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Yes, you're more or less correct. However, as someone who ditched Twitter for Mastodon, I don't miss Twitter. There's a vibrant community on Mastodon and you'll

Yes, you're more or less correct. However, as someone who ditched Twitter for Mastodon, I don't miss Twitter. There's a vibrant community on Mastodon and you'll feel right at home. It'll only get better as more people make the leap.

alkonaut 9y ago
> Yes, you're more or less correct. However, as someone who ditched Twitter for Mastodon, I don't miss Twitter. There's a vibrant community on Mastodon and you'll feel right at home. I tried to quit twitter for Mastodon (because it felt more like an open effort than a facebook-esque megacorp) but I was immediately confused by the distributed thing. I thought it was going to be distributed in terms of how it operated, not in terms of the actual social networks being more or less separated. I understood I could follow people from other instances, but only if the instance was somehow connected to the other instance. This confused me even more. How do I pick an instance without ever running into the risk that interesting person X joins in the future and doesn't pick an instance disconnected from the group of instances I'm in? Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio. Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for?
- daveid 9y ago
  You've got it a bit backwards, because instances don't connect and have no reason to connect except for following specific people. So you follow someone -> that creates a connection. Not the other way around.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  >I understood I could follow people from other instances, but only if the instance was somehow connected to the other instance. [...] How do I pick an instance without ever running into the risk that interesting person X joins in the future and doesn't pick an instance disconnected from the group of instances I'm in? In practice this is not a problem. You can pick any popular instance and it will work with everyone. All instances are connected with each other by default, instances are generally only explicitly "defederated" when they're havens for trolls, racists, etc. Besides, if you're trying to follow someone and the instance is defederated (something I've never run into, by the way), your admin is just a quick message away. Mastodon instances are small and the admins have a low workload, they're typically quite accessible. >Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio. >Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for? The only reason this might be the "wrong" approach is the general lack of big name organizations posting news. Most instances are hostile to companies settling in - Mastodon is for people, not brands. That being said, brands could run their own instances and be federated with anyone who wants to follow them. That aside, there's no wrong way to use Mastodon. Use it however you want.
  - gfodor 9y ago
    Isn't the whole point of decentralization to prevent censorship? Forced decentralization as a tool of suppressing speech doesn't seem like much of an improvement over Twitter. Is there some counterbalance to this?
    - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
      I don't understand what you mean by forced decentralization, or how it relates to censorship.
      - gfodor 9y ago
        Sorry, was referring to "defederation", as mentioned by the OP. It sounded like there was a mechanism for some kind of permabanning of the server from the federated network.
        kstrauser 9y ago
        Defederation is on an instance-by-instance basis. Given servers A, B, and C, if A disconnects from C, A-B and B-C are still linked. It's entirely possible (and as far as I'm concerned, except) that there will be instances dedicated to all sorts of horrible stuff. Taken to the extreme, they could split into disconnected networks where the far-left {A, B, C} federation is entirely distinct from the far-right {D, E, F} collective. There's no central banlist, though. A clean split like I described is exceedingly unlikely (unless {D, E, F} is a tiny group of real-life friends who only talk to each other and no one else).
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - halcy 9y ago
      Mostly, that not every instance has the same policy. You can always join a place where the credo is "we connect with everybody", while people who want a very filtered experience can join places that are a lot more nonchalant about blocking other instances. A lot of people probably do (and want to be in a place that does) something in the middle. You could even have multiple accounts on different instances that you use in different contexts. Most mobile clients support this more or less well, though the default web UI does not.
- detaro 9y ago
  Unless one the instances has explicitly blocked the other one, you can follow anyone on any other instance. As soon as you do, your instance contacts the other instance and subscribes to that users posts for you.

alkonaut 9y ago

> Yes, you're more or less correct. However, as someone who ditched Twitter for Mastodon, I don't miss Twitter. There's a vibrant community on Mastodon and you'll feel right at home. I tried to quit twitter for Mastodon (because it felt more like an open effort than a facebook-esque megacorp) but I was immediately confused by the distributed thing. I thought it was going to be distributed in terms of how it operated, not in terms of the actual social networks being more or less separated. I understood I could follow people from other instances, but only if the instance was somehow connected to the other instance. This confused me even more. How do I pick an instance without ever running into the risk that interesting person X joins in the future and doesn't pick an instance disconnected from the group of instances I'm in? Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio. Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for?

daveid 9y ago
You've got it a bit backwards, because instances don't connect and have no reason to connect except for following specific people. So you follow someone -> that creates a connection. Not the other way around.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
>I understood I could follow people from other instances, but only if the instance was somehow connected to the other instance. [...] How do I pick an instance without ever running into the risk that interesting person X joins in the future and doesn't pick an instance disconnected from the group of instances I'm in? In practice this is not a problem. You can pick any popular instance and it will work with everyone. All instances are connected with each other by default, instances are generally only explicitly "defederated" when they're havens for trolls, racists, etc. Besides, if you're trying to follow someone and the instance is defederated (something I've never run into, by the way), your admin is just a quick message away. Mastodon instances are small and the admins have a low workload, they're typically quite accessible. >Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio. >Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for? The only reason this might be the "wrong" approach is the general lack of big name organizations posting news. Most instances are hostile to companies settling in - Mastodon is for people, not brands. That being said, brands could run their own instances and be federated with anyone who wants to follow them. That aside, there's no wrong way to use Mastodon. Use it however you want.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Isn't the whole point of decentralization to prevent censorship? Forced decentralization as a tool of suppressing speech doesn't seem like much of an improvement over Twitter. Is there some counterbalance to this?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    I don't understand what you mean by forced decentralization, or how it relates to censorship.
    - gfodor 9y ago
      Sorry, was referring to "defederation", as mentioned by the OP. It sounded like there was a mechanism for some kind of permabanning of the server from the federated network.
      - kstrauser 9y ago
        Defederation is on an instance-by-instance basis. Given servers A, B, and C, if A disconnects from C, A-B and B-C are still linked. It's entirely possible (and as far as I'm concerned, except) that there will be instances dedicated to all sorts of horrible stuff. Taken to the extreme, they could split into disconnected networks where the far-left {A, B, C} federation is entirely distinct from the far-right {D, E, F} collective. There's no central banlist, though. A clean split like I described is exceedingly unlikely (unless {D, E, F} is a tiny group of real-life friends who only talk to each other and no one else).
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - halcy 9y ago
    Mostly, that not every instance has the same policy. You can always join a place where the credo is "we connect with everybody", while people who want a very filtered experience can join places that are a lot more nonchalant about blocking other instances. A lot of people probably do (and want to be in a place that does) something in the middle. You could even have multiple accounts on different instances that you use in different contexts. Most mobile clients support this more or less well, though the default web UI does not.
detaro 9y ago
Unless one the instances has explicitly blocked the other one, you can follow anyone on any other instance. As soon as you do, your instance contacts the other instance and subscribes to that users posts for you.