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I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like

I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like the way that the Fediverse has all kinds of different groups/instances/neighborhoods. For example, I joined https://ruby.social https://ruby.social this week and I've had some interesting discussions about Ruby programming. Twitter is a mess of everything because anything and everything is a topic.

skybrian 8y ago
I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)
- wetpaws 8y ago
  I assume you can't and this is a fundamental problem of federated systems.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    In Mastodon, I believe you can -- but it's more of a Twitter-dump than something as well-separated as subreddits. Each time a user follows someone from a new server, that server's "federated feed" is added to the homeserver of that user. It's not perfect, but it does mean that federated feeds do spread organically (and it does result in single-user instances spam-following everyone so that you can get a more cohesive feed).
    - s_kilk 8y ago
      > Each time a user follows someone from a new server, that server's "federated feed" is added to the homeserver of that user. Wait, is this a thing? I've been using Mastodon for months and have never seen this in the UI.
      - cyphar 8y ago
        The "federated timeline" tab should be what I'm describing -- though to be honest the last time I talked to any of the mastodon folks about this was more than a year ago (the semantics might have changed).
  - xj9 8y ago
    we're working on it ;) there are a handful of proposals for doing SSO on fediverse, but it isn't super high priority since creating multiple accounts (alts) is a pretty common practice here.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      > but it isn't super high priority since creating multiple accounts (alts) is a pretty common practice here. Then you'll only end up with users that are willing to put up with that, and you will not get users that perceive this as a major inconvenience (I'm in this camp, and I suspect many, many others are too.)
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        As a long time Mastodon user, I've never done the alt-account thing. If I'm interested in another community... I follow a bunch of people from that community. You don't need to have an account on every server, and I never have.
      - elago 8y ago
        On the android app I use, switching between accounts is as simple UI wise as switching to different instances (or spaces or whatever the top level division is called) in Slack. In two taps I can switch between tech themed and social themed for example. I agree some platforms make multiple accounts hard to the point where you're registering multiple free email accounts, installing multiple browsers and using incognito mode, etc. That is not inherently the case, and can be quite the opposite when allowing users to control multiple accounts is part of the software's design.
        TuringTest 8y ago
        But tying accounts to instances, and then instances to topics, is bad design. The purpose of multiple accounts from a user perspective should be for having separate identities, not separate topics of conversation. If you're forced to create one account per instance, there's no way to do something as simple as "merge comments from two instances into a single stream", which supposedly was the selling point of federated systems like Mastodon.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    People who downvote me without providing any counter-examples, please.
- y2bd 8y ago
  There’s a beta iOS app called Toot that solves this by letting you add timelines for instances you don’t have an account on. If you try interacting with anyone on that timeline, it asks you if you want to use one of your other accounts to handle that interaction. Don’t know if any other clients offer this. Link: https://mastodon.social/@tootapp https://mastodon.social/@tootapp
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    10,000 prototype apps/mockups sprung up (a good thing) after mastodon.design popped up. Some of them are bound to launch with this feature.
  - arunsathiya 8y ago
    Mastalab on Android seems to do the same now, based on recent release notes. But, I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
- RX14 8y ago
  The only thing that creates an instance's community is the local time line. Everything else is federated. So what you're really asking for is to be able to easily view another instance's local timeline I guess. There's some work being done in that area, currently focused on merging multiple instances local timelines, but the same technical infrastructure could easily be used to be able to show another instances local time line in the frontend.
- jancsika 8y ago
  Let me see if I understand the problem. alice register on instance "music" alice wants to see what's up on instance "books" Is the problem that the default behavior of Mastodon requires alice to register a new account on "books" just to see that instance's timeline?
  - justinpombrio 8y ago
    Yes, that is exactly the problem. Although it might be better to say that that's the manifestation of the real problem. The real problem is that I want to be able to talk about books sometimes, even though I'm a musician so I registered on the musician instance. If there's a way for me to have conversations about books, I don't care whether it's an "instance" or not. I just don't want to manage two separate accounts. (As an end-user, none of my end-goals mention the word "instance".)
    - jancsika 8y ago
      Yeah, I guess I'm confused about why an instance has any topic whatsoever associated with it. For a federated design I'd assume the main difference among instances to be code of conduct/ToS.
      - opan 8y ago
        I've been on one Mastodon instance and one Pleroma instance. Neither really had a set topic, and both pulled in some toots from other instances that were "similar", but my posts are about anything I want, as they would be on Twitter.
    - jaequery 8y ago
      Slack also have this same "problem" but strangely enough, it didn't stop them from growing as they are now.
  - elago 8y ago
    I wouldn't say that's the problem. You do not need to register a new account to see an instance's timeline. For example this page shows the instance's timeline without logging in: https://mastodon.sdf.org/about https://mastodon.sdf.org/about If you like someone's toots there, you can follow and message any user on SDF's instance from your account on any other instance. As mentioned elsewhere, the only thing you would gain by creating an account on sdf.org is to have your toots appear by default in the local timeline of other sdf.org users.
- phaedryx 8y ago
  Yeah, I've been wondering if I can write a bot that signs in to other accounts and aggregates things for a primary account.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    A number of instances in the Fediverse run bots whose sole purpose is to follow "interesting" accounts that they find on other instances in order to beef up the bot's instance's Federated feed. It can be a useful tool for small instances to still see a wider view of the Fediverse without any individual user themselves following a lot of people.
- panic 8y ago
  There's a tension here between different views of what Mastodon should be. Is an instance more like an email server (where it just acts as a gateway) or a web forum (with a community of people on each instance)? It seems like the ActivityPub protocol itself is designed from the "email server" perspective, but as different instances try to differentiate themselves and attract users, I bet the platform will swing more and more toward "web forum". It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
  - TuringTest 8y ago
    Even if each instance has its own community, that's no reason to force users to create a different account at each instance. Given the federated protocol, it's a reasonable expectation carrying around the same identity across instances.
  - ok-repl 8y ago
    I feel like the product signals a strange mix of the two, which has to at least be resolved in terms of what's user-facing (e.g. UX-wise)
- epeus 8y ago
  My tool unmung.com/mastoview let's you peek at local and federated timelines on other instances (by default the homepage view is federated, which is less useful in a large instance)
foxylad 8y ago
For any kiwi twitter refugees, I'm setting up https://mastodon.nz https://mastodon.nz. Very quiet so far, but fully functional and federation is working well. Come on over!
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skybrian 8y ago

I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)

wetpaws 8y ago
I assume you can't and this is a fundamental problem of federated systems.
- cyphar 8y ago
  In Mastodon, I believe you can -- but it's more of a Twitter-dump than something as well-separated as subreddits. Each time a user follows someone from a new server, that server's "federated feed" is added to the homeserver of that user. It's not perfect, but it does mean that federated feeds do spread organically (and it does result in single-user instances spam-following everyone so that you can get a more cohesive feed).
  - s_kilk 8y ago
    > Each time a user follows someone from a new server, that server's "federated feed" is added to the homeserver of that user. Wait, is this a thing? I've been using Mastodon for months and have never seen this in the UI.
    - cyphar 8y ago
      The "federated timeline" tab should be what I'm describing -- though to be honest the last time I talked to any of the mastodon folks about this was more than a year ago (the semantics might have changed).
- xj9 8y ago
  we're working on it ;) there are a handful of proposals for doing SSO on fediverse, but it isn't super high priority since creating multiple accounts (alts) is a pretty common practice here.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    > but it isn't super high priority since creating multiple accounts (alts) is a pretty common practice here. Then you'll only end up with users that are willing to put up with that, and you will not get users that perceive this as a major inconvenience (I'm in this camp, and I suspect many, many others are too.)
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      As a long time Mastodon user, I've never done the alt-account thing. If I'm interested in another community... I follow a bunch of people from that community. You don't need to have an account on every server, and I never have.
    - elago 8y ago
      On the android app I use, switching between accounts is as simple UI wise as switching to different instances (or spaces or whatever the top level division is called) in Slack. In two taps I can switch between tech themed and social themed for example. I agree some platforms make multiple accounts hard to the point where you're registering multiple free email accounts, installing multiple browsers and using incognito mode, etc. That is not inherently the case, and can be quite the opposite when allowing users to control multiple accounts is part of the software's design.
      - TuringTest 8y ago
        But tying accounts to instances, and then instances to topics, is bad design. The purpose of multiple accounts from a user perspective should be for having separate identities, not separate topics of conversation. If you're forced to create one account per instance, there's no way to do something as simple as "merge comments from two instances into a single stream", which supposedly was the selling point of federated systems like Mastodon.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  People who downvote me without providing any counter-examples, please.
y2bd 8y ago
There’s a beta iOS app called Toot that solves this by letting you add timelines for instances you don’t have an account on. If you try interacting with anyone on that timeline, it asks you if you want to use one of your other accounts to handle that interaction. Don’t know if any other clients offer this. Link: https://mastodon.social/@tootapp https://mastodon.social/@tootapp
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  10,000 prototype apps/mockups sprung up (a good thing) after mastodon.design popped up. Some of them are bound to launch with this feature.
- arunsathiya 8y ago
  Mastalab on Android seems to do the same now, based on recent release notes. But, I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
RX14 8y ago
The only thing that creates an instance's community is the local time line. Everything else is federated. So what you're really asking for is to be able to easily view another instance's local timeline I guess. There's some work being done in that area, currently focused on merging multiple instances local timelines, but the same technical infrastructure could easily be used to be able to show another instances local time line in the frontend.
jancsika 8y ago
Let me see if I understand the problem. alice register on instance "music" alice wants to see what's up on instance "books" Is the problem that the default behavior of Mastodon requires alice to register a new account on "books" just to see that instance's timeline?
- justinpombrio 8y ago
  Yes, that is exactly the problem. Although it might be better to say that that's the manifestation of the real problem. The real problem is that I want to be able to talk about books sometimes, even though I'm a musician so I registered on the musician instance. If there's a way for me to have conversations about books, I don't care whether it's an "instance" or not. I just don't want to manage two separate accounts. (As an end-user, none of my end-goals mention the word "instance".)
  - jancsika 8y ago
    Yeah, I guess I'm confused about why an instance has any topic whatsoever associated with it. For a federated design I'd assume the main difference among instances to be code of conduct/ToS.
    - opan 8y ago
      I've been on one Mastodon instance and one Pleroma instance. Neither really had a set topic, and both pulled in some toots from other instances that were "similar", but my posts are about anything I want, as they would be on Twitter.
  - jaequery 8y ago
    Slack also have this same "problem" but strangely enough, it didn't stop them from growing as they are now.
- elago 8y ago
  I wouldn't say that's the problem. You do not need to register a new account to see an instance's timeline. For example this page shows the instance's timeline without logging in: https://mastodon.sdf.org/about https://mastodon.sdf.org/about If you like someone's toots there, you can follow and message any user on SDF's instance from your account on any other instance. As mentioned elsewhere, the only thing you would gain by creating an account on sdf.org is to have your toots appear by default in the local timeline of other sdf.org users.
phaedryx 8y ago
Yeah, I've been wondering if I can write a bot that signs in to other accounts and aggregates things for a primary account.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  A number of instances in the Fediverse run bots whose sole purpose is to follow "interesting" accounts that they find on other instances in order to beef up the bot's instance's Federated feed. It can be a useful tool for small instances to still see a wider view of the Fediverse without any individual user themselves following a lot of people.
panic 8y ago
There's a tension here between different views of what Mastodon should be. Is an instance more like an email server (where it just acts as a gateway) or a web forum (with a community of people on each instance)? It seems like the ActivityPub protocol itself is designed from the "email server" perspective, but as different instances try to differentiate themselves and attract users, I bet the platform will swing more and more toward "web forum". It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
- TuringTest 8y ago
  Even if each instance has its own community, that's no reason to force users to create a different account at each instance. Given the federated protocol, it's a reasonable expectation carrying around the same identity across instances.
- ok-repl 8y ago
  I feel like the product signals a strange mix of the two, which has to at least be resolved in terms of what's user-facing (e.g. UX-wise)
epeus 8y ago
My tool unmung.com/mastoview let's you peek at local and federated timelines on other instances (by default the homepage view is federated, which is less useful in a large instance)

foxylad 8y ago

For any kiwi twitter refugees, I'm setting up https://mastodon.nz https://mastodon.nz. Very quiet so far, but fully functional and federation is working well. Come on over!

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