Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

I used discord for a class I was taking - like the class had a discord server. But the internet archive one seems very chaos

Someone could spin up a mastodon instance for a specific marginalized community and mod the hell out of it I think

I am still suprized to see how many bots i was followin g on Twittr

My Twitter follows is in the low 2 digits both out and inbound. I just never really used it.

mastodon is a thousand petty fiefdoms ruled by whim rather than profit, squabbling through fractious "federated" alliances -- the true technofeudalism. say what you will about the value form, at least it leads to predictable constraints and tendencies!

— Gavin Mueller (@gavinmuellerphd) November 18, 2022

lol i was breifly worried abt this academic with "teaching marxist theory" in his bio saying "the true technofeudalism" here -- i mean no -- but then i explored like two lines further and he admits he's just shitposting, as are we all tbf

Oh yeah he is a v good poster who switches to shitposting quite comfortably.

it's shitposting but it's not exactly wrong either, etc.

the federated nature of it really seems like a worst-of-both-worlds situation to me, not quite a lot of little independent online communities (and the messageboard is still the superior format for that, really) nor the single central website for everyone about all things, but it's trying to be both at once and isn't good at either as a result

The challenge for a everyone everywhere platform I guess is: 1) how do you scale so that 'everyone' can be on it and 2) how do you moderate it so that the worst ppl are kicked out.

Mastodon is trying to solve 2), but it probably won't be good enough at 1).

i don't think it's solving 2) because the politics of who's federated with who and different moderation standards and practices seems to get very messy very quickly

Agreed.

I think if there were standards and these could be enforced that might be a way of solving 2).

But not at scale.

yes all that we need is a technology and a top-down constitution that solves political messiness, no i am not a neolib crackpot

People seem to be pushing Hive as an alternative all of a sudden; seems to have a lot of Twitter-like features except you can also add a song to your profile like MySpace (which was my favorite obnoxious feature).

Solve like we did and let mod bots operate. 50 strikes and you are out (one week only) xp

happy I'm not well known like Wesley

"In brief, he's tired of being harassed constantly by random internet people, and the straw that broke the camel's back was getting run out of Mastodon by malicious users reporting his account simply for being there."

https://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/

I did it: @AlfredS✧✧✧@l✧✧.s✧

l✧✧.s✧ you say?

It must be true.

Is Mastodon real?

I rely on Twitter for three professional niches: biology, computer science, and numerical analysis. When I write that “I rely on Twitter,” I mean it. Nearly every collaboration of mine in the past three-four years started on Twitter. It’s been extremely nice to have all three (mostly disconnected) communities on one website. I was skeptical about, despite their rehetoric, whether these communities would move. Yet I feel like the entire biology community (or the subset relevant to me) moved to Mastodon this weekend. Today I see that the computer science community is starting to strongly consider moving. The numerical analysis community? Hopeless. They’ll likely move back to Usenet, if anywhere (this isn’t a joke, they continued to rely on Usenet and Listserv until the late 2010s). I don’t know whether Mastodon will be my new “home,” but I do hope I find one.

It's already feeling very comfortable, I have to say.

mastodon feels like it can serve the academic niches just fine, i think whatever various media outlets/members of the media choose could become the true twitter heir tho and i think the federatedness of mastodon doesnt lend itself to ease of sharing stuff like that, at least not in its current form

Apparently, getting a password reset email has been an impossibility on Mastodon, even prior to the Twitter migration. I'm still logged in on my mobile, but it wouldn't accept my login on desktop, so I was trying to reset due to that. The first time I tried was mid-last week and I haven't received an email from them yet.

The other thing that's been difficult about Mastodon so far is my inability to see who other people are following. For instance, I found someone on Mastodon who I recognized from Twitter and was hoping to poach some of his follows, because there is probably a sizable overlap between the two networks and I thought that it would save me time grabbing all these names again. According to his Mastodon account, he's following 300+ people. But when I click on the list of people he's following, it only shows me 3 people.

yeah to me it seems like 'professional niches' is probably the most likely twittery thing to happen

media / pr outlets and celebs / sports / politicians / "good general punditry" probably not so much

when I click on the list of people he's following, it only shows me 3 people.

The three people you're seeing will be ones who are on the same server as you. This might not be possible on mobile, but on desktop you have to click through to the account's home page on its origin server, then you get a full list of followers/following from all servers.

In general I am enjoying Mastodon (the instance I am on has upgraded their tech so it runs smoothly now), but there are definitely some not-so-user-friendly elements.

I am following you, emil.y, right?

Yep, I'm EK on mastodon.lol - not posting much but hanging out there frequently.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/21/tumblr-to-add-support-for-activitypub-the-social-protocol-powering-mastodon-and-other-apps/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAATkfHMi1jSTpSQ_PwB9QsQP0qI4VKRXOkTSsbUFPKqLx3TQ5YDzvZ6RVnSPFoBK5sFl3HkTiNvlou_dc4Nzbk39wb9FJMQTnkOZqNJx-0eJ9i_DYeZu8AA5WxrBZP75wVSytaqSlJ80-WnlYzuprY1YZkGK3p45rvpaA8M4fUqn

and here comes sic on his fiery steed

I’m @0x00b1 on @fediscience.org if people want to follow me! I think Ned is the only person I’ve found so far.

Hi there!

Have seen some actual funny toots today

My COmic SAns version of Moby Dick has been well-received on Mastodon

lol

👽 @joinmastodon official account has been banned on Twitter pic.twitter.com/qOSe7nRj2W

— Alex Barredo 📉 (@somospostpc) December 15, 2022

This guide should just have a link to this thread.

Here's a beginner 's guide to mastodon, the social network Elon Musk doesn't want you to know about, which you might want to use quite soon.https://t.co/o0XjdxS5v1

— Jayati Ghosh (@Jayati1609) December 16, 2022

is there an ilx-friendly server?

@TheMoviegoer✧✧✧@d✧✧.commun✧✧✧

But I'd be interested in an ILX-centric server.

https://dmv.community/@TheMoviegoeress

Is this better?

Yes

i signed up to a server but i'm on a waitlist and they haven't replied and literally every other server i've tried e.g. mastodon.lol has either removed their sign-up page or also operates a wait list :/

I see it as a quiet non-replacement for twitter

the thing that is kind of amazing is how non-commercial it is, at this point at least - not sure if /how that would change

Yeah, I think .lol is off-limits for a while. The guy who owns the servers has been overwhelmed.

try ravenation.club

nice

i found one btw

https://www.ft.com/content/de808736-2e05-4c3b-a53c-55b170ae9efd

Interesting - but can anything gold stay

wikipedia has. in fact i've just sent my annual donation.

I have read a few pieces pretty critical of their funding drives ie,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/

sure, i mean i think the criticisms there are fairly benign, but i get the messaging can be aggressively needy in tone. it was more to your original point – 'can anything gold stay'. assuming that anything needs some sort of revenue to run, and if you don't want wealthy individual philanthropy backing it, or private business owning it, that means donations if the answer is going to be 'yes'. for me, wikipedia remains an extraordinary enterprise from the early days of the internet, extraordinary partly because it exists, but partly too because it's endured – that's the 'gold' part of the equation. it's a resource I use regularly, at least once a week, probably more like once a day, so putting in a yearly donation seems right, ensuring it can can continue to endure – that's the 'stay' part of the equation.

I too kick a few bucks in Wikipedia's direction every now and then, in gratitude that there's at least one major resource on the internet that's not trying to suck me dry of data in order to enrich some amoral billionaire dickhead.

it's an interesting dilemma - I am happy the Internet Archive is so steadfastly non-profit. There are so many people who are willing to work for free because they believe in something. Much money to be made in things like Chat GPT but then some impertinent upstart offers a free open source version. I have donated this year to internet archive and probably will to my mastodon instance

so have i got this right?

home: just people i follow
local: everybody on that server
federated: everybody on that server plus everybody they follow