Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 131 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#81

Post by enkiv2 »

sleazy_b wrote: post #77
ekanes wrote: post #75

Mastodon looks great, but one newbie Q holds me back - what if you join, participate, and after some years your the instance/community upon which you built goes under? Are you starting again from scratch somewhere else? Thanks for any help!

Looks like

You can (and should) export & backup your following list.

Migrating posts is complicated -- it's straightforward to export all your posts with third party tools, but you shouldn't expect to be able to move them to a new instance unless you're running it yourself, in order to avoid the possibility of faked histories. (I personally keep a backup of all my posts, and it's fairly straightforward to re-format them as a static html document if you feel like you need to re-host them for archival purposes.)

Personally, I recommend keeping accounts on several instances, and posting to different accounts corresponding to your various interests. This makes it less irritating for members of your social group that don't want to hear about particular topics, makes migration in case of instance apocalypse easier, and encourages you to stretch out your identity a bit (rather than feeling like you need to stay 'on-brand' like people do on twitter).

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#82

Post by jaequery »

I think people will assume their data is safer with Mastadon. But in a way, your data might even be more insecure, as you have no idea what and who the Instance owner is, and what they will do with the data.

Also, now the responsibility of securing the platform is in the hands of the instance owner, whom you have no idea how they have their platform setup.

FYI, an open source project called Drupal, was recently affected with a a bug where millions of sites could be hacked.

Now I'd like to know how Mastadon will combat these issues.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#83

Post by enkiv2 »

akkartik wrote: post #10

I've been mostly hanging out in this subculture of Forth/Gopher folks: https://mastodon.social/@crc https://mastodon.social/@vertigo https://social.coop/@h https://mastodon.social/@natecull Ok, that's not much of a list. I tend to have favorite threads rather than favorite people: https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99158138073364070 https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99765851805118639 https://social.coop/@h/99191538225…

I love that there's a really rich gopher-centric community on the fediverse. It should be noted that the gopher people overlap heavily not just with forth but also with experimental hypertext.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#84

Post by fenwick67 »

dielan wrote: post #17
myst wrote: post #14

What is Mastodon?

Its a recent new server software and client for the StatusNet "fediverse". StatusNet and the protocols it uses are very old, and a small community of users have been there for like a decade. Its a federated social network. It is like a cross between Twitter and email. Anyone can start a server and set their own community rules and guide lines. If you or someone on your server remotely follows someone they like on ano…

If you want a freezepeach instance there are lots of them, and I wish you luck.

Frankly, social media is a place where I want a bit of a "bubble", and by "bubble" I mean "blocking people and communities that annoy me".

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#85

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

jaequery wrote: post #82

I think people will assume their data is safer with Mastadon. But in a way, your data might even be more insecure, as you have no idea what and who the Instance owner is, and what they will do with the data. Also, now the responsibility of securing the platform is in the hands of the instance owner, whom you have no idea how they have their platform setup. FYI, an open source project called Drupal, was recently affec…

I think that fundamentally misses the point. No one is using a social network for "data security", the whole value add of twitter (and by extension mastodon) is the public nature.

The value add of something like mastodon is you get to choose your instance owner (and it could be yourself) which means choosing your moderation scheme. As well as offering a more transparent social experience (ie no algorithmically generated timelines to push adds or "engagement").

Comparing Mastodon to a php CMS seems like an apples to oranges comparison in every sense.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#87

Post by kstrauser »

dielan wrote: post #17
myst wrote: post #14

What is Mastodon?

Its a recent new server software and client for the StatusNet "fediverse". StatusNet and the protocols it uses are very old, and a small community of users have been there for like a decade. Its a federated social network. It is like a cross between Twitter and email. Anyone can start a server and set their own community rules and guide lines. If you or someone on your server remotely follows someone they like on ano…

> It has a troubled history

Stop there; this is where your comment goes off the rails. I'm an admin (disclosure - my blocklist: https://github.com/kstrauser/freeradical/blob/master/content...) and see almost none of the far-left censorship you describe, particularly on content. You want to be pro-Trump? Go for it, as long as you're polite and respectful. Sure, people will argue with you, but that's their right to be expressive, too.

GNU Social is an interesting experiment and was quickly adopted by a lot of people who wanted to have literally zero limits on free speech. I initially switched from running a GS node to running a Mastodon instance because the software was orders of magnitude better, but quickly decided that adding a couple of rules (be polite. Don't harass. Respect others.) made for a much better user experience than the wild west "say anything you want" environment of GS. I guess you could argue that those rules are imposing censorship, but much in the same way that outlawing physical assault is a restriction of our freedom to beat people up.

As an admin, here's my take on the matter: https://blog.freeradical.zone/welcome-to-my-living-room/ . You don't have to agree with everything I say, but you don't get to punch my other guests and then whine when I throw you out. In practice, this is hypothetical because I've never had to ban anyone. Turns out adults are perfectly capable of treating each other decently when they know that's expected of them.

- @tek@freeradical.zone (https://freeradical.zone/@tek)

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#88

Post by jaequery »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #85
jaequery wrote: post #82

I think people will assume their data is safer with Mastadon. But in a way, your data might even be more insecure, as you have no idea what and who the Instance owner is, and what they will do with the data. Also, now the responsibility of securing the platform is in the hands of the instance owner, whom you have no idea how they have their platform setup. FYI, an open source project called Drupal, was recently affec…

I think that fundamentally misses the point. No one is using a social network for "data security", the whole value add of twitter (and by extension mastodon) is the public nature. The value add of something like mastodon is you get to choose your instance owner (and it could be yourself) which means choosing your moderation scheme. As well as offering a more transparent social experience (ie no algorithmically genera…

I get that. I haven't fully read the in and outs of Mastadon but from a glance, it reminds me of Wordpress with Pingbacks. Or quite simply RSS feeds, where user you follow is essentially subscribing to their feeds.

But all that aside, at the end of the day, if you "are" a user in one of the instances, you are still at the mercy of the owner's technical skills to make sure your data is safe.

If the owner one day decides he can't afford to pay his bills, or gets hacked and wipes out data, what would happen to all your posts? I believe it'd just disappear, but please do correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#89

Post by akkartik »

enkiv2 wrote: post #83
akkartik wrote: post #10

I've been mostly hanging out in this subculture of Forth/Gopher folks: https://mastodon.social/@crc https://mastodon.social/@vertigo https://social.coop/@h https://mastodon.social/@natecull Ok, that's not much of a list. I tend to have favorite threads rather than favorite people: https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99158138073364070 https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99765851805118639 https://social.coop/@h/99191538225…

I love that there's a really rich gopher-centric community on the fediverse. It should be noted that the gopher people overlap heavily not just with forth but also with experimental hypertext.

Indeed! Hence your Xanadu toot train in that list :)

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon?

#90

Post by davefp »

jaequery wrote: post #82

I think people will assume their data is safer with Mastadon. But in a way, your data might even be more insecure, as you have no idea what and who the Instance owner is, and what they will do with the data. Also, now the responsibility of securing the platform is in the hands of the instance owner, whom you have no idea how they have their platform setup. FYI, an open source project called Drupal, was recently affec…

For me the main draw of Mastodon is that my interactions with it aren't being increasingly optimized for revenue.

There are no ads in my feed, and no opaque algorithm determining what I see.

Data security is a concern of mine, but I don't think Mastodon is any more or less vulnerable to attacks than any other software.

Post reply on HN