9 ms·

Maybe they realized Mastodon has no real migration from one instance to another, ant that it's been a criticized limitation since 2019. Edit : people answering

Maybe they realized Mastodon has no real migration from one instance to another, ant that it's been a criticized limitation since 2019. Edit : people answering my message probably think as I did that Mastodon enables messages migration (your posts), but no. The "fediverse" doesn't allow you to migrate your posts with your profile migration. It's like keeping your android contacts but losing all your photos. Well more precisely, they're on this old hard drive, you can't show them to your friends and the hard drive can disappear anytime. 2019 issue with 500 likes, core team doesn't care much. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423

api 2y ago
IMHO this is an absolutely fatal design flaw. It means that if it were to become very popular eventually the largest instances would take over the network due to network effects. ActivityPub has eventual centralization baked in. Nostr is closer to a real decentralized social network, though it has other problems. Chief among these is trying to be Twitter, which has always been a model of interaction that lends itself to obnoxiousness. This was also a problem with Mastodon. If we're trying to do better, we should not be trying to duplicate a toxic environment. Still Nostr is architecturally superior.
- ptero 2y ago
  Can you expand on the Nostr problems? Honest question. I mostly see it trying to offer another (architecturally better and robust to censorship) mechanism for group communication. I think (hope, TBH) that Nostr can fill the niche of the Usenet of the past where some groups did slide into obnoxiousness but others maintained intelligent and thoughtful discussions for many years. My 2c.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I always liked the reddit post-scarcity solution to this -- make it as easy as possible to fork / start a new community. Users will vote with their feet. What was required to start a new usenet domain? (a bit before my time)
    - floren 2y ago
      > What was required to start a new usenet domain? Assuming you mean a new newsgroup (discussion forum for a single topic e.g. comp.lang.lisp): - If you wanted it in the Big 8 hierarchy, you had to campaign for it and get support and prove it would have traffic. - If you wanted it in alt.*, you just posted a control message (and then everyone ignored your group) Or you could make your own hierarchy but it's up to each individual server which hierarchies they carry.
- poopsmithe 2y ago
  Nostr is not trying to be Twitter; Nostr the protocol is more generalized than that. It just so happens that a lot of people want a Twitter alternative right now, so that's a popular Nostr webapp to make. There is also Nostr chess, Nostr podcasting, Nostr marketplaces, Nostr data vending machines, Nostr blogs, and more. See https://nostrapps.com/ https://nostrapps.com/ for a sample of what people are making.
tedivm 2y ago
What exactly do you mean? I migrated from one instance to another without problem, and all my followers/followings came over without an issue.
- Tomte 2y ago
  Only if your old instance still exists and cooperates. I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after banning you (because if they banned you they probably would like to punish you further).
  - maelito 2y ago
    Worse : my old instance had its backup down for months. Also, no GIF support. I asked the admin if he was wanting to get my help, or some funds to help for the servers. Said no. Imagine : to get GIF support by switching instance, I would lose my posts. After I did the migration, we talked, the backup worked again. Couldn't even see his answers nor thank him, since once the migration is acted you lose access to your past discussions. Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance.
    - echelon 2y ago
      > Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance. In the early 2000s, hackers were staunch defenders of free speech. The internet was a safe space from an often conservative and religiously Puritanical "meat space". Now that the pendulum has swung, a majority seemingly wants to shut down the things and the people that they disagree with. Moreover, the accepted social behavior encourages this kind of hate and range and spite. It's even been gamified. In many ways, the future turned out a lot worse than I'd hoped for. This is certainly one of the things I loathe.
      - simonask 2y ago
        Here is another perspective: In the 2000s, many of us were children and teens. Now we’re not, and definitely don’t want our own kids to be exposed to the same Internet as we were back then… People romanticize that time way more than it deserves. I’m not a fan of censorship, but there’s a case to be made for reasonable adults deciding the ground rules. Case in point: Twitter.
closewith 2y ago
Wow, I had no idea. This means migration is next to useless. The people responding to you saying this is expected are missing the point.
- maelito 2y ago
  > This means migration is next to useless. Well not completely. Lots of people see microblogging as the daily rant, the cat pictures. For them, it's not a big problem. But for people like me that use microbloging as a way to publish content, that use the search feature quite often to retrieve past thoughts, past links, etc it's a fatal flaw, like other users told it.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Not to mention search itself being fundamentally broken in Mastodon - there is no way to search all servers at once, you will always only see what the instance you're searching on has ingested into its cache. There's no trending topics or if there is, it's outdated and/or unmoderated. On top of that... instance mods powertripping is another issue. I don't care on which side of that godforsaken war in Israel/Palestine two different instance moderators are. But I do care when one of these morons drags in their user base into this bitch fight and decides to defederate from the instance ran by the other dude and suddenly I can't interact with a follower any more, I don't even get a warning "hey, you can't see posts from XYZ any more because their instance defederated from ours". While I'd love to see Mastodon succeed at least in survival, it suffers from a bunch of very fundamental design and concept issues.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I strongly recommend looking at something like IndieWeb's POSSE. You post to your main blog, and some automation automatically crossposts it to Mastodon (or Twitter or ...).
- rodgerd 2y ago
  The biggest problem with making Mastodon better is exactly that: anyone who dares suggest the way it's always been has a flaw will quickly be shouted down by people telling them that they're an idiot who clearly doesn't understand that the shortcoming is a feature.
throw7 2y ago
The migration issue is why I've never bothered with the "fediverse/mastodon". The other one is choosing a server. That's actually a critical first step that most don't really understand about the "fediverse". Just looking over the "rules" of mozilla.social is insufferable and a non-starter.
somat 2y ago
Don't be a digital serf, run your own instance. Personally I would start here, not because it is good but because it is simple. https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk
- simonask 2y ago
  Why would you go through the trouble, when nobody else is doing that, because the success of the system is highly dependent on network effects? These things have first-mover disadvantage, and last-mover advantage.
  - riffraff 2y ago
    But it's not dependent on network effects, you can follow people and they can follow back even if you run your own server. You miss being in the explore tab but I don't think that's the main source of traffic, and various bots or groups that re-share toots will likely spread your account far and wide.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  You can't expect most people to run their own instance, there needs to be a more user-friendly way to migrate accounts.
- lolinder 2y ago
  My understanding has been that the design of Mastodon is such that this is not universalizable—if everyone ran their own instance every instance would end up with too much traffic and drown. Is this understanding wrong?
- sbarre 2y ago
  This kind of attitude is the reason Mastodon will never be attractive to a lot of people who might otherwise be interested in it.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    The same people who have their whole lives on a free @gmail.com account with zero plan for what to do if that account goes away? The problem is real in any event, it's just a question of whether you care enough to do something about it. And if you don't care enough to do something about it for email, then you might as well not worry about it for Mastodon.
pkulak 2y ago
Yes, unlike every other social network. Or email. Or SMS. Or any other chat. Etc.

api 2y ago

IMHO this is an absolutely fatal design flaw. It means that if it were to become very popular eventually the largest instances would take over the network due to network effects. ActivityPub has eventual centralization baked in. Nostr is closer to a real decentralized social network, though it has other problems. Chief among these is trying to be Twitter, which has always been a model of interaction that lends itself to obnoxiousness. This was also a problem with Mastodon. If we're trying to do better, we should not be trying to duplicate a toxic environment. Still Nostr is architecturally superior.

ptero 2y ago
Can you expand on the Nostr problems? Honest question. I mostly see it trying to offer another (architecturally better and robust to censorship) mechanism for group communication. I think (hope, TBH) that Nostr can fill the niche of the Usenet of the past where some groups did slide into obnoxiousness but others maintained intelligent and thoughtful discussions for many years. My 2c.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I always liked the reddit post-scarcity solution to this -- make it as easy as possible to fork / start a new community. Users will vote with their feet. What was required to start a new usenet domain? (a bit before my time)
  - floren 2y ago
    > What was required to start a new usenet domain? Assuming you mean a new newsgroup (discussion forum for a single topic e.g. comp.lang.lisp): - If you wanted it in the Big 8 hierarchy, you had to campaign for it and get support and prove it would have traffic. - If you wanted it in alt.*, you just posted a control message (and then everyone ignored your group) Or you could make your own hierarchy but it's up to each individual server which hierarchies they carry.
poopsmithe 2y ago
Nostr is not trying to be Twitter; Nostr the protocol is more generalized than that. It just so happens that a lot of people want a Twitter alternative right now, so that's a popular Nostr webapp to make. There is also Nostr chess, Nostr podcasting, Nostr marketplaces, Nostr data vending machines, Nostr blogs, and more. See https://nostrapps.com/ https://nostrapps.com/ for a sample of what people are making.

tedivm 2y ago

What exactly do you mean? I migrated from one instance to another without problem, and all my followers/followings came over without an issue.

Tomte 2y ago
Only if your old instance still exists and cooperates. I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after banning you (because if they banned you they probably would like to punish you further).
- maelito 2y ago
  Worse : my old instance had its backup down for months. Also, no GIF support. I asked the admin if he was wanting to get my help, or some funds to help for the servers. Said no. Imagine : to get GIF support by switching instance, I would lose my posts. After I did the migration, we talked, the backup worked again. Couldn't even see his answers nor thank him, since once the migration is acted you lose access to your past discussions. Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance.
  - echelon 2y ago
    > Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance. In the early 2000s, hackers were staunch defenders of free speech. The internet was a safe space from an often conservative and religiously Puritanical "meat space". Now that the pendulum has swung, a majority seemingly wants to shut down the things and the people that they disagree with. Moreover, the accepted social behavior encourages this kind of hate and range and spite. It's even been gamified. In many ways, the future turned out a lot worse than I'd hoped for. This is certainly one of the things I loathe.
    - simonask 2y ago
      Here is another perspective: In the 2000s, many of us were children and teens. Now we’re not, and definitely don’t want our own kids to be exposed to the same Internet as we were back then… People romanticize that time way more than it deserves. I’m not a fan of censorship, but there’s a case to be made for reasonable adults deciding the ground rules. Case in point: Twitter.

closewith 2y ago

Wow, I had no idea. This means migration is next to useless. The people responding to you saying this is expected are missing the point.

maelito 2y ago
> This means migration is next to useless. Well not completely. Lots of people see microblogging as the daily rant, the cat pictures. For them, it's not a big problem. But for people like me that use microbloging as a way to publish content, that use the search feature quite often to retrieve past thoughts, past links, etc it's a fatal flaw, like other users told it.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Not to mention search itself being fundamentally broken in Mastodon - there is no way to search all servers at once, you will always only see what the instance you're searching on has ingested into its cache. There's no trending topics or if there is, it's outdated and/or unmoderated. On top of that... instance mods powertripping is another issue. I don't care on which side of that godforsaken war in Israel/Palestine two different instance moderators are. But I do care when one of these morons drags in their user base into this bitch fight and decides to defederate from the instance ran by the other dude and suddenly I can't interact with a follower any more, I don't even get a warning "hey, you can't see posts from XYZ any more because their instance defederated from ours". While I'd love to see Mastodon succeed at least in survival, it suffers from a bunch of very fundamental design and concept issues.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I strongly recommend looking at something like IndieWeb's POSSE. You post to your main blog, and some automation automatically crossposts it to Mastodon (or Twitter or ...).
rodgerd 2y ago
The biggest problem with making Mastodon better is exactly that: anyone who dares suggest the way it's always been has a flaw will quickly be shouted down by people telling them that they're an idiot who clearly doesn't understand that the shortcoming is a feature.

throw7 2y ago

The migration issue is why I've never bothered with the "fediverse/mastodon". The other one is choosing a server. That's actually a critical first step that most don't really understand about the "fediverse". Just looking over the "rules" of mozilla.social is insufferable and a non-starter.

somat 2y ago

Don't be a digital serf, run your own instance. Personally I would start here, not because it is good but because it is simple. https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk

simonask 2y ago
Why would you go through the trouble, when nobody else is doing that, because the success of the system is highly dependent on network effects? These things have first-mover disadvantage, and last-mover advantage.
- riffraff 2y ago
  But it's not dependent on network effects, you can follow people and they can follow back even if you run your own server. You miss being in the explore tab but I don't think that's the main source of traffic, and various bots or groups that re-share toots will likely spread your account far and wide.
ranger_danger 2y ago
You can't expect most people to run their own instance, there needs to be a more user-friendly way to migrate accounts.
lolinder 2y ago
My understanding has been that the design of Mastodon is such that this is not universalizable—if everyone ran their own instance every instance would end up with too much traffic and drown. Is this understanding wrong?
sbarre 2y ago
This kind of attitude is the reason Mastodon will never be attractive to a lot of people who might otherwise be interested in it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  The same people who have their whole lives on a free @gmail.com account with zero plan for what to do if that account goes away? The problem is real in any event, it's just a question of whether you care enough to do something about it. And if you don't care enough to do something about it for email, then you might as well not worry about it for Mastodon.

pkulak 2y ago

Yes, unlike every other social network. Or email. Or SMS. Or any other chat. Etc.