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Some questions: 1. Is this supposed to be run by me (an individual?) or run for my by somebody else (some existing community?). 2. Is there any information on

Some questions: 1. Is this supposed to be run by me (an individual?) or run for my by somebody else (some existing community?). 2. Is there any information on what makes this decentralized? How does it "discover" other users?

daveid 10y ago
1. You can either run it yourself or find an instance run by someone else (e.g. my flagship instance mastodon.social). This is similar in principle to GNU social, Diaspora and XMPP. 2. Users belong to a certain instance and can be addressed like username@domain. You can follow any user from any instance and you will receive their posts, you can interact with them just like if they'd be on your own instance (replies, mentions, reblogs, favourites, etc). On the technical side, this is accomplished with OStatus, Atom feeds/ActivityStreams, Salmon, PubSubHubbub and Webfinger. Anything that supports those technologies is part of the network (e.g. GNU social instances) User discovery in the sense of UX is something I want to work on in the future, like implementing "who to follow" suggestions etc.
okket 10y ago
> Is there any information on what makes this decentralized? How does it "discover" other users? The README says it is a Gnu Social implementation (previously known as StatusNet). It uses Jabber/XMPP for Message transport, which is decentralised and federated. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social
- daveid 10y ago
  Mostly correct but it does not use Jabber/XMPP, it uses a set of procotols like Webfinger (account resource discovery), Atom/ActivityStreams, Salmon (remote account notifications) and PubSubHubbub (follower update notifications)
  - okket 10y ago
    Right, sorry. I should have read the Wikipedia article more carefully.
- clacke2 10y ago
  Others have pointed out that OStatus isn't built on XMPP, but maybe the source of your confusion is this: OpenMicroBlogging, predecessor of OStatus and the original protocol of laconi.ca/StatusNet/GNU Social, was built on XMPP.

daveid 10y ago

1. You can either run it yourself or find an instance run by someone else (e.g. my flagship instance mastodon.social). This is similar in principle to GNU social, Diaspora and XMPP. 2. Users belong to a certain instance and can be addressed like username@domain. You can follow any user from any instance and you will receive their posts, you can interact with them just like if they'd be on your own instance (replies, mentions, reblogs, favourites, etc). On the technical side, this is accomplished with OStatus, Atom feeds/ActivityStreams, Salmon, PubSubHubbub and Webfinger. Anything that supports those technologies is part of the network (e.g. GNU social instances) User discovery in the sense of UX is something I want to work on in the future, like implementing "who to follow" suggestions etc.

okket 10y ago

> Is there any information on what makes this decentralized? How does it "discover" other users? The README says it is a Gnu Social implementation (previously known as StatusNet). It uses Jabber/XMPP for Message transport, which is decentralised and federated. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social

daveid 10y ago
Mostly correct but it does not use Jabber/XMPP, it uses a set of procotols like Webfinger (account resource discovery), Atom/ActivityStreams, Salmon (remote account notifications) and PubSubHubbub (follower update notifications)
- okket 10y ago
  Right, sorry. I should have read the Wikipedia article more carefully.
clacke2 10y ago
Others have pointed out that OStatus isn't built on XMPP, but maybe the source of your confusion is this: OpenMicroBlogging, predecessor of OStatus and the original protocol of laconi.ca/StatusNet/GNU Social, was built on XMPP.