4 ms·

Mastodon – Simplified Federation

62 points by Kye 4y ago

TekMol 4y ago
It would be better if this would be a bookmarklet and not a plugin. A plugin can read everything on every website you use. Your bank statements, your emails, which videos you watch on youtube, to whom you talk on Twitter and what you write with them, what you search on Google ... everything. A bookmarklet can only read what is on the page on which you invoke it.
- Kye 4y ago
  It seems like the bulk of it is only a few lines going by the GitHub. I don't know enough to know how to do it, but if you do, you might offer a bookmarklet version for privacy-conscious people as a pull request. https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation
  - TekMol 4y ago
    Phew, there are so many files and lines in that repo. As far as I understand it, all that has to be done is something like: document.body.innerHTML.replace(/<some_regex>/,'<some_string>') Where <some_regex> matches strings of type @someone@someinstance.tld and '<some_string>' turns that into <a href=https://yourinstance/web/@someon@someinstance.tld>@someon@someinstance.tld</a>
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  Yeah, it's wild to me that no major browser vendor has moved to expand the permissions system to addons. We already have the system in place for things like Camera, Mic, and Location access. Why not extend that to anything an addon can do?
- true_religion 4y ago
  I thought plug-ins can be scoped to only work on a single domain or only work when you click them. It’s how I run grammerly, which is a descent enough grammar checker except I never want it to correct my chat posts, or GitHub comments.
  - TekMol 4y ago
    I have never heard about such a restriction for plugins. And on the plugin page for Grammarly, it says it gets "Access your data for all websites": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/
    - jdiff 4y ago
      You've never seen the popups? If a WebExtension doesn't request access to all sites, it can only access sites that it's activated on by pressing the toolbar button (MDN refers to them as action buttons if you want to take a look). The problem is that most extensions that aren't site-specific are useful because they have access to all sites, but that doesn't mean that's a requirement of the system.
      - TekMol 4y ago
        Ok. Then it's probably that every time I looked at an extension it wanted access to any site.
  - The_SamminAter 4y ago
    Heads up about Grammarly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470457
  - maxltv 4y ago
    You can turn it off for specific sites (via Grammarly settings) OR you can turn it on only for specific sites (via browser settings). The process is different depending on whether you are using a browser extension or desktop integration. Here is an example for the browser extension: https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000091612-Turn-off-Grammarly-on-one-or-more-websites https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000091612...
- mawise 4y ago
  Is it possible for a bookmarklet to be able to find RSS autodiscovery[1] links? I've thought about building something like that but I've always been turned off by the "allow reading everything" permission. [1]: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
  - TekMol 4y ago
    Sure. It's just an element in the DOM. Try this: javascript:url=document.querySelector('link[type="application/rss+xml"]')?.href ?? 'None'; alert("RSS found: "+url);{}
    - mawise 4y ago
      Slick, I'll have to think about that some.
- imurray 4y ago
  I've made a bookmarklet to toggle between the website for the instance you use and the one the post/user used: https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html It's maybe easier to just use a separate app though, and avoid the faff of separate webpages entirely.
alkonaut 4y ago
Someone should make a “is Mastodon Twitter yet” page. So many including me have tried and quit in frustration when the federation/server nonsense gets in the way of actually emulating a centralized Twitter clone.
- jlkuester7 4y ago
  I am curious what Twitter features you are missing in Mastodon? The only thing I can think of that I feel like many people expect is some kind if "curated" recommendations system (e.g. I only want to see content that is relevant to me). This, of course, is a double-edged sword at best (who gets to decide what content is recommended? What are their goals/motivations?). Personally, I have not had any issues finding interesting folks to follow on Mastodon. Even though I started years ago on a completely fresh instance, I found some lists of recommended follows and started by following the ones who seemed interesting. The networking effect took it from there since following/interacting with those initial accounts surfaced more similar accounts to my server which I also chose to follow. Now my feed is full of cool stuff from the hundreds of accounts that I follow. Looking at the federated feed gives me an even more broad look at lots of things happening the the general fedi!
  - nequo 4y ago
    I really want to like Mastodon but there are two things that really bug me about it. First, searching for anything is very slow. Second, searching for people who are not on the same instance with me seems to return a lot of false negatives. The first may be a Ruby on Rails problem (although I am not sure), possibly exacerbated by the decentralized layout of Mastodon instances. The second seems to be a fundamental design problem. It seems to me that the original idea of Mastodon was that people would want to participate in communities that focus on specific themes. Many instances are aiming to serve people who are interested in one particular thing. Because of this, finding people and posts on other instances is harder. But reducing my interests to a single dimension is not how I used to use Twitter, so this is a major usability problem for me.
    - alkonaut 4y ago
proactivesvcs 4y ago
You can also paste the URL of any profile or post into the search bar to interact with it. Good way to see if a blog is ActivityPub-enabled.
ck2 4y ago
I'm curious to see what the adoption of BlueSky will be if ever available https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't. No need for censorship or filtering because you simply don't follow people you find offensive? No need for ads because it's your own app/data. The problem is there needs to be an edge cache of each post and storage/bandwidth isn't "free" (just cheap these days). The app/data is either entirely on your phone or browser. I guess the thing about twitter/facebook is people want "discovery" and to profit off it by self-promotion. So it's like those drones in the sky no-one asked for, it's someone being obnoxious for attention and profit. Just like usenet had its first spam sooner or later.
- colinsane 4y ago
  > I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't. comments. either you destroy UX, or you suffer intolerable levels of spam, or you roll your own pseudo captcha (“please enter the name of the original grass-type starter pokemon to comment”) that only works as long as your blog stays small and niche. and whatever you choose brings a bunch more hosting complexity compared to the low-barrier-to-entry static site generators so popular today.
  - ck2 4y ago
    Ah but that's because all models are "opt out" where you block someone afterwards. Instead make it "opt in" The same way people browse posts to respond to, people can browse people to allow comments. Friend requests and all that. In the current world, especially post-2016, there is a greater than 50% chance any person (or bot) openly allowed to comment without approval is going to offend. Unless you are in a closed community, in which case all the twitter models are unnecessary anyway.
    - mawise 4y ago
      Opt-in is key, thats how I made spam a non-issue on Haven[1]. And really it isnt anything super creative, anyone using an RSS reader for primary consumption gets the same benefits. [1] https://havenweb.org https://havenweb.org

62 points by Kye 4y ago

It would be better if this would be a bookmarklet and not a plugin. A plugin can read everything on every website you use. Your bank statements, your emails, which videos you watch on youtube, to whom you talk on Twitter and what you write with them, what you search on Google ... everything. A bookmarklet can only read what is on the page on which you invoke it.

Kye 4y ago
It seems like the bulk of it is only a few lines going by the GitHub. I don't know enough to know how to do it, but if you do, you might offer a bookmarklet version for privacy-conscious people as a pull request. https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation
- TekMol 4y ago
  Phew, there are so many files and lines in that repo. As far as I understand it, all that has to be done is something like: document.body.innerHTML.replace(/<some_regex>/,'<some_string>') Where <some_regex> matches strings of type @someone@someinstance.tld and '<some_string>' turns that into <a href=https://yourinstance/web/@someon@someinstance.tld>@someon@someinstance.tld</a>
BeefWellington 4y ago
Yeah, it's wild to me that no major browser vendor has moved to expand the permissions system to addons. We already have the system in place for things like Camera, Mic, and Location access. Why not extend that to anything an addon can do?
true_religion 4y ago
I thought plug-ins can be scoped to only work on a single domain or only work when you click them. It’s how I run grammerly, which is a descent enough grammar checker except I never want it to correct my chat posts, or GitHub comments.
- TekMol 4y ago
  I have never heard about such a restriction for plugins. And on the plugin page for Grammarly, it says it gets "Access your data for all websites": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/
  - jdiff 4y ago
    You've never seen the popups? If a WebExtension doesn't request access to all sites, it can only access sites that it's activated on by pressing the toolbar button (MDN refers to them as action buttons if you want to take a look). The problem is that most extensions that aren't site-specific are useful because they have access to all sites, but that doesn't mean that's a requirement of the system.
    - TekMol 4y ago
      Ok. Then it's probably that every time I looked at an extension it wanted access to any site.
- The_SamminAter 4y ago
  Heads up about Grammarly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470457
- maxltv 4y ago
  You can turn it off for specific sites (via Grammarly settings) OR you can turn it on only for specific sites (via browser settings). The process is different depending on whether you are using a browser extension or desktop integration. Here is an example for the browser extension: https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000091612-Turn-off-Grammarly-on-one-or-more-websites https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000091612...
mawise 4y ago
Is it possible for a bookmarklet to be able to find RSS autodiscovery[1] links? I've thought about building something like that but I've always been turned off by the "allow reading everything" permission. [1]: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
- TekMol 4y ago
  Sure. It's just an element in the DOM. Try this: javascript:url=document.querySelector('link[type="application/rss+xml"]')?.href ?? 'None'; alert("RSS found: "+url);{}
  - mawise 4y ago
    Slick, I'll have to think about that some.
imurray 4y ago
I've made a bookmarklet to toggle between the website for the instance you use and the one the post/user used: https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html It's maybe easier to just use a separate app though, and avoid the faff of separate webpages entirely.

alkonaut 4y ago

Someone should make a “is Mastodon Twitter yet” page. So many including me have tried and quit in frustration when the federation/server nonsense gets in the way of actually emulating a centralized Twitter clone.

jlkuester7 4y ago
I am curious what Twitter features you are missing in Mastodon? The only thing I can think of that I feel like many people expect is some kind if "curated" recommendations system (e.g. I only want to see content that is relevant to me). This, of course, is a double-edged sword at best (who gets to decide what content is recommended? What are their goals/motivations?). Personally, I have not had any issues finding interesting folks to follow on Mastodon. Even though I started years ago on a completely fresh instance, I found some lists of recommended follows and started by following the ones who seemed interesting. The networking effect took it from there since following/interacting with those initial accounts surfaced more similar accounts to my server which I also chose to follow. Now my feed is full of cool stuff from the hundreds of accounts that I follow. Looking at the federated feed gives me an even more broad look at lots of things happening the the general fedi!
- nequo 4y ago
  I really want to like Mastodon but there are two things that really bug me about it. First, searching for anything is very slow. Second, searching for people who are not on the same instance with me seems to return a lot of false negatives. The first may be a Ruby on Rails problem (although I am not sure), possibly exacerbated by the decentralized layout of Mastodon instances. The second seems to be a fundamental design problem. It seems to me that the original idea of Mastodon was that people would want to participate in communities that focus on specific themes. Many instances are aiming to serve people who are interested in one particular thing. Because of this, finding people and posts on other instances is harder. But reducing my interests to a single dimension is not how I used to use Twitter, so this is a major usability problem for me.
  - alkonaut 4y ago

proactivesvcs 4y ago

You can also paste the URL of any profile or post into the search bar to interact with it. Good way to see if a blog is ActivityPub-enabled.

ck2 4y ago

I'm curious to see what the adoption of BlueSky will be if ever available https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't. No need for censorship or filtering because you simply don't follow people you find offensive? No need for ads because it's your own app/data. The problem is there needs to be an edge cache of each post and storage/bandwidth isn't "free" (just cheap these days). The app/data is either entirely on your phone or browser. I guess the thing about twitter/facebook is people want "discovery" and to profit off it by self-promotion. So it's like those drones in the sky no-one asked for, it's someone being obnoxious for attention and profit. Just like usenet had its first spam sooner or later.

colinsane 4y ago
> I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't. comments. either you destroy UX, or you suffer intolerable levels of spam, or you roll your own pseudo captcha (“please enter the name of the original grass-type starter pokemon to comment”) that only works as long as your blog stays small and niche. and whatever you choose brings a bunch more hosting complexity compared to the low-barrier-to-entry static site generators so popular today.
- ck2 4y ago
  Ah but that's because all models are "opt out" where you block someone afterwards. Instead make it "opt in" The same way people browse posts to respond to, people can browse people to allow comments. Friend requests and all that. In the current world, especially post-2016, there is a greater than 50% chance any person (or bot) openly allowed to comment without approval is going to offend. Unless you are in a closed community, in which case all the twitter models are unnecessary anyway.
  - mawise 4y ago
    Opt-in is key, thats how I made spam a non-issue on Haven[1]. And really it isnt anything super creative, anyone using an RSS reader for primary consumption gets the same benefits. [1] https://havenweb.org https://havenweb.org