[HN Gopher] Mastodon's federation model encourages specific inst...
___________________________________________________________________
Mastodon's federation model encourages specific instances with
peculiar rules
Author : AstixAndBelix
Score : 72 points
Date : 2022-12-21 09:15 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (but-her-flies.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (but-her-flies.bearblog.dev)
| seydor wrote:
| Can we please go back to forums? The author is right, social
| media is about "me me me", users accumulating points in r/funny
| and then using it as social proof in r/geopolitics. Topical
| bubbles are the best, especially because they present only one
| aspect of each user. Since people don't use their real-life
| network in twitter/mastodon, i even thing that model is not
| social.
| timerol wrote:
| There's an entire paragraph about why generalist instances are
| bad, but no reflection about how each of those faults exists in a
| worse way in any centralized social network.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| - generalist instances aren't bad, there's just too few of them
|
| - if the whole point of the article is to illustrate how
| Mastodon might end up being centralized-light that's a tacit
| admission that it would not be a good thing
| beertoagunfight wrote:
| Isn't the point while point of the federated feed is that it cuts
| across instances?
| advisedwang wrote:
| Users on different instances can follow each other and see each
| others posts, but any given account is on a specific instance
| and must follow that instance's rules.
| imgabe wrote:
| > imagine if the only online profile where you could express
| yourself was through your old "Ancient Greek Literature Forum"
| account. that would be quite limiting, wouldn't it?
|
| I remember the days of small forums dedicated to niche topics.
| They usually had an "off-topic" board where members could
| socialize and talk about whatever. It was not limiting at all.
| seydor wrote:
| it was separate , though and you could ignore it. I purposely
| remove people who mix their politics in their science from
| twitter, and it works, but i am left with a small number of
| people. Separate rooms is good.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Not seeing a problem here either. It's free to create an
| account on however many instances and it lends itself to per-
| topic pseudonyms which is probably better than one identity
| everywhere anyway unless you're explicitly trying to build a
| self-brand.
|
| Even in the case of a single identity everywhere, it gives your
| followers a way to control which types of posts they see from
| you. Maybe they don't care about my explorations in UI design
| and programming and just want to see what pastries I've been
| cooking lately, in which case they can follow my account on a
| cooking-oriented Mastodon instance.
|
| That's actually one of my minor gripes with Twitter; it had no
| way to filter for topic which meant that even though I followed
| people I had an interest in my timeline still had a lot of
| stuff in it I didn't care about.
| masukomi wrote:
| Email is not a good messaging platform. Every server has its own
| rules and expectations. Completely different terms of service on
| each one.
|
| Communities of like minded people are bad. We shouldn't encourage
| people to gather with like minded folks.
|
| "the ideal solution would be to distribute all these users
| between many small and generic instances with no silly domain
| names or draconic rule sets"
|
| Self expression, humor, and fun are bad! I shouldn't be forced to
| adhere to your community guidelines! Only boring domains should
| be allowed! Only rules I like should be allowed!
|
| o....m....f....g....
|
| </sarcasm>
| spankalee wrote:
| Email providers do not generally prescribe what you can email
| about.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| writing </sarcasm> doesn't change the fact that this is an
| astound misrepresentation of everythig said in the post. it's
| not even close to the point
| jrm4 wrote:
| No, it doesn't really encourage closed off instances.
|
| I've been using for a while and, especially during recent
| times,my gut says the author's just wrong here; not my experience
| and also not likely to happen -- even if that's what some people
| think they want.
|
| My belief is that the collective "want" for something like
| Twitter, plus the superior model for doing so, will drive
| Mastodon to be effectively the new Twitter.
|
| Roughly, I think the human desire to "be up on everything" aka
| the desire for a "town square" will override this "divided up
| little spaces" thing.
|
| Two things make me optimistic about that. The first is the
| personal experience of watching a strong push for "Content
| Warnings" and the subsequent mostly-dismantling of that idea
| (owing to the fact that it became apparent that the sort of thing
| some people wanted to be warned against was also the very thing
| you should be paying attention to, mostly in the realm of
| racism).
|
| But the second and bigger feels like the killer here, if
| _companies_ are smart enough to figure it out.
|
| On Mastodon, companies and corporations can be their OWN primary
| source of truth. No Eli Lilly Situation. They're starting to
| catch on.
| neogodless wrote:
| I get the gist of this sentiment. It took me a while to migrate
| from the generic mainstream instance (mastodon.social) to a more
| specific one (hachyderm.io) because a lot of instances were
| regional (e.g. some country in the EU) or too narrowly defined
| (e.g. tabletop games). But the about page of hachyderm.io
| included a lot of broader interests that let me feel like joining
| that instance wouldn't give off the impression of a particularly
| deep but narrow interest (that isn't accurate).
|
| But who you are within Mastodon is not limited by the instance
| you created your account on! Especially since follows and posts
| are federated.
|
| A gentle reminder that your follows, Home feed, hashtags and the
| Federated timeline are not (overly) limited or filtered by the
| instance your account lives on. Only the Local timeline is 100% a
| view specific to that instance.
| constantcrying wrote:
| ???
|
| Is there a single instance which forbids you from talking _about_
| a certain topic?
|
| I really don't see the issue, even hyper specific instances let
| you talk about other things. Where is the actual problem? Why
| would it matter that your account is some specific instance?
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| I've seen plenty of instances where if you dare to be critical
| of Palestine they straight up ban you for being a fascist
| capitalist pig. You can be as polite as possible, but if one of
| the rules is "fascists not welcome" they can just accuse you of
| being a fascist and ban you regardless of your arguments.
|
| I'm sure there are plenty of other instances that behave the
| same way according other areas of the political spectrum. This
| has just been my experience when I wanted to sign up 5 years
| ago, when most people using this platform were left leaning and
| tech savvy
| morbidious wrote:
| If they don't want your opinions, forget it and join a like
| minded instance where they value your thoughts.
|
| You seem to be disappointed with the left-wing ideology, not
| Mastodon itself. Leftist will not tolerate anything other
| than what they think is right, so it's expected that they
| will ban everyone who doesn't share their mindset.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| I explicitely said I used this as an example because it was
| my personal experience, but I'm sure this happens for every
| single politically charged Mastodon servers regardless of
| political leaning.
|
| I'm not disappointed with any ideology and this had nothing
| to do with politics. Please don't charge my opinion with
| ulterior motives
| morbidious wrote:
| Fair
| concho wrote:
| > _Leftist will not tolerate anything other than what they
| think is right, so it 's expected that they will ban
| everyone who doesn't share their mindset._
|
| Not all leftists are like this. Some of us actively enjoy
| and even prefer discussing our political opinions with
| those who disagree.
|
| That said, I know the type of people you're referring to,
| and they tend to be insufferable to deal with.
| fleddr wrote:
| Let's first appreciate the parent of your comment being
| down-voted for saying leftists don't take critique,
| confirming the point.
|
| In my experience, the insufferable ones tend to dominate
| communities, making the entire place unappetizing. You
| can see this effect on Mastodon too. A tiny group makes
| all the posts, and they have 100% ideological
| consistency.
|
| I think that's an effect much more important than
| arbitrary rules of an instance, because this happens
| _before_ it. People aren 't banned, they are discouraged
| from posting at all and become the silent majority.
| morbidious wrote:
| > Not all leftists are like this
|
| I suppose that's true.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's one thing to discuss political _opinions_ with other
| people. However, there is a fine line that the far-right,
| TERFs and SWERFs easily cross - and that is denying other
| people their right to a self-determined existence or an
| existence at all.
| constantcrying wrote:
| No doubt, but the sollution to that would be to use an
| instance which doesn't do things like that.
|
| Of course Mastadon instances usually do not federate with
| freezpeech = nazi instances, so ..c
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| You should be careful about such "I'm sure" statements.
| "Right wing" Fediverse is very tolerant in moderation, that
| which results in bans, the only big issue is how much, if any
| pornography to allow and that gets fierce arguments. The big
| issue users might run into is harassment, but there are fine
| grained controls that allow you to trivially ignore or block
| such people going forward.
|
| Other issue which may not matter so much if you're "a fascist
| capitalist pig" is that your instance will likely be blocked
| by left wing Fediverse nodes. This can get silly, there are
| blocklists that often cite as cause nothing more than the
| software "right wing" nodes use, or in one case written by a
| particular developer. Too much of the Fediverse is that
| tribal.
|
| For a concrete example, look at how TERF spinster.xyz
| federates with "right wing" nodes and is blocked by many left
| wing ones, including all the ones I could look up just now
| with a Google search.
|
| I use scare quotes for right wing because many of these sites
| are politically neutral or thereabouts.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Is there a single instance which forbids you from talking
| about a certain topic?
|
| if the topic is at all sensitive, sure. Most instances have
| terms of service, and those could forbid it.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Maybe what we need is a decoupling of user-hosting instances and
| post-hosting instances. Probably the biggest issue I have with
| twitter is that I have multiple interests/communities I'm
| involved with. If I post a lot about topic A, get some followers
| who know me through A, that's great! But then I want to talk
| about B with the community who knows me through topic B and I
| feel the need to self-censor as to not spam the topic A
| followers.
|
| I've always felt I would like to be able to tweet only to the
| TopicA people or only to the TopicB people. But I don't really
| care that my user data is stored on the same instance as the
| people in TopicA or TopicB. So maybe a better model for
| federation would be that you can host your user on an instance,
| and then also when you post, you are deciding which instance to
| post on.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| First of all, a forum is a social network. A primitive one, sure,
| with origins before "social network" had really entered our
| lexicon, but a social network nonetheless.
|
| The ability of people in a federated social network to create
| arbitrary, independent instances with rules tailored for
| particular discussion topics is a feature, not a bug. If you
| don't like that... well, don't go on topic-specific Mastodon
| servers I guess.
|
| Are you advocating for Mastodon to have SSO? If so, I can get on
| board with that.
|
| Are you advocating for a cap on the number of members of a
| particular instance? Mastodon can already do that - all you have
| to do is _not approve new accounts_. Of course, the inherent
| problem with that is that activity in member-capped servers will
| gradually die out, and now you need way more admins... your idea,
| not mine.
| pwinnski wrote:
| This is the dumbest assessment of the fediverse I've seen in a
| month full of dumb assessments of the fediverse.
|
| For all the talk of peculiar rules, I haven't seen any servers
| with peculiar rules. There seems to be a general understanding
| that a server may be set up to focus on tabletop gamers, or STEM
| nerds, or journalists, that doesn't mean they can't _also_ talk
| about politics, or movies, or whatever they want.
|
| But ultimately, even if the fever dream hypothetical dystopia
| were real, people are free to set up their own dedicated servers
| just for themselves. That is, in fact, a point in favor of the
| federation model. There are a number of dedicated mastodon hosts
| already[0] for those who don't want to roll their own from
| scratch, and more will probably come online with time.
|
| Just a really, really dumb assessment.
|
| 0. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/#so-you-
| want...
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| I proposed a solution to both have more relaxed rules for
| personal profiles and have dedicated and highly regulated
| places for discussion. Seems like you just want to call things
| dumb
| pwinnski wrote:
| I don't have a history of calling things dumb, but you wrote
| this:
|
| > admins create these highly specific instances with peculiar
| rules, and people who want to create a profile there have to
| submit themselves to a highly limited set of conversations
| and content they can publish. what if I feel strongly about
| some geopolitical topic yet those kind of conversations are
| banned on my "LEGOholics" instance?
|
| You then proposed two things that don't make sense to solve a
| problem that doesn't exist.
|
| I called it like I see it.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| I first started dabbling with Mastodon 5 years ago. In my
| country there only were 6 instances at the time. 3 were
| made up by anarcho-communists, 1 was dedicated to music, 1
| was dedicated to video games and only 1 self-touted as a
| "generalist" instance.
|
| Of course I made my first profile on the generalist one,
| but I quicky discover I couldn't post on the timeline of
| the music or videogames one. I could only reply to already
| existing discussions, which was fine but gave me a big
| sense of passivity. This is a real problem for which I now
| propose a solution.
|
| If you think it's fine that the only people who can post in
| a specific community are the ones who have an account there
| (= giving all your data to the server admins) then maybe
| you have a completely different view of what should be
| possible on Mastodon.
| ffssffss wrote:
| Maybe a better title of this would have been, "Mastodon
| isn't a good social network for me". It sounds like you'd
| rather be on some kind of discussion forum with different
| areas for different topics all united under the same
| consistent moderation policies.
| pwinnski wrote:
| To make my second point even stronger, I've noticed that the
| site I linked doesn't even include two popular newer mastodon
| hosts, iKnox[0] and Elestio[1].
|
| 0. https://iknox.com/products/mastodon-hosting
|
| 1. https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon
| chroma wrote:
| > I haven't seen any servers with peculiar rules.
|
| The peculiar rules aren't written down. Admins will ban you for
| whatever reason they want.[1] This can include DMs that both
| parties are fine with (but not the server admin, who can read
| them), or behavior off of the site.[2][3]
|
| The problem isn't solved if you go through the trouble of
| setting up your own server. De-federation is common[4] (often
| for absurd reasons[5]), and blacklists are shared across many
| instances.[6]
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/triketora/status/1594348646396559361
|
| 2. https://twitter.com/WashburneAlex/status/1605268536930213907
|
| 3. https://twitter.com/LefterisJP/status/1593934653114785793
|
| 4. https://fba.ryona.agency/scoreboard?blockers=50
|
| 5. https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705
|
| 6. https://github.com/weirderearth/weirder-
| rules/blob/main/sugg...
| zzzeek wrote:
| > Admins will ban you for whatever reason they want.[1]
|
| from the link you provided, the admins respond:
|
| "This post was removed by mistake and we apologize. We've
| recently hired more moderators and the post in question was
| falsely interpreted to be implying something it was not."
|
| for [5], the journa.host server had a lot of problems out of
| the gate, including some suspicion they were sharing ban-
| evasion tools, but is not currently defederated for the most
| part. I follow lots of people on that host and I'm on a
| different server. the thread there illustrates the reasons
| which IMO were not unreasonable for a brand new server
| attracting a lot of attention with odd moves.
|
| not that moderation isn't fraught with tons of problems, but
| I dont think large servers have admins that are capriciously
| banning people for made-up reasons the way Musk has been
| doing on Twitter.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Admins will ban you for whatever reason they want.
|
| Apparently the same thing happens on Twitter now. If the
| "Twitter Files" are to be believed, it's happened for a long
| time before that.
|
| Frankly, I think all of this absurd rule-making is fine. If
| you disagree with it, nobody can stop you from creating your
| own instance and federating with all the great/terrible sites
| you want. The irony that these 'sky is falling' posts come
| from lifelong Twitter users feels like the icing on the cake.
| Nobody owes you anything on the internet; not Twitter, not
| Elon, and not the few-thousand instance admins who host
| servers out-of-pocket.
| bawolff wrote:
| Given that i read HN because of its focus and perculiur rules,
| the thesis of this post is a pretty hard sell to me.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Their house, their rules. I can respect that.
| okaleniuk wrote:
| What you describe is, of course, possible. You can create a
| personal fidonet/usenet-like echo conference with nothing more
| than a bunch of e-mail redirection rules. But people don't want
| that. I checked.
|
| There is no such thing as an "intellectual need". All the needs
| are fundamentally emotional. Mastodon addresses the identity
| need, it creates the sense of a community, and, as all the social
| media, it grants both cheap entertainment and immediate gratitude
| for conformity. It is a good "social network", it's just what we
| call a phenomena of "social network" is essentially shit.
| iza wrote:
| I prefer the approach taken by Scuttlebutt[1] and nostr[2], where
| identity is a public key not tied to any particular server.
| However Mastodon is gaining a lot more adoption and seems to be
| good enough in practice.
|
| 1. https://scuttlebutt.nz/
|
| 2. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
| dusted wrote:
| I'm so offended by the capitalization in this (potentially
| interesting) article that I didn't get past the first two
| paragraphs.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| On this Mastodon instance creative disregard for capitalization
| is mandatory.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| _Also_ what 's _up_ with _all_ the _bold words_ all over the
| _place_? _Emphasis_ doesn 't _work_ when used *Everywhere*!
| Lammy wrote:
| I kinda like it, like a built in short summary. Unfocus your
| eyes a little and read only the bold words and it still makes
| sense:
|
| "ideal distribute small generic. don't possible fantasy
| dreaming."
| [deleted]
| thot_experiment wrote:
| wild, i had to go back to the article after reading this
| comment to double check. my brain completely autocorrected
| everything and i didn't notice the formatting at all!
| r00fus wrote:
| This is annoying in a way that even my go-to "reader mode"
| doesn't fix either (unlike ads or autoplay videos etc).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It does, in the sense that it seems to mirror sentence-level
| emphasis in speech.
|
| (Even your comment sort of works - I'd drop the emphasis on
| "up" and "place" though.)
|
| It's definitely atypical. I think it wouldn't impact
| readability all that much, if not for the lack of
| capitalization at the start of sentences - the two
| abnormalities together make the text much harder to read than
| it should be.
| xvector wrote:
| Except when we read sentences, we expect to be reading
| sentences, not someone's interpretation of what their voice
| would sound like transposed onto a sentence, using obscure
| formatting cues to accomplish this.
|
| Generally I find that the more people rely on emphasis and
| formatting, the poorer their writing skills are.
| Ruq wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one is stopping you from making
| multiple accounts on various instances to overcome this built-in
| "limitation"...
|
| Also just run your own instance?
| asmor wrote:
| This is looking really hard for a problem that isn't there.
|
| Has the author actually used Mastodon? I wonder what server they
| ended up on to have this impression. And I find the claim that
| people don't want to run generalist instances... interesting. I
| ran a few of these and while they all had a theme and a few
| cultural baselines (which is okay, other instances have other
| standards), none of them really restricted what you post about.
| pornel wrote:
| > _I wonder what server they ended up on to have this
| impression_
|
| Probably http://dolphin.town -- you're only allowed to use the
| letter E.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I would join gadsby.town - it would block that symbol.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
| PebblesRox wrote:
| You can in fact join https://oulipo.social/public/local for
| that!
| jackson1442 wrote:
| yeah i just use mas.to and it pretty much just feels like
| twitter without the algorithm. I post what I want and people
| who follow me or tags I use see my posts
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >some could say: just create your account on a more generalist
| instance
|
| Close. I'ld have said host your own instance.
| jarjoura wrote:
| I also agree with the OP. My personal take on the experience so
| far:
|
| Joining a server feels like I'm hanging out in someone else's
| backyard. There's this feeling that at any point I could be asked
| to leave if I overstay my welcome. The server I'm attached to is
| run by someone who seems very friendly and so far I'm enjoying
| the community they're trying to build. However, I am struggling
| to wrap my head around this weird intersection of public
| broadcast over a semi-public (someone's backyard) space.
|
| Unlike Reddit or Discord where I can partake in multiple forums
| through my single account, my entire public persona on Mastodon
| is tied to the server I'm on. It really limits what I want to
| share as I don't feel as free to talk openly about any topic.
| Gigachad wrote:
| IMO Mastodon will settle like email has. A handful of mega
| servers and a smaller group of people who run their own for
| their use only.
|
| Owners of medium sized servers will tire of the maintenance and
| moderation.
| hendersoon wrote:
| Just spitballing here, but one solution is mandatory tagging,
| where you must pick at least one tag before posting. Additionally
| other users and mods on your Mastodon instance can vote to add
| tags as they see fit, and the mods may at their discretion
| discipline people who tag deceptively.
|
| The protocol itself could be amended to include a set of very
| high-level tags. Say for example, politics, sports, TV, movies,
| gaming, celebrities, fashion, personal, and NSFW. Don't have one
| of those? Your post won't be federated.
|
| Then if you're on a Mastodon instance dedicated to (for example)
| Porsche cars, you would have custom tags available by default for
| models, engines, make years, and so on to enrich the metadata.
|
| Mastodon already lets users subscribe to hashtags so much of the
| baseline functionality already exists, other than the control
| aspect.
| allenbrunson wrote:
| this doesn't sound terribly likely to me, as an outcome.
|
| i am seeing a whole lot of criticisms of mastodon that, to me,
| sound like "social networking sites have always been bad,
| therefore mastodon must also be bad." surely we can muster a
| little more optimism than that.
|
| i just posted my own "come to jesus" moment.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34079668
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| A few generalist instances dominating the fediverse and
| dictating its policy doesn't sound likely? It's slowly
| happening right now and will only make Mastodon a slightly less
| centralized Facebook.
|
| Most people don't want to link their online persona to
| instances with stupid names and very strange rules. So they all
| flock to the more generalist ones which are few and far between
| and have an established user base and reputation. Since
| generalist instances are not "cool" to administer, only a few
| dedicated people maintain them and they will keep being few and
| grow larger and larger
| allenbrunson wrote:
| that sounds to me like growing pains.
|
| i happened to find a "generalist" mastodon instance without
| really trying. i just read a few twitter ex-pats for awhile,
| to get the lay of the land, and picked one. i sent an email
| to the administrator, offering to donate some money, because
| i couldn't find a donation link. if this one doesn't work
| out, i'll pick a different one. or run one myself!
|
| again: your criticism sounds to me like "social media has
| never worked, therefore mastodon also can't work." i choose
| to believe that there is something beyond the status quo.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| I didn't say generalist instances are difficult to find, on
| the contrary they are the most popular. What I'm saying is
| that there's too few of them.
|
| > your criticism sounds to me like "social media has never
| worked"
|
| There is an entire paragraph where I explain exactly what
| functionality could be added to Mastodon to at least make
| it possible to be better. In its current state I believe
| it's bound to develop this behavior with no way to fix it
| allenbrunson wrote:
| i guess we will have to agree to disagree. i think it's
| _way_ to early to assume that. also, you titled your post
| "mastodon is not a good social network." that is the very
| definition of pessimism, versus optimism.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| I could have titled it "Mastodon is a terrible social
| network" but I didn't because it's not a lost cause. I
| provided an argument and a modest suggestion. I don't
| think I can do much more in my positiom.
| jjulius wrote:
| >surely we can muster a little more optimism than that.
|
| Name one social media site and then explain how it was a net
| positive for society/outweighed all of it's toxic aspects.
| allenbrunson wrote:
| i think that's asking the wrong question. i think most or all
| of them started off pretty good. where we went wrong is
| creating a system where social media sites are paid for with
| ads, which gives warped incentives to the owners of those
| sites.
|
| in that respect, federation is the answer. take the power
| away from anybody who could screw it all up for us.
| [deleted]
| doublerabbit wrote:
| MySpace.
|
| No dark-cryptic algorithms, promoted creativity in coding,
| design and music. You knew the people you added. Made
| socialising easier.
| jtr1 wrote:
| Guilty of mainstreaming social media as an idea /s
| krapp wrote:
| >Name one social media site and then explain how it was a net
| positive for society/outweighed all of it's toxic aspects.
|
| That isn't something one can objectively measure.
| jjulius wrote:
| I have my own subjective opinions about social media, as
| does OP. OP suggested I inject positivity into mine, so I
| am curious to see what their subjective opinions are in an
| effort to perhaps shift my perspective.
| marmadukester39 wrote:
| This one.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's more like "Twitter is bad for these reasons; and mastodon
| copied almost all of the design that makes twitter bad"
| madrox wrote:
| This is not a bug. It's a feature. You see this today in
| subreddits, twitch channels, and discord servers, and the
| community is better for it. Places with community moderation have
| higher levels of engagement.
|
| I'm one of those people that preferred Twitter before it became
| overrun with politics. Not that I'm not political, but it's not
| what I wanted to go to Twitter for. There was no control over it
| since people tweeted about whatever was on their mind, which was
| sometimes interesting tech things, and the rest of the time was
| social issues. I migrated to topic-based sites as a result.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I think the argument he makes at the end is that "we should
| have a centralized account model" and then let exactly what you
| say shine. It'll be like a twitter reddit.
|
| Problem: If you sign up for say LEGO reddit, but want to post a
| geo-political thing, then suddenly YOU CANNOT because you need
| a new account.
|
| Reddit is about the subreddit's popularity
|
| Twitter is about personal popularity
| fluidcruft wrote:
| > Problem: If you sign up for say LEGO reddit, but want to
| post a geo-political thing, then suddenly YOU CANNOT because
| you need a new account.
|
| Reddit doesn't actually solve that problem because subreddit
| moderators often run ban scripts that check which subreddits
| you have interacted with. If you happen to talk to the wrong
| people, you wind up banned and need a new account to talk to
| other people.
| delecti wrote:
| I have spent an unhealthy amount of time on reddit over the
| past 14 years and have never heard of such a thing. I find
| it unlikely that it's a significant problem which I've just
| been lucky to never brush against.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| that's a problem, yes. BUT.
|
| Reddit is popularity of the subreddit centric. So your own
| personal popularity doesn't really matter. Its why people
| make throw-away accounts all the darn time.
|
| Twitter is about personal popularity. This is why it is so
| important on twitter to have personal recognition.
|
| Mastodon is reddit style moderation, with twitter style
| identity/popularity.
| Gigachad wrote:
| This only happens on hyper political subreddits you don't
| want to be in anyway.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Last I checked, the ban bots exist in default subreddits
| (like /r/TwoXChromosomes) and there are reason you might
| want to comment in one of the shunned subs - not that you
| will usually know a sub is on that list until the bots
| get you. This kind of guilt by association is horrible.
| yucky wrote:
| If a hate sub like /r/TwoXChromosomes is a default sub
| now, then that says everything that needs to be said
| about the future of Reddit. What an absolute cesspit.
| yucky wrote:
| It happens on /worldnews which is a huge sub and
| shouldn't (in theory) be hyperpolitical. I've even seen
| it on subs like /nhl that have have nothing to do with
| politics at all, banning people for posts on other subs
| that don't align with the mods politics. Not that it
| matters, Reddit is essentially useless now but at one
| point it was a great source of information.
| lanstin wrote:
| True, but personal popularity is for me at least based on a
| useful property of people. When I was trying to explain why I
| enjoy Twitter so much, I would say, it is like Reddit but you
| only see people on your allow list, or vetted by your allow
| list. Reddit has too much junk and people I do not enjoy
| reading, but with twitter even if someone I follow doesn't
| know that much about something, I think they are intelligent,
| funny, and reasonable, and that outweighs the dilution of
| expertise. Sure, if I want to buy some audiophile equipment,
| then I might follow reddit links in the search, but for
| conversation, I like people of a certain wit and style.
| smeagull wrote:
| I don't want the streams to cross. I don't want to get my
| politics into my LEGO. But I also don't want to track
| multiple accounts.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Yeah I'd rather a client that can transparently create new
| accounts for each community. You can't interact honestly or
| freely on places like reddit because nut cases will read
| every one of your comments to piece together enough info to
| dox you. You have to be hyper vigilant and post enough fake
| or in accurate info to throw them off but it's just not as
| good as a private community you can trust.
| madrox wrote:
| This is arguably a client issue and not a federation issue.
| In the days of instant messaging we had no problem managing
| our AIM, ICQ, MSN, etc all in Trillian. We manage lots of
| accounts all the time anyway.
|
| The alternative is we revive OpenID, but good luck with
| that
| Justsignedup wrote:
| exactly!!!!
|
| i want to be able to go to a geopolitical mastodon and
| enjoy posting/reading there, and ignore the rest of the
| federation, but sometimes I want to see all like reddit's
| /r/all or the front page.
| jarjoura wrote:
| Twitter has communities just like the other platforms, however,
| it's follow/follower model is a fatal flaw that encourages
| toxicity.
|
| Every single community that flourishes on Twitter eventually
| devolves into a set of people who spend all their energy
| complaining about something. You can choose to ignore the
| complaints, but after a while it just becomes too much. Once
| you've followed enough people to be part of a Twitter
| community, it's annoyingly difficult to undo that.
|
| People will be people and the same toxic crap happens on Reddit
| and Discord. These other platforms just provide an easy way to
| leave an entire community if you unhappy with the moderation
| policies and/or general group dynamics.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| It does feel like the author has somewhat missed the fact that
| Twitter has become a space in which, while you can technically
| say whatever you want, is driven overwhelmingly by opinions on
| topic-du-jour social issues.
|
| Further, the communities on Twitter that aren't part of this
| are largely segregated from the hive by virtue of consisting of
| users that are explicitly trying to avoid it. And there's a
| perpetual risk that the forerunners of those communites are
| eventually sucked in by the Borg Cube of banal political debate
| regardless - we've all seen this happen in our feeds, and
| there's a good chance you've unfollowed or muted at least one
| person for abruptly and loudly picking up on some political or
| social topic.
|
| This is pretty much exactly what Mastodon is trying to avoid.
| Having over-subscribed political debate forums hang a sign over
| their door is definitely fine by me.
| holler wrote:
| Twitter wasn't built as a community platform. It's always had
| the user-centric model, which works well for the types of
| people who helped it gain popularity to begin with, namely
| journalists, celebrities, politicians, brands, gov agencies
| etc.
| spankalee wrote:
| Mastodon servers are _very_ different from subreddits. I could
| participate in 100s of subreddits and follow each of their
| rules just fine. I 'm not going to make even 10s of accounts on
| various Mastodon servers and create bespoke networks for each.
|
| If Mastodon wants to have communities, it should have a first
| class concept of communities where people can participate in as
| many of them as interests that they have. Servers aren't that.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| >Places with community moderation have higher levels of
| engagement.
|
| quoting DIRECTLY from the post
|
| > the ideal solution would be to [...] have some way to create
| "forum-like" instances where no accounts can be created but
| where specific and highly moderated discussions can take place.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _This is not a bug. It 's a feature. You see this today in
| subreddits, twitch channels, and discord servers, and the
| community is better for it_
|
| The problem is for people who are looking for a Twitter
| replacement, Mastodon isn't it.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| anytime de/centralization comes up I'm reminded about Taleb's
| take on the decentralzation of Switzerland's. It has messy
| federalized politics compared to the rest of the world that is
| obsessed with centralized governance. And Mastodon is like
| Switzerland quite literally how Taleb describes it in
| Antifragile ... Boring and full of small town drama (when it
| comes to moderation).
|
| It also seems not appealing to the many accounts who are only
| about influence or optimizing their follower count. Mastodon is
| like a reset button which is either a nightmare or a boon
| depending on what your original strategy was on twitter.
| Nican wrote:
| I have a friend that insists that "Mastodon is Twitter with
| HOAs", but I do not agree with it. I am writing my own blog
| post about Mastodon: https://bristle-
| tachometer-5db.notion.site/Yet-another-Masto...
|
| I personally enjoy being part of a community, getting to know
| the people around it, and get to chat about it in small
| discussion groups. I hope the Fediverse continues to evolve,
| and helps to build communities. Twitter has become too much
| about building an audience.
| alkonaut wrote:
| How does conversations work between people on different
| instances when it comes to moderation? Is an entire
| conversation taking place on the instance the top post is on?
| ezfe wrote:
| The conversation happens across the instances. User reports
| first go to the instance of the reporter, but can also be
| anonymously forwarded on to the instance of the reported post
| as well.
|
| If a user is bothering someone on your instance, then either
| your instance or that users instance could take action.
|
| If your instance bans them, they won't be banned anywhere
| else. If their instance bans them, they will be fully
| suspended.
| mathlover2 wrote:
| One issue with this article is that there is nothing preventing a
| person from having multiple accounts on different servers. I have
| three I still use because I was uncertain which community to join
| in 2019. There are many apps for Fediverse that allow one to use
| multiple accounts on different instances and flip between them as
| easily as flipping between Discord servers or alt accounts is in
| the Discord app.
|
| I also agree with madrox's comment that having specific instances
| with peculiar rules according to taste is a feature, not a bug.
|
| Heck, I agree with everyone calling out this article here,
| because it's just a bad take.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >I am of the opinion that, to give the users the most freedom to
| let their personality shine, the social network itslef should be
| as boring and generic as possible.
|
| This sounds like the Thatcherism of social networks. "There's no
| such thing as a community, only individual posters". The sort of
| desolate environment that you get as a result of this is exactly
| what people are increasingly shunning.
|
| It's why people move to private chat groups, subreddits, niche
| twitter subcultures with memes that nobody even understands from
| the outside (intentionally so). This very site is strongly
| opinionated as well. The logical endpoint of generic platforms is
| the Youtube comment section.
|
| If a social network is supposed to be social it has to be _about_
| something. There needs to be something that ties the people in it
| together. Any video game speedrunning community, music
| subculture, whatever have you is more interesting than generic
| sites. Even if you have to move between groups sometimes, that
| cost is well worth it. The real world doesn 't work like this
| either. Does anyone ever go to the "generic people meetup, where
| we do generic things"? Everyone is part of social networks,
| plural.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| So you extrapolated a single quote from the post when the rest
| of the article describes exactly how to have highly
| personalized communities without the burden of binding your
| personal profile to them?
| detaro wrote:
| I'm aware of very few instances that insist that people only post
| about whatever the "theme" of the instance is, so I don't think
| this is actually a big issue in practice.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| Which instance would get more users and hold more power,
| @mastodon.com or @mylittlepony4ever.net? Which instance would
| you want to hold your entire online persona? @mozilla.com or
| @stopclimatechange.org?
|
| very few people have silly email addresses because they realize
| sending their CV or writing to a friend or collegue with
| fuckjoebiden@racism.ftw is insane. but somehow when creating
| their main online account on mastodon they sign up to the
| silliest instances and bind their own identity to these niche
| communities
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > "your entire online persona"
|
| Are you limited to one instance or persona? Feels like an
| assumption based on twitter style advertising requirements
| where they don't want multiple sign ups as it maks it harder
| to track you.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Twitter makes it very easy to manage multiple accounts. You
| can be logged in with several accounts at once, and easily
| switch between them in the twitter UI.
| faizmokhtar wrote:
| I think this is possible on the Mastodon app. There's an
| option to login to multiple accounts but I haven't try it
| yet since I only have a single account.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Not only does Mastodon's official mobile app support
| multiple accounts and makes it easy to switch, it shows
| notifications for all of the accounts.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Pinafore (web FE) allows you to be logged into multiple
| instances with an easy switch between them.
|
| Soapbox (web FE, also Pulpit, Mangane since they are
| forks) handles multiple ogged in accounts on the same
| instance (which is handy if e.g. you've got an admin/mod
| role account or you've got a lot of bots on there.)
|
| Pretty sure this will be a common feature in frontends
| that get popular in 2023.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| You're not limited, but most people just want to have at
| least one profile which has their name and photo where they
| can have a presence online linked to their real life
| persona.
|
| By having so few generalist instances the risk is that they
| grow too large and gain too much power over the fediverse.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >most people just want to have at least one profile which
| has their name and photo where they can have a presence
| online linked to their real life persona.
|
| I am so absurdly out of touch with "most people"...
| jagermo wrote:
| No, you are not. I have one persona that moved over from
| twitter, one for ttrpgs.
|
| I think, we need to go back to the basics with people. You
| are allowed to have more than one email, for example.
| Facebook brainwashed people into believing they can only be
| one thing online.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >very few people have silly email addresses because they
| realize sending their CV
|
| Back when I was a teenager, I was told not to create accounts
| under my own name. I have many silly E-mail accounts. E-mail
| can be a professional medium. You don't apply via Twitter DM,
| I hope.
|
| >bind their own identity to these niche communities
|
| Just migrate if you don't like it anymore.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| Why would your teenager years be relevant here? Nowadays
| companies are online and jobs are online. There are an
| infinite amount of reasons why you would want to link your
| online identity to your personal one. You're not forced to
| and you should still be able to make anonymous and silly
| accounts, but this is not the point.
|
| >You don't apply via Twitter DM, I hope.
|
| If a company has a Twitter, why wouldn't I? Many young
| businesses less revering of e-mail gladly use Twitter as a
| valid avenue for these kinds of communications.
|
| >just migrate
|
| Mastodon handles migration terribly. You can either
| redirect or straight up move. In both cases your old
| profile is still in full display and your posts don't
| transfer.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >If a company has a Twitter, why wouldn't I? Many young
| businesses less revering of e-mail gladly use Twitter as
| a valid avenue for these kinds of communications.
|
| What a world...
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > You don't apply via Twitter DM, I hope.
|
| I was hiring recently, and one of the ways we advertised
| the position was that I tweeted the job description, and I
| arranged with the our social media team for them to retweet
| it for additional visibility. Candidates responding to that
| tweet generally contacted me via twitter DM - why wouldn't
| they?
|
| It's not like I conducted interviews in that medium, but
| it's not really any different than the people who initiated
| contact via email.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| One of the running jokes around mastodon right now is innocent
| people singing up on an instance like meow.social because they
| like cats. Then they realize it's specifically a _furry_
| instance. Some stick around because they like the people,
| others migrate to a new instance.
| shortformblog wrote:
| This feels like a mid-November take that feels extremely out of
| date in mid-December. That's the problem right now. Things are
| moving so fast that quick reads don't hold up to scrutiny after
| seeing how things actually play out.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I think this completely wrong. The fact that anybody can create
| an instance for any purpose they want is a good thing. The rest
| of the fediverse can choose the degree they wish to interact with
| that instance. But the possibilities of what can exist on the
| fediverse is not constrained at all.
| ocq698nes3javxw wrote:
| poorest take i've seen on this page so far
| jwildeboer wrote:
| Millions of users seem to be OK with the decentralised approach
| :)
| Gigachad wrote:
| For now until their accounts die off because the scattered
| collection of servers start to shut down.
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