7 ms·

Mastodon 2.5 released

198 points by valeg 8y ago

rainbowmverse 8y ago
Release #100.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
riffic 8y ago
This is a good read for anyone curious what this is all about, and contains a roadmap for an "instance-of-one" via Masto.host: https://laurakalbag.com/what-is-mastodon-and-why-should-i-use-it/ https://laurakalbag.com/what-is-mastodon-and-why-should-i-us...
- est 8y ago
  I hope it's truly instance-of-one that people can be quoted directly like "@mydomain.tld" instead of double at @user@host.tld
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  I've been quite satisfied with my "instance-of-one" via Masto.host. Mine is a much shorter domain than the average instance that I've had in my back pocket for years, which I find is also nice for a number of interesting small reasons (including sharing links to Mastodon statuses on places like Slack). I'm not sure I intend to always keep it to just myself, and I've made offers to give accounts to friends, but so far no one has taken me up on the offer. I definitely don't ever expect to allow public signups, though.
mothsonasloth 8y ago
Still not sure why they named it after an extinct Mammoth.
- camjohnson26 8y ago
  Or named their tweets "toots". It's like they want it to fail.
  - riffic 8y ago
    > It's like they want it to fail. This is software -- if you have a better idea create your own implementation of the underlying protocol: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
    - 80386 8y ago
      There's already a different implementation of the protocol: https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/
      - riffic 8y ago
        And a few more too such as Pixelfed and PeerTube: https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub
  - r00fus 8y ago
    cockroachdb is still surviving/thriving. Sometimes a product/project rises beyond it's name.
    - phalangion 8y ago
      Or lives up to its name.
  - progval 8y ago
    > Or named their tweets "toots". It's like they want it to fail. Why?
    - naavis 8y ago
      It's a slang word for farts.
wdewind 8y ago
The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and harassment is: > “Mastodon comes with effective anti-abuse tools to help protect yourself. Thanks to the network’s spread out and independent nature there are more moderators who you can approach for personal help, and servers with strict codes of conduct.” The solution can't just be "there are more people moderating," which translates to: the network is much more expensive to run. But that abstraction is the solution to everything in a federated system: spread out power so it isn't corruptible. As a libertarian this is really attractive to me, but in our current system, politically, it's completely infeasible and more than that just a little actively not wanted. People don't want to moderate themselves, they want a larger power to do it for them. It's why we have representative democracy instead of direct democracy: people don't want to be involved. Governing is a pain in the ass. I can respect that Mastodon is philosophically consistent: if you want to really control your communications, you need to put in the effort. I hope to be wrong about this, but people simply to not want to put this much effort into online communities. If they did we wouldn't have FB, IG and Twitter already. Please: CMV.
- syn0byte 8y ago
  The effort required to keep a federated service running is a fraction of its total user base. EG; You don't see most people running their own IRC servers. A small percentage puts in the time for everyone else.
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  >> It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. Define work. By many valid metrics, it's already a resounding success.
  - calimac 8y ago
panarky 8y ago
So tweets are "toots" in Mastodon. Could it be that extinct mastodons grunted or growled instead of tooting? I would rather bark, bleat, caw, croak, howl, quack or screech. Toot? Nah. Too many associations with musical fruits.
- beat 8y ago
  I tried to grunt in Mastodon and accidentally recompiled it.
- jordigh 8y ago
  Starting fights with other users is known as "tusking". Having a wildly popular toot get boosted all over the place is "going woolly". A server going down for good is an "extinction event". https://mastodon.social/@nolan/1522550 https://mastodon.social/@nolan/1522550 I think it's all very cute.
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  You could YIFF! on yiff.life, if you prefer. A lot of instances change the verb.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  It's open source. You can change this to say whatever you want if you're willing to run it yourself, or you can find a place that's changed it to something you think sounds better than "toot".
- chooseaname 8y ago
  The mammoth on The Flintstones had a human voice.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  > Could it be that extinct mastodons grunted or growled instead of tooting? We can presume Mastodons shared many characteristics with modern day Elephants, which from zoo anecdotes seem capable of grunting, growling, and (both types of) tooting, to communicate different things.
stesch 8y ago
Today I tried another software for the fediverse: pleroma. So far the fediverse isn't for me. I don't want to join an existent instance. I don't want to run a large project like Mastodon. And pleroma looked about right for me. But it's currently only for insiders. (I'm using Linux since the 1990s and have installed different news and mail servers. Maybe my patience isn't what it used to be but I don't have any plans on trying pleroma again soon.) All the other projects are either in a very early stage or use technology I trust less than C News.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  > I don't want to run a large project like Mastodon. There are good options like Masto.host that will run Mastodon for you, but you can bring your own domain. I find that a satisfying middle ground, and it's what I use for my own instance.
ChildOfChaos 8y ago
They really need to sort the name out, naming it the same as a major heavy metal band is just a bad idea. When every anyone mentions it you immediately think of the band until you realise it's that fringe social thing nobody cares about.
narohi 8y ago
Is there a way to make a mastodon instance for a private community where it requires registration (& approval) like a forum, but still have the federation between instances? (if not, is it possible to unfederate an instance?)
- kstrauser 8y ago
  Yes. It's very easy to lock down registrations, say to your family or coworkers, and still federate. You can also turn off federation if you want an internal-only instance.
- makomk 8y ago
  As I understand it, you can require users to get approval in order to register locally, and there are at least patches out there to create a whitelist of instances that are allowed to federate with you, but there's no way to require users from the allowed instances to get approval before interacting with local posts.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Private Accounts (also sometimes referred to as Locked Down Accounts) require explicit follow approvals and many federated actions are restricted only to direct followers. It's an easy task if you are an instance admin creating all accounts to default new accounts to Private instead Public (which is the usual default elsewhere). Accounts can switch themselves between Private and Public as needs change (though there are obvious caveats when switching).
dmix 8y ago
I'd join an HN-oriented Mastadon if there was one.
- EduardoBautista 8y ago
  For tech there is: https://mastodon.technology/about https://mastodon.technology/about
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    toot.cafe for various reasons also has a pretty high percentage of technologists. https://toot.cafe/about/more https://toot.cafe/about/more
- INTPenis 8y ago
  But it's not really about joining a themed mastodon instance. You can join any mastodon instance and subscribe to people who are HN oriented. There is an HN bot but it just repeats what is posted on HN.
  - EduardoBautista 8y ago
    Yes, but it's sometimes good to look at the local instance timeline and find most toots (tweets in Mastodon for the uninitiated) related to your interests.

198 points by valeg 8y ago

rainbowmverse 8y ago

Release #100.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

riffic 8y ago

This is a good read for anyone curious what this is all about, and contains a roadmap for an "instance-of-one" via Masto.host: https://laurakalbag.com/what-is-mastodon-and-why-should-i-use-it/ https://laurakalbag.com/what-is-mastodon-and-why-should-i-us...

est 8y ago
I hope it's truly instance-of-one that people can be quoted directly like "@mydomain.tld" instead of double at @user@host.tld
WorldMaker 8y ago
I've been quite satisfied with my "instance-of-one" via Masto.host. Mine is a much shorter domain than the average instance that I've had in my back pocket for years, which I find is also nice for a number of interesting small reasons (including sharing links to Mastodon statuses on places like Slack). I'm not sure I intend to always keep it to just myself, and I've made offers to give accounts to friends, but so far no one has taken me up on the offer. I definitely don't ever expect to allow public signups, though.

mothsonasloth 8y ago

Still not sure why they named it after an extinct Mammoth.

camjohnson26 8y ago
Or named their tweets "toots". It's like they want it to fail.
- riffic 8y ago
  > It's like they want it to fail. This is software -- if you have a better idea create your own implementation of the underlying protocol: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
  - 80386 8y ago
    There's already a different implementation of the protocol: https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/
    - riffic 8y ago
      And a few more too such as Pixelfed and PeerTube: https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub
- r00fus 8y ago
  cockroachdb is still surviving/thriving. Sometimes a product/project rises beyond it's name.
  - phalangion 8y ago
    Or lives up to its name.
- progval 8y ago
  > Or named their tweets "toots". It's like they want it to fail. Why?
  - naavis 8y ago
    It's a slang word for farts.

wdewind 8y ago

The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and harassment is: > “Mastodon comes with effective anti-abuse tools to help protect yourself. Thanks to the network’s spread out and independent nature there are more moderators who you can approach for personal help, and servers with strict codes of conduct.” The solution can't just be "there are more people moderating," which translates to: the network is much more expensive to run. But that abstraction is the solution to everything in a federated system: spread out power so it isn't corruptible. As a libertarian this is really attractive to me, but in our current system, politically, it's completely infeasible and more than that just a little actively not wanted. People don't want to moderate themselves, they want a larger power to do it for them. It's why we have representative democracy instead of direct democracy: people don't want to be involved. Governing is a pain in the ass. I can respect that Mastodon is philosophically consistent: if you want to really control your communications, you need to put in the effort. I hope to be wrong about this, but people simply to not want to put this much effort into online communities. If they did we wouldn't have FB, IG and Twitter already. Please: CMV.

syn0byte 8y ago
The effort required to keep a federated service running is a fraction of its total user base. EG; You don't see most people running their own IRC servers. A small percentage puts in the time for everyone else.
rainbowmverse 8y ago
>> It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. Define work. By many valid metrics, it's already a resounding success.
- calimac 8y ago

panarky 8y ago

So tweets are "toots" in Mastodon. Could it be that extinct mastodons grunted or growled instead of tooting? I would rather bark, bleat, caw, croak, howl, quack or screech. Toot? Nah. Too many associations with musical fruits.

beat 8y ago
I tried to grunt in Mastodon and accidentally recompiled it.
jordigh 8y ago
Starting fights with other users is known as "tusking". Having a wildly popular toot get boosted all over the place is "going woolly". A server going down for good is an "extinction event". https://mastodon.social/@nolan/1522550 https://mastodon.social/@nolan/1522550 I think it's all very cute.
rainbowmverse 8y ago
You could YIFF! on yiff.life, if you prefer. A lot of instances change the verb.
egypturnash 8y ago
It's open source. You can change this to say whatever you want if you're willing to run it yourself, or you can find a place that's changed it to something you think sounds better than "toot".
chooseaname 8y ago
The mammoth on The Flintstones had a human voice.
WorldMaker 8y ago
> Could it be that extinct mastodons grunted or growled instead of tooting? We can presume Mastodons shared many characteristics with modern day Elephants, which from zoo anecdotes seem capable of grunting, growling, and (both types of) tooting, to communicate different things.

stesch 8y ago

Today I tried another software for the fediverse: pleroma. So far the fediverse isn't for me. I don't want to join an existent instance. I don't want to run a large project like Mastodon. And pleroma looked about right for me. But it's currently only for insiders. (I'm using Linux since the 1990s and have installed different news and mail servers. Maybe my patience isn't what it used to be but I don't have any plans on trying pleroma again soon.) All the other projects are either in a very early stage or use technology I trust less than C News.

WorldMaker 8y ago
> I don't want to run a large project like Mastodon. There are good options like Masto.host that will run Mastodon for you, but you can bring your own domain. I find that a satisfying middle ground, and it's what I use for my own instance.

ChildOfChaos 8y ago

They really need to sort the name out, naming it the same as a major heavy metal band is just a bad idea. When every anyone mentions it you immediately think of the band until you realise it's that fringe social thing nobody cares about.

narohi 8y ago

Is there a way to make a mastodon instance for a private community where it requires registration (& approval) like a forum, but still have the federation between instances? (if not, is it possible to unfederate an instance?)

kstrauser 8y ago
Yes. It's very easy to lock down registrations, say to your family or coworkers, and still federate. You can also turn off federation if you want an internal-only instance.
makomk 8y ago
As I understand it, you can require users to get approval in order to register locally, and there are at least patches out there to create a whitelist of instances that are allowed to federate with you, but there's no way to require users from the allowed instances to get approval before interacting with local posts.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Private Accounts (also sometimes referred to as Locked Down Accounts) require explicit follow approvals and many federated actions are restricted only to direct followers. It's an easy task if you are an instance admin creating all accounts to default new accounts to Private instead Public (which is the usual default elsewhere). Accounts can switch themselves between Private and Public as needs change (though there are obvious caveats when switching).

dmix 8y ago

I'd join an HN-oriented Mastadon if there was one.

EduardoBautista 8y ago
For tech there is: https://mastodon.technology/about https://mastodon.technology/about
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  toot.cafe for various reasons also has a pretty high percentage of technologists. https://toot.cafe/about/more https://toot.cafe/about/more
INTPenis 8y ago
But it's not really about joining a themed mastodon instance. You can join any mastodon instance and subscribe to people who are HN oriented. There is an HN bot but it just repeats what is posted on HN.
- EduardoBautista 8y ago
  Yes, but it's sometimes good to look at the local instance timeline and find most toots (tweets in Mastodon for the uninitiated) related to your interests.