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From GNU social to Mastodon

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Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#11

Post by danharaj »

oopsman88 wrote: post #6
phaedryx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just join an instance that matches your needs or start your own instance and make it whatever you want?

Because most of the bigger instances have shared blocklists. I am not interested in Mastodon as a tech stack, I am interested in joining a social network. But the truth is that it's all aligned to the political left. And I'm sad because I think Twitter is very politically charged and its alternative should be neutral. You can create your own instance or join a small instance you like, but that would be like IRC. I al…

Freedom of association is the dual of freedom of speech.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#12

Post by oopsman88 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10
jmarinez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. No single person or group should have the capability to "censor" anyone. On an individual basis, any single user should decide to block, hide or completely ignore anyone they want at will. And here's the thing, Mastodon already has all kinds of controls like that for all users. Why the need to have a "benevolent dictator" that can by popularity or influence can decide what an entire group gets to read or see…

people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it. You don't curse in a church, yet plenty of people find them pleasant to visit. People definitely should have the ability to put restrictive rules in place in place if the association with that community is voluntary, and nobody forces you to use mastodon. I find strictly moderated communities very pleasant because I have no inte…

Exactly. I get your point. But mine is: Mastodon shouldn't be publicised as an alternative to Twitter because it's not. It would be like publicising HN as an alternative to Reddit. HN only works as an alternative to Reddit for a very, very reduced group of people. People who share the same interests more or less, and with similar ideas about what flies in tech, politics, social movements, etc.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#13

Post by skybrian »

phaedryx wrote: post #2

I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like the way that the Fediverse has all kinds of different groups/instances/neighborhoods. For example, I joined https://ruby.social this week and I've had some interesting discussions about Ruby programming. Twitter is a mess of everything because anything and ev…

I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit.

(I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#14

Post by wetpaws »

skybrian wrote: post #13
phaedryx wrote: post #2

I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like the way that the Fediverse has all kinds of different groups/instances/neighborhoods. For example, I joined https://ruby.social this week and I've had some interesting discussions about Ruby programming. Twitter is a mess of everything because anything and ev…

I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)

I assume you can't and this is a fundamental problem of federated systems.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#15

Post by cyphar »

wetpaws wrote: post #14
skybrian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)

I assume you can't and this is a fundamental problem of federated systems.

In Mastodon, I believe you can -- but it's more of a Twitter-dump than something as well-separated as subreddits. Each time a user follows someone from a new server, that server's "federated feed" is added to the homeserver of that user. It's not perfect, but it does mean that federated feeds do spread organically (and it does result in single-user instances spam-following everyone so that you can get a more cohesive feed).

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#16

Post by CharlesW »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10
jmarinez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. No single person or group should have the capability to "censor" anyone. On an individual basis, any single user should decide to block, hide or completely ignore anyone they want at will. And here's the thing, Mastodon already has all kinds of controls like that for all users. Why the need to have a "benevolent dictator" that can by popularity or influence can decide what an entire group gets to read or see…

people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it. You don't curse in a church, yet plenty of people find them pleasant to visit. People definitely should have the ability to put restrictive rules in place in place if the association with that community is voluntary, and nobody forces you to use mastodon. I find strictly moderated communities very pleasant because I have no inte…

> people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it.

You'd think, but no. Some instances are run by "free speech absolutists" (in quotes, because they're really not) who block instances which, in their opinion, are "too aggressive" about blocking spam and bad actors. For example, mastodon.social blocks counter.social, preventing all counter.social users from federating with mastodon.social users.

In other words, Twitter users have to deal with the opaque decision making of one @jack. Mastodon users have to deal with the opaque decision making of a bunch of @jacks.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#17

Post by y2bd »

skybrian wrote: post #13
phaedryx wrote: post #2

I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like the way that the Fediverse has all kinds of different groups/instances/neighborhoods. For example, I joined https://ruby.social this week and I've had some interesting discussions about Ruby programming. Twitter is a mess of everything because anything and ev…

I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)

There’s a beta iOS app called Toot that solves this by letting you add timelines for instances you don’t have an account on. If you try interacting with anyone on that timeline, it asks you if you want to use one of your other accounts to handle that interaction. Don’t know if any other clients offer this.

Link: https://mastodon.social/@tootapp

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#18

Post by freeone3000 »

oopsman88 wrote: post #12
Barrin92 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it. You don't curse in a church, yet plenty of people find them pleasant to visit. People definitely should have the ability to put restrictive rules in place in place if the association with that community is voluntary, and nobody forces you to use mastodon. I find strictly moderated communities very pleasant because I have no inte…

Exactly. I get your point. But mine is: Mastodon shouldn't be publicised as an alternative to Twitter because it's not. It would be like publicising HN as an alternative to Reddit. HN only works as an alternative to Reddit for a very, very reduced group of people. People who share the same interests more or less, and with similar ideas about what flies in tech, politics, social movements, etc.

Mastodon isn't a monolithic thing. That's the entire point. The moderation policy of the server at mastodon.social has no bearing on the moderation policy of social.wxcafe.net or switter.net. Your complaint of "it's like irc" isn't quite true, because of a number of obvious technical and user experience differences. "Everyone should be able to reach everyone else" is proving to be less and less desirable.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#19

Post by xj9 »

wetpaws wrote: post #14
skybrian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)

I assume you can't and this is a fundamental problem of federated systems.

we're working on it ;)

there are a handful of proposals for doing SSO on fediverse, but it isn't super high priority since creating multiple accounts (alts) is a pretty common practice here.

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