4 ms·

So if user A signs up on instance A, they can follow instance B and interact with users on instance B? Effectively, if you follow enough instances, it would lo

by robswc 4y ago

So if user A signs up on instance A, they can follow instance B and interact with users on instance B? Effectively, if you follow enough instances, it would look/feel like twitter? In the sense that you get a feed of interesting content from multiple users?

BeetleB 4y ago
Yep. The one major difference is you cannot "subscribe" to a hashtag. You can do a hashtag view, but it will be limited to all the toots on your server (which I believe includes all the toots people in other servers that folks on your server have subscribed to).
- robswc 4y ago
  Makes sense. I never really subscribed to hashtags in the first place. Always seem to be filled with spam. On twitter, I just follow a few interesting people and they'll usually tweet or retweet interesting stuff, so it works out.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    > I never really subscribed to hashtags in the first place. They're useful for limited, local current events. As an example, there was a sudden bush fire near my relative's house, and it was convenient to be able to track all the tweets tied to that hashtag to get the latest updates. For events like this, the local news media has only a tiny fraction of the (mis)information. You get a lot more (mis)information by following the hashtag.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Will that not become extremely resource-intensive once a server grows a bit and federates with other larger servers? E.g. you have 5000 users and they follow some other 50k users (each one following 10 people feels low, but I have no idea), you're now locally saving the twoots of 50000 users. And this is the same for every server, or is there kind of a synergy between federated servers?
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    Yes. This is why mastodon.social does not have the federated timelines, and why the feature is totally absent from the official mobile apps. Eugen (who created mastodon) has been trying to ditch the feature, which I think is a huge mistake. Almost every other server keeps it on, because it's a great part of what makes the fediverse special
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  You can subscribe to a hashtag in the newest version: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.0.0rc1 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.0.0rc1
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    There's a reason I put quotes around the word "subscribe". In current Mastodon, there is no subscribing of a hashtag - only searching. My belief is that in the newest version, you can subscribe, but it's still not global. Essentially it just saves you from doing an explicit search and adds it to your feed. So if someone posts a toot in some distant instance with a certain hashtag, it may still not show up in my feed.
matsemann 4y ago
I feel the easiest explanation is that it's like e-mail. You can send and receive from mostly anyone, even though they might use different providers. Like gmail or fastmail. But even though you have a gmail account, you don't use it to log into fastmail when talking with fastmail users.
- robswc 4y ago
  Makes a lot of sense. So if someone said "look at this cool OSS I created." You would be able to comment and see other's comments like a typical comment section?
  - OscarCunningham 4y ago
    Yes.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Yes, across all instances that your instance federates with. If your instance dislikes the policy of the other instance, e.g. because the other instance hasn't cancelled the right people, they might refuse to federate with it (and the other way around), and then you won't see those toots. Also, some instances will defederate any instance that itself federates with the "wrong" instances, sometimes forcing an instance to choose between letting others dictate its federation policy or having their users lose access to others they're following.
- robswc 4y ago
  At first I thought this wasn't a huge deal... it would be like having a bad experience with twitter moderation but now I'm thinking... in that case, you'll have to "choose" your first server pretty carefully then? Maybe I have a misunderstanding but I can't imagine convincing something like that on reddit or discord would go over well at all. Who and what you interact with can be changed by the whims of discord/reddit mods. Some even go so far as to craft tools/bots to extend their "power" to allow them to ban users across subs. This doesn't make it so you can't see the other users entirely though. What if you join on "gaming" and it turns out the admin of "gaming" is a huge d-bag and all the other instances decide to not federate with "gaming" ? Will you have to recreate your entire account? I could still be misunderstanding... but it seems like as time goes on, the chances of admins/mods having some ridiculous drama approaches 1. At least as far as discord and reddit have gone. Just look at the whole antiwork thing. Drama and struggles within the same subreddit, let alone different ones.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    > What if you join on "gaming" and it turns out the admin of "gaming" is a huge d-bag and all the other instances decide to not federate with "gaming" ? Will you have to recreate your entire account? Not entirely, you can migrate to a new instance. This of course depends on the old instance still being around (as that's where your account lives until you choose to migrate it), and on your account still being accessible (so hopefully you're not banned from it) but it's an option. Your followers get migrated over but your posts do not. So you do need to have some level of trust in the instance, but it's not necessarily a final decision.
rolenthedeep 4y ago
Almost every server except mastodon.social exposes local and federated timelines. The local timeline is the real time feed of all activity exclusively on your instance. Federated timeline shows the local timeline plus the public feeds of any account that someone on your instance is following. With enough users on an instance, the federated feed shows you a good chunk of the entire fediverse traffic. It's one of the best ways to find new and interesting accounts to follow

by robswc 4y ago

BeetleB 4y ago

Yep. The one major difference is you cannot "subscribe" to a hashtag. You can do a hashtag view, but it will be limited to all the toots on your server (which I believe includes all the toots people in other servers that folks on your server have subscribed to).

robswc 4y ago
Makes sense. I never really subscribed to hashtags in the first place. Always seem to be filled with spam. On twitter, I just follow a few interesting people and they'll usually tweet or retweet interesting stuff, so it works out.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > I never really subscribed to hashtags in the first place. They're useful for limited, local current events. As an example, there was a sudden bush fire near my relative's house, and it was convenient to be able to track all the tweets tied to that hashtag to get the latest updates. For events like this, the local news media has only a tiny fraction of the (mis)information. You get a lot more (mis)information by following the hashtag.
luckylion 4y ago
Will that not become extremely resource-intensive once a server grows a bit and federates with other larger servers? E.g. you have 5000 users and they follow some other 50k users (each one following 10 people feels low, but I have no idea), you're now locally saving the twoots of 50000 users. And this is the same for every server, or is there kind of a synergy between federated servers?
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Yes. This is why mastodon.social does not have the federated timelines, and why the feature is totally absent from the official mobile apps. Eugen (who created mastodon) has been trying to ditch the feature, which I think is a huge mistake. Almost every other server keeps it on, because it's a great part of what makes the fediverse special
OscarCunningham 4y ago
You can subscribe to a hashtag in the newest version: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.0.0rc1 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.0.0rc1
- BeetleB 4y ago
  There's a reason I put quotes around the word "subscribe". In current Mastodon, there is no subscribing of a hashtag - only searching. My belief is that in the newest version, you can subscribe, but it's still not global. Essentially it just saves you from doing an explicit search and adds it to your feed. So if someone posts a toot in some distant instance with a certain hashtag, it may still not show up in my feed.

matsemann 4y ago

I feel the easiest explanation is that it's like e-mail. You can send and receive from mostly anyone, even though they might use different providers. Like gmail or fastmail. But even though you have a gmail account, you don't use it to log into fastmail when talking with fastmail users.

robswc 4y ago
Makes a lot of sense. So if someone said "look at this cool OSS I created." You would be able to comment and see other's comments like a typical comment section?
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  Yes.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

Yes, across all instances that your instance federates with. If your instance dislikes the policy of the other instance, e.g. because the other instance hasn't cancelled the right people, they might refuse to federate with it (and the other way around), and then you won't see those toots. Also, some instances will defederate any instance that itself federates with the "wrong" instances, sometimes forcing an instance to choose between letting others dictate its federation policy or having their users lose access to others they're following.

robswc 4y ago
At first I thought this wasn't a huge deal... it would be like having a bad experience with twitter moderation but now I'm thinking... in that case, you'll have to "choose" your first server pretty carefully then? Maybe I have a misunderstanding but I can't imagine convincing something like that on reddit or discord would go over well at all. Who and what you interact with can be changed by the whims of discord/reddit mods. Some even go so far as to craft tools/bots to extend their "power" to allow them to ban users across subs. This doesn't make it so you can't see the other users entirely though. What if you join on "gaming" and it turns out the admin of "gaming" is a huge d-bag and all the other instances decide to not federate with "gaming" ? Will you have to recreate your entire account? I could still be misunderstanding... but it seems like as time goes on, the chances of admins/mods having some ridiculous drama approaches 1. At least as far as discord and reddit have gone. Just look at the whole antiwork thing. Drama and struggles within the same subreddit, let alone different ones.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  > What if you join on "gaming" and it turns out the admin of "gaming" is a huge d-bag and all the other instances decide to not federate with "gaming" ? Will you have to recreate your entire account? Not entirely, you can migrate to a new instance. This of course depends on the old instance still being around (as that's where your account lives until you choose to migrate it), and on your account still being accessible (so hopefully you're not banned from it) but it's an option. Your followers get migrated over but your posts do not. So you do need to have some level of trust in the instance, but it's not necessarily a final decision.

rolenthedeep 4y ago

Almost every server except mastodon.social exposes local and federated timelines. The local timeline is the real time feed of all activity exclusively on your instance. Federated timeline shows the local timeline plus the public feeds of any account that someone on your instance is following. With enough users on an instance, the federated feed shows you a good chunk of the entire fediverse traffic. It's one of the best ways to find new and interesting accounts to follow