4 ms·

This is very confusing. Why do they largely interconnect? (Why do they connect at all / why don't they always connect?) What's the point of multiple sites if th

• multiplegeorges 4y ago
  Think of it like email servers. My emails go through mine, and yours go through yours, but if I know your address I can still send you a message. It doesn't matter that I'm on Gmail and you're on Protonmail. Just like it doesn't matter that I'm on ruby.social and you're on mastodon.online. It's email servers for social posts.
  • tokamak-teapot 4y ago
    What about ones that don't interconnect? Is that a thing? Do users know where they should go in order to be connected to everyone? With a mobile app that picks a 'server' for you without interaction, no problem. With a browser where you see an address and it's not what you expect - like 'twitter.com' is what people expect - how does a user know if they're going the right way?
    • rsynnott 4y ago
      There are a few that don't interconnect at all (I think Parler or Gab or one of those is an unfederated Mastodon service, all alone in the world), but it would be more common for some of them to block others.
• Macha 4y ago
  The operators can choose who to work with and can ban other servers as well as just other users. Many do this because the other server is too right wing, too left wing, content illegal in some jurisdictions (the above mentioned pawoo is a Japanese server involved in the Japanese anime scene and therefore has lolicon on it), etc. Think of it like Twitter if the use of shared blocklists was standard rather than niche behaviour.