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> a combination of Twitter’s chronological feed with the community-driven spaces of Reddit Eugen's product vision is fighting the "community-driven spaces" ide

by kixiQu 4y ago

> a combination of Twitter’s chronological feed with the community-driven spaces of Reddit Eugen's product vision is fighting the "community-driven spaces" idea as hard as he can, as far as I understand – to the extent that that maps onto instances, and not the [groups that don't yet exist]. > But because each server effectively acts as a separate version of Mastodon, participating in multiple instances is a hassle. For each one, you must maintain separate profiles and follower lists, and there’s no way to view multiple “Local” timelines in a single feed. I agree that it'd be nice to be able to view other instances' local timelines. But from here on out, the piece gets real confused by its idea that this is the only way to use Mastodon and thus that you should have one account per instance – this is not how most people use Mastodon. > The mobile app isn’t really set up for hopping between instances, either. If you get bored with once instance and decide you’d like to check out another, the only option is to sign out of your account and sign up for a new instance from scratch. So... log on to your desktop and [move]. > The overarching issue here is that Mastodon is trying to be too much like Twitter when it really ought to be more like Reddit. If you want ActivityPub Reddit, you want [Lemmy], but with less FOSSy users. > In the ideal version of Mastodon, users would be able to browse the content of those communities, and jump between them at any time, but would still have easy ways to interact with anyone else on the network. This... is what I do. This is how I use Mastodon. This exists??? [groups that don't yet exist]: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/861#issuecomment-1135022537 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/861#issuecomment... [move]: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move [Lemmy]: https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/

Alekhine 4y ago
> This... is what I do How do you do that? When I used Mastodon, I could only see my own instance's local timeline and the federated timeline. Basically, how do I Mastodon?
- arcatech 4y ago
  Follow people (including people from other instances) and then interact with them on your timeline just like you would with Twitter.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    Yup, pretty much just this. I make lists of folks in certain groupings to be able to fake being able to see posts-from-the-subset-of-people-I-follow-from-yesterweb.social and similar (and hooo could this functionality use some ux polish), but mostly I'm looking at the feed of all people I follow.
- Matumio 4y ago
  For initial discovery you can (web-)browse a large instance by hashtag. Results will include posts from other instances. Then you follow anyone who is posting or boosting interesting stuff. On a large instance you can also subscribe to tags. I don't think you can remote-subscribe to tags (except via RSS). On a small instance tags are less useful as they only show posts the instance already knows about (e.g. from people someone is following). Once you follow enough people, you'll see them boosting posts from all over the fediverse. Then you have the inverse problem. You'll have to ignore or unfollow, because mastodons seem to be allergic to the concept of algorithmic feeds. (You can guess why.) > browse the content of those communities, and jump between Ah, the magic of web links. Click a post date or profile, and Bam! You're on their instance.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    All of this is correct! I use an instance I host myself that only has one other user on it. I've found that in such a case you have to follow very aggressively (to get content federating over to your instance; X who I follow RTed something from Y that sounds interesting, Y's profile seems like a good vibe, I follow) and unfollow aggressively (Y is live-tooting a reality show with many, many posts), which is kind of doing the work more manually that Twitter's algorithmic regime does for you. But it's also giving you control, so... trade-offs.
glenstein 4y ago
>But from here on out, the piece gets real confused by its idea that this is the only way to use Mastodon and thus that you should have one account per instance – this is not how most people use Mastodon. Yeah, this is like the most fundamental thing about Mastodon. You can access numerous instances from a single account. You don't need one account on every instance. >This... is what I do. This is how I use Mastodon. This exists??? I share your sense of incredulity here. That's.... what Mastodon does! How could you write a piece about what Mastodon is or isn't good for and... guh. It's like suggesting that cars are good but wouldn't it be better if there was a highway system so people could drive their cars and meet each other.

by kixiQu 4y ago

Alekhine 4y ago

> This... is what I do How do you do that? When I used Mastodon, I could only see my own instance's local timeline and the federated timeline. Basically, how do I Mastodon?

arcatech 4y ago
Follow people (including people from other instances) and then interact with them on your timeline just like you would with Twitter.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  Yup, pretty much just this. I make lists of folks in certain groupings to be able to fake being able to see posts-from-the-subset-of-people-I-follow-from-yesterweb.social and similar (and hooo could this functionality use some ux polish), but mostly I'm looking at the feed of all people I follow.
Matumio 4y ago
For initial discovery you can (web-)browse a large instance by hashtag. Results will include posts from other instances. Then you follow anyone who is posting or boosting interesting stuff. On a large instance you can also subscribe to tags. I don't think you can remote-subscribe to tags (except via RSS). On a small instance tags are less useful as they only show posts the instance already knows about (e.g. from people someone is following). Once you follow enough people, you'll see them boosting posts from all over the fediverse. Then you have the inverse problem. You'll have to ignore or unfollow, because mastodons seem to be allergic to the concept of algorithmic feeds. (You can guess why.) > browse the content of those communities, and jump between Ah, the magic of web links. Click a post date or profile, and Bam! You're on their instance.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  All of this is correct! I use an instance I host myself that only has one other user on it. I've found that in such a case you have to follow very aggressively (to get content federating over to your instance; X who I follow RTed something from Y that sounds interesting, Y's profile seems like a good vibe, I follow) and unfollow aggressively (Y is live-tooting a reality show with many, many posts), which is kind of doing the work more manually that Twitter's algorithmic regime does for you. But it's also giving you control, so... trade-offs.

glenstein 4y ago

>But from here on out, the piece gets real confused by its idea that this is the only way to use Mastodon and thus that you should have one account per instance – this is not how most people use Mastodon. Yeah, this is like the most fundamental thing about Mastodon. You can access numerous instances from a single account. You don't need one account on every instance. >This... is what I do. This is how I use Mastodon. This exists??? I share your sense of incredulity here. That's.... what Mastodon does! How could you write a piece about what Mastodon is or isn't good for and... guh. It's like suggesting that cars are good but wouldn't it be better if there was a highway system so people could drive their cars and meet each other.