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Searchable List of Mastodon Servers

148 points by vyrotek 4y ago

ssdown 4y ago
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Does this list include controversial instances that have been defederated?
- socialismisok 4y ago
  The link is there, go try it and report back.
- bsagdiyev 4y ago
  Not sure why this is light grey ("downvoted") -- it's a legit question.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    I don't think it was downvoted because people think it's an illegitimate question, but because it's generally seen as an imposition on people's time to ask a question that could be readily answered by clicking through to the site in question and having a look. That is, after all, what anyone else would do in order to answer the question. (I didn't vote on this comment.)
    - bsagdiyev 4y ago
      Understood. I took it also as a statement, people seem to be up in arms about free speech and Twitter but from what I seen Mastodon will gladly announce their silencing of opinions which seem to be anything not democrat adjacent. As a squarely middle of the road voter why would I want to use something like Mastodon? Edit: fuck it maybe I'll setup an instance for people similar to me and see what happens. I don't buy fully in to either side and it's hard to find social groups that feel similarly.
      - yborg 4y ago
        >Mastodon is one person People really seem to completely miss the whole concept of a federated ecosystem, Mastodon is just a tool, like vBulletin, the whole point of it is that there isn't a "Mastodon" that announces things.
    - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
      Unless I already know what instances to look for, how could I search for them?
    - Normille 4y ago
      >it's generally seen as an imposition on people's time to ask a question that could be readily answered by clicking through to the site in question and having a look That's not going to help anyone know if there are other Mastodon servers out there, which aren't on the list. Unless that person is already aware of the existence of said server in the first place. Anyone remember when Gab had the biggest Mastodon instance by far, by user numbers, but all the Mastodon indexes were pretending it didn't even exist? The myth of the Fediverse as some libertarian promised land free from censorship and heavy handed control is just farcical.
      - commoner 4y ago
        Freedom of association is an essential part of freedom of speech, and is one of the core principles of libertarianism. One of the main features of Mastodon is that individual instances have the option to either federate with or reject other instances to curate the character of the community they want to build. Unlike Twitter, which puts everyone on a single instance, people on Mastodon can choose to be in a community of people with shared interests and values, hosted on an instance with rules that they agree with. The decentralization makes individual Mastodon instances more pleasant and less divisive to their users. Forcing instances to federate with others would be compelled speech, not free speech, and would take away from what makes Mastodon different from Twitter. In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would not be free speech. (Gab disabled federation, so it is not actually part of the fediverse anymore: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012558.) Gab still exists as a service running on free and open source code derived from Mastodon because Mastodon is AGPLv3. Anyone who wants to sign up for Gab can just do that.
        Normille 4y ago
        >In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would not be free speech... I think you're being a bit disingenuous talking about "forcing" sites to list Gab. If individual instances wanted to de-link from it that was their perogative. But I was talking abuot sites which claim to provide indexes of what Mastodon servers are out there --ignoring the biggest one by a considerable margin, because they didn't like the politics of the people who used it. I think if ypu're claiming to provide an index, it kind of behoves you to index everything you're supposed to be indexing. Not leave huge sections out because you don't like them. Imagine publishing a business directory where you didn't list the Jewish or black owned businesses... or printing a dictionary but leaving out all the words that began with a letter you didn't like. Yes. No-one who believes in free speech should be "forcing" you to make good those omissions. But they're prefectly entitled to question the value of your 'publication' if you don't.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  I've seen a couple "free speech" instances in the list, yes.
jrmg 4y ago
This highlights why I’m so far not on Mastodon: Decision fatigue. How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant - and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic? Maybe I should just join what seems to be the default (because of its friendly domain?) of http://mastodon.social http://mastodon.social. But that seems defeat the purpose of decentralization - and (without evidence) I don’t really trust that mastodon.social is set up to handle the huge influx of users at the moment…
- GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
  You also can't: - move your account to a different server - use your account as a sign-on for other ActivityPub based services - easily discover content that your server doesn't already know about
  - M2Ys4U 4y ago
    Your first point is wrong, you definitely can move your account to a new instance and take your followers with you.
    - kixiQu 4y ago
      https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move The docs, for anyone wondering.
      - GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
        That just moves followers, not the account, data, followings, posts, reputations, links to your account, etc.
        kixiQu 4y ago
        Moving the accounts you follow (and block/mute settings) is on that page under a different heading. Setting up a profile redirect is also on that page under a different heading. It is correct that moving posts/other data is not possible. "Reputations" isn't a thing technically attached to an account.
socialismisok 4y ago
Mastodon evokes feelings of "year of Linux desktop" in me. Yes, Linux is a great desktop but no, I don't think people are ready to just up and move. Mastodon is probably great, but I don't think people are ready to move there.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's a lot more usable than I thought it would be when I joined up. And it has a lot of features Twitter doesn't have that I really appreciate... The fact that I can use markdown is pretty great. I don't think it will be for everybody... The federated discoverability is going to be a turnoff for a lot of individuals. But it's well cleared the bar of of "this will be constant pain if you sign up."
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  I don't think Linux desktop has had its "Windows might implode and randomly shut down in the next year" moment yet. I can kind of see why Mastodon is getting discussed here again.
  - chc 4y ago
    Yeah, we don't have Nadella publicly screaming about how left-wing advertising execs are about to destroy Microsoft, begging celebrities for money, and laying off half the company with no warning. Twitter genuinely looks in need of replacement at the moment.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    That's fair. Musk is throwing a truly monumental, once in a century scale meltdown.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  It's not going to replace Twitter. It's just something else. But you're wrong about people being ready to move there. It's added 230k users in the last week, and in the last 24 hours in particular growth has started to look a bit exponential with just under 70k users being added, ~3000ish an hour. Despite the biggest server (mastodon.social) being overwhelmed and not being able to take new users. Growth right now is about as rapid as possible.
nixcraft 4y ago
It would be best if you had users and followers to broadcast messages. Right now, mastodon feels like a ghost town. But who knows? There was a time when MySpace was king. Only time will tell .. Also, Twitter works because of eyeballs. However, with so many Mastodon instances, people need to learn and find out who the real @nixcraft is. Sorry to say this, but I don't think so; we have an actual Twitter replacement right now. In another six months, someone might build it, or Elon will make it better or send it to /dev/null.
- berkes 4y ago
  If you feel strongly about claiming the real nixcraft, you can host your own instance at nixcraft.com. or get one for approx the price of that infamous blue-check. Only a person in control of nixcraft com can have an account like @nix@nixcraft.com. Something extremely powerful and for free through federation. E.g. journalists or politicians who "require" a validated checkmark, would benefit from their company or party having an instance.
- ay 4y ago
  We don’t have the replacement for AOL either. We have the internet instead. Things evolve. As for who the “real” @nixcraft is - how would I know it on Twitter ? The intuition is “first come first serve”, but you are one account hijack away from having to explain that actually @nixcraft is not the real one, despite claiming to be so, and actually @latest_nixcraft is the true yourself. You would probably do so in the other places that people know you own: your website, your email sig, your GitHub account, your HN profile. Same as you are doing right now. (I checked only the HN profile) With that method, what is the obstacle to adding the domain name after that handle ?
- yogthos 4y ago
  It's kind of weird to me to say that a platform with millions of users on it is a ghost town. I have both twitter and Mastodon accounts, and I find the opposite to be true. I have roughly the same number of followers on both platforms, and I find that I see far more interaction on Mastodon than I do on Twitter.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Kiro 4y ago
This is the reason Mastodon will never fly.
- yogthos 4y ago
  Yup, just like email never took off because people have a selection of mail server providers to choose from.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    Most internet users were given an email address with their service, for free, with no setup, care, feeding, or even a single iota of further thought required. If sending and receiving email back then required as much screwing around then as setting up Mastodon does today, do you think it would be as ubiquitous?
    - yogthos 4y ago
      Setting up email back in the day required far more screwing around than Mastodon does today, and despite that email continued to gain more and more traction until it became mainstream and even the most computer illiterate people were able to use it.
      - Karunamon 4y ago
        With all due respect: bullshit. Again, email accounts were provided for free with bog standard Internet service at least in the mid-90s which is the time I can speak to. Hell, my original ISP as part of the sign-up paperwork included instructions on how to log in with Outlook Express (alongside the instructions on how to configure Windows 95 dial-up networking). Nobody had to think about where they were registering or who they could reach. Email accounts were fungible. At no point did picking the wrong ISP as a dial-up customer functionally limit who I could email. Mastodon, and the Fediverse for that matter, is far more complicated.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Lets say email didn't exist, and instead it came out today, do you think there's a chance in hell it would succeed? Everything in the early days of the internet was difficult in one way or another. Trying to get grandma's AT string right so the modem wouldn't drop at 24000bps and getting the POP3 server was configured was a nightmare. It mostly got easier for the masses when webmail became a thing. But again, I think it would fall on its face if introduced now.
BryantD 4y ago
Should Mastodon fans just be phrasing this kind of choice as if it were email? "You can have an email account on any number of servers, and you can send email anywhere, no matter where your account is." "You can have a Mastodon account on whichever server you like, and you can follow people anywhere, no matter where your account is." It just seems like a paradigm people already understand that might be more welcoming.
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  That seems like a really nice way to do it. "You can sign up with one of these main instances and follow people no matter where their account is. If you find make a lot of friends in a specific corner of the Fediverse, or just want to switch to another instance, you can do so whenever you want."
- Normille 4y ago
  And, to continue the email analogy [in response to all the "Just change servers if you don't like the one you signed up for"] If you don't like your email provider, just change to a different one... Oh yeah. And you'll lose all your previous emails. But we won't mention that.
  - lrvick 4y ago
    Actually on Mastodon you can change servers and keep your followers and follows. It has a built in mail forwarding process.
    - BryantD 4y ago
      I don't think you can move your old posts, though, FWIW. But it's an analogy intended to help with the server selection process; I don't think it has to be perfect.
      - lrvick 4y ago
        You can use a script to download old toots and automatically repost them, backdated, to a new server. A lot of people do this when moving email servers.
allenu 4y ago
I feel like the fact that there are different servers out there has made zero difference in how I use mastodon. I follow some people and that's it. I hardly ever view the local feed. I suppose the problem is I didn't really shop around for a specific server that matched my needs, but when you're starting out, what do you even know what you're looking for? And how do you know what difference it will even make?
hobo_mark 4y ago
Since it's supposedly 'decentralized', and this is HN, what are the downsides to just hosting a private ActivityPub instance and following people from there? Plus my account would not be tied to someone else's instance (since I can take my domain and vps with me).
- Macha 4y ago
  Yes (apart from the instances which operate on a whitelist basis for federation)
- jrnichols 4y ago
  yes, you can most certainly do that.
- blep_ 4y ago
  I do this, and more people should. People on huge multi-user instances are completely missing the point of federation. The downsides are the usual sysadmin stuff that comes with running servers for anything. People also get excited about the instance-local timelines on multi-user instances, but again, that's completely missing the point.
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  I've run my own single-user instance since 2018 - the biggest downside is discoverability and community. Discoverability: With other users on the instance the federated timeline is populated by posts from users that others on your instance follow, so you have to follow people a bit more liberally to discover other posts. Community: Instances also have a local timeline, which shows posts from others on the instance and this gives each one a slightly different vibe. With a single-user instance it's just your posts! But either way, you can still interact with pretty much anybody else in the Fediverse, and once you're followed by a couple of people your posts will go out to the federated timelines of other instances and you'll get interactions via that.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  You can and should do this, if you have the time and energy to do so.
someNameIG 4y ago
Having the ability to teach for servers that allow illegal content is a really big put off.
defulmere 4y ago
On Twitter I've seen a lot of criticism of the whole idea of "choose a server" when joining Mastodon (and the fediverse in general). Instead of lists of servers, I wonder if a better onboarding workflow would be... - What username do you want? - What are your interests? (click, click, click) - Backend checks availability of username on matching servers - Pick one of these: @username@abc.social, @username@def.org, @username@xyz.social (with a description of the community associated with each result). In my opinion this could make the process feel more like choosing an email address which, again in my opinion, could be more familiar than "choose a server".
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  That's actually a fantastic idea, and I assume that the main barrier to implementing this isn't a technical one, but the coordination problem of getting enough instance admins to opt-in to appearing on this system, and finding some neutral third party to maintain it (potentially the same people as run this instances.social site). Splitting your user story into smaller tasks, it seems like the technical side could be implemented as follows: - An agreed API / JSON format / microformat for instances to list the top 3 user interests that distinguish them from other instances (ideally using Wikidata Q identifiers[0], to create a consistent cross-language taxonomy) and maybe a paragraph of text to give a fuller description of the community - An agreed API for checking whether a username is already taken on an instance (and maybe a standardised query string format supported by each instance, which allows a third party site to send their visitor to that instance in such a way that the visitor is presented with a sign-up page where the username box is already filled) - A site with a neutral domain name like "join the fediverse . party" (or just re-use instances.social if that's catchy enough), with the UX you describe - A way for new instance admins to submit their instance for inclusion (which triggers some automated checks like "is this instance online?" and "which parts of the fediverse does it federate with?") Actually the hard part is probably preventing Sybil-attacks, since some attacker could create millions of dummy instances that have only one user on (though the instances will no doubt lie and claim to have billions of users). Maybe there does need to be some cabal or union of instance admins who can be trusted to give estimates for how many genuine users are probably on the smaller instances they federate with (reporting "0" or "negative infinity" for instances which they block). [0] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43649390 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43649390
linsomniac 4y ago
Another option: Sign up at masto.host for $6/mo and run your own instance, they rate that as good for up to 5 active users, so you could even invite some family or friends. I almost went that route, but someone I knew did that and invited me to join theirs. Review: It has been speedy. https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/
- mdaEyebot 4y ago
  Is it really too much to ask for people to host their own content on a cheap VPS? Wouldn't that neatly solve the content moderation problem? You register your server on an index or two, and you choose what your server will publish and accept. Each user would be responsible for finding a hosting provider who doesn't have a problem with what you post, and problematic content reports would go right to the hosting providers. The indexers could basically be DNS for usernames. The AWS free tier would cover 99% of people, and between VNC and web UIs, you wouldn't necessarily need them to ever touch a shell. Plus, requiring a reasonably consistent public IP address would help to cut down on bulk spam.
  - mabcat 4y ago
    For sure it's too much to ask. Get started on Twitter: 1. go to twitter.com 2. enter your name and phone number Get started on Pleroma: https://docs.pleroma.social/backend/installation/debian_based_en/ https://docs.pleroma.social/backend/installation/debian_base... Get started on Mastodon: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/ [page 1 of 12] For the full effect, do the install with an iPhone.
    - mdaEyebot 4y ago
      Does it sound elitist to say that maybe a small barrier to entry could make for better quality social networks? Especially if the tradeoff was giving users more creative control over their spaces? I guess you wouldn't get billions in ad revenue that way, but your expenses could be miniscule, and isn't it possible that a rapacious profit motive is part of the core problem with Meta, Twitter, & co? Or are there really too few people in the world who could figure out how to log into a <$5/mo cloud VM?
remram 4y ago
This lists a lot of instances that are not accepting new accounts. I am not sure how useful that is.
schoen 4y ago
As other people have said, it's kind of scary to think about getting an account somewhere and not understanding that that "place" has a specific culture or political orientation that ends up making me a bad fit for it in a way I didn't understand. And I guess imagine there are some potentially significant incentive problems about the way that instances talk about themselves and their communities. How does the federation part work in practice when people run their own instances?
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  Most people don't (and won't) run their own instances, either because they lack the skills or resources (including time).
skybrian 4y ago
Filtering on policy is somewhat useful. How long ago it launched, whether the software is up-to-date, uptime, latency, and what datacenter the server is running in would be signals of whether the sysadmin is serious about maintaining the server. (Weak signals, but better than nothing.) Also, who is the admin? Are they anonymous? On my third server now. After the first two stopped working, I decided to stick with mastodon.social.
mattkevan 4y ago
Mastodon is interesting as like a lot of open-source projects it focuses on solving a technical problem over a user-experience problem. And it’s why, even if Elon drives Twitter into a ditch, like a Tesla on FSD, it’ll never become the replacement. The problem being solved with Mastodon is ‘like Twitter but open source and without central control’. Federated! Decentralised! Instances! Great for people who are interested in that sort of thing, but I can guarantee that most Twitter users couldn’t give two shits about any of that, just as they don’t care about Twitter’s infrastructure. Things people do care about are ease of use (do I have to spend more time thinking about how to post than what to post?) and audience (are there things to see and will my stuff be seen?). With Twitter the answers are clear, but with Mastodon the emphasis on solving a particular architecture problem has led to a host of usability issues that each add friction to the experience. People who care about federation and ownership and all that may be willing to push through, but I’m not sure most would.
- ncr100 4y ago
  MD is irritating in the wrong ways, agreed. Federation functionality is cool and needs to be built upon. Twitter is irritating in the right way. In addition to posts w/ multimedia it has "identity", threading, boosting, and manual+auto moderation.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I am liking Mastodon a lot, and digging the general vibe and liking the smaller server I'm on. But can't help but feel that we're just a bit of time and marketing away from somebody "professional" coming along and creating a massive instance that federates into it, and tries to fill the Twitter niche more directly. Mastodon.social got overwhelmed, and it's interesting that there's nothing else to fill that niche of "I don't care which server, I just want to be where the crowd is" Maybe some ex-Twitter employees should fork Mastodon and go from there?
r2222 4y ago
I don’t understand what’s the point to this federation thing, other than to offer bad user experince. Shouldn’t “decentralized” be like the number 30 in the long list of things a popular/fun social platform should aspire for, not the number one? I swear I’ve tried to find an instance but either the focus of the instance is too specific, has only couple dozen people, or doesn’t accept new members because there’s too much of them.
- pandemicsoul 4y ago
  Mastodon was not made for the moment when Twitter collapsed. It was made as an alternative to (a fully working) Twitter for people who hated the toxic environment. So all of their marketing materials and onboarding process are geared toward helping the kinds of people who transition off Twitter to understand the benefits. Now that Mastodon is being portrayed by the media as the escape hatch from Twitter for a broader audience, they'll probably start focusing more on making the onboarding process clearer and their marketing less techy-focused.
  - r2222 4y ago
    Yeah I understand that now. I’ve learned a lot about Mastodon in these days and it’s not that bad really. I just had this choice-paralysis as I had this idea that I’d have to pick ONE and that’s it. Kinda like if when joining Reddit you’d have to pick just one subreddit and stick with it. The big revelation was that it doesn’t matter that much.

148 points by vyrotek 4y ago

ssdown 4y ago

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

Does this list include controversial instances that have been defederated?

socialismisok 4y ago
The link is there, go try it and report back.
bsagdiyev 4y ago
Not sure why this is light grey ("downvoted") -- it's a legit question.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I don't think it was downvoted because people think it's an illegitimate question, but because it's generally seen as an imposition on people's time to ask a question that could be readily answered by clicking through to the site in question and having a look. That is, after all, what anyone else would do in order to answer the question. (I didn't vote on this comment.)
  - bsagdiyev 4y ago
    Understood. I took it also as a statement, people seem to be up in arms about free speech and Twitter but from what I seen Mastodon will gladly announce their silencing of opinions which seem to be anything not democrat adjacent. As a squarely middle of the road voter why would I want to use something like Mastodon? Edit: fuck it maybe I'll setup an instance for people similar to me and see what happens. I don't buy fully in to either side and it's hard to find social groups that feel similarly.
    - yborg 4y ago
      >Mastodon is one person People really seem to completely miss the whole concept of a federated ecosystem, Mastodon is just a tool, like vBulletin, the whole point of it is that there isn't a "Mastodon" that announces things.
  - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Unless I already know what instances to look for, how could I search for them?
  - Normille 4y ago
    >it's generally seen as an imposition on people's time to ask a question that could be readily answered by clicking through to the site in question and having a look That's not going to help anyone know if there are other Mastodon servers out there, which aren't on the list. Unless that person is already aware of the existence of said server in the first place. Anyone remember when Gab had the biggest Mastodon instance by far, by user numbers, but all the Mastodon indexes were pretending it didn't even exist? The myth of the Fediverse as some libertarian promised land free from censorship and heavy handed control is just farcical.
    - commoner 4y ago
      Freedom of association is an essential part of freedom of speech, and is one of the core principles of libertarianism. One of the main features of Mastodon is that individual instances have the option to either federate with or reject other instances to curate the character of the community they want to build. Unlike Twitter, which puts everyone on a single instance, people on Mastodon can choose to be in a community of people with shared interests and values, hosted on an instance with rules that they agree with. The decentralization makes individual Mastodon instances more pleasant and less divisive to their users. Forcing instances to federate with others would be compelled speech, not free speech, and would take away from what makes Mastodon different from Twitter. In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would not be free speech. (Gab disabled federation, so it is not actually part of the fediverse anymore: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012558.) Gab still exists as a service running on free and open source code derived from Mastodon because Mastodon is AGPLv3. Anyone who wants to sign up for Gab can just do that.
      - Normille 4y ago
        >In the same way, forcing any website to list Gab would not be free speech... I think you're being a bit disingenuous talking about "forcing" sites to list Gab. If individual instances wanted to de-link from it that was their perogative. But I was talking abuot sites which claim to provide indexes of what Mastodon servers are out there --ignoring the biggest one by a considerable margin, because they didn't like the politics of the people who used it. I think if ypu're claiming to provide an index, it kind of behoves you to index everything you're supposed to be indexing. Not leave huge sections out because you don't like them. Imagine publishing a business directory where you didn't list the Jewish or black owned businesses... or printing a dictionary but leaving out all the words that began with a letter you didn't like. Yes. No-one who believes in free speech should be "forcing" you to make good those omissions. But they're prefectly entitled to question the value of your 'publication' if you don't.
Cyberdog 4y ago
I've seen a couple "free speech" instances in the list, yes.

jrmg 4y ago

This highlights why I’m so far not on Mastodon: Decision fatigue. How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant - and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic? Maybe I should just join what seems to be the default (because of its friendly domain?) of http://mastodon.social http://mastodon.social. But that seems defeat the purpose of decentralization - and (without evidence) I don’t really trust that mastodon.social is set up to handle the huge influx of users at the moment…

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
You also can't: - move your account to a different server - use your account as a sign-on for other ActivityPub based services - easily discover content that your server doesn't already know about
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  Your first point is wrong, you definitely can move your account to a new instance and take your followers with you.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move The docs, for anyone wondering.
    - GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
      That just moves followers, not the account, data, followings, posts, reputations, links to your account, etc.
      - kixiQu 4y ago
        Moving the accounts you follow (and block/mute settings) is on that page under a different heading. Setting up a profile redirect is also on that page under a different heading. It is correct that moving posts/other data is not possible. "Reputations" isn't a thing technically attached to an account.

socialismisok 4y ago

Mastodon evokes feelings of "year of Linux desktop" in me. Yes, Linux is a great desktop but no, I don't think people are ready to just up and move. Mastodon is probably great, but I don't think people are ready to move there.

shadowgovt 4y ago
It's a lot more usable than I thought it would be when I joined up. And it has a lot of features Twitter doesn't have that I really appreciate... The fact that I can use markdown is pretty great. I don't think it will be for everybody... The federated discoverability is going to be a turnoff for a lot of individuals. But it's well cleared the bar of of "this will be constant pain if you sign up."
emptyparadise 4y ago
I don't think Linux desktop has had its "Windows might implode and randomly shut down in the next year" moment yet. I can kind of see why Mastodon is getting discussed here again.
- chc 4y ago
  Yeah, we don't have Nadella publicly screaming about how left-wing advertising execs are about to destroy Microsoft, begging celebrities for money, and laying off half the company with no warning. Twitter genuinely looks in need of replacement at the moment.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  That's fair. Musk is throwing a truly monumental, once in a century scale meltdown.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It's not going to replace Twitter. It's just something else. But you're wrong about people being ready to move there. It's added 230k users in the last week, and in the last 24 hours in particular growth has started to look a bit exponential with just under 70k users being added, ~3000ish an hour. Despite the biggest server (mastodon.social) being overwhelmed and not being able to take new users. Growth right now is about as rapid as possible.

nixcraft 4y ago

It would be best if you had users and followers to broadcast messages. Right now, mastodon feels like a ghost town. But who knows? There was a time when MySpace was king. Only time will tell .. Also, Twitter works because of eyeballs. However, with so many Mastodon instances, people need to learn and find out who the real @nixcraft is. Sorry to say this, but I don't think so; we have an actual Twitter replacement right now. In another six months, someone might build it, or Elon will make it better or send it to /dev/null.

berkes 4y ago
If you feel strongly about claiming the real nixcraft, you can host your own instance at nixcraft.com. or get one for approx the price of that infamous blue-check. Only a person in control of nixcraft com can have an account like @nix@nixcraft.com. Something extremely powerful and for free through federation. E.g. journalists or politicians who "require" a validated checkmark, would benefit from their company or party having an instance.
ay 4y ago
We don’t have the replacement for AOL either. We have the internet instead. Things evolve. As for who the “real” @nixcraft is - how would I know it on Twitter ? The intuition is “first come first serve”, but you are one account hijack away from having to explain that actually @nixcraft is not the real one, despite claiming to be so, and actually @latest_nixcraft is the true yourself. You would probably do so in the other places that people know you own: your website, your email sig, your GitHub account, your HN profile. Same as you are doing right now. (I checked only the HN profile) With that method, what is the obstacle to adding the domain name after that handle ?
yogthos 4y ago
It's kind of weird to me to say that a platform with millions of users on it is a ghost town. I have both twitter and Mastodon accounts, and I find the opposite to be true. I have roughly the same number of followers on both platforms, and I find that I see far more interaction on Mastodon than I do on Twitter.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Kiro 4y ago

This is the reason Mastodon will never fly.

yogthos 4y ago
Yup, just like email never took off because people have a selection of mail server providers to choose from.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  Most internet users were given an email address with their service, for free, with no setup, care, feeding, or even a single iota of further thought required. If sending and receiving email back then required as much screwing around then as setting up Mastodon does today, do you think it would be as ubiquitous?
  - yogthos 4y ago
    Setting up email back in the day required far more screwing around than Mastodon does today, and despite that email continued to gain more and more traction until it became mainstream and even the most computer illiterate people were able to use it.
    - Karunamon 4y ago
      With all due respect: bullshit. Again, email accounts were provided for free with bog standard Internet service at least in the mid-90s which is the time I can speak to. Hell, my original ISP as part of the sign-up paperwork included instructions on how to log in with Outlook Express (alongside the instructions on how to configure Windows 95 dial-up networking). Nobody had to think about where they were registering or who they could reach. Email accounts were fungible. At no point did picking the wrong ISP as a dial-up customer functionally limit who I could email. Mastodon, and the Fediverse for that matter, is far more complicated.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Lets say email didn't exist, and instead it came out today, do you think there's a chance in hell it would succeed? Everything in the early days of the internet was difficult in one way or another. Trying to get grandma's AT string right so the modem wouldn't drop at 24000bps and getting the POP3 server was configured was a nightmare. It mostly got easier for the masses when webmail became a thing. But again, I think it would fall on its face if introduced now.

BryantD 4y ago

Should Mastodon fans just be phrasing this kind of choice as if it were email? "You can have an email account on any number of servers, and you can send email anywhere, no matter where your account is." "You can have a Mastodon account on whichever server you like, and you can follow people anywhere, no matter where your account is." It just seems like a paradigm people already understand that might be more welcoming.

emptyparadise 4y ago
That seems like a really nice way to do it. "You can sign up with one of these main instances and follow people no matter where their account is. If you find make a lot of friends in a specific corner of the Fediverse, or just want to switch to another instance, you can do so whenever you want."
Normille 4y ago
And, to continue the email analogy [in response to all the "Just change servers if you don't like the one you signed up for"] If you don't like your email provider, just change to a different one... Oh yeah. And you'll lose all your previous emails. But we won't mention that.
- lrvick 4y ago
  Actually on Mastodon you can change servers and keep your followers and follows. It has a built in mail forwarding process.
  - BryantD 4y ago
    I don't think you can move your old posts, though, FWIW. But it's an analogy intended to help with the server selection process; I don't think it has to be perfect.
    - lrvick 4y ago
      You can use a script to download old toots and automatically repost them, backdated, to a new server. A lot of people do this when moving email servers.

allenu 4y ago

I feel like the fact that there are different servers out there has made zero difference in how I use mastodon. I follow some people and that's it. I hardly ever view the local feed. I suppose the problem is I didn't really shop around for a specific server that matched my needs, but when you're starting out, what do you even know what you're looking for? And how do you know what difference it will even make?

hobo_mark 4y ago

Since it's supposedly 'decentralized', and this is HN, what are the downsides to just hosting a private ActivityPub instance and following people from there? Plus my account would not be tied to someone else's instance (since I can take my domain and vps with me).

Macha 4y ago
Yes (apart from the instances which operate on a whitelist basis for federation)
jrnichols 4y ago
yes, you can most certainly do that.
blep_ 4y ago
I do this, and more people should. People on huge multi-user instances are completely missing the point of federation. The downsides are the usual sysadmin stuff that comes with running servers for anything. People also get excited about the instance-local timelines on multi-user instances, but again, that's completely missing the point.
M2Ys4U 4y ago
I've run my own single-user instance since 2018 - the biggest downside is discoverability and community. Discoverability: With other users on the instance the federated timeline is populated by posts from users that others on your instance follow, so you have to follow people a bit more liberally to discover other posts. Community: Instances also have a local timeline, which shows posts from others on the instance and this gives each one a slightly different vibe. With a single-user instance it's just your posts! But either way, you can still interact with pretty much anybody else in the Fediverse, and once you're followed by a couple of people your posts will go out to the federated timelines of other instances and you'll get interactions via that.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
You can and should do this, if you have the time and energy to do so.

someNameIG 4y ago

Having the ability to teach for servers that allow illegal content is a really big put off.

defulmere 4y ago

On Twitter I've seen a lot of criticism of the whole idea of "choose a server" when joining Mastodon (and the fediverse in general). Instead of lists of servers, I wonder if a better onboarding workflow would be... - What username do you want? - What are your interests? (click, click, click) - Backend checks availability of username on matching servers - Pick one of these: @username@abc.social, @username@def.org, @username@xyz.social (with a description of the community associated with each result). In my opinion this could make the process feel more like choosing an email address which, again in my opinion, could be more familiar than "choose a server".

dane-pgp 4y ago
That's actually a fantastic idea, and I assume that the main barrier to implementing this isn't a technical one, but the coordination problem of getting enough instance admins to opt-in to appearing on this system, and finding some neutral third party to maintain it (potentially the same people as run this instances.social site). Splitting your user story into smaller tasks, it seems like the technical side could be implemented as follows: - An agreed API / JSON format / microformat for instances to list the top 3 user interests that distinguish them from other instances (ideally using Wikidata Q identifiers[0], to create a consistent cross-language taxonomy) and maybe a paragraph of text to give a fuller description of the community - An agreed API for checking whether a username is already taken on an instance (and maybe a standardised query string format supported by each instance, which allows a third party site to send their visitor to that instance in such a way that the visitor is presented with a sign-up page where the username box is already filled) - A site with a neutral domain name like "join the fediverse . party" (or just re-use instances.social if that's catchy enough), with the UX you describe - A way for new instance admins to submit their instance for inclusion (which triggers some automated checks like "is this instance online?" and "which parts of the fediverse does it federate with?") Actually the hard part is probably preventing Sybil-attacks, since some attacker could create millions of dummy instances that have only one user on (though the instances will no doubt lie and claim to have billions of users). Maybe there does need to be some cabal or union of instance admins who can be trusted to give estimates for how many genuine users are probably on the smaller instances they federate with (reporting "0" or "negative infinity" for instances which they block). [0] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43649390 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43649390

linsomniac 4y ago

Another option: Sign up at masto.host for $6/mo and run your own instance, they rate that as good for up to 5 active users, so you could even invite some family or friends. I almost went that route, but someone I knew did that and invited me to join theirs. Review: It has been speedy. https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/

mdaEyebot 4y ago
Is it really too much to ask for people to host their own content on a cheap VPS? Wouldn't that neatly solve the content moderation problem? You register your server on an index or two, and you choose what your server will publish and accept. Each user would be responsible for finding a hosting provider who doesn't have a problem with what you post, and problematic content reports would go right to the hosting providers. The indexers could basically be DNS for usernames. The AWS free tier would cover 99% of people, and between VNC and web UIs, you wouldn't necessarily need them to ever touch a shell. Plus, requiring a reasonably consistent public IP address would help to cut down on bulk spam.
- mabcat 4y ago
  For sure it's too much to ask. Get started on Twitter: 1. go to twitter.com 2. enter your name and phone number Get started on Pleroma: https://docs.pleroma.social/backend/installation/debian_based_en/ https://docs.pleroma.social/backend/installation/debian_base... Get started on Mastodon: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/ [page 1 of 12] For the full effect, do the install with an iPhone.
  - mdaEyebot 4y ago
    Does it sound elitist to say that maybe a small barrier to entry could make for better quality social networks? Especially if the tradeoff was giving users more creative control over their spaces? I guess you wouldn't get billions in ad revenue that way, but your expenses could be miniscule, and isn't it possible that a rapacious profit motive is part of the core problem with Meta, Twitter, & co? Or are there really too few people in the world who could figure out how to log into a <$5/mo cloud VM?

remram 4y ago

This lists a lot of instances that are not accepting new accounts. I am not sure how useful that is.

schoen 4y ago

As other people have said, it's kind of scary to think about getting an account somewhere and not understanding that that "place" has a specific culture or political orientation that ends up making me a bad fit for it in a way I didn't understand. And I guess imagine there are some potentially significant incentive problems about the way that instances talk about themselves and their communities. How does the federation part work in practice when people run their own instances?

M2Ys4U 4y ago
Most people don't (and won't) run their own instances, either because they lack the skills or resources (including time).

skybrian 4y ago

Filtering on policy is somewhat useful. How long ago it launched, whether the software is up-to-date, uptime, latency, and what datacenter the server is running in would be signals of whether the sysadmin is serious about maintaining the server. (Weak signals, but better than nothing.) Also, who is the admin? Are they anonymous? On my third server now. After the first two stopped working, I decided to stick with mastodon.social.

mattkevan 4y ago

Mastodon is interesting as like a lot of open-source projects it focuses on solving a technical problem over a user-experience problem. And it’s why, even if Elon drives Twitter into a ditch, like a Tesla on FSD, it’ll never become the replacement. The problem being solved with Mastodon is ‘like Twitter but open source and without central control’. Federated! Decentralised! Instances! Great for people who are interested in that sort of thing, but I can guarantee that most Twitter users couldn’t give two shits about any of that, just as they don’t care about Twitter’s infrastructure. Things people do care about are ease of use (do I have to spend more time thinking about how to post than what to post?) and audience (are there things to see and will my stuff be seen?). With Twitter the answers are clear, but with Mastodon the emphasis on solving a particular architecture problem has led to a host of usability issues that each add friction to the experience. People who care about federation and ownership and all that may be willing to push through, but I’m not sure most would.

ncr100 4y ago
MD is irritating in the wrong ways, agreed. Federation functionality is cool and needs to be built upon. Twitter is irritating in the right way. In addition to posts w/ multimedia it has "identity", threading, boosting, and manual+auto moderation.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I am liking Mastodon a lot, and digging the general vibe and liking the smaller server I'm on. But can't help but feel that we're just a bit of time and marketing away from somebody "professional" coming along and creating a massive instance that federates into it, and tries to fill the Twitter niche more directly. Mastodon.social got overwhelmed, and it's interesting that there's nothing else to fill that niche of "I don't care which server, I just want to be where the crowd is" Maybe some ex-Twitter employees should fork Mastodon and go from there?

r2222 4y ago

I don’t understand what’s the point to this federation thing, other than to offer bad user experince. Shouldn’t “decentralized” be like the number 30 in the long list of things a popular/fun social platform should aspire for, not the number one? I swear I’ve tried to find an instance but either the focus of the instance is too specific, has only couple dozen people, or doesn’t accept new members because there’s too much of them.

pandemicsoul 4y ago
Mastodon was not made for the moment when Twitter collapsed. It was made as an alternative to (a fully working) Twitter for people who hated the toxic environment. So all of their marketing materials and onboarding process are geared toward helping the kinds of people who transition off Twitter to understand the benefits. Now that Mastodon is being portrayed by the media as the escape hatch from Twitter for a broader audience, they'll probably start focusing more on making the onboarding process clearer and their marketing less techy-focused.
- r2222 4y ago
  Yeah I understand that now. I’ve learned a lot about Mastodon in these days and it’s not that bad really. I just had this choice-paralysis as I had this idea that I’d have to pick ONE and that’s it. Kinda like if when joining Reddit you’d have to pick just one subreddit and stick with it. The big revelation was that it doesn’t matter that much.