3 ms·
Mastodon is part of a federated network called the "fediverse": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse The fediverse w
by codewiz 8y ago
Mastodon is part of a federated network called the "fediverse": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
The fediverse works by propagating statuses a set of standard protocols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
Typical Mastodon instances have one or more frontends (Ruby on Rails) backed by a PostgreSQL database (possibly replicated). Several cloud providers offer managed PostgreSQL instances which mitigate the SPOF of using an RDBMS backend.
Accounts of users are bound to the instance where they were created, but recently Mastodon added a data export function that could be used to move an account to a different instance. I doubt you'd retain your followers in this case.
Unboundling user identity from instances sounds like a difficult researh problem, given that users can upload considerable amounts of data.
- billions 8y agoSo profile can be censored by taking down the instance hosting it?
- codewiz 8y agoOf course, but the victim can create a new account on another instance and upload the same content again. Note that this also makes it hard to deal with spam and DoS attacks. As adoption grows, instances might voluntarily adopt protocols for sharing abuse data.
- lokedhs 8y agoYes. Pretty much exactly the same way a web page can be taken down by the web server being shut down.
- SolarNet 8y agoIt's basically like email. As it evolves, people will deal with those issues in different ways. The point is that unlike twitter people have options to choose different instances that are unlikely to censor them.
- sintaxi 8y agoMastodon is hotmail & gmail, not email. Accounts are centralized and therefore subject to censorship.
- zaarn 8y agoYou can setup your own Mastodon instance and nobody will delete the accounts there unless you want it. And it'll work with other mastodon instances. Mastodon isn't hotmail or gmail it's an MTA+MDA, anyone can setup those on their own servers and become reachable by email...
- SolarNet 8y agomastodon.social is like gmail.com ; Mastodon is like Postfix.
- sp332 8y agoPeople who have received messages from the account will still have those copies when the originating instance goes down.