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

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

#101

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

dhruvkar wrote: post #94
ddevault wrote: post #66

People https://mastodon.social/@eevee - good tech blogger https://mastodon.art/@Curator - admin of an art-based instance who boosts lots of cool art https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy - artist behind https://peppercarrot.com https://octodon.social/@emersion - friend of mine who works on cool projects with me Orgs https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay https://mastodon.art/@Krita https://mastodon.technology/@kde Bots https://…

If I were to setup my own instance, like you, how do I interact (read & write) with other, curated instances (e.g. octodon.social, mastodon.social etc.)?

Every instance can talk to every other one seamlessly. You just follow the people you want or even mention them directly and it'll work.

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

#102

Post by dhruvkar »

WorldMaker wrote: post #100
dhruvkar wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to setup my own instance, like you, how do I interact (read & write) with other, curated instances (e.g. octodon.social, mastodon.social etc.)?

Remote follow enough specific people you are interested in and some of the rest of the instance's traffic will show up in your instance's Federated Feed as it interests them. Sometimes if the remote instance's entire feed is interesting I might set up a "read only" account on that instance to get an idea of people to remote follow from my main account. I've heard good multi-instance clients can help a lot with that,…

Okay, yeah, doesn't seem to be too many out there. So no real way to do this now, except what you described. You can follow specific people, but no local timelines of instances.

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

#103

Post by WorldMaker »

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!

Just as you might vet the domain your email address is hosted with, you want to vet the instance you join. Most instances post information about their admin policies. Some instances post information about their business/hosting model (ie, cooperatives that pay for their instance among themselves, versus people using spare VM cycles "for fun"), and many admins will answer questions about it even if not posted explicitly.

As with email, there's also always the option to use a custom domain you control for your instance. There are a couple of SaaS providers for Mastodon instances like https://masto.host, and cookbooks for several DIY options on major hosting providers. A benefit to custom domain is that you have some power to migrate your CNAME records if you had to switch hosts, and keep your existing followers even.

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

#104

Post by WorldMaker »

jaequery wrote: post #88
lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decid…

There is a lot of overlap with RSS and Pingbacks, indeed.

Mastodon today provides a tool to get data backups of your account's own data, at least, so in the case of a lost instance there may be some options.

Plus, as with blogs there is the option to be your own instance owner on a custom domain you control. So the assumed risk level can vary to what you are comfortable with.

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

#105

Post by kral »

sridca wrote: post #74
kral wrote: post #34

If someone is interested, I'm the amin of an instance focused on functional programming: https://functional.cafe

Looking at the local timeline of functional.cafe there is hardly any tech related toots, much less functional programming. Is this expected of Mastodon networks? I noticed the same thing with bsd.network.

That's why I called it “café”

Jokes apart, I'm trying my best to make it a more technical instance, but I can't control what the users toot. I just hope that someone joins a tech instance to talk about tech...

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

#107

Post by vigliag »

ColinWright wrote: post #48
vigliag wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can copy-paste the profile url in mastodon's searchbar, it'll open that profile in the UI of your mastodon instance, so you can follow it as you normally would.

Your words "the profile url" don't mean anything to me. The URL I have - as quoted above - when pasted into the search bar gives no results.

That was exactly what I meant, sorry if it was unclear. Copy-pasting the http URL in the search bar works for me. I am however on a different instance, mastodon.social, no idea what may be causing the different behavior.

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

#108

Post by msoucy »

ddevault wrote: post #66

People https://mastodon.social/@eevee - good tech blogger https://mastodon.art/@Curator - admin of an art-based instance who boosts lots of cool art https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy - artist behind https://peppercarrot.com https://octodon.social/@emersion - friend of mine who works on cool projects with me Orgs https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay https://mastodon.art/@Krita https://mastodon.technology/@kde Bots https://…

@eevee@mastodon.social was surprised by all the people suddenly following them... As they've tooted, a lot of what they post could definitely be seen as not safe for work.

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

#109

Post by ColinWright »

vigliag wrote: post #107
ColinWright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your words "the profile url" don't mean anything to me. The URL I have - as quoted above - when pasted into the search bar gives no results.

That was exactly what I meant, sorry if it was unclear. Copy-pasting the http URL in the search bar works for me. I am however on a different instance, mastodon.social, no idea what may be causing the different behavior.

OK, so interpreted you correctly, but it didn't work on my instance. Fair enough - not really worth pursuing, but worth being aware of.

Thanks.

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

#110

Post by eevee »

msoucy wrote: post #108
ddevault wrote: post #66

People https://mastodon.social/@eevee - good tech blogger https://mastodon.art/@Curator - admin of an art-based instance who boosts lots of cool art https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy - artist behind https://peppercarrot.com https://octodon.social/@emersion - friend of mine who works on cool projects with me Orgs https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay https://mastodon.art/@Krita https://mastodon.technology/@kde Bots https://…

@eevee@mastodon.social was surprised by all the people suddenly following them... As they've tooted, a lot of what they post could definitely be seen as not safe for work.

but hey, that's what CWs are for
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