4 ms·

How is it a pain when you can just skip the server selection process and use mastodon.social like pretty much everyone else?

jsheard 1y ago
Doesn't pretty much everyone using the same instance pretty much defeat the point?
- archagon 1y ago
  We’re talking about the average user. They’re not going to be particularly passionate about federation. The point, to them, is to have a functioning Twitter-like social network.
  - Diti 1y ago
    The average user starts caring about censorship, AFAIK. And Bluesky has done very nasty ToS changes that only federation would have helped fight against. But this is off-topic, because the ToS changes are mostly about porn, while this HN submission is about the professional use of Bluesky.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      The only thing that would help with running sadly illegal in increasing parts of the world (including US) adult content servers would be not having a corporate entity. It's difficult to fund rapid development at the scale needed, with that hobble.
  - sumeno 1y ago
    Then why would the average user bother signing up for mastodon over something else
  - LexiMax 1y ago
    I'll be completely honest, as someone who remembers the internet before social networks, I have started caring less and less about being crammed into a single shared social space with every other person on earth.
- krapp 1y ago
  No, because the point is that not everyone is forced to use the same instance. When I started on Mastodon I created an account for each instance I wanted to post to, which was slightly annoying but not much more complicated than signing up for different subreddits. Now I have my own hosted account and follow whomever I like from there. Of course you can follow any account from any account (if the admin hasn't blocked it.)
Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
I see that now the website shows a simpler choice - join mastodon.social or choose another server. I don't think it was like that when I joined (maybe 2 or 3 years ago), you were just given a list of servers or a search and told to choose. This is an improvement for average user onboarding - although if almost everyone clicks mastodon.social, you kind of lose the value of decentralization, right?
- archagon 1y ago
  I think there’s still value to having a long tail of independent instances, which can readily become more dominant if something happens to compromise the primary mastodon.social instance.
- xethos 1y ago
  The time to have an opinion on which servers are cool and which host the fun people you follow is not the instant you go to sign up. Over time, you can notice which servers have buzz for bad moderation vs good, or where half your follow-list lives, and consider moving then Having it take longer to form an opinion isn't exactly a negative either. The longer you take to pick a new server, the longer that server will have been around, and the longer it'll likely continue to be around.
jghn 1y ago
This. I still don't understand why there's so much consternation over choosing a Mastodon server. It doesn't limit who you can follow. I suppose if you're the sort of person who actually likes seeing random content from people you don't explicitly follow it could matter, but that's not for me.
- tredre3 1y ago
  > It doesn't limit who you can follow. That's simply not true. All servers maintain blacklists of other servers they don't like and won't federate with, including mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about (last section, "Moderated servers") You could argue that it's normal to block problematic servers, but it's not you the user who gets to define what is problematic, it's your server. Therefore your choice of server may very well prevent you from seeing content you'd like to see.
  - jghn 1y ago
    Sure, and I did almost mention that. This is an outlier though. When people normally discuss this they act as if their choice of server has a huge impact on whom they can follow. Except for degenerate cases this isn’t true
  - LexiMax 1y ago
    > Therefore your choice of server may very well prevent you from seeing content you'd like to see. How is this any different than users of different IRC networks being unable to communicate with each other? If I'm on OFTC, I certainly don't complain about not being able to talk to people on Libera.chat. I just....join the server and start talking.
    - Ferret7446 1y ago
      Because IRCs aren't social media platforms? Creating an "account" on an IRC server is trivial, and you don't have a permanent profile or friend lists, etc

jsheard 1y ago

Doesn't pretty much everyone using the same instance pretty much defeat the point?

archagon 1y ago
We’re talking about the average user. They’re not going to be particularly passionate about federation. The point, to them, is to have a functioning Twitter-like social network.
- Diti 1y ago
  The average user starts caring about censorship, AFAIK. And Bluesky has done very nasty ToS changes that only federation would have helped fight against. But this is off-topic, because the ToS changes are mostly about porn, while this HN submission is about the professional use of Bluesky.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    The only thing that would help with running sadly illegal in increasing parts of the world (including US) adult content servers would be not having a corporate entity. It's difficult to fund rapid development at the scale needed, with that hobble.
- sumeno 1y ago
  Then why would the average user bother signing up for mastodon over something else
- LexiMax 1y ago
  I'll be completely honest, as someone who remembers the internet before social networks, I have started caring less and less about being crammed into a single shared social space with every other person on earth.
krapp 1y ago
No, because the point is that not everyone is forced to use the same instance. When I started on Mastodon I created an account for each instance I wanted to post to, which was slightly annoying but not much more complicated than signing up for different subreddits. Now I have my own hosted account and follow whomever I like from there. Of course you can follow any account from any account (if the admin hasn't blocked it.)

Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago

I see that now the website shows a simpler choice - join mastodon.social or choose another server. I don't think it was like that when I joined (maybe 2 or 3 years ago), you were just given a list of servers or a search and told to choose. This is an improvement for average user onboarding - although if almost everyone clicks mastodon.social, you kind of lose the value of decentralization, right?

archagon 1y ago
I think there’s still value to having a long tail of independent instances, which can readily become more dominant if something happens to compromise the primary mastodon.social instance.
xethos 1y ago
The time to have an opinion on which servers are cool and which host the fun people you follow is not the instant you go to sign up. Over time, you can notice which servers have buzz for bad moderation vs good, or where half your follow-list lives, and consider moving then Having it take longer to form an opinion isn't exactly a negative either. The longer you take to pick a new server, the longer that server will have been around, and the longer it'll likely continue to be around.

jghn 1y ago

This. I still don't understand why there's so much consternation over choosing a Mastodon server. It doesn't limit who you can follow. I suppose if you're the sort of person who actually likes seeing random content from people you don't explicitly follow it could matter, but that's not for me.

tredre3 1y ago
> It doesn't limit who you can follow. That's simply not true. All servers maintain blacklists of other servers they don't like and won't federate with, including mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about (last section, "Moderated servers") You could argue that it's normal to block problematic servers, but it's not you the user who gets to define what is problematic, it's your server. Therefore your choice of server may very well prevent you from seeing content you'd like to see.
- jghn 1y ago
  Sure, and I did almost mention that. This is an outlier though. When people normally discuss this they act as if their choice of server has a huge impact on whom they can follow. Except for degenerate cases this isn’t true
- LexiMax 1y ago
  > Therefore your choice of server may very well prevent you from seeing content you'd like to see. How is this any different than users of different IRC networks being unable to communicate with each other? If I'm on OFTC, I certainly don't complain about not being able to talk to people on Libera.chat. I just....join the server and start talking.
  - Ferret7446 1y ago
    Because IRCs aren't social media platforms? Creating an "account" on an IRC server is trivial, and you don't have a permanent profile or friend lists, etc