[HN Gopher] Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize socia...
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Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media
Author : buovjaga
Score : 164 points
Date : 2022-11-06 15:11 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (time.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (time.com)
| amelius wrote:
| Wasn't it the idea of Musk to give everyone on Twitter absolute
| freedom of (amplification of) speech?
| tomrod wrote:
| Hard to do with an ad-driven platform.
| enumjorge wrote:
| I honestly can't tell if your comment is sarcasm. Are you
| attributing the idea of free speech in social media to Musk?
| Like you think he came up with the idea?
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| You should read the article and how that very topic and what
| "free speech" even means is discussed
| andai wrote:
| Yeah, that's the point. Mastodon was created because its
| developers thought Twitter didn't have enough censorship.
|
| I don't mean to trivialize their achievement, but I thought
| that was pretty funny.
| weberer wrote:
| >Mastodon was created because its developers thought Twitter
| didn't have enough censorship
|
| You got it backwards. Mastodon was created back in 2016 when
| Twitter censorship was starting to get way out of hand. Its
| description was "A decentralized solution to commercial
| platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company
| monopolizing your communication."
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The thing is, Mastodon isn't adding censorship: Anyone has
| numerous servers to choose from that will let them say
| whatever they want, but other people have the choice to go to
| servers which don't federate with the other one.
|
| Free speech is the right to speak, not the right to force
| everyone to listen. The federation model codifies this.
| yanderekko wrote:
| >Anyone has numerous servers to choose from that will let
| them say whatever they want, but other people have the
| choice to go to servers which don't federate with the other
| one.
|
| And then people who are unhappy with the mere existence of
| other servers hosting speech they dislike will launch
| coordinated attacks on the upstream infrastructure and
| revenue streams of those servers, as we've seen time and
| time and time again. And of course this will just be
| justified as giant corporations merely engaging in their
| free expression by ensuring that certain narratives cannot
| be easily communicated between willing parties via a
| digital medium.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's a strange take. If another server hosts content I,
| as a Mastodon admin, dislike, then I can simply choose
| not to talk to them. I do not owe them a platform. I'm
| not preventing my users from creating a second account on
| that server so that they can interact with it. That
| server has perfect freedom to host whatever they see fit,
| and I have perfect freedom not to see it.
|
| And if I'm too quick to block servers, my users will
| leave for less restrictive alternatives. Same if I'm too
| slow to block bad actors: people being harassed by users
| on those servers will leave for somewhere more moderated.
| In short, there's a feedback loop that tends to optimize
| a community's moderation to follow that community's
| preferences. What more could you possibly ask for?
| yanderekko wrote:
| I'm not saying that it's a Mastadon technology problem.
| I'm saying it's a social problem, that the "federation
| model" only truly works down to the layer of the tech
| stack which is _not_ federated, which is still most
| layers. Activists will not be content to merely
| defederate, they will coordinate to have disfavored
| Mastadon instances brought down by their hosts and
| funders.
| metadat wrote:
| He stated his true plans privately, these comms were unveiled
| by the discovery process from the Twitter lawsuit.
|
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475031 for more
| details and sources.
|
| p.s. thanks to Dan Luu for putting it all online!
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That actually seems... pretty reasonable and probably a net
| good? Why are people so mad about this? The Twitter status
| quo seems incredibly toxic.
| metadat wrote:
| Maybe, it's still too early to discern what the end state
| will be. I feel disdain for the dishonesty and poor
| treatment of / regard for human beings in his sphere,
| though.
|
| So far it's a case study demonstration of poor and
| uninspiring leadership.
| bergenty wrote:
| There's a lot of incredibly racist commentary now. The
| toxicity is at a whole other level at this point.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The content moderation policy hasn't changed. I mean, I
| guess some far right folk think Elon's their man. They're
| sorely mistaken (as can be seen by the outrage/despair of
| Nazis when Elon said he's talking with ADL
| representatives).
| bergenty wrote:
| Hopefully. Elon never felt like a racist to me plus he's
| been my hero for a very long time so I hope I don't have
| to start disliking him.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Heroes don't generally make libelous pedo accusations
| against people who are trying to do good things.
| tomrod wrote:
| Jack Dorsey seems to be describing Mastodon, unless I
| misunderstand.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Nothing even remotely objectionable there? It's no secret
| that twitter has been a money-losing toxic cesspit for years.
| Making the moderation fair and transparent will go miles all
| on its own.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Elon's improved blue checkmark is basically a shadow ban
| system for the average person that doesn't pay $8. If the
| average person is talking to a wall and the influencers are
| getting all the engagement why would they stick around?
|
| I also feel like all these discussions are a distraction
| from the real issue. The average person doesn't like using
| Twitter and never will.
| themitigating wrote:
| How was the moderation unfair?
| Karunamon wrote:
| Allowed to tweet things that are objectively against the
| rules if they politically lean a certain way.
|
| Outsized attention given to harmless shitposting at
| Hollywood actors while Iranian terrorists are allowed to
| post propaganda unchecked despite reports.
|
| Selective application of rules against things like
| "hacked content" used against certain politicians and
| organizations with certain political leanings but not
| others (in one case leading to the censorship of a .gov
| domain even over direct messages).
|
| Verification badges issued to nobody journalists and
| sometimes for monetary compensation in contravention of
| their stated policy.
|
| The existence of shadow banning which was lied about in
| Congress before leaked screenshots of the backend tools
| showed that multiple kinds of shadow bans exist.
|
| Manual manipulation of the ostensibly algorithmic
| trending list.
|
| It is hard for me to even imagine a way in which
| Twitter's moderation could possibly be any less fair or
| transparent.
| themitigating wrote:
| Do you have proof of this?
| Karunamon wrote:
| I sure do. One day I might write up a full article on it,
| but this is the summary you asked for.
|
| In the meantime I would ask you to remember that HN is
| not a journal, a debate stage, or an encyclopedia
| article, instead it is an informal discussion on the
| internet. As such, participants are allowed to recount
| things from memory.
| metadat wrote:
| I'm also interested in any concrete examples you can link
| us to.
| themitigating wrote:
| In an informal discussion citing sources for disputed
| information is normal. I also don't need a longer version
| of your claims, I want credible sources to back up them
| up.
|
| How do I know you're not lying?
|
| I think you've been lied to so many times about this that
| you think it's true. A common tactic with right wing
| media.
|
| See hunter biden crimes in china, election fraud, etc
| Karunamon wrote:
| >How do I know you're not lying?
|
| Assumption of good faith and an understanding of the
| obvious fact that not everything that happened on the
| Internet gets written about by a "credible source" (which
| often is a synonym for "the media", and given your
| unwarranted partisan swipe there, likely a synonym for
| "the media that agrees with me"). At least one of the
| things I mentioned above, namely fruitless reporting of
| terrorist content (where I specifically was the person
| clicking on the report button) while the CEO got involved
| with a Hollywood star's gripes, is something I was
| involved in. What source would even possibly exist?
|
| You can either take my word for it as someone that's been
| here for over 10 years and isn't in the habit of making
| shit up, or you can not.
| tablespoon wrote:
| Who is that "Jason C"?
|
| Also, further down in the chat log there's this:
|
| > [redacted]: Hey Elon -my name is Jake Sherman. I'm a
| reporter with Punchbowl News in Washington I cover Congress.
| Wonder if you're game to talk about how Twitter would change
| for politics if you were at the helm?
|
| What's with the [redacted]? Does Musk give journalists
| insulting names in his contact list?
| metadat wrote:
| Jason Calacanis, a wealthy VC friend to elon.
|
| Check out the clickable link sources, it's interesting to
| see how cavalier billionaires are in their private life,
| the "hard work" consists of mostly just scheming. Not even
| data-driven in this case, only napkin math:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475152
| neilv wrote:
| I didn't read the whole thing, but my favorite part was:
|
| > _Jason: Day zero_
|
| > _Jason: Sharpen your blades boys [dagger emoji]_
|
| > _Jason: 2 day a week Office requirement= 20% voluntary
| departures_
| random314 wrote:
| Jason Calcanis always had the worst ideas. Classic
| example of failing upwards.
|
| I remember Jason's mahalo which was supposedly a "human
| powered" search engine which would out compete flawed
| algorithmic search of Google. Mahalo eventually became a
| spam content generator for SEO.
|
| I think he was a tech journalist who failed upwards into
| becoming a VC. Which reminds me- what is parislemon up
| to?
| numbsafari wrote:
| If he wasn't in the contact list, perhaps that is his phone
| number.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| I tried looking for people today and it was so slow, nothing
| worked. Can they really scale?
| beardedman wrote:
| Mastodon is too fragmented to work... well. For example; this
| tweet:
| https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/1585756076305444864.
|
| Would you really host your email on a server that some dude in
| rural Canada runs in his spare time? I don't think so. Not just
| for reliability reasons, but for privacy reasons as well.
| [deleted]
| imhoguy wrote:
| As with email hosting, what stops you to choose instance served
| by a company? Let's imagine Google Fedi+, MS Fedilook or Proton
| Fedi hosted from some bunker in Switzerland.
| beardedman wrote:
| > what stops you to choose instance served by a company
|
| That when the goodwill of said company runs out, there is
| very little incentive for them to maintain the service (other
| than trying to monetize it).
| imhoguy wrote:
| There is no free lunch. Somebody has to pay electricity
| bills and spend resources (time) on administration.
|
| But you have a choice: so you trust the dude in rural
| Canada who pays the server bills with his harvest earnings,
| or you agree with monetization T&C by giving up your
| privacy to ads corporation, or you pay a hosting company
| who manages your instance on VPS, or you setup your own
| instance, or you participate in coop scheme where you share
| instance with some common interest group, or you find some
| rich and trusted philanthropist. Otherwise the owner can't
| sustain the operations and may need to shut down one day
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120136)
| beardedman wrote:
| I think I will trust/use/invest in the company whose
| business model depends on me using the platform.
| bombcar wrote:
| Handling it less like email and more like a "well if it blows
| up ah well" is part of the featureset in my opinion.
| beardedman wrote:
| Social accounts are monetizable & part of peoples brands now
| - "well if it blows up ah well" might be fine for you or for
| me, but might not be for others.
| bombcar wrote:
| Arguably we're seeing the beginning of Twitter blowing up
| and if that falls to Digg-like irrelevance they face a
| similar issue.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Then don't use free instances? There's a bunch of companies
| that would run a dedicated instance for you for a couple
| dozen $/mo.
| jscipione wrote:
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I really want to like Mastodon, and every few years I make an
| attempt to join. But then, I am faced with the decision of
| choosing a server - if I like cooking and golf, do I join the
| cooking server or the golf server? What if I choose _wrong_? -
| and the choice overload makes me just give up.
|
| And even if I really joined, then apparently my server's
| administrator would be able to silently prevent me from seeing
| other "enemy" servers' messages, and they could even read my DMs.
|
| I think I see the point of Mastodon, and I think it can be really
| advantageous for certain uses (e.g. for relatively tight
| communities, that want to have bonds within the community but
| also connections to the outside) but I just don't see its fit for
| the average user and especially as a replacement for the
| generalistic, unstructured network that is Twitter.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Am I the only one who doesn't get why chosing a server is
| necesary? I just don't get it at all from a user experience
| perspective.
|
| Do we need to pick servers with Bittorrent? no. Just tell it
| what file you want (magnet link).
|
| Do we need to pick servers with Tox? no. Just tell it what
| friend you want to talk to (contact ID).
|
| Or to pick a centralized example: do we need to pick a server
| on Twitter? no. duh.
|
| Then why is there any necesity or excuse ever to have to pick
| servers for "social" apps? Is this the 80's?!
|
| How do these "decentralized" advocates think they can get away
| with a "harder to use app with more steps"? Especially when
| it's not a technical necesity?
| alex_duf wrote:
| You need to pick servers (providers) for emails. But we don't
| really think about it this much because we're used to it.
|
| The fediverse is built on a very similar type of network:
| federated servers, similarly to how gmail talks to yahoo and
| hotmail.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Two big, vanilla instances are https://mastodon.social and
| https://mas.to. Unfortunately they've both been struggling to
| keep up with demand lately. If you're paralyzed by choice, I'd
| say just go for one of those if / when they're accepting new
| users.
|
| I think Mastodon would get more signups if interested people
| were just pointed at like ten working, non-specialized, non-
| tiny instances, rather than being confronted with hundreds of
| weird / non-working options. I realize this feels a bit
| contrary to the goals of federation, but the current situation
| seems to be causing a lot of potential users to retreat in
| annoyance and confusion.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They're wasting a massive opportunity. Mastodon should have
| been built to scale from the start because huge viral growth
| is exactly how social networks like this make it big.
|
| As it stands right now, I am struggling to join because every
| mastodon instance I've checked is struggling with scaling.
| Joeboy wrote:
| The other opportunity "they" are missing is that normally
| when a new social network struggles under the weight of new
| users, that's _good_ publicity. Instead of going that
| route, people get offered a huge list of niche or
| unavailable options, or told they should run their own
| server. And unsurprisingly a lot of people are saying, fuck
| that.
|
| It's frustrating to watch. I guess a lot of fediverse
| people don't actually _want_ twitter normies on board
| though.
| _djo_ wrote:
| The point of the fediverse was never to match the scale
| of Twitter on a single instance. In fact, that's
| something of an anti-pattern.
|
| These are the inherent trade offs of a distributed social
| network.
| Joeboy wrote:
| > The point of the fediverse was never to match the scale
| of Twitter on a single instance.
|
| Of course. I don't understand why you are telling me
| this.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Mastodon isn't a commercial entity, so what's the
| opportunity that's being wasted? Its entire purpose is to
| provide an alternative model for social media on a non-
| profit basis. If that doesn't scale to Twitter or Meta
| levels so what? That's not the goal and it's certainly far
| beyond what those behind it could afford. Mastodon gGmbH
| has just two core developers.
|
| Frankly, it's impressive that it's scaling as well as it
| has so far given the tiny size of the team and that all the
| servers are run on a volunteer basis.
| gbraad wrote:
| Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are
| hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers
| cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket
| investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without
| having to spend bucketloads on new servers.
|
| Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new
| registration/break down are at a few thousand members,
| maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented,
| but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or
| even Java service should be able to handle that many
| users on a single instance.
| lrvick wrote:
| Twitter makes -200m a year hosting their solution.
|
| Mastodon by contrast spreads out this load to servers
| paid for by users, not by ads.
|
| If you cannot join any servers, pay for a managed hosting
| provider to spin one up, or host yourself on a vps or a
| home server.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| That may be well and true, but seems unrelated to the
| point i am making, which is that I would expect a single
| instance to be able to handle a few thousand users.
| lrvick wrote:
| Sure one instance could support that if you pay amazon
| $2k/mo for a monster instance, but most do not have that
| kind of money to donate.
|
| Most servers will be small, or you can host your own.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think we are talking past each other.
| [deleted]
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I hear you.
|
| It would be cool if someone rewrote it with a Crystal
| framework. Although there are limitations to this because
| it's faster than Ruby and similar to Ruby but not
| completely like Ruby.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398253
| nesarkvechnep wrote:
| Or go with the best tool for the job - Erlang/Elixir.
| TJSomething wrote:
| It's Ruby on Rails, which is the second slowest web
| framework I would consider reasonable for production use
| (after Django).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Ah, it is all beginning to make sense now.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| In the category of large general instances, there's also
| https://mstdn.social and https://mastodon.online.
| riffic wrote:
| these large servers are being toasted right now beyond
| their capacity, which is giving the larger community a poor
| impression of this system.
|
| I'd recommend joining smaller instances or like, just
| running your own. WordPress with the AP plugin is a nice
| alternative if you just want to feed your own thoughts out
| into the fedi-sphere.
| tramtrist wrote:
| Really surprised fosstodon.org doesn't get mentioned on
| HN more..
| [deleted]
| Lendal wrote:
| The people come first, not the technology. I didn't really
| start using Twitter until I first knew some people I wanted to
| communicate with. It will be the same with Mastodon, or
| whatever. Then the choice of server will become much simpler.
| Until then, I'm not moving from Twitter. Sure I'm using Twitter
| less these days, due to the chaos, but I'm not joining anything
| else until I see where others are going.
|
| Does that make me a sheeple? Yes, it does. Sue me.
| geoffeg wrote:
| How is that different from email though? Email providers will
| block whole swaths of IPs without telling you but you don't
| really notice it because it's very likely those IPs are only
| being used maliciously.
|
| We're in a weird time right now though. Most people choose an
| email provider based on word of mouth or what their friends use
| but not enough people know about Mastodon to make that
| possible. Maybe Mastodon itself isn't the right answer, but I
| hope that a federated/distributed system is.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Email providers will block whole swaths of IPs without
| telling you but you don't really notice it because it's very
| likely those IPs are only being used maliciously.
|
| Most blocked instances in Mastodon are typically not being
| blocked for being malicious instances, but instead because
| they don't like the kind of tweets that are from there. Email
| servers are typically much more neutral and block IPs mostly
| to prevent spam instead of because they disagree with the
| speech contained in the emails originating from that IP.
| _hypx wrote:
| It is a lot like email. There is no centralized email network
| either. Ultimately, people will realize that they are really
| looking for a specific community rather than joining "Mastodon"
| itself.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think you're just putting way too much thought into it: Any
| server will do just fine (you can always move later, but only
| if you feel really attached to a given community), and any
| well-established server really just blocks servers full of
| Nazis and anime child porn.
| zaik wrote:
| You should join a server you think has a reasonable approach to
| moderating other servers. On any other service the
| administrator can also prevent you from seeing posts, this is
| not specific to Mastodon at all. For private messaging other
| standards exist, for example XMPP+OMEMO.
| raarts wrote:
| How do you find out if that is the case? Believe what they
| say? What happens if they die, or throw you out? Do you need
| to get another handle? Will this drop you from other people's
| contact lists?
|
| These are things I worry about.
| deberon wrote:
| If these are your concerns you may be well served by
| hosting an instance on a domain you own.
| kornhole wrote:
| from @SilverEagle@pony.social People treating cell phones like
| they treat Mastodon: "ok...so you're saying I get a phone
| number, but I have to pick a provider? wtf that sounds like
| work...but I can call you even if you're using a different one,
| because they all talk to each other? so f*ing confused rn"
| elcapitan wrote:
| Also, besides choosing a server, how do you figure out which
| other servers that server "federates" with or blocks entirely?
| geoffeg wrote:
| Many Mastodon servers list which other instances they block
| or limit. Check out the "Moderated servers" list at the
| bottom of https://mastodon.social/about
| tedunangst wrote:
| Live and learn? It astonishes me that people would get so
| worked up about the possibility that somebody somewhere is
| posting and you might not see it. Guess what? They're already
| posting today and you're not seeing their posts.
| unconed wrote:
| You don't see the risk of outsourcing your reach to a rando
| admin, who may have started their instance out of protest
| reasons, in a highly contentious, politicized climate?
|
| There are people right now having tantrums because they
| want their one-sided censorship back, and indeed, that's
| what's behind this latest drive to promote mastodon all
| over the place.
|
| Nothing has actually changed on Twitter except the
| bluechecks' sense that they're no longer a privileged
| class.
| _djo_ wrote:
| There are risks in trusting your instance admin, but you
| can move.
|
| Tons has changed on Twitter, including the laying off of
| half the company including substantial numbers in the
| Trust & Safety team. I'm seeing people who couldn't have
| cared less about the US's culture wars talking about
| leaving Twitter and setting up Mastodon accounts because
| they're expecting the platform to become nastier, more
| spammy, less reliable, and overall less pleasant to be
| on. Perhaps they're wrong, but it's wrong to pretend
| they're all doing it because they're having 'tantrums'
| and want their 'one-sided censorship back'.
|
| The major concern I've seen regarding the blue checks is
| that it's going from being a system of verification (this
| person really is who they claim to be) to one where it
| just represents having paid a subscription fee without
| any real identity verification at all.
| elcapitan wrote:
| Oh, I have no intention or reason to move away from
| twitter. My interest ist purely theoretical.
| allenu wrote:
| You have a point, but think about it from the newbies
| perspective. They have no idea how many posts they won't
| see. Everybody is used to centralized where they see
| _everything_ and now they 're being told to check out this
| alternative where you might not see everything. Okay, does
| that mean 50% of what gets posted won't be seen? 25%? 5%?
| Will I be able to see what my favorite celeb posts? There's
| zero context for a newbie to understand what they're
| missing out on. Much easier to say "too complicated" than
| to give it a try.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Honestly, I think it's concern trolling. Newbies don't
| know federation is incomplete, so it's not a problem for
| them. It's only on the HN threads full of mastodon haters
| that the topic even gets mentioned, but these are not
| newbies. They're people looking for reasons to be
| unhappy.
| allenu wrote:
| Perhaps some are concern trolling, but I think it's still
| a legitimate problem if you want people to take up the
| technology. I use mastodon, but I know it's not the
| easiest thing to pick up. A lot of the complaining, to
| me, is just recognizing the common pattern of
| technically-minded creators not recognizing that the tech
| (and how it's presented) can get in the way of
| encouraging more users to join.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| Generally they seem to have lists of blocked servers (often
| with the full domain censored with ****) on the about page. I
| don't know if the list is generated or manually updated.
| jrnichols wrote:
| Most of the servers I've looked at today have that list
| hidden behind a signup wall. "The list is visible for
| logged-in members under the heading Unavailable content
| below."
|
| and they aren't taking new signups. Soooo.... no idea.
| btown wrote:
| > apparently my server's administrator would be able to
| silently prevent me from seeing other "enemy" servers'
| messages, and they could even read my DMs.
|
| There's an interesting problem here - how do you know that your
| server's software and configuration hasn't been modified in a
| way that subtly lets these things happen?
|
| I've always wanted a PaaS, operated by a too-big-to-make-
| exceptions security-hardened company (here's looking at you,
| Google!), that lets you deploy any image or set of images, but
| has a centrally managed ingress that ensures that the only
| access is over HTTPS (so no direct access to any requisitioned
| databases) and furthermore reports a hash of the image(s) as an
| HTTP response header with every single response, with no way to
| change or suppress this
|
| You could then have, say, a Mastodon implementation that also
| reports all appropriate central configuration (say, blocklists,
| or disabling the ability of users to port out) at a public
| endpoint, and, importantly, is trusted to report that
| accurately, because you could validate what code it's running
| via the HTTP response. You could audit that security updates
| are being applied, that nobody is running a fork that gives
| them access to your DMs, and, if Mastodon gave visibility into
| this, you could also validate whether administrators all have
| 2FA enabled and how many of them there are (and hold your
| server admins to account socially).
|
| Of course, you do have to trust the PaaS provider not to make
| exceptions to the rules, but no more so than we currently trust
| any certificate authority.
|
| Does anyone know if anything like this exists right now?
| allan-a wrote:
| Just a small note, you can't really choose wrong because you
| can participate across the fediverse, with other "servers", and
| even non-mastodon federated social media. However if it irks
| one to join a specific community, there does exist general
| purpose instances.
| neogodless wrote:
| I haven't figured out this part. I joined the default server
| years ago. All of the other servers want a unique account, as
| I cannot login using my existing account.
|
| How do I "participate across the fediverse" _without_
| creating one account per server? Is there a part of the UI I
| just haven 't stumbled on yet?
| lrvick wrote:
| You cannot use your gmail credentials to login to yahoo,
| but you can communicate with anyone from yahoo with your
| gmail account.
|
| Similarly servers do not share credentials, but you can
| follow people no matter what server they are on.
| jrnichols wrote:
| It's finding people to follow that are on different
| servers. That's the thing. A lot of servers have their
| content for users only, and if you don't have an account
| on those servers, you don't know who to follow.
|
| there's a lot of chicken & egg issues still going on. I
| think it'll get better as more people put their info on
| their web pages, though.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| If I can't choose wrong then why am I forced to choose at
| all? The user experience doesn't add up.
| afiori wrote:
| The "not choosing" option is to run your own instance.
|
| You are forced to chose because there is not a central
| blessed server that acts as a main hub.
| xaduha wrote:
| Who should decide it for you then? Did someone mention
| blockchain already?
|
| But seriously though, if you start to make it more
| distributed than it already is it will look even less like
| Twitter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)
| phire wrote:
| Most users don't care how distributed it is, or what it's
| architecture looks like.
|
| They just want to sign up, and get an out-of-the box
| experience more or less like twitter.
| xaduha wrote:
| If they don't care, then they should stay on Twitter.
| There isn't a better option right now than
| Mastodon/ActivityPub.
| lrvick wrote:
| If Mastodon was fully centralized like Twitter and
| offered that experience, it would need an immense source
| of funding, and need ads, and shareholders, and would be
| losing money rapidly until some billionare bought it
| out... like Twitter.
|
| Mastodon is built so that there is no single point of
| failure, but that means users have no single point of
| signup. It is like email, or matrix. Host your own on
| your own domain for a few dollars a month or join a
| friendly server paying the bill for you.
|
| It is really not that hard, but people are just not used
| to having choices on the internet anymore.
|
| At some point someone you know picked Twitter and you did
| too. Maybe find some friends or public figures you like
| on Mastodon and see what server they are on.
| lrvick wrote:
| You chose an area code for your phone number. Often people
| choose area codes from a home state as a bit of nostalgia
| or affinity, but in the end you can use any number to talk
| to any number, so it really does not matter much.
|
| In Mastodon you can choose a french server if you are
| french and agree with generally accepted french values of
| moderation, or you can choose a general purpose server, or
| host your own.
|
| There are a lot of LGBT servers and special interest
| servers with strict moderation, and general purpose servers
| that moderate very little.
|
| It is also a bit like choosing what city to live in...
| except it is -much- easier to move if you decide you do not
| like the vibe and wish to live somewhere else. Mastodon has
| built-in user forwarding to take your follows and followers
| with you.
| dymk wrote:
| I've never been given a choice for my area code, and if I
| was, there's the obvious default to "where I live".
| What's the Mastodon equivalent?
| arjvik wrote:
| If there's no wrong answer between Gmail and Outlook, why
| must you choose one of them?
| xaduha wrote:
| You have a good analogy attempt there, but you didn't
| quite nail it I think, because Outlook is also an email
| client.
|
| It's more like if someone asked why they need to choose
| between someone@gmail.com address or someone@outlook.com,
| but in reality email would work just fine regardless.
|
| EDIT: fixed
| arjvik wrote:
| Yup, you're right. I guess I was specifically referring
| to outlook.com, Microsoft's hosted email solution for
| consumers.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Except for all the people with outlook.com addresses.
| riffic wrote:
| Eugen is playing almost all roles singlehandedly and last said he
| was making around 35k a year. "I do software development, devops,
| accounting, customer support, project management, product design,
| public relations, and moderation for 36K per year..."
|
| please help fund the project to ensure further stability.
|
| https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109260715240000670
| fredgrott wrote:
| I think most of us are missing where things are converging:
|
| 1. Easier to do ads as overlay on vid clips than 12 character
| content 2. User base is getting to trained to expect and WANT
| short vid clip content 3. Ease and reach of story telling via
| short vid clips 4. Move off of social graph to AI graph 5.
| Automated moderation but open where you can see what posts were
| moderated and why pertaining to the rules of the SM platform.
|
| What we are seeing is the move to Social 2.0.
|
| 1. Mark Z has the problem of how to turn FB into instagram and AI
| graph @. Youtube has smaller problem of just adjusting their feed
| impl to AI graph 3. Twitter has the most work out of the three in
| that it's their full imp and infrastructure that has to change to
| get back to revelance.
|
| True P2P has never ever won in the market of over almost 40
| years. But people keep rehashing the same way of doing and
| structuring P2P both tech wise and business wise and losing.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Who cares about "winning the market". Join a server and talk
| with your friends, colleagues, and like-minded people. Have a
| good time. Kick a few bucks at your instance for hosting costs
| maybe. Let the back-alley knife fight for the right to spy on &
| manipulate you happen somewhere else, never even crossing your
| mind.
| the-printer wrote:
| Is there any space nowadays for tech that is essentially free of
| politicized rhetoric? I really don't care about democracy or
| decentralization on my social media platform. When I first
| discovered Tumblr, MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga, AIM, and Twitter
| I didn't care about any of their techno-political underpinnings.
| silverwasthere wrote:
| Some servers enforce a rule where political messages are hidden
| behind a content warning. Check the CoC before you sign up.
| the-printer wrote:
| That rule itself implies the sort of underpinnings that repel
| me from certain alternative social networks.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| In theory federated social media seems like a great idea. You can
| hand-wave a lot of impossible moderation problems away just by
| not being so damn big. It seems like I could join for music and
| geeky history without being inundated with The Current Thing
| ragebait culture. I'd try that out!
|
| In practice it's still a desert.
|
| The problem isn't how to sign up, it's that with the exception of
| a few active communities, there's not much going on once you do.
| lrvick wrote:
| I have never cared to look at local server feeds. I follow
| dozens of people that interest me, and that is it.
| tomrod wrote:
| I finally joined yesterday to a niche (academic) community that
| is moving from Twitter. 18k migrants in the 30 hours since it
| opened up with virtually linear growth. I can search other
| similar niche communities and they are seeing similar growth.
|
| It's not seeming like much of a desert, and is just starting to
| benefit from network effects as some of the more known members
| of the community announce their moves.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Right. I'm on the mathematics server https://mathstodon.xyz/
| and it's already feeling like a big community.
| arjvik wrote:
| How do you get invited?
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Existing users can generate an invite link:
|
| https://mathstodon.xyz/invite/5nKykTB6
|
| If it doesn't work then check back in a day or two, many
| servers are struggling at the moment but the mathstodon
| admins are scaling up now.
|
| Or you can join any other instance since any account can
| follow any other account regardless of instance. The main
| advantage of mathstodon is LaTeX support.
| [deleted]
| earthscienceman wrote:
| What's the community of academics? I haven't joined Twitter
| specifically because I think it's a horrible medium for
| communicating science or meeting with academics. Can you
| point me there?
| detaro wrote:
| Just from a quick look, no claim to completeness,
| intentionally including also small ones:
|
| https://fediscience.org/
|
| https://vis.social/
|
| https://mstdn.science/
|
| https://astrodon.social/
|
| https://mapstodon.space/
|
| currently not taking signups:
|
| https://scholar.social/
|
| https://scicomm.xyz/
| notpushkin wrote:
| https://qoto.org/ is another really nice instance
| oriented on STEM. It adds some features like LaTeX and
| Markdown support (not sure how well do those federate
| though).
| baq wrote:
| How do I follow a server with an account on a different
| server? I don't want to register on multiple servers
| since it's a hassle...
| detaro wrote:
| not sure what you mean by "follow a server"? You can
| interact with/follow people on other servers from yours.
| baq wrote:
| That's the thing, I don't really want to find people to
| follow, I guess? Not out of band at least. First I need
| to find a few of their posts. How do I do that?
| mgerdts wrote:
| Each server has a local timeline. Some are visible to
| non-subscribers, some are not.
|
| I'm on fosstodon which has this as the local timeline.
|
| https://fosstodon.org/web/public/local
|
| On many servers I can do the obvious substitution to see
| that server's local timeline. I don't think I've seen any
| servers that link that from their top level page.
| neogodless wrote:
| This asks for a login - but you can't use "your" login,
| you have to create a login for that server.
| baq wrote:
| > https://fosstodon.org/web/public/local
|
| This presents me with a log in form.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Might be related to this message they have on their main
| page:
|
| > Due to the massive influx of users from Twitter, we
| have had to temporarily close registrations. Please check
| back later if you wish to join Fosstodon.
| killing_time wrote:
| It's pretty straightforward: you either click on their
| profile or (if you know someone's username@server via
| some other medium), search for them on your 'home' server
| and you'll see their profile. Then just click the
| 'follow' button.
|
| Under the covers this sets up the federated follow
| relationship, but the UX feels the same as following
| someone on twitter.
|
| There is one slightly more complicated scenario; if for
| some reason you're exploring a different server and find
| someone there you want to follow. In that case you still
| click the follow button but have to provide _your_
| username@server string which triggers the necessary back-
| and-forth to get the follow relationship set up.
| baq wrote:
| That makes sense, but my case is before I know who to
| follow. Is there any way to explore what's going on on a
| server? Like browsing a news group on Usenet or checking
| a subreddit before subscribing?
| xaduha wrote:
| > Like browsing a news group on Usenet or checking a
| subreddit before
|
| How would you do that on Twitter? Follow the hashtags.
| Why do you insist on limiting it to a server? That's not
| really how it is supposed to work anyway, it's not those
| things you mentioned.
| baq wrote:
| But how do I know what hashtags are there? I don't know
| what to follow is my issue. I need to bootstrap my set of
| followed things and people and how do I do that?
| xaduha wrote:
| If you're not a part of some clique that decides to move
| off Twitter together, then I doubt you'll be able to just
| recreate a similar environment.
|
| Otherwise for someone who posts frequently and has a good
| following, then it's probably worth it to start posting
| on Twitter and Mastodon at the same time, that's the only
| way it happens. Big movers and shakers are either going
| to stay on Twitter or drag everyone else with them,
| basically unlikely to happen.
| xaduha wrote:
| It's federated, you don't need to register on multiple
| servers.
| tomrod wrote:
| https://econtwitter.net
| dhruvdh wrote:
| Could you share the name of the server?
| pera wrote:
| > In practice it's still a desert.
|
| That's not true anymore: I am currently following over 100
| academics and scientists who decided to migrate over the past
| week, they are _very_ active and as a result my timeline is
| much more interesting and engaging than Twitter.
|
| I have never seen such a big exodus in my 25+ years online,
| this is historic.
| tomrod wrote:
| Digg to Reddit comes to mind, but the quality of new material
| in Mastodon eclipses Twitter.
| systemicdanna wrote:
| > You can hand-wave a lot of impossible moderation problems
| away just by not being so damn big
|
| Instance admins can certainly be more decisive and just ban
| anyone they want without causing a media storm. Not sure if
| that's what people meant when they asked for a Twitter
| alternative.
| leobg wrote:
| lrvick wrote:
| For those not sure who to follow on Mastodon, I have been
| curating my follow list for years. Mostly people into tech,
| security, privacy, and digital sovereignty.
|
| https://mastodon.social/@lrvick/following
| samsepi0l wrote:
| I dont think Mastodon will gain mainstream adoption because of
| the naming, and they call messages "Toots". Normal people will
| baulk at the branding of it all.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I remember complaining the "iPad" sounded like a menstrual
| product. Seemed to do fine.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| The Wii did fine too.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| iBrator
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-ReZh0sQw
| extheat wrote:
| The i-line of products was already well known by the general
| public at the time to be synonymous with Apple. iTunes, iPod,
| iPhone ... those were normal english words prefixed with an
| "i". People wonder why Apple didn't call their watch the
| iWatch. This is a much different thing with "mastrodon". It's
| not a word people are familiar with, has enough syllables to
| sound funny, and gets combined with other nonsense words
| people aren't familiar with. Compare that with something like
| youtube subscribers, posters, tweets, etc. which are all
| basic words. Mastrodon's situation is that it reeks of being
| engineer designed. That's not a good thing if your goal is to
| reach a mainstream audience.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think you're skipping past the word "pad" which is what
| people thought was weird, not the I.
|
| Toot is as much a basic word as tweet, I think you are just
| reflecting your own bias towards words from products you
| already know.
| appletrotter wrote:
| "pad" without the "i" was already accepted as a term for
| something you write on e.g., "pen and pad"
|
| I'm pretty confident that you can ask someone for a pad for
| writing, without thinking at all about hygiene products, but
| you can't even hear the toot of a horn without thinking of a
| fart.
| jacooper wrote:
| This reminds me of the super old joke "iPod, iPad, iPaid"
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I like the name Mastodon!
|
| masto- : a combining form meaning "breast," used in the
| formation of compound words: mastopathy.
|
| It sounds like the sister site of Phallodon.
|
| -Don
| Daishiman wrote:
| All the better; if the cool people can't adopt a social network
| due its quirky names they're not the kind of people I want I my
| timeline anyway.
| Finnucane wrote:
| So what? It doesn't need to be mainstream. It's not built for
| exploitation of the user base, so it doesn't need to sell the
| idea that everyone needs to be there.
| imhoguy wrote:
| tweet it louder, bird!
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Posts are just call 'posts' in the latest versions of the
| software.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| sazz wrote:
| Things we are currently seeing going on is social debt, not
| technical debt. Therefore another technical solution won't fix
| the issue. It will just relay the social issues to a new platform
| which will start over again very soon.
|
| You can't fix people by giving them new software.
| varelse wrote:
| cratermoon wrote:
| Who do Mastodon's boosters believe is going to be installing and
| running Mastodon servers?
| r721 wrote:
| Who is running current 5k servers? Same kind of people.
|
| http://demo.fedilist.com/instance?q=&ip=&software=mastodon&r...
| cratermoon wrote:
| A list of the servers is data, but where does one go to find
| out about the people or organizations running them? How do we
| know that that a couple of thousand of them aren't all run by
| one group?
| paulgb wrote:
| Mastadon provides a way for servers to have an "about"
| page, which often has more details about who runs the
| server. In some cases they prefer to be pseudonymous, but
| in some it's possible to attach the instance to a human.
| easrng wrote:
| Some are on managed hosting from companies like
| https://masto.host/
| dmitriid wrote:
| And most of those servers stopped registrations when the
| exodus from Twitter began.
|
| One reason, so that communities wouldn't get diluted. The
| other, it's expensive to run this.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| They stopped to throttle, but that's not necessarily
| permanent. Also for which instances will survive and how
| they will operate and how they will finance will play out.
| In the moment there is a lot wild west of people figuring
| things out and experimenting.
|
| Similar to email - for a long time somebody in a university
| basement had been running those and now it's google,
| Microsoft and a bunch of smallers or selfhosted where you
| can pick the offering you like.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I wouldn't say "most". According to that site, of the 4880
| instances list, 1909 are close and another ~300 are invite-
| only.
|
| > it's expensive to run this
|
| As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought
| twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an
| instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer
| and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements
| and installation process, I decided that it was too much
| work for a little one-person experiment. This is why I ask
| about who is running instances. Yes, I had a strong hunch
| it would be all nerds, but I didn't expect it to be require
| so much sophistication and outlay. One very dedicated
| person could certainly set up and run an instance, but most
| likely any instance of moderate popularity is going to
| require a team.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > After perusing the requirements and installation
| process
|
| Was that the original Mastodon? That does have a
| reputation of being faffy to install and resource-hungry.
| Pleroma is much easier and less resource-hungry. Even I
| managed to spin up a Pleroma server without any trouble.
|
| > most likely any instance of moderate popularity is
| going to require a team.
|
| It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support,
| perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users
| will, surely?
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Was that the original Mastodon?
|
| Likely. I didn't investigate alternative implementations.
|
| > It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support,
| perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users
| will, surely?
|
| I'm under the impression that the claims of Mastodon
| include "self-moderation" and, because of its supposed
| decentralization, 24/7 uptime is not needed for any one
| instance. I have been imagining it like torrents, where
| no single node matters. Once the initial seeding is
| complete, the content lives across many instances. If
| it's not like that, then claims for its decentralization
| are highly overblown.
| twmiller wrote:
| It took me about 45 minutes last night to install a
| pleroma server and get it set up. Also as 'just an
| experiment'. This was on a server that had nginx running
| on it but not much else.
| cratermoon wrote:
| In contrast, I set up IPFS[1] in less than half that
| time.
|
| 1 https://ipfs.tech/
| r721 wrote:
| On the topic of costs I saw this today in my Mastodon
| feed:
|
| >The costs were already ~$35/month even with reserved
| instances; back-of-the-envelope is that the new costs
| would be in the ballpark of ~$50/month.
|
| https://toot.cafe/@nolan/109295574721909717
|
| toot.cafe is #216 (by MAU) in the list above, MAU=315 -
| there's a data point.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| They should migrate to Pleroma and reduce their monthly
| costs.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Instances will be run by small groups of people motivated
| by personal or political reasons.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's much more than running the service, the instance
| owner is the moderator of that instance basically, if
| nobody else fills that role. Lack of moderation will
| eventually kill an instance (other instances will
| blacklist it, if it is seen as a safe haven for whatever
| they don't want to see).
| r721 wrote:
| Well, the scale of exodus was unanticipated? I mean Paul
| Krugman who has 4.6M Twitter followers just announced his
| Mastodon account. I think things will stabilize in a couple
| of days/weeks.
| crocowhile wrote:
| I am a scientist and I've setup a mastodon instance on my own
| server, with remote file hosting on S3. It was pretty painless
| and in a few days 200 non tech-savvy people have joined and
| started contributed. Some migrating from twitter, some joining
| social media for the first time.
|
| It is great.
| Kye wrote:
| Someone is. Instance count is growing in proportion to user
| count.
| davoneus wrote:
| Yeah, it's a major issue (to some at least).
|
| Lots of fly by night servers, stood up by (probably well
| meaning) people that have no idea if how hard it is to run and
| administer a server like that. Point in fact the
| "Mastodon.technology"(MT) server
|
| If you read the heartfelt post from the MT owners/op on why it
| had to be shutdown. How much it took of his life to run it, and
| the choices he made. It doesn't matter that a new "like that"
| MT server is being stood up as a replacement. The MT server
| admins post shows the burden of running a server like that. For
| free (unless Patreon'ed I guess).
|
| Activity Pub is a well designed protocol, but to my eye it has
| some major warts( _). Add in it 's decentralized nature and it
| shows how hard it will be to institute major changes, even if
| the community supported it.
|
| I'd like to find a nice, professionally run Mastodon server,
| with clear rules and a believable investment in infrastructure
| and people. Absent that, I certainly can't see myself
| advocating for it, it recommending it to others. Shame too.
|
| (_) Lack of encryption, lack of non-server discovery, lack of
| consistent, user controled server migration.p
| lostfocus wrote:
| Nerds
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Before they are bought by bigwigs with cash.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Then we'll move to Yddgrasil.
|
| https://yggdrasil-network.github.io
|
| https://letsdecentralize.org
| remram wrote:
| This appears to be a transport layer... It is not a
| social network, and would still require people to run
| always-on "instances" of software to be usable as one.
| twmiller wrote:
| The same sort of people who decided it'd be interesting and/or
| fun to snag an extra phone line and set up a BBS back in the
| day, I suspect.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Just wait until the journalists find out Trumps Truth Social is
| the biggest Mastodon server out there.
| abhinavk wrote:
| It's based on Mastodon project but it's not part of the
| Mastodon network. I don't think you can follow a Truth.social
| user.
| [deleted]
| Klonoar wrote:
| This isn't new news, it's just not remotely interesting news.
| jrnichols wrote:
| I think Gab is running on a mastodon fork as well.
| mozman wrote:
| Centralized systems are very dangerous, moderation is a huge
| problem and has a massive chilling effect.
|
| I support civil discourse and disagreements, I actively want to
| see both sides and not just an echo chamber.
|
| We all have different beliefs and the only way to move forward as
| society is to foster open and honest conversation.
|
| This is especially applicable to politically correct language and
| culture. Some things are uncomfortable and that's ok. It should
| be.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > We all have different beliefs and the only way to move
| forward as society is to foster open and honest conversation.
|
| This presupposes every "belief" and discussion is in good
| faith. It also presupposes that there's no second order effects
| from the amplification of "beliefs". A bigot is not interested
| in learning about whatever it is they're bigoted against. They
| just want to amplify their message. Trolls and shit posters
| just want to troll and shit post.
|
| If you eliminate moderation then all you'll get is people using
| your platform to scream at everyone else. Assuming everyone is
| interested in actual conversation is childishly naive.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Mastodon is not a platform and does have moderation.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Individual instances do which is what the GP was talking
| about. Also individual instances are where an outside link
| is going to point at.
| 7e wrote:
| Reddit should just clone Twitter and solve everyone's problems.
| someNameIG wrote:
| They have most of the basics required to do so already. Just
| have a tab that is a feed of the u/ you follow.
| woah wrote:
| The uptick of interest in Mastodon due to Musk buying Twitter
| doesn't make sense. Only the left is angry about the acquisition.
| The right is gleeful. What the left is angry and the right is
| gleeful about is the idea that Musk is a "free speech absolutist"
| and might unban Donald Trump and other right wing / fascist media
| personalities.
|
| Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been possible
| to ban Trump in the first place. Sure, leftist servers could have
| stop syndicating his posts, but this would not have had much more
| of an effect than individuals blocking him on Twitter if he had
| never been banned there.
|
| Further, Musk hasn't actually unbanned him yet. If this mastodon
| push was somehow successful, and everyone switched over, then
| Trump would be truly unbannable. He would run his own instance,
| and it would syndicated to all his fans. The people who are mad
| about Musk might not syndicate Trump's posts but this wouldn't
| matter.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| It's not god that Elon can see ones DMs.
|
| I'm on the left and it's also just a fine time to promote
| things like federation that are otherwise hard to get non-
| technical people to care about, regardless of what Twitter ends
| up doing. Never let a crisis go to waste!
| kzrdude wrote:
| It might be good for everyone to know that "DMs" on mastodon
| are not even secret, anyone can sniff them if they read the
| traffic between two instances.
| easrng wrote:
| That's not true. The two instances (and potentially their
| admins, though there isn't a UI for it) see the DMs, but
| the connection between instances is HTTPS.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Just to not forget the "past": Trump was banned from twitter
| due to inciting violence, see
| https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
|
| There is an objective truth out there, no reason to return to
| our echo chambers. Some people are angry at Elon buying twitter
| because a subjectively good platform might just die in a short
| time, because everyone who had even an ounce of try at managing
| a platform knows that "unmoderated free speech" is just
| shitposting.
|
| Also, I don't see how death threats, n-words and the like would
| contribute to any discussion.
| kragen wrote:
| The objective truth is that states are founded on violence --
| both punishment for crimes and warfare -- so every politician
| spends their entire career inciting violence. "Either you're
| with us or you're with the terrorists" is inciting violence
| against whatever country refuses to fall in line. "Three
| strikes and you're out" is inciting violence against junkies,
| hundreds of thousands of whom are imprisoned in the US today
| as a result.
|
| The press in the US had unmoderated free speech for over a
| century until the FCC was established, and print publishing
| still does. That's why the New York Times bought the first
| Gatling guns: they were inciting violence (specifically, the
| Civil War) and justifiably feared that rioters would try to
| lynch them. Though you're probably too young to remember it,
| Usenet had unmoderated free speech for about 25 years.
| Freenet still does.
|
| It's not a bullshit idea. Just an unpopular one.
| saurik wrote:
| The point of the person you are responding to wasn't to
| really defend whether the idea of unbanning Trump was good or
| not: it was to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to explicitly
| move to a decentralized solution like _Mastadon_ if that 's
| your concern.
| kaba0 wrote:
| But mastodon is not without moderation on a per instance
| basis.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > He would run his own instance, and it would syndicated to all
| his fans.
|
| He technically does, doesn't he? Truth Social is a Mastodon
| instance, IIRC.
| easrng wrote:
| It doesn't federate though.
| twmiller wrote:
| "Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been
| possible to ban Trump in the first place. Sure, leftist servers
| could have stop syndicating his posts, but this would not have
| had much more of an effect than individuals blocking him on
| Twitter if he had never been banned there."
|
| My observation is that the modern right wing social media user
| only thrives when there are 'liberal snowflakes' around that
| they can piss off. Hence Gab, Truth, Parler, etc. being largely
| failures. They all miss the key ingredient that the right
| wingers need to really get their endorphin hit: people to
| offend.
| throwawayacc4 wrote:
| My observation is that the modern leftt wing social media
| user only thrives when there are 'conservative Nazis' around
| that they can piss off. Hence Lemmy, Tumblr, Mastodon, etc.
| being largely failures. They all miss the key ingredient that
| the left wingers need to really get their endorphin hit:
| people to virtue signal over.
|
| We can both play this game but I don't think it's
| particularly helpful. One could say Elon is bringing
| ideological equality to the platform. For leftists/liberals,
| this equality feels like oppression after years of dominance
| and privilege on Twitter.
| twmiller wrote:
| I think you're only half wrong here. The difference is that
| you can virtue signal to people inside of your own crowd
| without much consequence, but if you seek to offend them,
| they kick you out. There's _definitely_ (a lot of) virtue
| signaling going on in the fediverse, for what it 's worth.
| And I really don't see people on the left getting the same
| sort of kicks out of pissing people off that people on the
| right seem to enjoy. As you sort of pointed out, they're
| annoying in _different_ ways. ;)
| nemo44x wrote:
| I'm just grabbing my popcorn and can't wait to watch the
| inevitable splits. Each of the communities will split
| into 2, will split into 2, etc. They just can't help
| themselves.
| throwawayacc4 wrote:
| I think you're only half wrong here. The difference is
| that you can piss off people outside of your own crowd
| without much consequence, but if you seek to offend them,
| they kick you out. There's definitely (a lot of) pissing
| off lefties going on in Parler, Truth Social, etc. for
| what it's worth. And I really don't see people on the
| right getting the same sort of kicks out of virtue
| signaling (AKA pissing right wing people off) that people
| on the left seem to enjoy. As you sort of pointed out,
| they're annoying in different ways. ;)
|
| Again, we can both play these games. You original
| presumption:
|
| >My observation is that the modern right wing social
| media user only thrives when there are 'liberal
| snowflakes' around that they can piss off.
|
| Remember, one of the major reasons behind Truth Social,
| Parler, etc. failing to gain user share is the fact that
| their respective apps were banned from Google/Apple
| stores.
|
| At the end if the day, both extremes, left and right,
| need an enemy to point at and rally over. They are
| different sides of the same coin.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| You might want to look at what happened when Gab switched to
| Mastodon, and/or when Trump basically made a Mastodon server
| called "Truth Social", which was some years ago...
|
| (Note also that you are not much of a (societal) liberal if you
| don't value freedom of speech. But therefore this isn't so much
| of a left vs right than a top vs bottom issue...)
| ipaddr wrote:
| Left wing people would live in their silo and Trump people
| would live in theirs. It's not a terrible idea until you have
| to ban or unban 5,000 instances depending on their social point
| of view on ever changing issues and than you realize it is like
| outdated docs
| paulgb wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the number of people hedging
| their bets on twitter not for ideological reasons, but because
| a company left with a billion dollars in annual interest is
| going to have to squeeze that out of whichever users remain.
| Whether it is through ads or fees, the dynamic on the site will
| change substantially.
| [deleted]
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Predictions: Mastodon becomes platform for technically minded
| center left. Tribel Social becomes lower brow left version of
| Parler. Twitter loses customers to aforementioned platforms but
| survives.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I feel like most people I know on the left have essentially
| abandoned social media as inherently unproductive and instead
| gather in local group chats which can only be found by being
| active in a community. So the only people who will really be
| hanging around are probably techno optimists
| nemo44x wrote:
| That's pretty much what their opposition wants. Previously
| they controlled what was allowed to be said on the mainstream
| platforms and that was influential. Scattering off to 1000
| different Balkanized ghettos puts them back on the margins.
| This was what happened to the far right already.
| [deleted]
| Bud wrote:
| imhoguy wrote:
| Prediction: masses get into Mastodon, governments mandate
| protocol tapping to filter out some ActivityPub traffic, for
| "kids good" or to "stop terrorism". Hosting companies and ISPs
| start to disallow hosting social networks in their T&C, kind
| like torrent or crypto mining.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| That won't happen unless Mastodon becomes a hub for
| socialists and communists. The average Twitter user switching
| to Mastodon isn't radical enough for that. Western
| governments won't censor ideas within their overton windows,
| so they won't censor anything from centre left to centre
| right.
|
| You won't see censorship of Mastodon until anarchists and
| communists use it to coordinate protests at scale.
| chatterhead wrote:
| sseagull wrote:
| And yet, lots of people are on there at this moment just having
| fun. Even if it doesn't last, oh well.
|
| These complaints remind me of the famous dropbox comment, as
| well as this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/359/
| chatterhead wrote:
| By all means, keep conflating the comments as a professional
| PR person would and continue to ignore the fact these
| bullshit Mastodon posts are making it to the top of HN by
| design; almost no comments, less than a dozen upvotes and on
| the front page and anyone who comments against it gets
| downvoted into nothing?
|
| Sounds like a bunch of Twitter censorshits.
| meesterdude wrote:
| I didn't think Mastodon would make sense for me as any kind of
| twiter alternative, but then I found someone created ruby.social
| and now it actually makes sense for me, and offers something
| twitter doesn't.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Imagine you need to choose a server every time you wanted to surf
| the net and some server you may not see certain things
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's called your ISP, the only difference is you don't get a
| choice.
| [deleted]
| kstrauser wrote:
| Imagine you need to choose a server every time you want to
| email your someone, and that server may have spam filters.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Or having to pick the best option from a million different mail
| providers.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| Twitter is a great place for creatives to pitch their shows and
| get scooped up into a studio if you can put out some high-quality
| work. Mastodon doesn't seem like it has any solid use case to
| that end.
|
| Craig McCracken, the creator of PPG and Fosters Home has
| consistently used his Twitter following to boost other creatives
| by retweeting their work and LaikaStudios has been a great place
| to see BTS work on their stop-motion projects.
|
| These sites all seem to have some grandiose plan but at the end
| of the day, the long-standing use case is just a place to build a
| community, collaborate with like-minded people, and ultimately
| just take a break from real life for a few moments by scrolling
| down your feed to consume some content.
| cphuntington97 wrote:
| "Craig McCracken, the creator of PPG and Fosters Home has
| consistently used his Twitter following to boost other
| creatives by retweeting their work"
|
| This is exactly how Mastodon works.
| lakomen wrote:
| I said it before, I'm not paying so Mastodon gets popular. It's
| either open source no strings attached I can change what I want
| or nothing.
| Kye wrote:
| I'm not sure what your issue is. Mastodon is open source. You
| can download it right now and stand up a server without payment
| or permission.
| Vaslo wrote:
| My anti-tech wife looked at this for 5 minutes and was horribly
| confused. Her friends all feel the same way - why can't they just
| sign in and see all the people they want to see? What is an
| instance, why cant the instance be just one? Which one do they
| join? They all went back to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Ben Thompson put well why "Twitter, more than any social network,
| is _sui generis_ :
|
| First, the service emerged at a time and place where a text-based
| network was cutting edge...
|
| Second, Twitter grew up in an environment where it was normal to
| publicly broadcast whatever it was you had to say...
|
| Third, because Twitter was first, it became ground zero for
| everyone who was textual and had something to say, even if those
| folks had diametrically opposing viewpoints on everything from
| Donald Trump to LeBron James."
|
| https://stratechery.com/2022/musks-twitter-blue-a-twitter-su...
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