4 ms·

Now, you can embed Mastodon posts in Medium stories

94 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dahwolf 4y ago
In particular edge cases this might become a DDOS vector. Say you have a large following on Mastodon, which means lots of people follow you from lots of other instances. In that case, when you boost ("retweet") content from a small instance, your boost will federate across many servers. Next, as it appears on everyone's timeline in their own instance, it will fetch the post preview details (of the boosted toot) from the unfortunate small instance. At times this has created such a traffic surge that servers go down, not to mention the hosting bill being affected. To combat this effect, Mastodon software has a random fetch delay for preview images. Still just as much traffic, just not all at once. The user experience price to pay is that previews may not initially show up. I wonder if this Medium embed plays by the "pacing" rules of Mastodon or just launches an all-out attack. Meaning, a high profile Medium writer can cause huge spikes in traffic.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  At the moment the problem is mostly the other way around: Mastodon preview fetches function as a DDOS on your site; given the intransigence of the Masto BDFL on this problem, I would be delighted if it were inverted.
  - dahwolf 4y ago
    I don't understand. This looks to me like a Medium page that embeds a Mastodon post, hence preview fetching lands on the Mastodon's instance? That's what the post describes. However, confusingly, the very first screenshot indeed shows the opposite scenario: a Mastodon post with a preview of a Medium article.
- Kye 4y ago
  I assume it benefits from Embedly's CDN once it's cached.
- Alex3917 4y ago
  Content loaded via Embedly is cached after the first load. By default I think it's cached for a few hours. FWIW Mastodon isn't the only decentralized social network where you can embed published content into Medium; you can do it with email as well, with any thread published on fwdeveryone.com. I documented the process of building our integration here: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/how-to-build-an-oembed-integration-for-your-startup-and-why-its-necessary https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/how-to-build-an-oembed-inte...
vertis 4y ago
The reactions that brought a lot of people to Mastodon are one step in the right direction, but the slowly expanding pool of support is going to be a whole other problem for Twitter. There is no denying that Mastodon and the fediverse still has a long long way to go, but I'm always heartened by these additions.
- realitysballs 4y ago
  Exactly
dwighttk 4y ago
Medium… there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time
mal-2 4y ago
This is a cool change. I am a bit disappointed at the prominent 'Follow' button on the embed though. That button won't do what users think it will, because it opens the linked account on its home server, which is not the place where you can take the follow action.
- 90-00-09 4y ago
  Agreed. It's especially confusing because if the user who clicked the Follow button then tries to sign in on that server, they will be presented with a very generic Mastodon sign in page: https://me.dm/auth/sign_in https://me.dm/auth/sign_in This is a problem that hopefully will be solved in the future. Not sure if there needs to be a global (non exclusive) sign in portal... something that could be used as an easy entry point to the user's home server from any other server.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- remram 4y ago
  I don't understand why those can't be mastodon:// URLs. That way we can configure our devices or browsers to take us to our app or home instance to subscribe. The same way Matrix does it with element:// links.
  - mal-2 4y ago
    I think that's the right solution. There has been discussion on it before. on Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679 on Misskey: https://github.com/misskey-dev/misskey/issues/9504 https://github.com/misskey-dev/misskey/issues/9504 There is a lot of resistance to the idea. The browser UX for registering protocols is not particularly intuitive. The protocol should not be named after Mastodon because they are defensive of their trademark, and it wouldn't be accurate since the user identifier could be followed from any ActivityPub compatible software. If you look at the newer comments on the Mastodon github thread I posted you can see web+ap:// recommended, or apub:// I think there just needs to be enough collective will to make this happen. Likely another project will need to take the lead because Mastodon team has decided the browser UX is too much of a barrier. Maybe glitch-soc can do a proof of concept.
realitysballs 4y ago
Every time I see a mastodon development I smirk and think of twitter descending into obsoletion ::smirk-face::
duxup 4y ago
Have people given up on calling Mastodon posts, “toots”? Or are posts a different thing?
- Angostura 4y ago
  Sadly, a couple of months ago, a new Mastodon version named the Toot buttons, etc as 'Post'
  - duxup 4y ago
    Probably a more appealing term.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Personally I am a die hard tooter.

94 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

In particular edge cases this might become a DDOS vector. Say you have a large following on Mastodon, which means lots of people follow you from lots of other instances. In that case, when you boost ("retweet") content from a small instance, your boost will federate across many servers. Next, as it appears on everyone's timeline in their own instance, it will fetch the post preview details (of the boosted toot) from the unfortunate small instance. At times this has created such a traffic surge that servers go down, not to mention the hosting bill being affected. To combat this effect, Mastodon software has a random fetch delay for preview images. Still just as much traffic, just not all at once. The user experience price to pay is that previews may not initially show up. I wonder if this Medium embed plays by the "pacing" rules of Mastodon or just launches an all-out attack. Meaning, a high profile Medium writer can cause huge spikes in traffic.

rodgerd 4y ago
At the moment the problem is mostly the other way around: Mastodon preview fetches function as a DDOS on your site; given the intransigence of the Masto BDFL on this problem, I would be delighted if it were inverted.
- dahwolf 4y ago
  I don't understand. This looks to me like a Medium page that embeds a Mastodon post, hence preview fetching lands on the Mastodon's instance? That's what the post describes. However, confusingly, the very first screenshot indeed shows the opposite scenario: a Mastodon post with a preview of a Medium article.
Kye 4y ago
I assume it benefits from Embedly's CDN once it's cached.
Alex3917 4y ago
Content loaded via Embedly is cached after the first load. By default I think it's cached for a few hours. FWIW Mastodon isn't the only decentralized social network where you can embed published content into Medium; you can do it with email as well, with any thread published on fwdeveryone.com. I documented the process of building our integration here: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/how-to-build-an-oembed-integration-for-your-startup-and-why-its-necessary https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/how-to-build-an-oembed-inte...

vertis 4y ago

The reactions that brought a lot of people to Mastodon are one step in the right direction, but the slowly expanding pool of support is going to be a whole other problem for Twitter. There is no denying that Mastodon and the fediverse still has a long long way to go, but I'm always heartened by these additions.

realitysballs 4y ago
Exactly

dwighttk 4y ago

Medium… there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time

mal-2 4y ago

This is a cool change. I am a bit disappointed at the prominent 'Follow' button on the embed though. That button won't do what users think it will, because it opens the linked account on its home server, which is not the place where you can take the follow action.

90-00-09 4y ago
Agreed. It's especially confusing because if the user who clicked the Follow button then tries to sign in on that server, they will be presented with a very generic Mastodon sign in page: https://me.dm/auth/sign_in https://me.dm/auth/sign_in This is a problem that hopefully will be solved in the future. Not sure if there needs to be a global (non exclusive) sign in portal... something that could be used as an easy entry point to the user's home server from any other server.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
remram 4y ago
I don't understand why those can't be mastodon:// URLs. That way we can configure our devices or browsers to take us to our app or home instance to subscribe. The same way Matrix does it with element:// links.
- mal-2 4y ago
  I think that's the right solution. There has been discussion on it before. on Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679 on Misskey: https://github.com/misskey-dev/misskey/issues/9504 https://github.com/misskey-dev/misskey/issues/9504 There is a lot of resistance to the idea. The browser UX for registering protocols is not particularly intuitive. The protocol should not be named after Mastodon because they are defensive of their trademark, and it wouldn't be accurate since the user identifier could be followed from any ActivityPub compatible software. If you look at the newer comments on the Mastodon github thread I posted you can see web+ap:// recommended, or apub:// I think there just needs to be enough collective will to make this happen. Likely another project will need to take the lead because Mastodon team has decided the browser UX is too much of a barrier. Maybe glitch-soc can do a proof of concept.

realitysballs 4y ago

Every time I see a mastodon development I smirk and think of twitter descending into obsoletion ::smirk-face::

duxup 4y ago

Have people given up on calling Mastodon posts, “toots”? Or are posts a different thing?

Angostura 4y ago
Sadly, a couple of months ago, a new Mastodon version named the Toot buttons, etc as 'Post'
- duxup 4y ago
  Probably a more appealing term.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Personally I am a die hard tooter.