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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#31

Post by icebraining »

digitaLandscape wrote: post #4

> As a result, Mastodon users basically never boost toots to say how wrong they are, and there isn't an issue with armies of followers descending on the original author. Because Mastodon is full of like-thinking people, and the ones they'd strongly disagree with aren't joining. This isn't a bad thing (it's the "local" point this post makes), but it's important to emphasize this as the primary factor responsible for p…

Keeping people civil is easy when there are ten thousand times fewer and they all voted socialist.

Clearly you haven't spent much time with actual socialists!

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#32

Post by tablethnuser »

I am interested in joining a Mastodon instance but I don't know how to find the right one to join.

Every pro-Mastodon article mentions I can pack my bags and leave for a new instance but if you do research you find that that feature isn't built yet and the community can't agree on how it should work. So picking the right server is currently a very heavy decision.

I've tried some of these instance finder tools but they reveal that Mastodon instances are like 25% furry communities and other fringe fetishes and I really just want a place to talk tech, philosophy, and video games.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#34

Post by pulisse »

peatmoss wrote: post #11

The posting from a few days ago that reimagined email as a social network really got me thinking how much our approach to social networks has been led by the webbification of everything. The spirit-of-the-nineties approach to recreating mastodon would probably look like one or two dominant native apps and something like a newsgroup server. Or maybe something like a really great RSS reader. Questions about federation…

> In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client’s job, for better or worse. Your computer crashes, you lose who you were following. If you want to publish who you’re following that’s you or your client’s job.

If all the state related to following is on the client, then the client has to either consume the stream of all messages (on a push model) or regularly poll its sources across its entire follower set (on a pull model), both of which are extremely inefficient. Some pressure in the direction of centralization is intrinsic to the problem.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#36

Post by peatmoss »

icebraining wrote: post #29
peatmoss wrote: post #11

The posting from a few days ago that reimagined email as a social network really got me thinking how much our approach to social networks has been led by the webbification of everything. The spirit-of-the-nineties approach to recreating mastodon would probably look like one or two dominant native apps and something like a newsgroup server. Or maybe something like a really great RSS reader. Questions about federation…

In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client’s job, for better or worse. In the 90s, if you moved from your universities' mail server to Lycos, you also lose all the people who you were following, since they still had the previous email address. Mastodon just happens to work in the reverse (you have a list of people you follow, rather than of people who fo…

Yes, though it was hypothetically possible to buy a domain and host your own email. Not a solution for most people in those days, certainly!

That’s gotten harder and easier today. It’s never been harder to properly manage a mailserver yourself. On the other hand, registering a vanity domain and hosting with a neutral 3rd party like (my current) Fastmail has never been easier.

Someone should make a startup that suggests and registers a vanity domain on users’ behalf and then configures the email hosting provider of the user’s choice, spelling out the costs and tradeoffs of each. Work out the billing with a handful of providers and take a small monthly cut. It’s probably a beer money startup :-)

Come to think of it, given this problem is so old, I’d be surprised if nobody has made this.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#37

Post by armandososa »

We should remember that the retweet feature was originally created by the community, like, years before twitter implemented it officially. You'll compose a tweet with the format "RT @username " and broadcast it to all your followers. There's no reason mastodon users can't do the same. Right?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#38

Post by ColinWright »

esrauch wrote: post #20
thsealienbstrds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs could even provide the federated services like they provide e-mail. Another way it might work is companies that sell people federated service servers as products that they can deploy for example in their home or let the company host it. In any case maintenance must be included. I don't see how federated will take off without commercial support. The Smiths might be technically capable but I doubt the Jones's who…

Do people use ISPs email anymore?

Yes.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#40

Post by ColinWright »

tablethnuser wrote: post #32

I am interested in joining a Mastodon instance but I don't know how to find the right one to join. Every pro-Mastodon article mentions I can pack my bags and leave for a new instance but if you do research you find that that feature isn't built yet and the community can't agree on how it should work. So picking the right server is currently a very heavy decision. I've tried some of these instance finder tools but the…

There are many, many out there. I suggest you join one with a deliberately "throw away" account and start following a few people. Then see where they are, and after a time export the list of people you follow, and move.

I'm on https://mathstodon.xyz/ and https://fosstodon.org/ if you want to start on either of those.

Then again, maybe you will neither need nor want to move.

A quick web search for "mastodon instance tech video games" has produces a few pages listing some instances with comments about what sorts of things they cover:

https://thefishcrow.com/2017/04/08/mastodon-instance-content...

https://instances.noct.zone/

Visit one of those pages and Ctrl-F for the things you're interested in. Again, a couple of minutes searching has suggested https://elekk.xyz/about and https://mastodon.gamedev.place/about

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