4 ms·

> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.

by rapnie 6y ago

> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Of course not. Because Mastodon is a federated microblogging service. As that it is a good alternative for Twitter. My Mastodon client has a better UX than twitter, no algorithmic feed, no ads, no trackers, no distracting recommendations, and - importantly - breathing a friendly, open and largely non-toxic culture. Sure, it only has a tiny number of users in comparison to twitter (about 4 million), but there is no reason this can be many many more. And hosted on a federation of 1,000's of servers. Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. The Fediverse is only at the start of its evolution, and things are becoming exciting for us devs. Diverse applications, PeerTube, PixelFed, write.as, Lemmy, many more, all start to be integrated together. A gradual process, as the underlying standards mature and new ones (content addressing, object capabilities, datashards) are being developed. Besides federated ActivityPub there's work ongoing to extend to full p2p contexts. I'd say you should have Developer FOMO. To miss out on opportunities to stand out, and be part of a path that could be part of the solution to our social dilemma :)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
auganov 6y ago
> Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. Federation does absolutely nothing for this. The risk is probably even higher given how small most of these instances are. Much more likely to run into an admin/moderator.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  In the fediverse, you're more likely be able to say "Hey Lisa, why did you ban me?" than you can get into contact with the Youtube/Facebook/etc forces that be. That may or may not be better because your admin may respond "Well because I think you're a jerk and disagree with your political views" but at least you can migrate to a new instance still instead of just being banned for all eternity.
  - auganov 6y ago
    If you want to keep your followers you'd need to migrate before they ban you. But yes, I guess you can start over somewhere else while on big ones you're out forever. So in that sense I guess it is a tiny improvement. But if most of your followers were concentrated on server[s] that don't like you, you may not be able to reach them anymore.
    - MrGilbert 6y ago
      If your followers are "real" followers, and if you are important to them, they'll get in touch outside the fed and will know where to find you. Maybe that's what we should strive for. I have 200+ followers on Twitter, but if you ask me, I can only name 15 with real, social interaction. And I think that's great.
      - input_sh 6y ago
        I second this. While I foolishly didn't export the list of people I was following when I've decided to shut down my own instance and just use an already established one, I've seen other people switching between instances without really losing much in terms of interactions.
      - auganov 6y ago
        If that's how you define "real" followers then you might as well use an IM application instead. IMO the whole point of (Twitter style) social media is having effortless reach and interactions without explicitly sending stuff to anybody. I had over 10 thousand and had many interactions with people but wouldn't feel like bothering them on other platforms (unless it was of the same nature). And the few people who bothered to contact me personally felt a little awkward too. I don't necessarily want to be talking to these people directly. The magic is you just publish whatever you want and people can look at it. They can comment but there's no obligation to respond. Having actual conversations with that many people would be a huge chore. The whole thing isn't about having relationships with people at all but about spreading information. It could be about yourself in which case there would be some implicit one way relationship but that's just one use case.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  I run a small instance and I don't think this applies. New signups are closed on my instance, and the only way to get on is for you to ask me for an invitation, or for a friend of yours who's on the instance to ask for you. If you look like someone who I'd be likely to kick off my instance, I won't let you on in the first place. It's a private garden that I let my friends hang out in, not a public park where I have to let some asshole who thinks me and my friends should all be dead come in and rant and rave all they like. "Oh I am totally being de-platformed! Free Speech! Filter Bubble!", you cry. And then you discover that the Fediverse is split into multiple parts, and that there are instances that are delighted to let you say anything and everything you want as long as it is not explicitly illegal. You can even run one yourself if you have a bit of spare change! You can say anything you like on your own instance, you can follow anyone your heart desires. And anyone on another instance can follow you if they like. But no other instance is obligated to listen to you.
  - fluffernutter 6y ago
    > But no other instance is obligated to listen to you. So deleting DNS solves this for the Internet?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'm not sure I agree there's less deplatforming risk. It's structurally harder to be completely excluded from the network, since each instance has its own banlist, but that won't be of much comfort if you're banned from the instance with all your friends in it.
intended 6y ago
Unless you are building from ground up rules against types of mental virii, you are simply building a new circulatory/ neuronal system, without planning an antibody/immunity system. Reddit USED to be relatively federated - dont like the subreddit mods and behavior, make your own sub, release hundreds of posts announcing it to users, and then users chose which sub they preferred. Automod came along and white lists/black lists of words killed that system whole. Now people send laborious messages on reddit to let people know of which new, new subversive subreddit has opened up. With all the credibility of a guy selling illicit goods on a street corner. Not sure how you can prevent botting, and thence white lists/black lists of words.
allenu 6y ago
Unfortunately, Mastodon doesn't have a lot of things Twitter has going for it, such as search or trends. These two things make it easier to find others and to get a pulse on what's happening around you. I just tried searching for "seattle" and it just gives me a list of my own posts that match it and users with seattle in their name. In the past search seemed to work differently (not sure what changed), but when I searched for "seattle" then, I mostly got back a list of prostitutes who were hashtagging their posts with city names—–not exactly what I'm looking for.
amelius 6y ago
> My Mastodon client has (...) no trackers Perhaps your client hasn't, but how do you know that others don't track you through their clients (or perhaps even bots)?

by rapnie 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

auganov 6y ago

> Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. Federation does absolutely nothing for this. The risk is probably even higher given how small most of these instances are. Much more likely to run into an admin/moderator.

vorpalhex 6y ago
In the fediverse, you're more likely be able to say "Hey Lisa, why did you ban me?" than you can get into contact with the Youtube/Facebook/etc forces that be. That may or may not be better because your admin may respond "Well because I think you're a jerk and disagree with your political views" but at least you can migrate to a new instance still instead of just being banned for all eternity.
- auganov 6y ago
  If you want to keep your followers you'd need to migrate before they ban you. But yes, I guess you can start over somewhere else while on big ones you're out forever. So in that sense I guess it is a tiny improvement. But if most of your followers were concentrated on server[s] that don't like you, you may not be able to reach them anymore.
  - MrGilbert 6y ago
    If your followers are "real" followers, and if you are important to them, they'll get in touch outside the fed and will know where to find you. Maybe that's what we should strive for. I have 200+ followers on Twitter, but if you ask me, I can only name 15 with real, social interaction. And I think that's great.
    - input_sh 6y ago
      I second this. While I foolishly didn't export the list of people I was following when I've decided to shut down my own instance and just use an already established one, I've seen other people switching between instances without really losing much in terms of interactions.
    - auganov 6y ago
      If that's how you define "real" followers then you might as well use an IM application instead. IMO the whole point of (Twitter style) social media is having effortless reach and interactions without explicitly sending stuff to anybody. I had over 10 thousand and had many interactions with people but wouldn't feel like bothering them on other platforms (unless it was of the same nature). And the few people who bothered to contact me personally felt a little awkward too. I don't necessarily want to be talking to these people directly. The magic is you just publish whatever you want and people can look at it. They can comment but there's no obligation to respond. Having actual conversations with that many people would be a huge chore. The whole thing isn't about having relationships with people at all but about spreading information. It could be about yourself in which case there would be some implicit one way relationship but that's just one use case.
egypturnash 6y ago
I run a small instance and I don't think this applies. New signups are closed on my instance, and the only way to get on is for you to ask me for an invitation, or for a friend of yours who's on the instance to ask for you. If you look like someone who I'd be likely to kick off my instance, I won't let you on in the first place. It's a private garden that I let my friends hang out in, not a public park where I have to let some asshole who thinks me and my friends should all be dead come in and rant and rave all they like. "Oh I am totally being de-platformed! Free Speech! Filter Bubble!", you cry. And then you discover that the Fediverse is split into multiple parts, and that there are instances that are delighted to let you say anything and everything you want as long as it is not explicitly illegal. You can even run one yourself if you have a bit of spare change! You can say anything you like on your own instance, you can follow anyone your heart desires. And anyone on another instance can follow you if they like. But no other instance is obligated to listen to you.
- fluffernutter 6y ago
  > But no other instance is obligated to listen to you. So deleting DNS solves this for the Internet?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I'm not sure I agree there's less deplatforming risk. It's structurally harder to be completely excluded from the network, since each instance has its own banlist, but that won't be of much comfort if you're banned from the instance with all your friends in it.

intended 6y ago

Unless you are building from ground up rules against types of mental virii, you are simply building a new circulatory/ neuronal system, without planning an antibody/immunity system. Reddit USED to be relatively federated - dont like the subreddit mods and behavior, make your own sub, release hundreds of posts announcing it to users, and then users chose which sub they preferred. Automod came along and white lists/black lists of words killed that system whole. Now people send laborious messages on reddit to let people know of which new, new subversive subreddit has opened up. With all the credibility of a guy selling illicit goods on a street corner. Not sure how you can prevent botting, and thence white lists/black lists of words.

allenu 6y ago

Unfortunately, Mastodon doesn't have a lot of things Twitter has going for it, such as search or trends. These two things make it easier to find others and to get a pulse on what's happening around you. I just tried searching for "seattle" and it just gives me a list of my own posts that match it and users with seattle in their name. In the past search seemed to work differently (not sure what changed), but when I searched for "seattle" then, I mostly got back a list of prostitutes who were hashtagging their posts with city names—–not exactly what I'm looking for.

amelius 6y ago

> My Mastodon client has (...) no trackers Perhaps your client hasn't, but how do you know that others don't track you through their clients (or perhaps even bots)?