit from their company or party having an
| instance.
| ay wrote:
| We don't have the replacement for AOL either. We have the
| internet instead. Things evolve.
|
| As for who the "real" @nixcraft is - how would I know it on
| Twitter ? The intuition is "first come first serve", but you
| are one account hijack away from having to explain that
| actually @nixcraft is _not_ the real one, despite claiming to
| be so, and actually @latest_nixcraft is the true yourself.
|
| You would probably do so in the other places that people know
| you own: your website, your email sig, your GitHub account,
| your HN profile. Same as you are doing right now. (I checked
| only the HN profile)
|
| With that method, what is the obstacle to adding the domain
| name after that handle ?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Doesn't feel like a ghost town to me? I've watched my feed
| explode in the last week though. Now I almost wish for a
| ranking algorithm.
|
| You won't see jack shit until you start following people,
| though. It steadfastly will refuse to spoonfeed you. You have
| to manually curate your feed.
|
| So it can feel a bit bare at first... But I think the last few
| years has shown the downsides of the _" let me show you what I
| think you should like"_ approach...
|
| 230,000 new users in the last week, 66,000 of them just in the
| last 24 hours. Currently at about 30,000 posts per hour.
| (according to @mastodonusercount@bitcoinhackers.org)
| BryantD wrote:
| Should Mastodon fans just be phrasing this kind of choice as if
| it were email?
|
| "You can have an email account on any number of servers, and you
| can send email anywhere, no matter where your account is."
|
| "You can have a Mastodon account on whichever server you like,
| and you can follow people anywhere, no matter where your account
| is."
|
| It just seems like a paradigm people already understand that
| might be more welcoming.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| That seems like a really nice way to do it.
|
| "You can sign up with one of these main instances and follow
| people no matter where their account is. If you find make a lot
| of friends in a specific corner of the Fediverse, or just want
| to switch to another instance, you can do so whenever you
| want."
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| In fact I've seen that analogy made many times on Mastodon in
| the last week.
| Normille wrote:
| And, to continue the email analogy [in response to all the
| "Just change servers if you don't like the one you signed up
| for"]
|
| If you don't like your email provider, just change to a
| different one...
|
| Oh yeah. And you'll lose all your previous emails. But we won't
| mention that.
| lrvick wrote:
| Actually on Mastodon you can change servers and keep your
| followers and follows.
|
| It has a built in mail forwarding process.
| jrmg wrote:
| This highlights why I'm so far not on Mastodon: Decision fatigue.
|
| How do I find a server that 'matches' me but doesn't make me seem
| like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant -
| and also isn't run by someone whose (perhaps currently
| unespoused) views I'd find problematic?
|
| Maybe I should just join what seems to be the default (because of
| its friendly domain?) of http://mastodon.social. But that seems
| defeat the purpose of decentralization - and (without evidence) I
| don't really trust that mastodon.social is set up to handle the
| huge influx of users at the moment...
| linsomniac wrote:
| FYI: I had signed up years ago on mastoton.social and not
| really used it. I tried logging in a few days ago and it was
| struggling under the load. Sounds like the admin of that
| instance is buying hardware to support the new load.
| elcapitan wrote:
| To me it's like the difference between living in an anonymous
| big city where I can do whatever I want without too many people
| yelling at me, and having to pick some village where everybody
| knows everybody and forces their rules on them. I would never
| choose the latter just by my own nature, so Mastodon will never
| be an alternative to twitter for me. Looking at that endless
| list of specialized echo chambers of some people with their own
| sub rules just makes me shudder immediately.
| chc wrote:
| There are general servers that provide basically the same
| "anonymous in a big city" experience as Twitter (or at least,
| as much as Twitter did 10 years ago).
| [deleted]
| lrvick wrote:
| If you want to be on your own sovereign island you can host
| your own Mastodon instance or pay a monthly fee to one of the
| many Managed Mastodon providers and even use your own domain
| name.
|
| It is not that much different from choosing an email
| provider.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You and a lot of other people. I see this blind spot in the
| open source community from time to time regarding decision
| paralysis and I'm surprised that more people don't realize how
| much of an issue it is for a lot of users.
|
| I don't want to think about what server I'm on. I want the
| whole thing to just work. The fact that there is only one
| Twitter and only one Facebook are actually advantages in the
| marketplace for those services.
| lrvick wrote:
| Do you get decision paralysis when deciding what home to buy
| or what apartment to live in?
|
| This is what freedom looks like, vs going to a defacto
| centralized megacorp and having them tell you where to live
| so that they can most efficiently manipulate and spy on you
| for profit.
|
| Everyone has become far too accustomed with exploitative
| corpos telling them what to do on the internet. Choices are
| harder, but healthier.
|
| Just make a choice, and you can make a different one later.
| ISL wrote:
| When you move because you don't like the instance anymore,
| how do all of your connections follow you?
|
| This, to me, is the central problem in the Fediverse.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > When you move because you don't like the instance
| anymore, how do all of your connections follow you?
|
| You use the built-in[0] migration feature. Create an
| account on your new instance, point it at your old one.
| Then point your old account to your new one.
|
| [0] Built in to Mastodon, anyway. YMMV with other
| Fediverse software.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Do you get decision paralysis when deciding what home to
| buy or what apartment to live in?
|
| Yes, of course. That involves a mortgage, location, the
| logistics of moving...
| josteink wrote:
| > I don't want to think about what server I'm on.
|
| Maybe I'm the exception but for me almost without exception
| the answer is that I want to run my own instance.
|
| What's the point of leaving a centralized system for a
| decentralized one if you still let someone else own your
| data?
| parminya wrote:
| People aren't mass-leaving Twitter because Twitter owns
| their data. They were happy with someone else owning their
| data to the extent that they were users of Twitter. They're
| mass-leaving Twitter becomes Elon Musk bought Twitter. Elon
| Musk cannot buy Mastodon. He might buy your particular
| server, but the chances he'd try to are much more remote
| because the benefit of doing so is much less.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Should just lead with advice "CHOOSE THE FIRST YOU LIKE AND
| CHANGE IT LATER".
|
| Opine:
|
| The "tell me what to think" motivation is frustrating from
| multiple perspectives:
|
| - overt bias of the Tellers is rife with unethical potential
|
| - low engagement of the Users is a part of communication,
| it's reality and why the style of Exciting Content (insert
| emojis) has become popular in modern communication vs the
| 'respectably formatted and spell-checked' of yesteryear
| allenu wrote:
| I've been using Mastodon on and off for a few years now and
| the thing that bugged me was that the benefits it was pushing
| at first were absolutely uninteresting to me as a user: it's
| decentralized and you can pick your server. Those aren't
| exactly things a general user is going to care about or even
| understand. They just want to know how to sign up and follow
| interesting people. The fact that there wasn't any trending
| (or usable search) for a while made it also feel like a ghost
| town. You create your new account and look around and think,
| "Okay, where's the activity?" I suppose it wasn't really
| meant to be twitter, so my criticisms may not be entirely
| fair.
| mynameismonkey wrote:
| Agreed. I've been pasting this anywhere I see the frustration
|
| Think of it like your phone number, it's a service and you
| need a provider. Choose one by location
| https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mastodon-near-me_828094
| makes no difference, they all talk to each other and you can
| move servers at any time
|
| And it's curated for servers that are open for registration
| so hopefully no dead ends
| tekchip wrote:
| Totally this. Did decision fatigue stop you from using
| email? It didn't because they all talk. It doesn't really
| matter which you choose.
|
| This is especially true now that there is an official
| system to change/move servers.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| _> How do I find a server that 'matches' me but doesn't make me
| seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby
| dedicant_
|
| Just don't care about it that much, really. My main account has
| been at https://functional.cafe for years now, but I'm posting
| about pretty much everything there: programming, music, art,
| politics, current events, shitposting.
|
| _> and also isn't run by someone whose (perhaps currently
| unespoused) views I'd find problematic?_
|
| Ask someone from your friend circle who's already on Fediverse,
| but also see the above point.
| jrmg wrote:
| Just don't care about what the first thing people will see
| that's specifically about me says about me? I don't think I
| can bring myself to do that.
| flkiwi wrote:
| Then signing up for a general instance (mastodon.social,
| mas.to, etc.) makes sense. It's like (as in _exactly_ like)
| signing up for gmail vs. having a custom domain.
| Joeboy wrote:
| https://mastodon.social/ isn't allowing new signups,
| https://mas.to/ is returning a cloudflare error page for
| me.
| flkiwi wrote:
| It's an exceptional growth period for the servers.
| Twitter used to have failwhales, and gmail used to
| require invitations. It will stabilize. (And, if you
| happen to be interested and have the skillset, you could
| deploy your own instance. I wouldn't be surprised if
| there's already a VPS provider that already has
| pushbutton mastodon deployment in place.)
| Joeboy wrote:
| So, it's exactly like signing up for gmail if gmail was
| down and you had to either wait for them to fix it at
| some undetermined point in the future, find another email
| provider or set up your own email server instead.
| mirkules wrote:
| It's also exactly like when people on the right started
| leaving twitter and all these alternatives popped up.
|
| And in the end, people (who left willingly) ended up back
| on twitter anyway just because people kept sharing things
| from there. But also because the alternative services
| could not keep up with the momentum, resulting in
| degraded service. So everyone seemed to collectively go
| "meh" and returned to twitter.
|
| I predict everyone will be back on twitter once all this
| blows over, and especially if alternatives can't keep up.
| Uptime and reliability seem to be more important than
| features, freedom, or just about anything else.
| ralgozino wrote:
| > So, it's exactly like signing up for gmail if gmail was
| down and you had to either wait for them to fix it at
| some undetermined point in the future, find another email
| provider or set up your own email server instead.
|
| GMail was invite only for a very long time at the
| beginning fwiw
| flkiwi wrote:
| Much of the history of the Internet has been exactly like
| that. New services (or new-you-you) constantly going down
| with an influx of new users, services (like email) that
| allow anyone to set up their own machine ... this mild
| and temporary inconvenience is familiar. A week from now
| it will be fine.
|
| But I think that's the important point. Right now,
| there's nothing wrong with Mastodon. Mastodon is working
| fine. A couple of servers that people commonly encounter
| first are having growth issues. But those servers aren't
| Mastodon any more than Gmail is email.
| ianbutler wrote:
| > A couple of servers that people commonly encounter
| first are having growth issues. But those servers aren't
| Mastodon any more than Gmail is email.
|
| And that's what a lot of tech people don't get, to
| normies actually Gmail does equal Email and such. You're
| not going to get the bulk of everyday people on these
| platforms until you think in their shoes and provide
| features (and don't have downtime on your main servers)
| that fit their experiences.
| parminya wrote:
| > to normies actually Gmail does equal Email and such
|
| I'd love to hear of some evidence for that. I've never
| encountered anyone assuming that the bit after the @ has
| to be gmail.com, or being unclear and uncertain if they
| can communicate between their work Outlook account and
| their home Gmail account. This feels very much like
| someone's taken the idea "to most people, the internet
| just is the web" and run wild with it.
| ianbutler wrote:
| My point stands Mastodon has a bad UX and no one I know
| wants to continue to use it. They were all pretty much
| immediately put off.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Well, I would say it's a problem that a lot of people are
| trying to join the fediverse and it's currently quite
| difficult and confusing to do so.
|
| I would further say there's a marketing problem that
| Mastodon advocates keep saying this situation is normal,
| expected and it's working fine, which is obviously quite
| offputting.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is a community project, there isn't a centralized
| marketing message or anything like that. If the community
| is growing as fast as their servers can handle it, that
| seems like a fine situation?
| Joeboy wrote:
| I sincerely hope it can conquer its current growth and
| signup issues and the unnecessary reputational damage
| inflicted by its advocates.
| alwillis wrote:
| _Twitter used to have failwhales_
|
| I remember the failwhale days, but this is different.
|
| Twitter is a VC-backed company that had the resources to
| build out their infrastructure.
|
| Mastodon is a bunch of volunteer-run servers and it looks
| pretty obvious they aren't going to be able to handle the
| infusion of new users... unless there's an infusion of
| resources.
|
| I'm on mastodon.social and it has slowed to a crawl,
| compared to what I was used to 6 months ago.
|
| Also the UI/UX isn't great. Say what you will about
| Twitter, but they've built a pretty slick web application
| and native apps. People used to the simplicity of Twitter
| are going to struggle, if the complaints on my Twitter
| timeline are any indication.
| neltnerb wrote:
| There is an infusion of resources. One option that seems
| common is that users aren't required to contribute
| towards hosting fees, but donations are easily accepted
| -- that is how the sustainable ones work from what I have
| seen. It seems to work pretty well?
|
| It's very transparent, which I like -- "we got a bunch of
| new users, the server bill is going up $2k a month
| overall so if you can pitch in please do" is extremely
| clear and seems to work effectively. An individual server
| seems like it should be able to charge for hosting your
| account like with email if it needed to be operated like
| a business.
|
| So far it doesn't really seem like it needs to operate
| like a business, it just takes longer for collectives of
| humans to respond to changes in needs than a giant
| enormously wealthy company that knew what would happen in
| advance. I'm sure it will equilibrate, it has the last
| two times this happened.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Mastohost offers fully-provisioned Mastodon hosting
| service:
|
| <https://masto.host/>
|
| Edit: And a few minutes after posting this, a wiki link
| showed up in my Masto stream with numerous suggestions
| and tips:
|
| <https://joinfediverse.wiki/How_to_host_your_own_Fedivers
| e_in...>
| phoe-krk wrote:
| This problem is literally solved by OP. Search https://in
| stances.social/list#lang=&allowed=&prohibited=&min... for
| the whole list of instances accepting signups, choose the
| most generic-sounding name, check it out, register there.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Did you see the list? Finding a "generic" instance that's
| open to signups honestly isn't easy, right now. I ended
| up on fosstodon.org, which is not as generic as I'd like
| but seemed like the least terrible option I could find in
| half an hour.
| jrmg wrote:
| How do I ensure I'm not picking one that won't, now or in
| a few days or weeks or months end up being associated
| with views I find problematic?
|
| What I'm worried about is my reputation - what the server
| I'm associated with tells others about me (the argument
| that those others are wrong in making assumptions doesn't
| comfort me).
|
| These hazards are probably very unlikely, of course, but
| the alternative of 'how about I just avoid all these
| hazards' is the one my lizard brain is picking.
| andocars wrote:
| Dude who cares. Unless youre like a popular figure or
| something whose going to go through the list of users and
| be like oh this particular user happens to be signed up
| to this site along with tens of thousands of other users
| but Im gonna find this person and trash talk them
| jrnichols wrote:
| what's more likely to happen is that the instance will go
| offline for some reason and never come back. We had this
| happen with an adult material related instance. It became
| brigaded by another crew who flooded it with very illegal
| material. The users were helpless to do anything but
| report it, and soon the whole instance was gone.
|
| It was a very unfortunate and frightening view into what
| can quickly happen with the fediverse.
| etrautmann wrote:
| I think you're worrying too much about this particular
| point. If it becomes noxious, migrate later.
| lrvick wrote:
| The same thing was true of Twitter which is why so many
| are leaving.
|
| Unlike Twitter, you can leave a Mastodon server for
| another one and take your follows and followers with you.
|
| If you want assurances that a server owner will never act
| against your will, you need to take the same action you
| would to mitigate a landlord acting against your will.
| Buy your own place.
|
| In a decentralized universe you have to start thinking of
| servers as real estate. Nothing is free but if your goal
| is to get to share with you what they paid for for free,
| you take what you can get. Or buy your own server for
| only yourself, or share with others.
|
| This is what the world looks like without tracking and
| advertizing trying to make everything seem free.
| kixiQu wrote:
| FWIW, most of us don't pay that much attention to it unless
| it's an instance with a very good or bad reputation, and
| even then, new users aren't really presumed to know what
| they signed up for.
| BryantD wrote:
| This is not at all obvious, but it's fairly easy to move
| your Mastodon account and leave a forwarding notice behind:
| https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/
| Kiro wrote:
| If this is the best response hardcore fans of Mastodon can
| come up with, I don't have much hope.
| Joeboy wrote:
| You actually can't sign up on mastodon.social at the moment. I
| thought the same, all the instances are for weirdly specific
| groups I'm not in. You don't have this problem with email,
| there's no requirement to choose an email address that matches
| your political tendencies, sexual kinks etc.
|
| I eventually chose fosstodon.org which seems like about the
| most vanilla thing that's open to new users and where I have a
| decent claim to being the right kind of person. I suspect a lot
| of people will look at the long list of furry-centric instances
| and conclude Mastodon is not for them. IDK, maybe that's
| considered a feature.
| berkes wrote:
| But it really is the same with mastodon. You don't need to
| find an instance that matches your political tendencies,
| furry niche, or whatever.
|
| Just pick one that feels right. Maybe you are French or
| Korean and like a server in French or Korean, or maybe you
| feel very strong about politics: the make that a parameter.
| Otherwise just go for any "general" server.
|
| Just like with email, people will generally just pick
| Hotmail, AOL, xs4all.nl, yahoo or email, without much
| thought. This is fine.
|
| You can easily move later if you ever find a community that
| you wish to be part of.
| Joeboy wrote:
| > Otherwise just go for any "general" server
|
| That's exactly what I tried, and failed, to do. As far as I
| was able to discover, including via the site being
| discussed here, there are no such servers currently
| available for new signups.
| berkes wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that. The influx is big currently. Many
| servers can barely handle all the signups and extra load.
|
| So this is temporary, and certainly not a fundamental
| issue.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Thank you! This is a much, much better response than the
| denialism I'm seeing in other replies.
| olliej wrote:
| I'm not convinced that this is a temporary issue - the
| mastodon servers seem to require relatively high upkeep
| (cost, cpu, and manual time) for relatively few users,
| which naturally leads to instances reducing/blocking new
| accounts and even just shutting down, which further
| exacerbates the load on other instances.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| You're overthinking it. Find an instance that seems friendly
| and sign up. If it turns out you don't like it there, you can
| migrate to another one; barring defederation issues, everyone
| who is following you on the old instance will follow you on the
| new one automatically. Unfortunately the list of people that
| you follow isn't automatically migrated, but some front ends
| reduce the pain of this by letting you export a list of follow-
| ees on the old instance and then import it on the new one.
|
| Just do it!
| mabcat wrote:
| That's such a strange piece of UX. As a typical user, who on
| average consumes content rather than produces it, what I care
| about is that my list of followed accounts migrates with me
| so that my feed stays relatively consistent. As a content
| producer I would also care about my past posts migrating with
| me, which they don't. Having followers continue to follow me
| after migration is only the primary concern for the
| "influencer". I get that "my friends can still find me" is an
| important feature but who thought it was ok to skip the other
| two?
| kixiQu wrote:
| Followed accounts are easier to do manually; there's a
| simple export / import interface that existed before the
| account move feature.
|
| I will note that for you "as a content producer" the
| uniformly reverse chronological presentation on Mastodon
| highly penalizes older posts (even a day old!) to an extent
| that is pretty rough to get used to, and that makes those
| older posts pretty irrelevant to move over. This is much
| like Twitter before its engagement-maximization algorithm
| days, though.
| olah_1 wrote:
| I just want a public key. You can name me what you want or I
| can buy an easy-to-read username and renew it like a domain.
| lrvick wrote:
| You have the choice to have any username you want on a domain
| you own.
| olah_1 wrote:
| *if you know how to manage and maintain a server
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| You also can't:
|
| - move your account to a different server
|
| - use your account as a sign-on for other ActivityPub based
| services
|
| - easily discover content that your server doesn't already know
| about
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Your first point is wrong, you definitely can move your
| account to a new instance and take your followers with you.
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move The docs,
| for anyone wondering.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It doesn't matter ... _too_ much.
|
| I've been on Mastodon since 2016. I've switched instances
| twice, once when the instance was shut down (the maintainer
| gave several months' notice), once when instance ownership
| changed.
|
| The first time was early enough that profile migration didn't
| exist ... and it still wasn't much of a deal. I follow a few
| hundred profiles, and am followed by about 2,000. It turns out
| that it's pretty easy to re-associate, at least for
| individuals. (Commercial / brand profiles with large
| follow/follower lists would have a different experience.) We
| reconnected pretty easily.
|
| The more recent switch used profile migration. This brings
| along your followers / following lists, as well as block and
| mute lists, and is straightforward. _Toots_ are not migrated,
| but for the most part Mastodon "lives in the present", and the
| back-catalogue isn't particularly significant. (I care more
| about this than most, and ... it's still not that big a deal.)
|
| I actually have several active profiles, though all are
| forwarded to my primary active one:
| <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius>. Again, if I need to fallback
| to another instance, I can.
|
| Larger instances tend to be fairly anodyne. Smaller instances
| tend to fit niches, of both specific interests and policies.
| Pick something that looks reasonable. If you decide you want to
| change at a later date, it's not a big deal.
| socialismisok wrote:
| This is 100% why I haven't signed up yet. It's like walking
| into a blockbuster video and being told, "you can pick one
| movie from this store, but everyone will know which movie you
| pick, and the director of that movie will be able to control
| what other movies you get to see."
|
| The analysis paralysis this induces is _incredible_.
| josteink wrote:
| > and the director of that movie will be able to control what
| other movies you get to see
|
| That's not true though, is it?
|
| Aren't you able to consume content from anywhere else in the
| fediverse?
| flkiwi wrote:
| You can unless an admin specifically blocks another
| instance. It doesn't seem to be that common in practice
| (other than blocking the content that you'd expect to be
| blocked or, IIRC, a handful of servers that effectively de-
| federate).
| lrvick wrote:
| It is more like you previously could -only- obtain movies
| from Blockbuster and you loved that they recommended
| sponsored movies whenever you visited. You did not have to
| think.
|
| Now Blockbuster is gone and there are a pile of other ways to
| obtain movies out there and you are complaining that choosing
| one is hard. It is entertainment and they all have access to
| the same movies so it is not that important of a choice.
| Kiro wrote:
| This is the reason Mastodon will never fly.
| yogthos wrote:
| Yup, just like email never took off because people have a
| selection of mail server providers to choose from.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Most internet users were given an email address with their
| service, for free, with no setup, care, feeding, or even a
| single iota of further thought required. If sending and
| receiving email back then required as much screwing around
| then as setting up Mastodon does today, do you think it would
| be as ubiquitous?
| someNameIG wrote:
| Having the ability to teach for servers that allow illegal
| content is a really big put off.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Since it's supposedly 'decentralized', and this is HN, what are
| the downsides to just hosting a private ActivityPub instance and
| following people from there? Plus my account would not be tied to
| someone else's instance (since I can take my domain and vps with
| me).
| blep_ wrote:
| I do this, and more people should. People on huge multi-user
| instances are completely missing the point of federation.
|
| The downsides are the usual sysadmin stuff that comes with
| running servers for anything. People also get excited about the
| instance-local timelines on multi-user instances, but again,
| that's completely missing the point.
| jrnichols wrote:
| yes, you can most certainly do that.
| Macha wrote:
| Yes (apart from the instances which operate on a whitelist
| basis for federation)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| You can and should do this, if you have the time and energy to
| do so.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| I've run my own single-user instance since 2018 - the biggest
| downside is discoverability and community.
|
| Discoverability: With other users on the instance the federated
| timeline is populated by posts from users that others on your
| instance follow, so you have to follow people a bit more
| liberally to discover other posts.
|
| Community: Instances also have a local timeline, which shows
| posts from others on the instance and this gives each one a
| slightly different vibe. With a single-user instance it's just
| your posts!
|
| But either way, you can still interact with pretty much anybody
| else in the Fediverse, and once you're followed by a couple of
| people your posts will go out to the federated timelines of
| other instances and you'll get interactions via that.
| ssdown wrote:
| linsomniac wrote:
| Another option: Sign up at masto.host for $6/mo and run your own
| instance, they rate that as good for up to 5 active users, so you
| could even invite some family or friends. I almost went that
| route, but someone I knew did that and invited me to join theirs.
| Review: It has been speedy.
|
| https://masto.host/
| mdaEyebot wrote:
| Is it really too much to ask for people to host their own
| content on a cheap VPS?
|
| Wouldn't that neatly solve the content moderation problem? You
| register your server on an index or two, and you choose what
| your server will publish and accept. Each user would be
| responsible for finding a hosting provider who doesn't have a
| problem with what you post, and problematic content reports
| would go right to the hosting providers. The indexers could
| basically be DNS for usernames.
|
| The AWS free tier would cover 99% of people, and between VNC
| and web UIs, you wouldn't necessarily need them to ever touch a
| shell. Plus, requiring a reasonably consistent public IP
| address would help to cut down on bulk spam.
| mabcat wrote:
| For sure it's too much to ask.
|
| Get started on Twitter: 1. go to twitter.com 2. enter your
| name and phone number
|
| Get started on Pleroma: https://docs.pleroma.social/backend/i
| nstallation/debian_base...
|
| Get started on Mastodon:
| https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/ [page 1 of 12]
|
| For the full effect, do the install with an iPhone.
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
|
| Almost a third of American adults can't achieve computer
| tasks comparable in difficulty to "delete an email message."
| Only about a third can manage tasks comparable to: "You want
| to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to
| you by John Smith in October last year."
| mabcat wrote:
| masto.host was an option yesterday, now it looks like it won't
| be an option for the next few days.
|
| I was about to install self-hosted Mastodon but the machine
| load and amount of admin chores seemed too high. I've installed
| self-hosted Pleroma instead. Pleroma has 2% the DAU count of
| Mastodon, I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing out on the main
| experience, but I also don't want the main experience to be
| "server administration".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-05 23:01 UTC)