4 ms·

Decentralisation on Mastodon is an illusion. For me a truly decentralised thing is where I am a node that transmits and can receive transmissions, like radios.

by rckt 11mo ago

Decentralisation on Mastodon is an illusion. For me a truly decentralised thing is where I am a node that transmits and can receive transmissions, like radios. When there has to be a server that's being administrated by somebody, this already puts me in a position where I depend on the people who own the server. This means that if for any reason these people don't like me, they can simply ban me and that's it. Basically the same caveat as with the corp social medias, but on a smaller scale. Mastodon is definitely an alternative to big corps, but it has the same flaws. I don't see it as a way the decentralised community should go.

latexr 11mo ago
> When there has to be a server that's being administrated by somebody And that somebody can be you. There are Mastodon servers operated by individuals for their friends or their small company. Anyone can host a server with their own rules.
- rckt 11mo ago
  Yes, I know this. But it feels overkilling to host a server which is capable of hosting thousands of users just for me alone. I'd like something small, dedicated just for my own usage. Kind of a way to have my RSS feed discoverable and commentable.
  - ktpsns 11mo ago
    Modern software deployment methods can fill the gap between your selfhosted need and the work to be done. I won't name technologies here, because existing have its flaws (docker, helm, etc). Mastodon is federated and thus basically fulfills your whish. IMO "decentralized Web3" such as IPFS may rempve that need for classical "hosts" but at the costs of an entrance barrier for users (have to install that client).
  - Yodel0914 11mo ago
    Do you know about gotosocial? That’s pretty much exactly what you’re describing.
    - rckt 11mo ago
      Never heard of it. Thanks! I'll take a look.
  - jeroenhd 11mo ago
    I run my own Mastodon instance and it's definitely heavy and unoptimized for this use case. That seems to be a common theme with Ruby on Rails applications, to be honest. There are lighter clients that will integrate perfectly into Fediverse/Mastodon networks, though, such as GoToSocial (https://gotosocial.org/ https://gotosocial.org/) with its light and low-tech UI. Many Mastodon alternatives expose a Mastodon API so that you can use the standard Mastodon apps with them, even if you're not really hosting Mastodon itself.
- amiga386 11mo ago
  Though that will then open you up to legal liability, including for things that other people say (if their messages reach your server, even if you haven't personally seen them): https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html Being a user on someone else's server is much less legal risk. Using E2E software where nobody runs a server is much less legal risk. Running a one-person instance of Mastodon is the worst case for legal liability.
  - Angostura 11mo ago
    Just use your server only for you, and ingest the federated feed.
    - amiga386 11mo ago
      Even if you do that, you're still - legally speaking - liable for hosting all those federated messages. IANAL, but my understanding is the most effective way to run your own server is to have it completely hidden, e.g. behind classic HTTP authentication so that nobody but you can even see it's a Mastodon server, and definitely can't see anything the server is ingesting, without first logging in. Even then, if you're a resident of California, your server "collects and maintains personally identifiable information from a consumer residing in California who uses or visits" so you need a privacy policy for yourself, legally speaking. See how much work it is to be legally compliant with laws that never really considered your use-case but apply to you anyway?
      - bayindirh 11mo ago
        > liable for hosting all those federated messages. Mastodon do not permanently stores these messages. They are cached, and evicted after some time. I linked to a video some time ago, and now that link is unreachable because it's expired. The URL contained "/cache/", and I didn't understand what it meant until my video died.
        amiga386 11mo ago
nostrfanboi 11mo ago
Yes. It's just larping as long as you are to use a username and a password to log in to a server - even if it's your own server. This is why I have never tried bluesky, their apps wants me to enter a user/pass and my date of birth. Nostr fixes this.
Angostura 11mo ago
There’s really nothing to stop you running your own server. One of my impractical, but dream ideas was to create a Mastodon client that had a server embedded in it. No more ‘Signing up for a server’ by default you had your own instance
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  What’s impractical about that? It seems like a great idea. Well, I guess doing any big open source project is a bit impractical. I wonder if it would be possible to (as a hack) come up with a set of scripts to smoosh the general Mastodon server into this shape…
  - Nextgrid 11mo ago
    > What’s impractical about that? My understanding is that ActivityPub relies on the server having a stable domain name and be reachable from the internet so that other instances can talk to it. So your client must continuously run its server in the background (impossible on mobile) and be reachable from the internet at a static IP or dynamic DNS with low TTLs (very impractical on mobile unless you perpetually leave your "mobile" at home).
    - berkes 11mo ago
      Your understanding is right. Though some downtime is usually handled by servers with "backoff retries" eventually you're server will be marked as offline and servers might never bother contacting it anymore. Similar to email which - at least technically - has the idea built into its protocol that servers are going to be down. But mastodon was built with more modern web in mind, so having a server that's offline more than online will be highly impractical. I guess one could solve this with buffering proxies. Either hosted by others for you (as a service) defeating the entire premise of you being the full owner, or hosted on your nas or cheap hosting. Such a proxy would be far simpler than a full blown server, as all it needs to do is ingest messages and keep them for X time and forward them to your "actual server inside the client" once that connects online. The server-in-the client can handle outgoing messages and handle downloading linked media and such. I am not aware of such proxy software. But currently gotosocial is the simplest and lightest server software I am aware of, so maybe stripping that could work.
t0bia_s 11mo ago
Even Eugen himself set to position of labelling opposite opinions (1) and censorship. Fediverse, in Mastodon way, actually feeds social bubbles. (1) https://ibb.co/qY082NjX https://ibb.co/qY082NjX
- rckt 11mo ago
  That's what puzzles me. In the fediverse where you can mute anyone on the user level, admins feel the urge to ban those who they see as bad actors.
cpburns2009 11mo ago
> For me a truly decentralised thing is where I am a node that transmits and can receive transmissions, like radios. That sounds like Nostr. My understanding is your node is the nostr relay. Your nostr client can publish messages to your relay. Any "subscribed" clients or relays can then access and forward the message from your relay.
- rckt 11mo ago
  On the GoToSocial website it's clear what it is, how it works and how to get started. The Nostr website seems more like they want me to sign up and start using their server/relay. And I had to spend some time searching for how to set up a private relay. This fact is off-putting. Feels like they care more about their product than about free communication.
  - MarsIronPI 11mo ago
    Nostr doesn't have "a website". nostr.com is its own thing, nostr.org is another thing and nostr.how is yet another. None of these (AFAIK) is related to the Nostr project, whose only web presence is on GitHub.
    - rckt 11mo ago
      Feels messed up already. But I’ll have a look at their GitHub. Thanks.
      - MarsIronPI 11mo ago
        Yeah, Nostr is a bit of a free-for-all, and I think it's by design.
miki123211 11mo ago
And to make matters worse, Mastodon relies heavily on domains (and indirectly TLS root certs) as protocol primitives. Even if you run your own server, you just change who your "overlord" is.
blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
Why do you think that decentralization isn’t real if it’s not at the furthest extreme?

by rckt 11mo ago

latexr 11mo ago

> When there has to be a server that's being administrated by somebody And that somebody can be you. There are Mastodon servers operated by individuals for their friends or their small company. Anyone can host a server with their own rules.

rckt 11mo ago
Yes, I know this. But it feels overkilling to host a server which is capable of hosting thousands of users just for me alone. I'd like something small, dedicated just for my own usage. Kind of a way to have my RSS feed discoverable and commentable.
- ktpsns 11mo ago
  Modern software deployment methods can fill the gap between your selfhosted need and the work to be done. I won't name technologies here, because existing have its flaws (docker, helm, etc). Mastodon is federated and thus basically fulfills your whish. IMO "decentralized Web3" such as IPFS may rempve that need for classical "hosts" but at the costs of an entrance barrier for users (have to install that client).
- Yodel0914 11mo ago
  Do you know about gotosocial? That’s pretty much exactly what you’re describing.
  - rckt 11mo ago
    Never heard of it. Thanks! I'll take a look.
- jeroenhd 11mo ago
  I run my own Mastodon instance and it's definitely heavy and unoptimized for this use case. That seems to be a common theme with Ruby on Rails applications, to be honest. There are lighter clients that will integrate perfectly into Fediverse/Mastodon networks, though, such as GoToSocial (https://gotosocial.org/ https://gotosocial.org/) with its light and low-tech UI. Many Mastodon alternatives expose a Mastodon API so that you can use the standard Mastodon apps with them, even if you're not really hosting Mastodon itself.
amiga386 11mo ago
Though that will then open you up to legal liability, including for things that other people say (if their messages reach your server, even if you haven't personally seen them): https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html Being a user on someone else's server is much less legal risk. Using E2E software where nobody runs a server is much less legal risk. Running a one-person instance of Mastodon is the worst case for legal liability.
- Angostura 11mo ago
  Just use your server only for you, and ingest the federated feed.
  - amiga386 11mo ago
    Even if you do that, you're still - legally speaking - liable for hosting all those federated messages. IANAL, but my understanding is the most effective way to run your own server is to have it completely hidden, e.g. behind classic HTTP authentication so that nobody but you can even see it's a Mastodon server, and definitely can't see anything the server is ingesting, without first logging in. Even then, if you're a resident of California, your server "collects and maintains personally identifiable information from a consumer residing in California who uses or visits" so you need a privacy policy for yourself, legally speaking. See how much work it is to be legally compliant with laws that never really considered your use-case but apply to you anyway?
    - bayindirh 11mo ago
      > liable for hosting all those federated messages. Mastodon do not permanently stores these messages. They are cached, and evicted after some time. I linked to a video some time ago, and now that link is unreachable because it's expired. The URL contained "/cache/", and I didn't understand what it meant until my video died.
      - amiga386 11mo ago

nostrfanboi 11mo ago

Yes. It's just larping as long as you are to use a username and a password to log in to a server - even if it's your own server. This is why I have never tried bluesky, their apps wants me to enter a user/pass and my date of birth. Nostr fixes this.

Angostura 11mo ago

There’s really nothing to stop you running your own server. One of my impractical, but dream ideas was to create a Mastodon client that had a server embedded in it. No more ‘Signing up for a server’ by default you had your own instance

bee_rider 11mo ago
What’s impractical about that? It seems like a great idea. Well, I guess doing any big open source project is a bit impractical. I wonder if it would be possible to (as a hack) come up with a set of scripts to smoosh the general Mastodon server into this shape…
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  > What’s impractical about that? My understanding is that ActivityPub relies on the server having a stable domain name and be reachable from the internet so that other instances can talk to it. So your client must continuously run its server in the background (impossible on mobile) and be reachable from the internet at a static IP or dynamic DNS with low TTLs (very impractical on mobile unless you perpetually leave your "mobile" at home).
  - berkes 11mo ago
    Your understanding is right. Though some downtime is usually handled by servers with "backoff retries" eventually you're server will be marked as offline and servers might never bother contacting it anymore. Similar to email which - at least technically - has the idea built into its protocol that servers are going to be down. But mastodon was built with more modern web in mind, so having a server that's offline more than online will be highly impractical. I guess one could solve this with buffering proxies. Either hosted by others for you (as a service) defeating the entire premise of you being the full owner, or hosted on your nas or cheap hosting. Such a proxy would be far simpler than a full blown server, as all it needs to do is ingest messages and keep them for X time and forward them to your "actual server inside the client" once that connects online. The server-in-the client can handle outgoing messages and handle downloading linked media and such. I am not aware of such proxy software. But currently gotosocial is the simplest and lightest server software I am aware of, so maybe stripping that could work.

t0bia_s 11mo ago

Even Eugen himself set to position of labelling opposite opinions (1) and censorship. Fediverse, in Mastodon way, actually feeds social bubbles. (1) https://ibb.co/qY082NjX https://ibb.co/qY082NjX

rckt 11mo ago
That's what puzzles me. In the fediverse where you can mute anyone on the user level, admins feel the urge to ban those who they see as bad actors.

cpburns2009 11mo ago

> For me a truly decentralised thing is where I am a node that transmits and can receive transmissions, like radios. That sounds like Nostr. My understanding is your node is the nostr relay. Your nostr client can publish messages to your relay. Any "subscribed" clients or relays can then access and forward the message from your relay.

rckt 11mo ago
On the GoToSocial website it's clear what it is, how it works and how to get started. The Nostr website seems more like they want me to sign up and start using their server/relay. And I had to spend some time searching for how to set up a private relay. This fact is off-putting. Feels like they care more about their product than about free communication.
- MarsIronPI 11mo ago
  Nostr doesn't have "a website". nostr.com is its own thing, nostr.org is another thing and nostr.how is yet another. None of these (AFAIK) is related to the Nostr project, whose only web presence is on GitHub.
  - rckt 11mo ago
    Feels messed up already. But I’ll have a look at their GitHub. Thanks.
    - MarsIronPI 11mo ago
      Yeah, Nostr is a bit of a free-for-all, and I think it's by design.

miki123211 11mo ago

And to make matters worse, Mastodon relies heavily on domains (and indirectly TLS root certs) as protocol primitives. Even if you run your own server, you just change who your "overlord" is.

blackqueeriroh 11mo ago

Why do you think that decentralization isn’t real if it’s not at the furthest extreme?