5 ms·

Mastodon is unusable to me because I need two accounts to be parts of the math community and programming community. N accounts for N interests I have. Doesn't

by rg111 3y ago

Mastodon is unusable to me because I need two accounts to be parts of the math community and programming community. N accounts for N interests I have. Doesn't work for me. Reddit had subs. With one acocunt, I could sub to any number of interests. Twitter is flat. Again, I can get content from all areas of interest fron one account.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago
Huh? What makes you think that? If you set up an account on a Lemmy instance, you can subscribe to communities on any other instance. You absolutely do not need an account on each server. Thats kinda that whole point of the fediverse. Heck, you can even follow Lemmy communities from a Mastodon server, or a Calckey instance, since they all talk ActivityPub. Edit: ahh, I just noticed I misread the parent post, as they are talking about Mastodon, not Lemmy. Of course my comment also largely applies to Mastodon, save that you follow people instead of whole communities. Yes, that means you really have to build a good followed list to get the most out of it.
- shagie 3y ago
  Short of following everyone on the other instance, the "local" view on each likely has people that you aren't following. You can't get the "what's the buzz on the other one?" from viewing the home, local, or federated views. Additionally, the discoverability of your content on one server depends on it getting followed and people watching the federated feed rather than local or home feeds (and when people on the site are following other sites, your content is difficult to be discovered). The federated feed is a firehose that goes too fast for discovery. The local feed is domain/subject/theme appropriate and where most people likely browse content. Your content would only show up in the local feed of the other if someone on that other one boosted it which implies that they discovered it on the other instance and followed your account there. If you post something math related on the programming instance, the only way for it to show up in the local feed of the math instance is for someone to boost it there. Short of having someone boosting everything that you want to say on the other topic on the other instance, it might be less friction to maintain multiple accounts. That's not the way that it "should" work, but that's the way that people are using it. The "town square" of the local feed is where interesting things happen.
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  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    Eh, that comes down to how you choose to use the platform. Speaking for myself, early on I used the local and federated feeds to find interesting people to follow, but once my followed list was built up, I found I rarely spent time in those feeds. Personally, I'd say if folks are using Mastodon in the way you're describing, they'd be better off using Lemmy or kbin, which are centered around communities containing topics, as then you can just follow those communities rather than following individual people.
    - shagie 3y ago
      When groups that formed around hashtags on twitter moved to mastodon, they did so as a group. What was #footwitter is now local on foostodon.social. For example "energy twitter" (where people discuss power grids) https://twitter.com/hashtag/energytwitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/energytwitter has had a partial migration to https://mastodon.energy/public/local https://mastodon.energy/public/local When people migrated off of Twitter, and mastodon.social wasn't accepting new registrations, and "taking over" a random one was seen as impolite, someone stood up an instance and said "hey, we're over here" and local will be encouraged to have mostly energy related information. If you were following two different hashtags on twitter, and they're now two different mastodon instances, to have a similar experience you need to be able to follow local on each and push content to either such that it shows up in local on the proper one. With the way that mastodon is organized, that's not an option and the way to get to that similar experience is to have an account in each. Would Lemmy or kbin have been a better choice for such? Maybe. However, for a twitter like experience, they aren't a proper substitute.
  - rg111 3y ago
    This is exactly what I meant. I want interesting content from all of my interest areas no matter if I follow a person or not. You elaborated it fully.
- rg111 3y ago
  I am part of Lemmy for some months, and keep going back to it. But not Mastodon. I want to be able to follow whole instances and get content delivered to my feed no matter who posts it- whether followed by me or not. In Lemmy, you can follow other communities. In FB, groups, in Reddit- subs. But with Mastodon- you can only follow people and not whole instances. That's why it didn't stick to me.
Spivak 3y ago
You explicitly don't need to do that which is the whole point of Mastadon being federated.
dredmorbius 3y ago
As others have suggested: this sounds very much as if you don't understand federation. So long as you're on a well-maintained instance (one that responds reasonably quickly and appropriately to abuse reports), you can interact with ("federate") with any person or group on any other well-behaved instance. (The full reality is ... slightly ... more complicated, but generally, where you are doesn't have much impact on whom you interact with). I do agree that the focus on interest-specific instances is cumbersome, and probably a poor choice. That is, it affects a small minority of instances and Fediverse participants, and there are instances whose focus is actually a core of the local community --- @ColinWright's Mathstodon and Jerry Bell's infosec.exchange, for example). Otherwise, join a general-interest instance, or one that corresponds with one of (or your primary) interest(s).
- rg111 3y ago
  What I meant is that I want algorithm suggested content come to me automatically like it happens in Twitter or Reddit. In Reddit, you can sub to r/math and r/programming with a single account and have content appear on your feed. In Mastodon, I need to explicitly follow accounts from other instances and get the content they post, or repost. This is very bad to me. In FB there are groups, in Twitter, you just follow people, in Reddit there are subs. And entire different instants for different communities? Nah I simply don't like it. I want to be able to follow whole _instances_ rather than follow people from instances. (PS: I do understand federation, and have merged code PRs in multiple fediverse-related repos.)
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Algorithmic content promotion is fundamentally antithetical to Mastodon's intent, as well as most other Fediverse systems: You know best what you want to see on your home feed. No algorithms or ads to waste your time. Follow anyone across any Mastodon server from a single account and receive their posts in chronological order, and make your corner of the internet a little more like you. <https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/> This doesn't mean that someone couldn't create an algorithmic Fediverse server, which would ingest a large number of feeds and then specifically surface particular posts and/or profiles to people. It's just that that's not the present project's philosophy, and you'd probably find any such instance defederated by most other instances. There are a few ways you can follow topical rather than profile-based content, and several others may be emerging. - Mastodon has recently enabled subscribing to hashtags. So long as others are tagging content reliably, you can see discussion on a specific topic, either in its own stream (as a pinned Hashtag) or within your Home stream. - There are several group-based services, with gup.pe (<https://a.gup.pe/ https://a.gup.pe/>) which allow people to subscribe to a feed on a specific theme or topic. You follow the group, and post specific topics to that group --- the overall function is much like a mailing list. Chirp.social and Qoto are similar services. - There's an upcoming roadmap feature for MAS-15 labeled "Groups" though I' don't know what functionality is included under that. <https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap> There's at least one open issue (<https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/139 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/139>) which ... has some discussion, and points to an essay on the topic: <https://raphael-jolivet.name/en/blog/groups-in-mastodon-and-the-fediverse https://raphael-jolivet.name/en/blog/groups-in-mastodon-and-...>. (I've included some information from that above, and recommend reading it.) But algorithmically-selected content is simply not what Mastodon is about. If that's your desire, find a service which provides that.

by rg111 3y ago

BaseballPhysics 3y ago

Huh? What makes you think that? If you set up an account on a Lemmy instance, you can subscribe to communities on any other instance. You absolutely do not need an account on each server. Thats kinda that whole point of the fediverse. Heck, you can even follow Lemmy communities from a Mastodon server, or a Calckey instance, since they all talk ActivityPub. Edit: ahh, I just noticed I misread the parent post, as they are talking about Mastodon, not Lemmy. Of course my comment also largely applies to Mastodon, save that you follow people instead of whole communities. Yes, that means you really have to build a good followed list to get the most out of it.

shagie 3y ago
Short of following everyone on the other instance, the "local" view on each likely has people that you aren't following. You can't get the "what's the buzz on the other one?" from viewing the home, local, or federated views. Additionally, the discoverability of your content on one server depends on it getting followed and people watching the federated feed rather than local or home feeds (and when people on the site are following other sites, your content is difficult to be discovered). The federated feed is a firehose that goes too fast for discovery. The local feed is domain/subject/theme appropriate and where most people likely browse content. Your content would only show up in the local feed of the other if someone on that other one boosted it which implies that they discovered it on the other instance and followed your account there. If you post something math related on the programming instance, the only way for it to show up in the local feed of the math instance is for someone to boost it there. Short of having someone boosting everything that you want to say on the other topic on the other instance, it might be less friction to maintain multiple accounts. That's not the way that it "should" work, but that's the way that people are using it. The "town square" of the local feed is where interesting things happen.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  Eh, that comes down to how you choose to use the platform. Speaking for myself, early on I used the local and federated feeds to find interesting people to follow, but once my followed list was built up, I found I rarely spent time in those feeds. Personally, I'd say if folks are using Mastodon in the way you're describing, they'd be better off using Lemmy or kbin, which are centered around communities containing topics, as then you can just follow those communities rather than following individual people.
  - shagie 3y ago
    When groups that formed around hashtags on twitter moved to mastodon, they did so as a group. What was #footwitter is now local on foostodon.social. For example "energy twitter" (where people discuss power grids) https://twitter.com/hashtag/energytwitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/energytwitter has had a partial migration to https://mastodon.energy/public/local https://mastodon.energy/public/local When people migrated off of Twitter, and mastodon.social wasn't accepting new registrations, and "taking over" a random one was seen as impolite, someone stood up an instance and said "hey, we're over here" and local will be encouraged to have mostly energy related information. If you were following two different hashtags on twitter, and they're now two different mastodon instances, to have a similar experience you need to be able to follow local on each and push content to either such that it shows up in local on the proper one. With the way that mastodon is organized, that's not an option and the way to get to that similar experience is to have an account in each. Would Lemmy or kbin have been a better choice for such? Maybe. However, for a twitter like experience, they aren't a proper substitute.
- rg111 3y ago
  This is exactly what I meant. I want interesting content from all of my interest areas no matter if I follow a person or not. You elaborated it fully.
rg111 3y ago
I am part of Lemmy for some months, and keep going back to it. But not Mastodon. I want to be able to follow whole instances and get content delivered to my feed no matter who posts it- whether followed by me or not. In Lemmy, you can follow other communities. In FB, groups, in Reddit- subs. But with Mastodon- you can only follow people and not whole instances. That's why it didn't stick to me.

Spivak 3y ago

You explicitly don't need to do that which is the whole point of Mastadon being federated.

dredmorbius 3y ago

As others have suggested: this sounds very much as if you don't understand federation. So long as you're on a well-maintained instance (one that responds reasonably quickly and appropriately to abuse reports), you can interact with ("federate") with any person or group on any other well-behaved instance. (The full reality is ... slightly ... more complicated, but generally, where you are doesn't have much impact on whom you interact with). I do agree that the focus on interest-specific instances is cumbersome, and probably a poor choice. That is, it affects a small minority of instances and Fediverse participants, and there are instances whose focus is actually a core of the local community --- @ColinWright's Mathstodon and Jerry Bell's infosec.exchange, for example). Otherwise, join a general-interest instance, or one that corresponds with one of (or your primary) interest(s).

rg111 3y ago
What I meant is that I want algorithm suggested content come to me automatically like it happens in Twitter or Reddit. In Reddit, you can sub to r/math and r/programming with a single account and have content appear on your feed. In Mastodon, I need to explicitly follow accounts from other instances and get the content they post, or repost. This is very bad to me. In FB there are groups, in Twitter, you just follow people, in Reddit there are subs. And entire different instants for different communities? Nah I simply don't like it. I want to be able to follow whole _instances_ rather than follow people from instances. (PS: I do understand federation, and have merged code PRs in multiple fediverse-related repos.)
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Algorithmic content promotion is fundamentally antithetical to Mastodon's intent, as well as most other Fediverse systems: You know best what you want to see on your home feed. No algorithms or ads to waste your time. Follow anyone across any Mastodon server from a single account and receive their posts in chronological order, and make your corner of the internet a little more like you. <https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/> This doesn't mean that someone couldn't create an algorithmic Fediverse server, which would ingest a large number of feeds and then specifically surface particular posts and/or profiles to people. It's just that that's not the present project's philosophy, and you'd probably find any such instance defederated by most other instances. There are a few ways you can follow topical rather than profile-based content, and several others may be emerging. - Mastodon has recently enabled subscribing to hashtags. So long as others are tagging content reliably, you can see discussion on a specific topic, either in its own stream (as a pinned Hashtag) or within your Home stream. - There are several group-based services, with gup.pe (<https://a.gup.pe/ https://a.gup.pe/>) which allow people to subscribe to a feed on a specific theme or topic. You follow the group, and post specific topics to that group --- the overall function is much like a mailing list. Chirp.social and Qoto are similar services. - There's an upcoming roadmap feature for MAS-15 labeled "Groups" though I' don't know what functionality is included under that. <https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap> There's at least one open issue (<https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/139 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/139>) which ... has some discussion, and points to an essay on the topic: <https://raphael-jolivet.name/en/blog/groups-in-mastodon-and-the-fediverse https://raphael-jolivet.name/en/blog/groups-in-mastodon-and-...>. (I've included some information from that above, and recommend reading it.) But algorithmically-selected content is simply not what Mastodon is about. If that's your desire, find a service which provides that.