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The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is inco

The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow appears in your home feed, and everyone who follows you receives your posts in their home feed. It is unfortunately a common misunderstanding, and I must admit we didn't help the situation by leaning into calling servers "communities" on joinmastodon.org in the past (not anymore). There do exist plenty of "themed" Mastodon servers, aimed at specific communities, e.g. phpc.social which describes itself as a server for the PHP community, because some secondary discovery features of Mastodon lend themselves to what kind of feels like a slack/irc/subreddit, but ultimately, in their primary purpose, servers are service providers just like GMail/Outlook/Fastmail are for e-mail.

na85 4y ago
>The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow appears in your home feed, and everyone who follows you receives your posts in their home feed. I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception and I had no idea that this was the case. The messaging really needs improved.
- kevinmgranger 4y ago
  I remember early mastodon marketing being criticized for emphasizing federation _too much_, and that it would confuse new users.
- shadowfacts 4y ago
  The sixth sentence on the project homepage: "Joining a server on Mastodon provides you with the power to communicate with any server across the globe." Not sure how much clearer it gets.
  - gargron 4y ago
    To be fair, that sentence has only been there for a couple days. We redesigned our project homepage completely. Some of the copy is still in flux.
- glenstein 4y ago
  >I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception You must be part of an exceptionally small minority then. I, too, have known about Mastodon since it's inception, and this was not news to me. As another commenter said, a debate during that time was that users were beaten over the head with too much discussion of federation and instances. This is always how it's worked, and it's nearly impossible to join any instance without following & interacting with people from other instances on a daily basis. It's like the one thing about Mastodon you can't escape knowing about even if you actively try.
  - na85 4y ago
    >This is always how it's worked, and it's nearly impossible to join any instance without following & interacting with people from other instances on a daily basis. It's like the one thing about Mastodon you can't escape knowing about even if you actively try. I don't use Mastodon, so perhaps that's why. It always seemed like a Twitter clone except with fewer people and, importantly for this particular discussion, where you can't interact with anyone. Guess I was mistaken, but that's why I never bothered to learn anything further about it.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception and I had no idea that this was the case. The messaging really needs improved. How can you not know, since it's clearly "decentralized" in every claim made about its service. That's the textbook definition of decentralized.
assetlabel 4y ago
This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers. Further, once you pick a server, if you are kicked off, you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.
- VikingCoder 4y ago
  ...so why isn't there another layer of abstraction, where you have like a DNS to register where you (and here's your public key) are currently: you@thatserver, and you sign it... And then you can change (using the same public / private key pair) to be: you@someotherserver? This seems obvious to me as a necessary feature...?
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    There is a move feature so you can transfer your account and its following relationships to a new server, without your followers having to update anything or any key signing at all. You can't use it if your account has been nuked, but it's not weird in "we're asking you to leave"-type moderation.
  - JD557 4y ago
    There are a few issues for that, but they haven't seen any activity in a while: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/3796 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/3796 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  >This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. Most do, the default is open federation. > As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers. It's hardly a surprise that most people don't want to associate with neo-Nazis and others with similar worthless ideologies. The fact that admins can firewall off instances if they're are run by arseholes is a good thing.
  - 4y ago
roenxi 4y ago
Greetings ordinary and non-remarkable commenter who has no special insight into Mastodon's workings! I don't know anything about the project but I have been watching the journey of the big social networks with interest. If you're taking questions - what do you think are the typical needs of new users as they hear about and start trying mastodon? How do you envision onboarding happening?
- gargron 4y ago
  Number one priority for onboarding is giving new users something interesting to see. We've made big strides in this direction this year. There's a new "Explore" screen in our official apps that shows trending posts, hashtags, and news articles. We also have a system of follow recommendations.
snickerbockers 4y ago
Fediverse has the unique problem (or benefit depending on your perspective) of the instance owners being able to cut their users off from other instances, which is unheard of in email. At face value this is done to keep users from being tormented by pedophiles and internet nazis, but my experience is that most of the server admins get a weird power trip out of blocking things, and will overzealously block anything that they personally find offensive or disagreeable. This extreme amount of curation is why each fediverse instance is its own community. You only get to experience fediverse through the lens of your instance admin's moderation policy.
- ghostDancer 4y ago
  And then you take your account to a different server where you feel you fit better or that it doesn't cut the experience you want.
  - snickerbockers 4y ago
    but then you lose your old acvount.
    - Smhlol 4y ago
    - Le_Dook 4y ago
      Surprisingly not, you can easily transfer your followers and follows. Even your bookmarked posts can be saved and transferred. You do lose your old posts you've made, but in the grand scheme of things that's not the worst loss
    - smcn 4y ago
      https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ You keep most of what you'd expect when you transfer, but you do lose your posts. However, I agree with you that (over-)moderation is a huge issue facing Mastodon. However, that's true of any online community run by users. The ideal, in my opinion, it's improving the process for people to self host instances. It's simply too hard for the average person currently and the copy on websites such as masto.host is ambiguous for people who may not be experienced with such concepts. My belief is that Mastodon will thrive when there are more communities of smaller groups.
msravi 4y ago
This is the theory. In practice, this is what happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195851
rakoo 4y ago
There is a kernel of truth though. Many communities are organized per instance, so if you want to be part of multiple communities you must register on multiple instances. You can follow an account, but you can't follow an entire instance and have all toots of everyone there displayed in a timeline on your own instance. Humans are naturally converging towards communities, and Mastodon leaned into that. But it's actually not the right tool, because in the end it's centered around individual accounts. Lemmy is the closest thing to what the author wants I guess.
- Ferret7446 4y ago
  It seems like it should be trivial to extend the Mastodon protocol and software to support following other instances. Is that not so, or why has that not been done?
  - rakoo 4y ago
    It's probably possible to use ActivityPub to do that. But looking at gargron's messages in this thread, it sounds like Mastodon doesn't want to continue in the "1 instance = 1 community" direction.

na85 4y ago

>The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow appears in your home feed, and everyone who follows you receives your posts in their home feed. I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception and I had no idea that this was the case. The messaging really needs improved.

kevinmgranger 4y ago
I remember early mastodon marketing being criticized for emphasizing federation _too much_, and that it would confuse new users.
shadowfacts 4y ago
The sixth sentence on the project homepage: "Joining a server on Mastodon provides you with the power to communicate with any server across the globe." Not sure how much clearer it gets.
- gargron 4y ago
  To be fair, that sentence has only been there for a couple days. We redesigned our project homepage completely. Some of the copy is still in flux.
glenstein 4y ago
>I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception You must be part of an exceptionally small minority then. I, too, have known about Mastodon since it's inception, and this was not news to me. As another commenter said, a debate during that time was that users were beaten over the head with too much discussion of federation and instances. This is always how it's worked, and it's nearly impossible to join any instance without following & interacting with people from other instances on a daily basis. It's like the one thing about Mastodon you can't escape knowing about even if you actively try.
- na85 4y ago
  >This is always how it's worked, and it's nearly impossible to join any instance without following & interacting with people from other instances on a daily basis. It's like the one thing about Mastodon you can't escape knowing about even if you actively try. I don't use Mastodon, so perhaps that's why. It always seemed like a Twitter clone except with fewer people and, importantly for this particular discussion, where you can't interact with anyone. Guess I was mistaken, but that's why I never bothered to learn anything further about it.
ekianjo 4y ago
> I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception and I had no idea that this was the case. The messaging really needs improved. How can you not know, since it's clearly "decentralized" in every claim made about its service. That's the textbook definition of decentralized.

assetlabel 4y ago

This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers. Further, once you pick a server, if you are kicked off, you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.

VikingCoder 4y ago
...so why isn't there another layer of abstraction, where you have like a DNS to register where you (and here's your public key) are currently: you@thatserver, and you sign it... And then you can change (using the same public / private key pair) to be: you@someotherserver? This seems obvious to me as a necessary feature...?
- kixiQu 4y ago
  There is a move feature so you can transfer your account and its following relationships to a new server, without your followers having to update anything or any key signing at all. You can't use it if your account has been nuked, but it's not weird in "we're asking you to leave"-type moderation.
- JD557 4y ago
  There are a few issues for that, but they haven't seen any activity in a while: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/3796 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/3796 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668
M2Ys4U 4y ago
>This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. Most do, the default is open federation. > As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers. It's hardly a surprise that most people don't want to associate with neo-Nazis and others with similar worthless ideologies. The fact that admins can firewall off instances if they're are run by arseholes is a good thing.
- 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

Greetings ordinary and non-remarkable commenter who has no special insight into Mastodon's workings! I don't know anything about the project but I have been watching the journey of the big social networks with interest. If you're taking questions - what do you think are the typical needs of new users as they hear about and start trying mastodon? How do you envision onboarding happening?

gargron 4y ago
Number one priority for onboarding is giving new users something interesting to see. We've made big strides in this direction this year. There's a new "Explore" screen in our official apps that shows trending posts, hashtags, and news articles. We also have a system of follow recommendations.

snickerbockers 4y ago

Fediverse has the unique problem (or benefit depending on your perspective) of the instance owners being able to cut their users off from other instances, which is unheard of in email. At face value this is done to keep users from being tormented by pedophiles and internet nazis, but my experience is that most of the server admins get a weird power trip out of blocking things, and will overzealously block anything that they personally find offensive or disagreeable. This extreme amount of curation is why each fediverse instance is its own community. You only get to experience fediverse through the lens of your instance admin's moderation policy.

ghostDancer 4y ago
And then you take your account to a different server where you feel you fit better or that it doesn't cut the experience you want.
- snickerbockers 4y ago
  but then you lose your old acvount.
  - Smhlol 4y ago
  - Le_Dook 4y ago
    Surprisingly not, you can easily transfer your followers and follows. Even your bookmarked posts can be saved and transferred. You do lose your old posts you've made, but in the grand scheme of things that's not the worst loss
  - smcn 4y ago
    https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ You keep most of what you'd expect when you transfer, but you do lose your posts. However, I agree with you that (over-)moderation is a huge issue facing Mastodon. However, that's true of any online community run by users. The ideal, in my opinion, it's improving the process for people to self host instances. It's simply too hard for the average person currently and the copy on websites such as masto.host is ambiguous for people who may not be experienced with such concepts. My belief is that Mastodon will thrive when there are more communities of smaller groups.

msravi 4y ago

This is the theory. In practice, this is what happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195851

rakoo 4y ago

There is a kernel of truth though. Many communities are organized per instance, so if you want to be part of multiple communities you must register on multiple instances. You can follow an account, but you can't follow an entire instance and have all toots of everyone there displayed in a timeline on your own instance. Humans are naturally converging towards communities, and Mastodon leaned into that. But it's actually not the right tool, because in the end it's centered around individual accounts. Lemmy is the closest thing to what the author wants I guess.

Ferret7446 4y ago
It seems like it should be trivial to extend the Mastodon protocol and software to support following other instances. Is that not so, or why has that not been done?
- rakoo 4y ago
  It's probably possible to use ActivityPub to do that. But looking at gargron's messages in this thread, it sounds like Mastodon doesn't want to continue in the "1 instance = 1 community" direction.