7 ms·

Mastodon.lol will shut down on May 9, 2023

79 points by Lammy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
trynewideas 4y ago
http://archive.today/UeWon http://archive.today/UeWon in case it goes out sooner Context seems related to the new Harry Potter game: https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109836004635134601 https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109836004635134601 > We're not banning people for buying a video game. Express your displeasure to them if you so wish, but that alone doesn't require our attention. > Related, please don't post spoilers just to spite people. You can justify it to yourself however you like, but you're shouting into a crowd here. Not every HP fan knows J.K. Rowling is a piece of shit, and ruining the days of random bystanders ain't the way to go. > It will cause problems for myself and .lol in general if it continues. Thanks.
- peppermint_gum 4y ago
  The lesson here is: "give an inch and they will take a mile".
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Also, "no good deed goes unpunished".
- burnished 4y ago
  Woof, some of those comments were pretty terminally online.
  - retrac 4y ago
    "The idea that there are people out there who don't know Rowling is a tervert is ludicrous." definitely takes the cake for terminally online. It's quite revealing. The existence of someone who has not had a media diet similar to theirs, one with heavy coverage of the JK Rowling transphobia controversy, is downright inconceivable.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      Yep, I'd love for these chronically people to take a poll around school kids, say, under 14. How many of them know anything about JK Rowling's personal life beyond "I think she's blonde and she wrote the HP books"?
      - nickthegreek 4y ago
        I think it’s actually the opposite. They are so young they will be exposed to the controversy before they know her hair color.
        shard 4y ago
        Sample point of 1 and everything, but regarding JK Rowling (whom I had to clarify as the author of Harry Potter), my 11yo youngling has no knowledge about her besides: "I heard that the first Harry Potter book is kind of boring, but the second one gets better." So at least amongst my 11yo's friends, JKR doesn't matter. They talk about currently published series such as Wings of Fire, Keeper of Lost Cities, Whatever After. I think they see Harry Potter as some old series that people read in the past.
- luckylion 4y ago
  That reads like a lot of the users struggle with juggling things that are in conflict. - JK Rowling is a tervert(!) and I must tell the world. - Nobody is allowed to enjoy anything that JK Rowling is indirectly involved with. - This will get me / my server banned from most of the world because nobody cares. And since there's no way to compromise, they'll sort by priority and whatever is the most important wins. It's a hard place to be in as a server admin. You can't really ban these folks or you'll be targeted next, and they are part of the community. If you let them do their thing, other servers will nuke you just to get rid of them. Will Mastodon get shadow banning?
  - pas 4y ago
    > and they are part of the community Is this a community run server or it's this guy/gal's server, and through acquaintances this vocal group ended up there?
    - luckylion 4y ago
      From what I could gather, he (it's okay to assume pronouns from 'Nathan', I hope) intentionally created it as "a Mastodon server friendly towards anti-fascists, members of the LGBTQ+ community, hackers, and the like", which includes them. I do think he agrees, which is why he's shutting down the server. If a bunch of people he didn't consider part of the community (e.g. rightwingers, or "trans-exclusionary radical feminists") were doing stuff that put the server at risk of being defederated, I'm sure he would've simply banned them (and would've done so much earlier, because he doesn't care for them). That's the tricky part, if you ban people that are considered part of your community albeit 'difficult', you'll quickly lose support of the less extreme members, because you're banning people who aren't that far away from them. It affects all communities where the vast majority of members are very similar in their core values and beliefs, and those are self-reinforcing by keeping/driving out people that are too different from them. In this specific case it wouldn't have been an issue at all if there hadn't been other servers being involved. Basically everyone on this server agrees that Harry Potter is Mein Kampf (slightly exaggerated), they would've all said that they hate the game and how JK Rowling is genociding trans kids and would've mocked the normies that don't get it, but without interacting with those normies (who are on different servers) there wouldn't have been a problem.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  The insane people in that thread aren't kidding when they use the word "genocide". On Reddit, for example, here is someone claiming that Rowling is "actively funding the genocide of trans youth in the UK" <https://np.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/10xubmv/with_the_recent_trend_of_making_videogames_into/j7vq3sv/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/10xubmv/with_the_...>.
  - _a9 4y ago
    People like that have caused words like nazi and genocide to completely lose their meanings. When you hear someone being called nazi these days you just assume they just mean someone they don't like, same goes with genocide. Not surprised that so many people are now desensitized to real genocide and actual nazi-like regimes/dictators/countries/groups because of terminally online folk.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- terfcomment 4y ago
  [flagged]
- shantara 4y ago
  I was baffled to see this outrage leak into my feed. I follow some developer accounts and several tech and nature related hashtags, but people keep boosting the posts related to this story. It’s a shame, I hoped that Mastodon would offer a good place for discussion between humans, and not the Twitter-like experience. With regards to the game itself, it is impossible to find any objective information about gameplay or performance online, and all the usual tech publications, including gaming subreddits and forums are either boycotting it or published scathing non-reviews. Any over what?! Looking at the player stats on Steam, the game is enjoying a massive popularity. I think it might be the first time a media product was too big for the outrage crowd to cancel
  - terfcomment 4y ago
    It is baffling, but I think this is mostly because these activists have obfuscated what this is really about: male rage at women asserting their boundaries and saying no to their female-only spaces being eradicated.
rvz 4y ago
Well that is a hilarious failure, lol. All over the new Harry Potter wizard video game. It is just a game. Just another Mastodon instance destroying itself, when JK Rowling isn't even involved in the game and still makes millions out of it. All of this outrage is just a leaf falling out a tree. Dear, Oh dear.
- xcrunner529 4y ago
  [dead]
Lammy 4y ago
Meta: apologies for the hot-button-issue-adjacent submission. I'm much more interested in seeing how the fediverse handles data portability in this sort of relatively large-scale shutdown than in trying to make a statement one way or the other on the issue at fault.
- fleddr 4y ago
  It doesn't. They will lose all their posts. You could say they go the way of the Mastodon.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    ? It doesn't transfer your posts, but it does transfer [1] all your followers, follows, bookmarks, mute lists, and block lists. That's still a lot of room for error. What happens if you and a follower transfer your accounts simultaneously? Will they get redirected properly? It is still a good test. [1] https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/ https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-anot...
    - fleddr 4y ago
      Well, the redirect isn't going to work anyway, because the source server will cease to exist. As for migrating followers, I hear that it's glitchy, people typically lose a portion of their followers when migrating.
- defrost 4y ago
  To that end; * What tools | methods exist to fetch total members at Mastodon.lol on a daily basis. * Ditto for individual names and their new migrated names. Are any HN users planning to grab data and graph present the diaspora to other instances | falling out of sight?
- stereosteve 4y ago
  I think nostr is better in this regard: - The "account" primitive is just a key pair, but you can layer more auth requirements on top of that. - All messages are always signed by your key pair end to end. - Server admin can't read your DMs or edit your messages. The worst they can do is see public posts or delete events. - You can move your messages between servers with via piped CLI commands. e.g.: echo '["REQ", "my_mirror_request_id", {"pubkey": "mynpubkey"}]' | websocat -n wss://source | jq -c '[.[0,2]]' -M | websocat wss://destination Anyway I know there are reservations, but ultimately I think it got many of the "account" things right as compared to other fedeverse projects where the "webmaster" is still a big deal. Ideally the server side of things would be unimportant, the clients can offer compelling experiences, and people can create their own internet cul-de-sacs in a more chill way... Maybe nostr is not "the thing" but it's better than the mastodon paradigm.
narrator 4y ago
Who would have guessed struggle sessions[1] would come back like this in the digital age? Imagine dying and going to hell and trying to explain to Mao his legacy in terms of Harry Potter, J.K Rowling, Video Games, Mastodon and so forth. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
- TMWNN 4y ago
  With a perfect example of struggle sessions being found in the thread that trynewideas linked to. What miawgogo and others put nathan, the server owner, through is something to behold.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Whenever we do things, it's somehow China's fault.
lapcat 4y ago
It's important to note that you can't take your posts or DMs with you when you migrate Mastodon instances. I had to migrate a couple weeks ago because my old instance broke for 6 days while the administrator was on vacation and incommunicado, with no backup admins. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mastodon2.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mastodon2.html
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  That seems like it could possibly be a GDPR violation, couldn't it?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Because of the other person's messages becoming readable to a third party (the admin of the new server)? Interesting question. Would it be?
    - polio 4y ago
      I mean it seems like the "Mastodon protocol" could just specify that admins should have no expectation of privacy when they communicate in their official capacity. I'd expect the protocol to eventually support account migrations to allow for the best user experience, resilient to the caprices of power-tripping moderators or just badly run servers.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        I don't know the system at all, but aren't the DMs between regular users (or at least also)? Like, you and me are on mastodon.example.org and I'm sending you a message. I can read it (in my sent messages), you can read it (in your inbox) and the admin of that server can read it. But we both agreed to that by signing up to that service. If I now move to mastodon.example.com and somehow migrate my messages, that server's admin would be able to read them, but you never consented to them having access to (part of) your private messages. It's similar to email, but we tend to put high requirements on running an email server (concerning data / privacy). I have no idea how that works out on Mastodon, whether it's closer to email or closer to Twitter DMs. E2E messages would probably be best, but then you make it harder for yourself to combat spam and harassment, I assume.
pram 4y ago
The comments are nearly incomprehensible. Probably for the best this place is nuked from orbit. “Griffindor scarf is a hate symbol.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Don't forget the struggle session that results from nathan, the server's owner, admitting that he was unaware of the alleged bigotry[1] in the Harry Potter books/films. The resulting taunting of him for his ignorance by another (who, I am willing to wager a very large sum of money, was no more aware of said bigotry when originally consuming the works) ought to appear in the dictionary as an example in the definition for "struggle session". [1] My understanding is that the alleged bigotry is said to be anti-semitism
fleddr 4y ago
If you consider Twitter to be toxic, wait until you experience Mastodon. It's the homeland of the most unhinged activists. Correction: sadistic bullies that have no life. They've build tools to find out who plays/streams this game and then spam the chat. They bully people to unfollow said players. They post game spoilers everywhere on social media. They report Mastodon users playing the game, demanding a ban. And when the mod does not comply, they circle and attack the mod. The mod...whom specifically managed a LGBTQ+ instance. The game is now antisemitic too, because it contains some ancient horn artifact? There is no end to their sadism and pettiness. And when the damage is done, they'll high five each other and consider it another win for the humanitarian cause. They're evil and disturbed.
- partiallypro 4y ago
  > If you consider Twitter to be toxic, wait until you experience Mastodon. I noticed this immediately on several Twitter alts I explored and immediately stopped using them. They were massive echo chambers and circle jerks. Some of them would even turn on each other and implode over incredibly minor things. I remember message boards imploding in the early 2000s, but that usually took years, massive circles of people leaving, and changing of hands to achieve...this was like that on a speed run; and they mostly all went back to Twitter.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    Accurately described. At times it comes across as peaceful, but in a very creepy way. 100% ideological consistency where the ideology is nothing of substance, just unhinged online-only performative virtue signaling. Every once in a while a reply gives a minor pushback after which the account is immediately circled and stomped on.
    - TMWNN 4y ago
      Such methods were perfected on Metafilter. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32880651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32880651>
- 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
refuse 4y ago
I tried Mastodon for a little bit but quit because the community was too much like this. How's anyone supposed to take you seriously if you perceive an existential threat from a children's author expressing their opinion? One comment I saw claimed that she was literally killing them. I mean...
- pixelat3d 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - linuxftw 4y ago
    None of these problems seems real. It seems they're just fuel for the outrage mob. Who's ever heard of a 'shofar' horn? When people throw around scare terms like 'alt-right' it's very hard to take them serious.
  - _a9 4y ago
    [Link 1] Article boiling down to JK having an opinion and 5000 buzzwords and off-topic filler (modern journalism) [Link 2] 1 Dev makes entire team antisemetic? A developer has different opinions than us, how dare he. The only reason WB did anything is because how dangerous the hate-mob can be with threats an PR. Good on WB for not caring about devs opinions when hiring and only how good they can code (AKA their jobs): > "I'm happy to say that, even though I disclosed my YouTube channel to WB Games, it didn't appear to be an issue for them. Not that they endorse anything that I've said, of course, but at least they seem more concerned with making good games than with pushing some kind of a social justice agenda, so there is hope." [Link 3] This is reaching so hard. Terminally online people trying to make up an insane meaning for a meaningless item in a video game.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    I've yet to read a single real problem.
  - pixelat3d 4y ago
    [flagged]
SanjayMehta 4y ago
I had to look up what TERF meant. Frankly this seems to be manufactured outrage: do these people have nothing better to do with their time?
- grapesurgeon 4y ago
  [dead]
- yucky 4y ago
  This is what mental illness looks like. We used to treat it as such, now some people take them far too seriously.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    Indeed. We should not hesitate to call this mental illness: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34780054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34780054> Acknowledging such is the first step to getting help.
- rib3ye 4y ago
  Everyone wants to be part of something. Some people think they are part of the Rebellion when it's actually the Dark Side.
a1445c8b 4y ago
Wait, so: 1. Some HP video game is release; 2. Users who bought it mentioned it in mastodon.lol; 3. Other users want to ban them because...JK Rowling is...a Nazi(?); 4. Other users posted spoilers because...JK Rowling bad and anyone who does not know that deserves getting their day ruined(?); 5. Mastodon.lol owner chide these other users and gets harassed as a result; 6. Mastodon.lol owner decides to shut down site; Is mastodon.lol really just a toddlers’ playground rather than a town hall?
- grapesurgeon 4y ago
  from what i understand, he was getting tons of harassment because he wasn't folding to the outrage mob and decided it wasn't worth the stress of keeping it up. i wouldnt call it a toddlers playground
xwdv 4y ago
Until people can learn to live peacefully in a world where others oppose or are even just indifferent to things they feel strongly about, there is no real point in getting too attached to online communities. All eventually spiral into self destructive toxicity and we are left looking for alternatives.
abetusk 4y ago
There was an article featured the other day about how some communities on some subreddits become hostile when the community size gets too large [0] [1]. The article estimated that the critical size was Dunbar's number (150) raised to 2.5, which gives about 300k. Mastodon.lol looks to have been around 67k up until recently [2] (which gives an exponent of about 2.2). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713553 [1] https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/scaling-problems-in-social-control https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/scaling-problems-in-soc... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20221122205835/https://mastodon.lol/explore https://web.archive.org/web/20221122205835/https://mastodon....
- Lammy 4y ago
  > Mastodon.lol looks to have been around 67k up until recently 75k as of November last year when registration was closed: https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109374989892780399 https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109374989892780399 (https://archive.ph/IXKx3 https://archive.ph/IXKx3) 12th largest instance listed on https://instances.social/list/advanced#lang=&allowed=&prohibited=&min-users=&max-users= https://instances.social/list/advanced#lang=&allowed=&prohib...
helf 4y ago
So.. these random mastodon servers are islands and if they shut down you have to migrate your shit? Tbh I’ve barely paid any attention to mastodon but crap like this just makes me have less interest in it. Yay decentralization! …
- brianjking 4y ago
  I mean...this makes sense.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Mastodon is a huge mess, and these servers shut down constantly. Imagine trying to use email but the server is run by a single stranger who gives up after 2 years and you have to reset all of your account emails. The only feasible end result is that everyone picks one large corporate server or hosts their own. Like how email works.
- npteljes 4y ago
  In my understanding it's similar to email. We can email each other on different hosts just fine, but if my host goes down, so does my email address, and my previous emails.
haunter 4y ago
The revolution devours all its children
rolenthedeep 4y ago
Something I want to point out about this: Nathan has been harassed and bullied as the only moderator on a server with 50-100k users. He's very clearly been burnt out for a while and has been struggling to cope. A lot of people are trying to make this about the Harry Potter game, but it really isn't. Any conflict being aimed at him would have put him over the edge, it just happened to be this. He has always tried to protect the majority of users over what any subgroup wants. He was pretty harsh as a moderator, but genuinely wanted to do the best he could. This isn't a trans thing or a Nazi thing, this is just about burnout. Nathan made some bad choices and said some things he really shouldn't have. He should have found a way to bring more moderators on, but he didn't. He tried to do everything on his own and it broke him. Nathan isn't a bad person, he just got pushed too far and he snapped.

79 points by Lammy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

http://archive.today/UeWon http://archive.today/UeWon in case it goes out sooner Context seems related to the new Harry Potter game: https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109836004635134601 https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109836004635134601 > We're not banning people for buying a video game. Express your displeasure to them if you so wish, but that alone doesn't require our attention. > Related, please don't post spoilers just to spite people. You can justify it to yourself however you like, but you're shouting into a crowd here. Not every HP fan knows J.K. Rowling is a piece of shit, and ruining the days of random bystanders ain't the way to go. > It will cause problems for myself and .lol in general if it continues. Thanks.

peppermint_gum 4y ago
The lesson here is: "give an inch and they will take a mile".
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Also, "no good deed goes unpunished".
burnished 4y ago
Woof, some of those comments were pretty terminally online.
- retrac 4y ago
  "The idea that there are people out there who don't know Rowling is a tervert is ludicrous." definitely takes the cake for terminally online. It's quite revealing. The existence of someone who has not had a media diet similar to theirs, one with heavy coverage of the JK Rowling transphobia controversy, is downright inconceivable.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Yep, I'd love for these chronically people to take a poll around school kids, say, under 14. How many of them know anything about JK Rowling's personal life beyond "I think she's blonde and she wrote the HP books"?
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      I think it’s actually the opposite. They are so young they will be exposed to the controversy before they know her hair color.
      - shard 4y ago
        Sample point of 1 and everything, but regarding JK Rowling (whom I had to clarify as the author of Harry Potter), my 11yo youngling has no knowledge about her besides: "I heard that the first Harry Potter book is kind of boring, but the second one gets better." So at least amongst my 11yo's friends, JKR doesn't matter. They talk about currently published series such as Wings of Fire, Keeper of Lost Cities, Whatever After. I think they see Harry Potter as some old series that people read in the past.
luckylion 4y ago
That reads like a lot of the users struggle with juggling things that are in conflict. - JK Rowling is a tervert(!) and I must tell the world. - Nobody is allowed to enjoy anything that JK Rowling is indirectly involved with. - This will get me / my server banned from most of the world because nobody cares. And since there's no way to compromise, they'll sort by priority and whatever is the most important wins. It's a hard place to be in as a server admin. You can't really ban these folks or you'll be targeted next, and they are part of the community. If you let them do their thing, other servers will nuke you just to get rid of them. Will Mastodon get shadow banning?
- pas 4y ago
  > and they are part of the community Is this a community run server or it's this guy/gal's server, and through acquaintances this vocal group ended up there?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    From what I could gather, he (it's okay to assume pronouns from 'Nathan', I hope) intentionally created it as "a Mastodon server friendly towards anti-fascists, members of the LGBTQ+ community, hackers, and the like", which includes them. I do think he agrees, which is why he's shutting down the server. If a bunch of people he didn't consider part of the community (e.g. rightwingers, or "trans-exclusionary radical feminists") were doing stuff that put the server at risk of being defederated, I'm sure he would've simply banned them (and would've done so much earlier, because he doesn't care for them). That's the tricky part, if you ban people that are considered part of your community albeit 'difficult', you'll quickly lose support of the less extreme members, because you're banning people who aren't that far away from them. It affects all communities where the vast majority of members are very similar in their core values and beliefs, and those are self-reinforcing by keeping/driving out people that are too different from them. In this specific case it wouldn't have been an issue at all if there hadn't been other servers being involved. Basically everyone on this server agrees that Harry Potter is Mein Kampf (slightly exaggerated), they would've all said that they hate the game and how JK Rowling is genociding trans kids and would've mocked the normies that don't get it, but without interacting with those normies (who are on different servers) there wouldn't have been a problem.
TMWNN 4y ago
The insane people in that thread aren't kidding when they use the word "genocide". On Reddit, for example, here is someone claiming that Rowling is "actively funding the genocide of trans youth in the UK" <https://np.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/10xubmv/with_the_recent_trend_of_making_videogames_into/j7vq3sv/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/10xubmv/with_the_...>.
- _a9 4y ago
  People like that have caused words like nazi and genocide to completely lose their meanings. When you hear someone being called nazi these days you just assume they just mean someone they don't like, same goes with genocide. Not surprised that so many people are now desensitized to real genocide and actual nazi-like regimes/dictators/countries/groups because of terminally online folk.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
terfcomment 4y ago
[flagged]
shantara 4y ago
I was baffled to see this outrage leak into my feed. I follow some developer accounts and several tech and nature related hashtags, but people keep boosting the posts related to this story. It’s a shame, I hoped that Mastodon would offer a good place for discussion between humans, and not the Twitter-like experience. With regards to the game itself, it is impossible to find any objective information about gameplay or performance online, and all the usual tech publications, including gaming subreddits and forums are either boycotting it or published scathing non-reviews. Any over what?! Looking at the player stats on Steam, the game is enjoying a massive popularity. I think it might be the first time a media product was too big for the outrage crowd to cancel
- terfcomment 4y ago
  It is baffling, but I think this is mostly because these activists have obfuscated what this is really about: male rage at women asserting their boundaries and saying no to their female-only spaces being eradicated.

rvz 4y ago

Well that is a hilarious failure, lol. All over the new Harry Potter wizard video game. It is just a game. Just another Mastodon instance destroying itself, when JK Rowling isn't even involved in the game and still makes millions out of it. All of this outrage is just a leaf falling out a tree. Dear, Oh dear.

xcrunner529 4y ago
[dead]

Lammy 4y ago

Meta: apologies for the hot-button-issue-adjacent submission. I'm much more interested in seeing how the fediverse handles data portability in this sort of relatively large-scale shutdown than in trying to make a statement one way or the other on the issue at fault.

fleddr 4y ago
It doesn't. They will lose all their posts. You could say they go the way of the Mastodon.
- SECProto 4y ago
  ? It doesn't transfer your posts, but it does transfer [1] all your followers, follows, bookmarks, mute lists, and block lists. That's still a lot of room for error. What happens if you and a follower transfer your accounts simultaneously? Will they get redirected properly? It is still a good test. [1] https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/ https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-anot...
  - fleddr 4y ago
    Well, the redirect isn't going to work anyway, because the source server will cease to exist. As for migrating followers, I hear that it's glitchy, people typically lose a portion of their followers when migrating.
defrost 4y ago
To that end; * What tools | methods exist to fetch total members at Mastodon.lol on a daily basis. * Ditto for individual names and their new migrated names. Are any HN users planning to grab data and graph present the diaspora to other instances | falling out of sight?
stereosteve 4y ago
I think nostr is better in this regard: - The "account" primitive is just a key pair, but you can layer more auth requirements on top of that. - All messages are always signed by your key pair end to end. - Server admin can't read your DMs or edit your messages. The worst they can do is see public posts or delete events. - You can move your messages between servers with via piped CLI commands. e.g.: echo '["REQ", "my_mirror_request_id", {"pubkey": "mynpubkey"}]' | websocat -n wss://source | jq -c '[.[0,2]]' -M | websocat wss://destination Anyway I know there are reservations, but ultimately I think it got many of the "account" things right as compared to other fedeverse projects where the "webmaster" is still a big deal. Ideally the server side of things would be unimportant, the clients can offer compelling experiences, and people can create their own internet cul-de-sacs in a more chill way... Maybe nostr is not "the thing" but it's better than the mastodon paradigm.

narrator 4y ago

Who would have guessed struggle sessions[1] would come back like this in the digital age? Imagine dying and going to hell and trying to explain to Mao his legacy in terms of Harry Potter, J.K Rowling, Video Games, Mastodon and so forth. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

TMWNN 4y ago
With a perfect example of struggle sessions being found in the thread that trynewideas linked to. What miawgogo and others put nathan, the server owner, through is something to behold.
pessimizer 4y ago
Whenever we do things, it's somehow China's fault.

lapcat 4y ago

It's important to note that you can't take your posts or DMs with you when you migrate Mastodon instances. I had to migrate a couple weeks ago because my old instance broke for 6 days while the administrator was on vacation and incommunicado, with no backup admins. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mastodon2.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mastodon2.html

EMIRELADERO 4y ago
That seems like it could possibly be a GDPR violation, couldn't it?
- luckylion 4y ago
  Because of the other person's messages becoming readable to a third party (the admin of the new server)? Interesting question. Would it be?
  - polio 4y ago
    I mean it seems like the "Mastodon protocol" could just specify that admins should have no expectation of privacy when they communicate in their official capacity. I'd expect the protocol to eventually support account migrations to allow for the best user experience, resilient to the caprices of power-tripping moderators or just badly run servers.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      I don't know the system at all, but aren't the DMs between regular users (or at least also)? Like, you and me are on mastodon.example.org and I'm sending you a message. I can read it (in my sent messages), you can read it (in your inbox) and the admin of that server can read it. But we both agreed to that by signing up to that service. If I now move to mastodon.example.com and somehow migrate my messages, that server's admin would be able to read them, but you never consented to them having access to (part of) your private messages. It's similar to email, but we tend to put high requirements on running an email server (concerning data / privacy). I have no idea how that works out on Mastodon, whether it's closer to email or closer to Twitter DMs. E2E messages would probably be best, but then you make it harder for yourself to combat spam and harassment, I assume.

pram 4y ago

The comments are nearly incomprehensible. Probably for the best this place is nuked from orbit. “Griffindor scarf is a hate symbol.”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TMWNN 4y ago
Don't forget the struggle session that results from nathan, the server's owner, admitting that he was unaware of the alleged bigotry[1] in the Harry Potter books/films. The resulting taunting of him for his ignorance by another (who, I am willing to wager a very large sum of money, was no more aware of said bigotry when originally consuming the works) ought to appear in the dictionary as an example in the definition for "struggle session". [1] My understanding is that the alleged bigotry is said to be anti-semitism

fleddr 4y ago

If you consider Twitter to be toxic, wait until you experience Mastodon. It's the homeland of the most unhinged activists. Correction: sadistic bullies that have no life. They've build tools to find out who plays/streams this game and then spam the chat. They bully people to unfollow said players. They post game spoilers everywhere on social media. They report Mastodon users playing the game, demanding a ban. And when the mod does not comply, they circle and attack the mod. The mod...whom specifically managed a LGBTQ+ instance. The game is now antisemitic too, because it contains some ancient horn artifact? There is no end to their sadism and pettiness. And when the damage is done, they'll high five each other and consider it another win for the humanitarian cause. They're evil and disturbed.

partiallypro 4y ago
> If you consider Twitter to be toxic, wait until you experience Mastodon. I noticed this immediately on several Twitter alts I explored and immediately stopped using them. They were massive echo chambers and circle jerks. Some of them would even turn on each other and implode over incredibly minor things. I remember message boards imploding in the early 2000s, but that usually took years, massive circles of people leaving, and changing of hands to achieve...this was like that on a speed run; and they mostly all went back to Twitter.
- fleddr 4y ago
  Accurately described. At times it comes across as peaceful, but in a very creepy way. 100% ideological consistency where the ideology is nothing of substance, just unhinged online-only performative virtue signaling. Every once in a while a reply gives a minor pushback after which the account is immediately circled and stomped on.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    Such methods were perfected on Metafilter. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32880651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32880651>
4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

refuse 4y ago

I tried Mastodon for a little bit but quit because the community was too much like this. How's anyone supposed to take you seriously if you perceive an existential threat from a children's author expressing their opinion? One comment I saw claimed that she was literally killing them. I mean...

pixelat3d 4y ago
[flagged]
- linuxftw 4y ago
  None of these problems seems real. It seems they're just fuel for the outrage mob. Who's ever heard of a 'shofar' horn? When people throw around scare terms like 'alt-right' it's very hard to take them serious.
- _a9 4y ago
  [Link 1] Article boiling down to JK having an opinion and 5000 buzzwords and off-topic filler (modern journalism) [Link 2] 1 Dev makes entire team antisemetic? A developer has different opinions than us, how dare he. The only reason WB did anything is because how dangerous the hate-mob can be with threats an PR. Good on WB for not caring about devs opinions when hiring and only how good they can code (AKA their jobs): > "I'm happy to say that, even though I disclosed my YouTube channel to WB Games, it didn't appear to be an issue for them. Not that they endorse anything that I've said, of course, but at least they seem more concerned with making good games than with pushing some kind of a social justice agenda, so there is hope." [Link 3] This is reaching so hard. Terminally online people trying to make up an insane meaning for a meaningless item in a video game.
- fleddr 4y ago
  I've yet to read a single real problem.
- pixelat3d 4y ago
  [flagged]

SanjayMehta 4y ago

I had to look up what TERF meant. Frankly this seems to be manufactured outrage: do these people have nothing better to do with their time?

grapesurgeon 4y ago
[dead]
yucky 4y ago
This is what mental illness looks like. We used to treat it as such, now some people take them far too seriously.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Indeed. We should not hesitate to call this mental illness: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34780054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34780054> Acknowledging such is the first step to getting help.
rib3ye 4y ago
Everyone wants to be part of something. Some people think they are part of the Rebellion when it's actually the Dark Side.

a1445c8b 4y ago

Wait, so: 1. Some HP video game is release; 2. Users who bought it mentioned it in mastodon.lol; 3. Other users want to ban them because...JK Rowling is...a Nazi(?); 4. Other users posted spoilers because...JK Rowling bad and anyone who does not know that deserves getting their day ruined(?); 5. Mastodon.lol owner chide these other users and gets harassed as a result; 6. Mastodon.lol owner decides to shut down site; Is mastodon.lol really just a toddlers’ playground rather than a town hall?

grapesurgeon 4y ago
from what i understand, he was getting tons of harassment because he wasn't folding to the outrage mob and decided it wasn't worth the stress of keeping it up. i wouldnt call it a toddlers playground

xwdv 4y ago

Until people can learn to live peacefully in a world where others oppose or are even just indifferent to things they feel strongly about, there is no real point in getting too attached to online communities. All eventually spiral into self destructive toxicity and we are left looking for alternatives.

abetusk 4y ago

There was an article featured the other day about how some communities on some subreddits become hostile when the community size gets too large [0] [1]. The article estimated that the critical size was Dunbar's number (150) raised to 2.5, which gives about 300k. Mastodon.lol looks to have been around 67k up until recently [2] (which gives an exponent of about 2.2). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713553 [1] https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/scaling-problems-in-social-control https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/scaling-problems-in-soc... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20221122205835/https://mastodon.lol/explore https://web.archive.org/web/20221122205835/https://mastodon....

Lammy 4y ago
> Mastodon.lol looks to have been around 67k up until recently 75k as of November last year when registration was closed: https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109374989892780399 https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109374989892780399 (https://archive.ph/IXKx3 https://archive.ph/IXKx3) 12th largest instance listed on https://instances.social/list/advanced#lang=&allowed=&prohibited=&min-users=&max-users= https://instances.social/list/advanced#lang=&allowed=&prohib...

helf 4y ago

So.. these random mastodon servers are islands and if they shut down you have to migrate your shit? Tbh I’ve barely paid any attention to mastodon but crap like this just makes me have less interest in it. Yay decentralization! …

brianjking 4y ago
I mean...this makes sense.
Gigachad 4y ago
Mastodon is a huge mess, and these servers shut down constantly. Imagine trying to use email but the server is run by a single stranger who gives up after 2 years and you have to reset all of your account emails. The only feasible end result is that everyone picks one large corporate server or hosts their own. Like how email works.
npteljes 4y ago
In my understanding it's similar to email. We can email each other on different hosts just fine, but if my host goes down, so does my email address, and my previous emails.

haunter 4y ago

The revolution devours all its children

rolenthedeep 4y ago

Something I want to point out about this: Nathan has been harassed and bullied as the only moderator on a server with 50-100k users. He's very clearly been burnt out for a while and has been struggling to cope. A lot of people are trying to make this about the Harry Potter game, but it really isn't. Any conflict being aimed at him would have put him over the edge, it just happened to be this. He has always tried to protect the majority of users over what any subgroup wants. He was pretty harsh as a moderator, but genuinely wanted to do the best he could. This isn't a trans thing or a Nazi thing, this is just about burnout. Nathan made some bad choices and said some things he really shouldn't have. He should have found a way to bring more moderators on, but he didn't. He tried to do everything on his own and it broke him. Nathan isn't a bad person, he just got pushed too far and he snapped.