[HN Gopher] Mastodon Is Just Blogs
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       Mastodon Is Just Blogs
        
       Author : fariszr
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2022-11-08 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (simonwillison.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (simonwillison.net)
        
       | lucideer wrote:
       | This is a nice analogy for starters. It's inaccurate, but I think
       | clarifying those differences is something that can happen later
       | if explaining to a new user.
       | 
       | Fwiw main inaccuracy is:
       | 
       | > _A Mastodon server (often called an instance) is just a shared
       | blog host. Kind of like putting your personal blog in a folder on
       | a domain on shared hosting with some of your friends._
       | 
       | This is technically true but in practice this kind of thing was
       | never common for blogs outside of university servers, so imo
       | doesn't make for a great analogy. It's also important not to
       | fudge analogies like that because Mastodon's shared instances are
       | different to a shared blog host in some interesting ways.
       | 
       | Most interestingly: moderation. The moderation model of Mastodon
       | instances is pretty fascinating in practice. While it resembles
       | moderation on oldschool indie bulletin boards, or subreddits, the
       | federation aspect makes it really weird. If Mastodon takes off in
       | a major way (overall network at modern corp social network scale)
       | I think we'll start to see really insightful patterns of network
       | interconnectivity emerging as a result of instance-level
       | federation limit/suspensions lists.
        
         | sureglymop wrote:
         | I have been using mastodon for years and what I've observed is
         | that most instances will basically ban/blacklist "free
         | speech/hate speech" instances. I guess those servers start to
         | federate amongst themselves or stay unfederated. Personally
         | found it to be working well, i never saw content i didn't want
         | to see.
        
           | lucideer wrote:
           | That's been the case for a long time and it works well.
           | 
           | Already that will introduce some slightly interesting shapes
           | in the network graph as not all instances will have matching
           | blocklists, even though the reasons for blocks right now are
           | similar.
           | 
           | It's also not a black and white action - instances can be
           | blocked completely, or just limited (blocking files &
           | attachments or post visibility without blocking user follows,
           | etc.).
           | 
           | However I'm curious to see as the network gets a lot larger
           | whether that network graph shape gets a lot more complex as
           | certain instances start blocking others for a broader variety
           | of reasons. For example I've seen discussions of blocking
           | sources news/journalistic content on an instance intended for
           | friendly community chat. I think it'll be interesting to
           | observe what bespoke & unique moderation policies emerge.
        
           | nathias wrote:
           | "come to Mastodon - you'll never see content you don't want
           | to see"
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | The fact that you don't see bad content doesn't mean the
           | moderation is good. You also need to check that good content
           | isn't being filtered out.
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | I did consider extending that piece to talk about some classic
         | shared blogs, such as Kuro5hin and MetaFilter and Artima - but
         | I decided the piece had enough material already!
        
       | imwillofficial wrote:
       | This is an unhelpful oversimplification.
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | Can you expand on why you think that?
         | 
         | I've had feedback from a lot of people that say they found it
         | really useful.
        
       | nickstinemates wrote:
       | Twitter is just microblogs.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | I think people wouldn't' be so confused by it if a lot of pages
       | didn't look like facebook's layout... just my opinion!
        
       | barbariangrunge wrote:
       | Isn't mastodon like Twitter, with super short character counts?
       | You can't blog at that word count. You still get that Twitter-
       | like inability to have discourse and nuance
       | 
       | Unless different instances lift that?
        
         | omoikane wrote:
         | Each instance sets their own character limits and some
         | instances are more generous than twitter's limit. But it seems
         | that short posts are more common because many people use
         | mastodon like twitter.
        
       | atoav wrote:
       | Books is just long blogs on paper. Films is just blogs played out
       | by actors in front of a camera. Blogs is just...
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-08 23:02 UTC)