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From GNU social to Mastodon

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Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#91

Post by oopsman88 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #87
dx87 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously implying that someone is a nazi just because they have the number 88 in their name? I have the number 87 in my name, what does that tell you about me? You're a perfect example of what they're complaining about. They've said nothing even remotely offensive, just that they don't agree with shared block lists, and you've already decided that they're wrong and a nazi. I've seen people get added to share…

I don't think everyone I disagree is a Nazi. It's just… easy to lose patience with the “free speech” line of argument when so many people invoking it are doing so in bad faith.

Also, not everybody you disagree with acts in bad faith. Nazis, communists, anarchists, you name it: most of them believe their views of society will lead to a betterment of it. They don't adhere to their principles just because they want to fuck with others.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#93

Post by pmlnr »

stevenicr wrote: post #76
oopsman88 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am appreciating this comment, not because I agree or disagree, but it contains some views I had not considered and they may be important for others who I might want to attract to a mastadon instance if I set up one. I've been keeping on eye on this project for many months, and it's been very interesting. A recent post about moderation and mastadon was very nice to read, but I had only considered the info there from…

MastOdon. Not Mastadon. It's the same word as the giant ancient mammal.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#94

Post by zaarn »

spc476 wrote: post #83
unimpressive wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People use software, the value add Mastodon has over GnuSocial is that it's software that advertises itself to users on its own merits. (Well that and a moderation policy that's stricter than Twitter's, supposedly.)

Yeah, but I'd like to use software that isn't written in PHP or Ruby (for a variety of reasons, some valid, and some not). If the protocol was better documented, there might be more choice.

There is pleroma which is written in Python and functions with the mastodon web interface natively .

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#95

Post by marci »

zaarn wrote: post #94
spc476 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but I'd like to use software that isn't written in PHP or Ruby (for a variety of reasons, some valid, and some not). If the protocol was better documented, there might be more choice.

There is pleroma which is written in Python and functions with the mastodon web interface natively .

Pleroma is written in Elixir

https://blog.soykaf.com/post/what-is-pleroma/#less-moving-pa...

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#96

Post by TuringTest »

panic wrote: post #50
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.)

There's a tension here between different views of what Mastodon should be. Is an instance more like an email server (where it just acts as a gateway) or a web forum (with a community of people on each instance)? It seems like the ActivityPub protocol itself is designed from the "email server" perspective, but as different instances try to differentiate themselves and attract users, I bet the platform will swing more…

Even if each instance has its own community, that's no reason to force users to create a different account at each instance.

Given the federated protocol, it's a reasonable expectation carrying around the same identity across instances.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#97

Post by TuringTest »

elago wrote: post #37
craftyguy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it isn't super high priority since creating multiple accounts (alts) is a pretty common practice here. Then you'll only end up with users that are willing to put up with that, and you will not get users that perceive this as a major inconvenience (I'm in this camp, and I suspect many, many others are too.)

On the android app I use, switching between accounts is as simple UI wise as switching to different instances (or spaces or whatever the top level division is called) in Slack. In two taps I can switch between tech themed and social themed for example. I agree some platforms make multiple accounts hard to the point where you're registering multiple free email accounts, installing multiple browsers and using incognito…

But tying accounts to instances, and then instances to topics, is bad design. The purpose of multiple accounts from a user perspective should be for having separate identities, not separate topics of conversation.

If you're forced to create one account per instance, there's no way to do something as simple as "merge comments from two instances into a single stream", which supposedly was the selling point of federated systems like Mastodon.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#98

Post by zaarn »

marci wrote: post #95
zaarn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is pleroma which is written in Python and functions with the mastodon web interface natively .

Pleroma is written in Elixir https://blog.soykaf.com/post/what-is-pleroma/#less-moving-pa...

I probably remembered wrong... still not Ruby or php!

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#99

Post by TuringTest »

I really miss something like thematic "groups" or "channels" in Mastodon, i.e., a mechanism for making sure that all the people subscribed get all the messages published in it.

That's the #1 feature that allows separate communities to grow, which makes places like Usenet or Reddit or ICQ to become a global conversation where anyone can participate, and where private conversations between restricted communities can happen independent of a central server.

The "timeline" model where everyone publishes their own stream, and anyone subscribe to individual persons, is good for fast propagating of ideas and news; but it doesn't create "clusters" of like-minded ideas that you can follow, and forces everybody to curate their own inputs. This makes it really difficult to jump in, as building a subscription list that provides interesting content and avoids noise has a lot of friction.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#100

Post by epeus »

TuringTest wrote: post #99

I really miss something like thematic "groups" or "channels" in Mastodon, i.e., a mechanism for making sure that all the people subscribed get all the messages published in it. That's the #1 feature that allows separate communities to grow, which makes places like Usenet or Reddit or ICQ to become a global conversation where anyone can participate, and where private conversations between restricted communities can ha…

You can do that with hashtags, but it is only going to show up within your instance's federation. Gnusocial has ! Groups which do propagate all posts, but mastodon didn't implement that bit.
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