4 ms·

If I'm a casual user without any great motivation for learning the arcane ways of "The Fediverse"... someone just looking for someway to get into this Mastodon

If I'm a casual user without any great motivation for learning the arcane ways of "The Fediverse"... someone just looking for someway to get into this Mastodon thing I keep hearing about: a normal, everyday user. I'm going to probably go to some search engine and type in "Mastodon" or "Mastodon social network". Using DuckDuckGo, many of the first links show up pointing to mastodon.social or server lookups operated from there (assiming joinmastodon.org is affiliated). The point is that someone that is relatively disinterested in "The Fediverse" or the technology per se and just wants to participate in social interactions... the fine tuning you're suggesting may be required is probably on the wrong side of the cost/benefit ratio. But, wanting to give your point a chance... I went to the first 10 servers that were suggested by joinmastodon. There was very little difference just scrolling their landing pages in terms of content than that of mastodon.social. Not surprising: Federation is suppose to allow this sort of decentralized sharing of the exact same content across instances. Of those, only really the instance run by the makers of the Vivaldi Browser seems to be notably toned down on the political muck.. and they probably for business reasons. Then I went different interest specific group servers and scrolled through their landing page content. And they were also very reflective of my mastodon.social experience... many of the same Toots. The kind of community didn't really matter so much for the most part (I'm guessing a fair amount of lazy configuration to be honest). Here's an example: birds.town which bills itself as... "A server primarily meant for people who like birds, birding and nature in general, but obviously everyone is equally welcome here! Have fun cawing about " And I almost was happily surprised. The top Toots of the feed (or whatever it's called in Mastodon-land) were, in fact, about birding! Unfortunately I kept scrolling. Oh dear. "I'd find conservatives attacks on “woke” funny if they weren't so dangerous. Woke people fought and won the battle against slavery. Woke people went to war and defeated fascism in WWII. Woke people fought for and won equal rights for women and people of color. Woke people battled for rights for workers like 40-hour workweeks and safety protections." https://birds.town/@augieray@mastodon.social/110049850172355535 https://birds.town/@augieray@mastodon.social/110049850172355... Yes, because that's what I want to know when participating in a social network focusing on bird watching.

nforgerit 4y ago
Your link is pointing to the general mastodon.social instance and not to birds.town. To see local birds.town posts, go to [0]. Looks like birds-only to me w/o any politics, tho I'm not aware of any of these birds' political preferences. And generally, whenever there's people annoying me, I just unfollow/mute/block them - problem solved. [0] https://birds.town/public/local https://birds.town/public/local
- monksy 4y ago
  Cool, there's a mastodon instance about government drones.
- peterashford 4y ago
  Yeah. Blocking / muting is required to shape ANY social media feed to your liking.
- sbuttgereit 4y ago
  This is correct, but the birding server served that link to me while just perusing its default landing page. The point I was answering was that I saw what I saw because I used a single instance of a Federated service (mastodon.social)... my counter-point here was that the instance really didn't matter. I was served, by default, largely the same toxic content across the 20 or so servers I ended up landing on. Yes, I can unfollow, mute, block, etc. anyone that I decide isn't someone I want in my life. But I'm pretty sure I could do that on Twitter, too (could be wrong, I've not been there for a long time). Life's too short. Maybe the local feed would have been much better... or maybe the warm cozy Mastodon isn't that which competes with Twitter, but that which competes with Discourse or Discord.

nforgerit 4y ago

Your link is pointing to the general mastodon.social instance and not to birds.town. To see local birds.town posts, go to [0]. Looks like birds-only to me w/o any politics, tho I'm not aware of any of these birds' political preferences. And generally, whenever there's people annoying me, I just unfollow/mute/block them - problem solved. [0] https://birds.town/public/local https://birds.town/public/local

monksy 4y ago
Cool, there's a mastodon instance about government drones.
peterashford 4y ago
Yeah. Blocking / muting is required to shape ANY social media feed to your liking.
sbuttgereit 4y ago
This is correct, but the birding server served that link to me while just perusing its default landing page. The point I was answering was that I saw what I saw because I used a single instance of a Federated service (mastodon.social)... my counter-point here was that the instance really didn't matter. I was served, by default, largely the same toxic content across the 20 or so servers I ended up landing on. Yes, I can unfollow, mute, block, etc. anyone that I decide isn't someone I want in my life. But I'm pretty sure I could do that on Twitter, too (could be wrong, I've not been there for a long time). Life's too short. Maybe the local feed would have been much better... or maybe the warm cozy Mastodon isn't that which competes with Twitter, but that which competes with Discourse or Discord.