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All of his complaints are intentional. * There is intentionally no global search. Mastodon is about conversation among people, not about searching out every si
by joecot 4y ago
All of his complaints are intentional.
* There is intentionally no global search. Mastodon is about conversation among people, not about searching out every single person in the entire fediverse who mentions your name or a topic you want to argue about so you can argue with them.
* Mastodon instances can intentionally choose to not federate with other instances. This is why, even though people regularly bring up that there are servers full of Nazis on Mastodon, you never see them. Because everyone blocked their instances. Everyone blocks The Gab immediately for example. If someone on an instance is harassing people, the first step is to report them to their instance admin. If they don't take any action, the next step is to defederate from that instance because they don't have the level of moderation safety your instance expects. Defederating is what keeps out harassment and trolls, because the instances that don't moderate them get iced out of the Fediverse. But it is not, as described, a situation where one instance "Doesn't Like" another. Harassment ~= "Doesn't Like." There might be a few who defederate with that little reason, but not the vast majority.
* Sure, the small instances are an old server in someone's basement. There are also massive instances with many servers and redundancies. You can also get a managed Mastodon instance. You could also run an instance for just you on a Raspberry Pi. Your choice whether you put it in the basement or your living room.
* I'm surprised he didn't also mention a lack of quote tweets, but that's also intentional.[1]
All these complaints come down to: join an instance that runs how you want it. Join one with text search or not. Join one with strong or no moderation (but with no moderation, expect it is isolated from many other instances). Join a small instance in someone's basement or a big one with a huge patreon. Or just put up your own, in your own basement, at a host, or managed.
Or just don't join mastodon. Don't tell people to quit having fun because you choose not to understand it.
1. https://scott.mn/2022/10/29/twitter_features_mastodon_is_better_without/ https://scott.mn/2022/10/29/twitter_features_mastodon_is_bet...
- zach_garwood 4y ago> Don't tell people to quit having fun because you choose not to understand it. I mean, that's pretty much Twitter's raison detre, isn't it?
- RobotToaster 4y agoI do think not allowing users to override blacklists is an issue personally. When the main point of federation is supposed to be about giving power back to users, and that you are supposed to be able to follow anyone on any server. Having blacklists as default is one thing, but not allowing your users to make their own decisions is just treating them as children. And it's not just about "nazis" many instances do block instances that allow porn or simply opinions they don't like. For example the largest instance lists plenty of blocked instances just under "inappropriate content" (they list "hate speech" separately, which I assume nazis would fall under) The only way to get access to the entire fediverse right now is to host your own instance, that doesn't seem desirable.
- joecot 4y agoWhen you're administering a server, that's the difference between Silence and Suspend. If a server's content causes problems but it'd be fine if users followed them, then they're "Silenced" (on some servers this shows up as "Limited Content"). If an instance doesn't want their content no matter what, it's "Suspended". For most instances, other instances are only suspended if their "inappropriate content" is often illegal.
- sattoshi 4y agoInstances blocking other instances is a complete deal-breaker for me. If I were to want an “open source community” experience, I would’ve hoped that instance operators would be powerless to stop me from following whoever I want. And yet, by the sounds of it, “following” people happens on the server instead of the client.
- turtleyacht 4y agoIf you have your own instance (server, time to maintain it, and so on), is it possible to follow whomever you want?
- lambdadmitry 4y agoUntil you encounter an instance that blocks any instance federating with what they consider undesirable. Then you have to choose.
- turtleyacht 4y agoOh, so it's like a viral thing? If your instance follows an instance that has blocked all other instances, then your instance cannot view those blocked ones. Maybe I don't understand it. Or maybe that's the idea of federation. So, the solution is then to have your instance join the larger federation (for convenience), and then sign up as just an account on all other blocked ones. I guess.