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Making your Mastodon account provider also be a community is a fatal flaw of Mastodon. I don't want to belong to just one community, nor have my account and ser

Making your Mastodon account provider also be a community is a fatal flaw of Mastodon. I don't want to belong to just one community, nor have my account and server administration policies somehow tied to my topic interests!

krapp 3y ago
Then don't do that. Have multiple identities on multiple servers, or host your identity on your own server.
- nvy 3y ago
  So just so I'm clear you're suggesting that a person should log in/out of multiple accounts depending on the topic one wants to discuss/read about, on the same app?
  - DiabloD3 3y ago
    Mastodon isn't an app, it has apps, but isn't one. In your parlance, each Mastodon instance is "an app". The real apps, however, many of them can log into multiple accounts and change which account you're posting from.
    - eropple 3y ago
      This is technically correct, in the Futurama sense of the term. It also isn't what people actually want, though.
      - DiabloD3 3y ago
        The problem is... who cares what this ambiguous "people" want? Mastodon was created by and for its intended userbase, as in, people who want a federated Twitter-like interface to ActivityPub. Don't like it? You just excluded yourself as part of the intended userbase: Mastodon is not for people who don't grok federated service, and Mastodon doesn't want people who can't grok federated services. Think of understanding simple concepts like this as sort of a "you have to be this tall to ride this ride" skill check gate. Either you get it, or you don't get in.
        eropple 3y ago
        It's hard not to read your posts as hailing from the Linux-on-the-desktop mindset: "either you love it or you don't understand it". I understand federated services just fine. I use several, both personally and professionally. And I even understand ActivityPub, I've written code in the ecosystem before. Because ActivityPub makes a lot of sense in some contexts; I think it is a worthy successor to pingbacks/trackbacks for blogs, for example. That doesn't make Mastodon's conception of federation fit-for-purpose for the people Mastodon likers themselves evangelize at--again, much like Linux-on-the-desktoppers. "Just cope with the community/identity conflation by using multiple separate identities on different frontends with different affordances updated at different cadences, what's the problem??" is right up there with "just edit xorg.conf." This is a big reason why I'm excited for Bluesky and ATProto: theirs includes many more touchpoints for federation and for control of the user experience without falling into the "server federation is so point to point that the entire thing feels like an empty landscape" problem encountered by many of the folks I know (myself included) who tried Mastodon and then bailed. Bluesky right now is pretty good, and when graph systems and personal data stores are federated along with the existing feed creators (which are a really awesome feature to use even in an early form), it'll be an interesting thing to witness.
        DiabloD3 3y ago
        Whats weird is, what you accuse me of is how I read most comments on HN: The argument against Mastodon is literally "I don't understand federation, so it's bad, and my feelings somehow control if Mastodon has failed or not; I don't want multiple identities because I don't understand the use-case, so I don't want anyone else to have them either, and I want the feature removed". You seem to be one of the few people on HN who may understand the benefits. Trying to conflate that with "xorg.conf sucks" misses the fact that Twitter is basically the X here (literally and figuratively), while Mastodon is the Wayland. A lot of X-lovers spend their time shitting on Wayland in HN comments because they don't understand the problem Wayland is solving, and don't understand it successfully solved it and is becoming the default, and it just makes them angry. Also, I don't see the point of Bluesky. If their specifications prove to be useful, then federated services will start using those protocols. Anything they can do, Mastodon can do, too.
  - nhanb 3y ago
    Husky (android app) does support multi-account. I'm using it right now. I imagine there should be something equivalent for ios. It's not rocket science.
  - krapp 3y ago
    I have a third party client manage all of my accounts, and it's relatively seamless. I also have them as a list of browser bookmarks. If course there's no reason to log in, read and log out of every account, every time you read, that would be silly when most people never bother logging out of any of their accounts to begin with. Also, it's entirely feasible to just follow people on other accounts from whatever account you're on.
  - ebiester 3y ago
    Do you remember PhpBB? It's the same thing. Heck, I had two twitter profiles because I had two different sets of interests. This isn't uncommon.
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    I keep a browser tab open for each of my two Mastodon accounts (fulfilling different roles); they are on different servers. It's easy. I don't even run an app. I also use the 'personal' Mastodon account from my phone, as a link. Very very easy. No logging in and out at all.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  > Have multiple identities on multiple servers, or host your identity on your own server. I hope you realize that this is a hilariously out-of-touch answer with respect to what most people want from a Twitter-alike.
  - cdchn 3y ago
    No it's not. If what you want out of a Twitter-alike is to be able to decide what the administrative environment is of where your account lives, this is a great answer. If you don't care about that, then _you don't have to do those things._
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Don’t a lot of people keep separate Twitter accounts for different interests/identities too? To me it seems like the main question is the amount of friction encountered in switching accounts in clients. In more polished clients like Ivory this is just as easy as it is with Twitter.
    - DamonHD 3y ago
      I had/have multiple Twitter IDs: one for me personally, one for a particular topic, and one for brands and even other for IoT experiments. One of the brand accounts was handed over along with other assets when company IPR was sold: it was a role account, The first two I have replicated on Mastodon. I have stopped using all the Twitter accounts, so I have now 'slimmed down'.
  - krapp 3y ago
    I don't have an answer for the people who want to leave Twitter but refuse to touch anything that isn't a perfect clone with complete feature parity and a comparable user base, but plenty of people - even "non-technical" people, manage Mastodon just fine as an alternative. It really isn't that difficult.
- alt227 3y ago
  This is really the fatal flaw, 99% of people dont want to think about servers or identities, they just want to open an app and chat.
- jskherman 3y ago
  > host your identity on your own server This gets the closest to having control over your online identity but, honestly, the ROI for self-hosting your own Mastodon server just isn't worth it. The requirements are too demanding for just a one-person (or a few more) instance. Even with Pleroma/Akkoma/[other platform], you still have to jump through some hoops of complexity for someone new to the fediverse, let alone a Twitter refugee (even on the more tech-literate side).
  - Zak 3y ago
    I've self-hosted both Pleroma and Mastodon. One isn't much more effort than the other. Fully self-hosting anything is a big step for anyone without sysadmin experience, though managed hosting is a good intermediate option for those willing to pay for it.
    - jskherman 3y ago
      Paying is not an option for most people coming from free services like Twitter. It was not for me since I can't spend money on something frivolous like a Mastodon/Pleroma server. I've already tried deploying Pleroma on Fly.io using a Dockerfile and successfully did it with someone's guide. I was hoping to get away with the Fly.io's free tier but it's still a lot of work to maintain for something that should be simple. With Pleroma and it's derivatives there is not even an option to reimport "backups".
      - Zak 3y ago
        I think I have to dispute the idea that hosting a web service like Pleroma "should be simple". It's a complex system with multiple dependencies and an external database server. Of course, it would be nice if somebody made a full-featured fediverse server that was self-contained with no dependencies, did backups through a web UI, and was generally as easy as possible for someone without expertise to self-host. Pleroma isn't designed for that. Neither is Mastodon.
DiabloD3 3y ago
Host your own Mastodon server then, allows you to administrate your own account. Mastodon is federated, so where your account lives has nothing to do with what accounts you reply to and follow, nor has anything to do with who replies and follows you. Administrators have the limited scope of only their instance.
- notamy 3y ago
  > Host your own Mastodon server then, allows you to administrate your own account. But that's the thing, I as an end user don't want to and shouldn't have to. Hosting my own instance is a pain in the ass that introduces needing a server to run it on, OS maintenance / updates, Mastodon instance maintenance / updates, paying for everything, ... It's a huge waste of my time and energy when decoupling identity from content solves it much more smoothly, for a much wider audience. If the goal of Mastodon isn't to attract that sort of audience, that's a separate issue, but that doesn't seem to be it from what I can see. Identity and content can both be federated without tying them together.
  - DiabloD3 3y ago
    Sure, and it'd be kinda neat if I could, say, use DNS records in a way to allow specific servers to post as my identity, thus, both proving that I'm me (from the me@mydomain.com sense), but also the server can post as me (maybe what I have to put in the record is me countersigning their sign-as-me key). We don't have that yet. It'd be nice if we do someday.
    - notamy 3y ago
      > and it'd be kinda neat if I could, say, use DNS records in a way to allow specific servers to post as my identity So, Bluesky? :P (I know it's not federated at this point in time)
- eropple 3y ago
  By hosting your own Mastodon server, you are effectively buying into only receiving direct, point-to-point notifications and you lose what remains of the “overheard amongst acquaintances” effect that Twitter and now Bluesky effectively capture (that is, when it’s on the same, large instance). Of course, replicating this effect would be a dump truck of load on every Mastodon server, but it’s also the experience most people seem to want, so that’s unfortunate.
dredmorbius 3y ago
That is a gross misreading of how the Fediverse operates. Yes, there is some locality aspect to the instance you belong to, but in general the instance you log on to has comparatively little impact on what other instances you can interact with. This isn't absolutely true. The characteristics of a given instance do have an impact on what technical features are available to you. There are a number of supported advanced features such as toot length, Markdown and LaTeX formula support, etc., which apply to only a subset of instances. My primary instance, toot.cat, is based on Glitch.soc, a Mastodon fork, which supports both long posts and Markdown, both of which I (ab)use frequently. Mathstodon, hosted by our own @ColinWright, is amongst those supporting LaTeX-based maths formulae, for some inexplicable reason.... Another is that the moderation practices your instance follows will be reflected in how remote instances interact with yours. Ineffective or beligerent moderators are a fast route to being limited or outright blocked (there is a continuum of potential restrictions, it's not all-or-nothing) by others. And similarly, your local instance might have its own set of criteria for determining what traffic or patterns are or are not permissible in remote instances, again resulting in varying levels of moderation on that basis. The "local community" element mostly shows up in the Local timeline. I ... hardly ever have that open, relying instead on a set of curated, priority-based Lists, or pinned Hashtags. Lists are based on specific profiles you choose to add, and I've found that the best organisational method is not topical but rather is based on interest level. So I keep a relatively small top-priority list, a somewhat broader secondary, and for profiles who are overly chatty, a third which I view rarely. I follow nearly 1,000 profiles, but effectively see perhaps 50--100. I have a small set of topical lists, largely press/journalists and admins, though I use those rarely. I'll also pin hashtags that I'm currently interested in, which might be for anything from a few minutes to months on end. You can also subscribe to hashtags as of recently, though I've yet to do this. There are other topical tools including <https://gup.pe https://gup.pe>, which function somewhat like a mailing list or forum. (There are newer variants which offer more powerful moderation options.) But in general, the instance you're on, so long as it's well-managed and well-behaved, has little impact on who else you can interact with. The misinformation, and disinformation, on this point becomes tedious with time.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  > That is a gross misreading of how the Fediverse operates. And then you go on to enumerate various important ways in which it is not a gross misread at all. "The characteristics of a given instance do have an impact on...": "...what technical features are available to you" "...how remote instances interact with yours" "...criteria for determining what traffic or patterns are or are not permissible in remote instances"
toofy 3y ago
> … is a fatal flaw of mastodon. I don’t want to belong to just one community. I could be misunderstanding what you’re saying, but regarding Fosstodon, they’re not at all limited to one community — they’re not decoupling from the fediverse?
phoe-krk 3y ago
The "just one community" and "topic interests" parts are BS. Nobody says that an account at https://functional.cafe https://functional.cafe cannot post things that are not related to functional programming. Source: I have an account a https://functional.cafe https://functional.cafe, and I post about everything - that includes functional programming, non-functional programming, calligraphy, Fediverse, socializing, and shitposting. As for administration policies - find a server whose moderation policy you enjoy. Unlike on Xitter, you have a choice of these policies and have immediate contact to the admins and moderators of your instance and other instances, and you can consult them.
DamonHD 3y ago
I have accounts on two different instances: one small and very subject focussed, and one on a big instance. I try to keep roughly to topic on the former, but no one is shouting at me when I have a little fun on either.
1MachineElf 3y ago
Most mastodon servers don't limit discussion to a central domain of topics. If you still feel limited, then the solution to your problem is to have multiple accounts for the mutually-exclusive communities you enjoy. That's what people do on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter with their alt accounts. Keep that in mind whenever you encounter someone online using an anime profile pic. The major factor I look for when choosing a mastodon instance is the business model. The vast majority are free, which leads to either limits on registration, ads, or spammy free-for-all instances. I want to join a mastodon instance that I can pay for, as a control over these types of problems. If it can sustain itself through membership, then the experience and policies should be relatively stable. For the above reasons, I use mastodon.green.

krapp 3y ago

Then don't do that. Have multiple identities on multiple servers, or host your identity on your own server.

nvy 3y ago
So just so I'm clear you're suggesting that a person should log in/out of multiple accounts depending on the topic one wants to discuss/read about, on the same app?
- DiabloD3 3y ago
  Mastodon isn't an app, it has apps, but isn't one. In your parlance, each Mastodon instance is "an app". The real apps, however, many of them can log into multiple accounts and change which account you're posting from.
  - eropple 3y ago
    This is technically correct, in the Futurama sense of the term. It also isn't what people actually want, though.
    - DiabloD3 3y ago
      The problem is... who cares what this ambiguous "people" want? Mastodon was created by and for its intended userbase, as in, people who want a federated Twitter-like interface to ActivityPub. Don't like it? You just excluded yourself as part of the intended userbase: Mastodon is not for people who don't grok federated service, and Mastodon doesn't want people who can't grok federated services. Think of understanding simple concepts like this as sort of a "you have to be this tall to ride this ride" skill check gate. Either you get it, or you don't get in.
      - eropple 3y ago
        It's hard not to read your posts as hailing from the Linux-on-the-desktop mindset: "either you love it or you don't understand it". I understand federated services just fine. I use several, both personally and professionally. And I even understand ActivityPub, I've written code in the ecosystem before. Because ActivityPub makes a lot of sense in some contexts; I think it is a worthy successor to pingbacks/trackbacks for blogs, for example. That doesn't make Mastodon's conception of federation fit-for-purpose for the people Mastodon likers themselves evangelize at--again, much like Linux-on-the-desktoppers. "Just cope with the community/identity conflation by using multiple separate identities on different frontends with different affordances updated at different cadences, what's the problem??" is right up there with "just edit xorg.conf." This is a big reason why I'm excited for Bluesky and ATProto: theirs includes many more touchpoints for federation and for control of the user experience without falling into the "server federation is so point to point that the entire thing feels like an empty landscape" problem encountered by many of the folks I know (myself included) who tried Mastodon and then bailed. Bluesky right now is pretty good, and when graph systems and personal data stores are federated along with the existing feed creators (which are a really awesome feature to use even in an early form), it'll be an interesting thing to witness.
        DiabloD3 3y ago
        Whats weird is, what you accuse me of is how I read most comments on HN: The argument against Mastodon is literally "I don't understand federation, so it's bad, and my feelings somehow control if Mastodon has failed or not; I don't want multiple identities because I don't understand the use-case, so I don't want anyone else to have them either, and I want the feature removed". You seem to be one of the few people on HN who may understand the benefits. Trying to conflate that with "xorg.conf sucks" misses the fact that Twitter is basically the X here (literally and figuratively), while Mastodon is the Wayland. A lot of X-lovers spend their time shitting on Wayland in HN comments because they don't understand the problem Wayland is solving, and don't understand it successfully solved it and is becoming the default, and it just makes them angry. Also, I don't see the point of Bluesky. If their specifications prove to be useful, then federated services will start using those protocols. Anything they can do, Mastodon can do, too.
- nhanb 3y ago
  Husky (android app) does support multi-account. I'm using it right now. I imagine there should be something equivalent for ios. It's not rocket science.
- krapp 3y ago
  I have a third party client manage all of my accounts, and it's relatively seamless. I also have them as a list of browser bookmarks. If course there's no reason to log in, read and log out of every account, every time you read, that would be silly when most people never bother logging out of any of their accounts to begin with. Also, it's entirely feasible to just follow people on other accounts from whatever account you're on.
- ebiester 3y ago
  Do you remember PhpBB? It's the same thing. Heck, I had two twitter profiles because I had two different sets of interests. This isn't uncommon.
- DamonHD 3y ago
  I keep a browser tab open for each of my two Mastodon accounts (fulfilling different roles); they are on different servers. It's easy. I don't even run an app. I also use the 'personal' Mastodon account from my phone, as a link. Very very easy. No logging in and out at all.
BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
> Have multiple identities on multiple servers, or host your identity on your own server. I hope you realize that this is a hilariously out-of-touch answer with respect to what most people want from a Twitter-alike.
- cdchn 3y ago
  No it's not. If what you want out of a Twitter-alike is to be able to decide what the administrative environment is of where your account lives, this is a great answer. If you don't care about that, then _you don't have to do those things._
- jwells89 3y ago
  Don’t a lot of people keep separate Twitter accounts for different interests/identities too? To me it seems like the main question is the amount of friction encountered in switching accounts in clients. In more polished clients like Ivory this is just as easy as it is with Twitter.
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    I had/have multiple Twitter IDs: one for me personally, one for a particular topic, and one for brands and even other for IoT experiments. One of the brand accounts was handed over along with other assets when company IPR was sold: it was a role account, The first two I have replicated on Mastodon. I have stopped using all the Twitter accounts, so I have now 'slimmed down'.
- krapp 3y ago
  I don't have an answer for the people who want to leave Twitter but refuse to touch anything that isn't a perfect clone with complete feature parity and a comparable user base, but plenty of people - even "non-technical" people, manage Mastodon just fine as an alternative. It really isn't that difficult.
alt227 3y ago
This is really the fatal flaw, 99% of people dont want to think about servers or identities, they just want to open an app and chat.
jskherman 3y ago
> host your identity on your own server This gets the closest to having control over your online identity but, honestly, the ROI for self-hosting your own Mastodon server just isn't worth it. The requirements are too demanding for just a one-person (or a few more) instance. Even with Pleroma/Akkoma/[other platform], you still have to jump through some hoops of complexity for someone new to the fediverse, let alone a Twitter refugee (even on the more tech-literate side).
- Zak 3y ago
  I've self-hosted both Pleroma and Mastodon. One isn't much more effort than the other. Fully self-hosting anything is a big step for anyone without sysadmin experience, though managed hosting is a good intermediate option for those willing to pay for it.
  - jskherman 3y ago
    Paying is not an option for most people coming from free services like Twitter. It was not for me since I can't spend money on something frivolous like a Mastodon/Pleroma server. I've already tried deploying Pleroma on Fly.io using a Dockerfile and successfully did it with someone's guide. I was hoping to get away with the Fly.io's free tier but it's still a lot of work to maintain for something that should be simple. With Pleroma and it's derivatives there is not even an option to reimport "backups".
    - Zak 3y ago
      I think I have to dispute the idea that hosting a web service like Pleroma "should be simple". It's a complex system with multiple dependencies and an external database server. Of course, it would be nice if somebody made a full-featured fediverse server that was self-contained with no dependencies, did backups through a web UI, and was generally as easy as possible for someone without expertise to self-host. Pleroma isn't designed for that. Neither is Mastodon.

DiabloD3 3y ago

Host your own Mastodon server then, allows you to administrate your own account. Mastodon is federated, so where your account lives has nothing to do with what accounts you reply to and follow, nor has anything to do with who replies and follows you. Administrators have the limited scope of only their instance.

notamy 3y ago
> Host your own Mastodon server then, allows you to administrate your own account. But that's the thing, I as an end user don't want to and shouldn't have to. Hosting my own instance is a pain in the ass that introduces needing a server to run it on, OS maintenance / updates, Mastodon instance maintenance / updates, paying for everything, ... It's a huge waste of my time and energy when decoupling identity from content solves it much more smoothly, for a much wider audience. If the goal of Mastodon isn't to attract that sort of audience, that's a separate issue, but that doesn't seem to be it from what I can see. Identity and content can both be federated without tying them together.
- DiabloD3 3y ago
  Sure, and it'd be kinda neat if I could, say, use DNS records in a way to allow specific servers to post as my identity, thus, both proving that I'm me (from the me@mydomain.com sense), but also the server can post as me (maybe what I have to put in the record is me countersigning their sign-as-me key). We don't have that yet. It'd be nice if we do someday.
  - notamy 3y ago
    > and it'd be kinda neat if I could, say, use DNS records in a way to allow specific servers to post as my identity So, Bluesky? :P (I know it's not federated at this point in time)
eropple 3y ago
By hosting your own Mastodon server, you are effectively buying into only receiving direct, point-to-point notifications and you lose what remains of the “overheard amongst acquaintances” effect that Twitter and now Bluesky effectively capture (that is, when it’s on the same, large instance). Of course, replicating this effect would be a dump truck of load on every Mastodon server, but it’s also the experience most people seem to want, so that’s unfortunate.

dredmorbius 3y ago

That is a gross misreading of how the Fediverse operates. Yes, there is some locality aspect to the instance you belong to, but in general the instance you log on to has comparatively little impact on what other instances you can interact with. This isn't absolutely true. The characteristics of a given instance do have an impact on what technical features are available to you. There are a number of supported advanced features such as toot length, Markdown and LaTeX formula support, etc., which apply to only a subset of instances. My primary instance, toot.cat, is based on Glitch.soc, a Mastodon fork, which supports both long posts and Markdown, both of which I (ab)use frequently. Mathstodon, hosted by our own @ColinWright, is amongst those supporting LaTeX-based maths formulae, for some inexplicable reason.... Another is that the moderation practices your instance follows will be reflected in how remote instances interact with yours. Ineffective or beligerent moderators are a fast route to being limited or outright blocked (there is a continuum of potential restrictions, it's not all-or-nothing) by others. And similarly, your local instance might have its own set of criteria for determining what traffic or patterns are or are not permissible in remote instances, again resulting in varying levels of moderation on that basis. The "local community" element mostly shows up in the Local timeline. I ... hardly ever have that open, relying instead on a set of curated, priority-based Lists, or pinned Hashtags. Lists are based on specific profiles you choose to add, and I've found that the best organisational method is not topical but rather is based on interest level. So I keep a relatively small top-priority list, a somewhat broader secondary, and for profiles who are overly chatty, a third which I view rarely. I follow nearly 1,000 profiles, but effectively see perhaps 50--100. I have a small set of topical lists, largely press/journalists and admins, though I use those rarely. I'll also pin hashtags that I'm currently interested in, which might be for anything from a few minutes to months on end. You can also subscribe to hashtags as of recently, though I've yet to do this. There are other topical tools including <https://gup.pe https://gup.pe>, which function somewhat like a mailing list or forum. (There are newer variants which offer more powerful moderation options.) But in general, the instance you're on, so long as it's well-managed and well-behaved, has little impact on who else you can interact with. The misinformation, and disinformation, on this point becomes tedious with time.

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
> That is a gross misreading of how the Fediverse operates. And then you go on to enumerate various important ways in which it is not a gross misread at all. "The characteristics of a given instance do have an impact on...": "...what technical features are available to you" "...how remote instances interact with yours" "...criteria for determining what traffic or patterns are or are not permissible in remote instances"

toofy 3y ago

> … is a fatal flaw of mastodon. I don’t want to belong to just one community. I could be misunderstanding what you’re saying, but regarding Fosstodon, they’re not at all limited to one community — they’re not decoupling from the fediverse?

phoe-krk 3y ago

The "just one community" and "topic interests" parts are BS. Nobody says that an account at https://functional.cafe https://functional.cafe cannot post things that are not related to functional programming. Source: I have an account a https://functional.cafe https://functional.cafe, and I post about everything - that includes functional programming, non-functional programming, calligraphy, Fediverse, socializing, and shitposting. As for administration policies - find a server whose moderation policy you enjoy. Unlike on Xitter, you have a choice of these policies and have immediate contact to the admins and moderators of your instance and other instances, and you can consult them.

DamonHD 3y ago

I have accounts on two different instances: one small and very subject focussed, and one on a big instance. I try to keep roughly to topic on the former, but no one is shouting at me when I have a little fun on either.

1MachineElf 3y ago

Most mastodon servers don't limit discussion to a central domain of topics. If you still feel limited, then the solution to your problem is to have multiple accounts for the mutually-exclusive communities you enjoy. That's what people do on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter with their alt accounts. Keep that in mind whenever you encounter someone online using an anime profile pic. The major factor I look for when choosing a mastodon instance is the business model. The vast majority are free, which leads to either limits on registration, ads, or spammy free-for-all instances. I want to join a mastodon instance that I can pay for, as a control over these types of problems. If it can sustain itself through membership, then the experience and policies should be relatively stable. For the above reasons, I use mastodon.green.