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Well, I believe it is fair for the host owner to decide what they serve or not. If they think bot accounts, with the sole purpose to repeatedly display informa

Well, I believe it is fair for the host owner to decide what they serve or not. If they think bot accounts, with the sole purpose to repeatedly display information that is available in any modern mobile phone, takes up unnecessary resources then.. Well, they have right to restrict them IMHO.

vidarh 1y ago
And a bot account like that is if anything the easiest thing to host on a purpose-made instance. You need a full Mastodon instance for that. You just need to generate an outbox collection, individual pages for the objects and actor, and a webfinger endpoint. It could be easier, but it's not that hard.
- seba_dos1 1y ago
  You don't need*
xdennis 1y ago
I haven't used Mastodon, but I think what he's saying is that no one can choose to see the bot's content. He has his account on the mastodon.social instance, but since they block the instance where the bot is, he can't see the bot's content. What's the point of being distributed if others can pick and choose what YOU get to see?
- vidarh 1y ago
  If he's unhappy about mastodon.social, he can move elsewhere. He should. Moving ought to be made easier - he has a point there. Nobody in the Fediverse can prevent you from posting what you want. But everyone can choose to band together in groups around shared policies and prevent you from imposing what you post on them. Some users are unaware of which policies they opt into when they pick an instance, and that is an issue (and why moving ought to be made easier). My experience is that while it makes discovery slightly annoying - a single user instance is the nicest Mastodon experience. Anyone who blocks your instance then is doing so because they're blocking you (don't share that instance with noisy bots). For some it might make sense to have an account on a major instance too, to check in for discovery, and to follow their own single-user instance account to kickstart some visibility (and it's a flaw that it is like this - Mastodon does not better discovery functionality). Mastodon is by no means flawless, and to grow more it will need to fix a lot of them, but a lot of the purported issues are seen as features by users. E.g. the ability to band together and purposefully isolate but allow limited federation, is a feature. An extreme example is a pair instances for a marginalized group where one of them federates with the rest of the fediverse, but the "inner" one only federates with the other instance. It's on purpose set up that way to provide a safe space for those who want limited exposure. People have a right to choose not to associate just as they have a right to choose to associate.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    If HE wants to post THAT kind of content, it's FINE. He can do so. ELSEWHERE. NO ONE STOPS you doing so. In fact WHY NOT YOU DO SO NOW THANK YOU. Don't see the absurdity of that? The non-exaggerated version of this was thrown at someone running a sunrise notification bot. His bot posts that the Sun rises tomorrow on Earth. At specific local times. As it tends to. "Mastodon is weakly federated, you can move to wherever you are better aligned" narrative is mere justification, if not mental traumatic response, against EU national counter-terrorism police special forces and Apple App Store imposing anime and Trump purge(note: AIUI, EU for anime, Apple for Trump, not the other way around, lol), leading to the once-united Fediverse becoming couples of severed virtual continents, all on terminal care. That narrative just creates peace of mind for the European operator inner circles that it was the right call and it shall shield themselves from police flashbangs thrown at their face to harm them and their family members. But it just don't hold water as something logical.
    - vidarh 1y ago
      > Don't see the absurdity of that? No, I don't. Nobody is obliged to carry his content. Requiring individuals to carry his content would be authoritarian, abusive, and coersive.
- Timshel 1y ago
  https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about does not appear to block mas.to. As mentioned in the article it's just that if nobody is interested in your posts then they won't propagate. > Crucially, the posts did not exist even if I visited the profile page of the account: even after weeks of daily posts This means he did not even follow his own bot account, otherwise the posts would be visible ...
- mariusor 1y ago
  The point is that yourself can pick and choose which instance you create an account on, therefore you can be somewhere where the people in charge share your views. Or, you can start your own instance and be entirely responsible for everything...
poulpy123 1y ago
It's totally fair. The issue is that it is advertised as the mastodon social network and not as the host owner social network. The fault lies a lot on the mastodon project that allows it and even advertises it in a way, but the host owner is also responsible to not be clear with that.

vidarh 1y ago

And a bot account like that is if anything the easiest thing to host on a purpose-made instance. You need a full Mastodon instance for that. You just need to generate an outbox collection, individual pages for the objects and actor, and a webfinger endpoint. It could be easier, but it's not that hard.

seba_dos1 1y ago
You don't need*

xdennis 1y ago

I haven't used Mastodon, but I think what he's saying is that no one can choose to see the bot's content. He has his account on the mastodon.social instance, but since they block the instance where the bot is, he can't see the bot's content. What's the point of being distributed if others can pick and choose what YOU get to see?

vidarh 1y ago
If he's unhappy about mastodon.social, he can move elsewhere. He should. Moving ought to be made easier - he has a point there. Nobody in the Fediverse can prevent you from posting what you want. But everyone can choose to band together in groups around shared policies and prevent you from imposing what you post on them. Some users are unaware of which policies they opt into when they pick an instance, and that is an issue (and why moving ought to be made easier). My experience is that while it makes discovery slightly annoying - a single user instance is the nicest Mastodon experience. Anyone who blocks your instance then is doing so because they're blocking you (don't share that instance with noisy bots). For some it might make sense to have an account on a major instance too, to check in for discovery, and to follow their own single-user instance account to kickstart some visibility (and it's a flaw that it is like this - Mastodon does not better discovery functionality). Mastodon is by no means flawless, and to grow more it will need to fix a lot of them, but a lot of the purported issues are seen as features by users. E.g. the ability to band together and purposefully isolate but allow limited federation, is a feature. An extreme example is a pair instances for a marginalized group where one of them federates with the rest of the fediverse, but the "inner" one only federates with the other instance. It's on purpose set up that way to provide a safe space for those who want limited exposure. People have a right to choose not to associate just as they have a right to choose to associate.
- numpad0 1y ago
  If HE wants to post THAT kind of content, it's FINE. He can do so. ELSEWHERE. NO ONE STOPS you doing so. In fact WHY NOT YOU DO SO NOW THANK YOU. Don't see the absurdity of that? The non-exaggerated version of this was thrown at someone running a sunrise notification bot. His bot posts that the Sun rises tomorrow on Earth. At specific local times. As it tends to. "Mastodon is weakly federated, you can move to wherever you are better aligned" narrative is mere justification, if not mental traumatic response, against EU national counter-terrorism police special forces and Apple App Store imposing anime and Trump purge(note: AIUI, EU for anime, Apple for Trump, not the other way around, lol), leading to the once-united Fediverse becoming couples of severed virtual continents, all on terminal care. That narrative just creates peace of mind for the European operator inner circles that it was the right call and it shall shield themselves from police flashbangs thrown at their face to harm them and their family members. But it just don't hold water as something logical.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    > Don't see the absurdity of that? No, I don't. Nobody is obliged to carry his content. Requiring individuals to carry his content would be authoritarian, abusive, and coersive.
Timshel 1y ago
https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about does not appear to block mas.to. As mentioned in the article it's just that if nobody is interested in your posts then they won't propagate. > Crucially, the posts did not exist even if I visited the profile page of the account: even after weeks of daily posts This means he did not even follow his own bot account, otherwise the posts would be visible ...
mariusor 1y ago
The point is that yourself can pick and choose which instance you create an account on, therefore you can be somewhere where the people in charge share your views. Or, you can start your own instance and be entirely responsible for everything...

poulpy123 1y ago

It's totally fair. The issue is that it is advertised as the mastodon social network and not as the host owner social network. The fault lies a lot on the mastodon project that allows it and even advertises it in a way, but the host owner is also responsible to not be clear with that.