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I inspected the mastodon.social website

catalin.red

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Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#21

Post by mothsonasloth »

Nice review, I will consider some of those things when building sites now.

After reading your post and then reading more stuff, it appears that Mastodon is going to become the Gab.ai for Leftists.

Which seems to be ironic in a way.

The internet cannot be controlled if it is to remain free and open. Creating censor lists like this here https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances ,is no different to traffic shaping that ISPs do and what the FCC in America has done.

Effectively they have created BBS boards with a bit more tech and have isolated them.

If this sort of mentality continues we are going to have a segmented internet as a whole, where mega corps rule.

Imagine a hellhole like this:

-- Connecting to Monsanto ISP -- Connected > -- Type "www.reddit.com" -- Coca-Cola DNS, im sorry I cannot resolve that domain for you, please buy another Coca-cola. -- Buys Coca-cola -- Connection to www.reddit.com blocked, it is now under the federated space of GlaxoSmithKlein, who are in competition with the Monsanto Liandri Corporation. -- Goes to connect to www.guardian.com -- Hit with adds for Monsanto weedkiller, and GMO sweetcorn.

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#22

Post by tasuki »

redmaniack wrote: post #12
jimtoo wrote: post #10

I love Mastadon. Apart from the points OP mentioned, I would love to see the UI & UX being upgraded to something that feels cleaner and less cluttered.

To be honest, I blame myself for not opening some pull requests yet, considering the project is open-source. I'd love to contribute and try to improve things but this task might become gigantic on long-term, as the Mastodon project itself :)

Came here to tell you this :)

A blog post is nice and educational, but pull requests would move things forward way better!

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#23

Post by redmaniack »

nailer wrote: post #18
tmy03 wrote: post #16

This is what Sass files do to your CSS files if you abuse nesting Aren't they just using BEM, which is a quite popular css methodology? I don't see how this is a bad thing.

I agree this is BEM, not SASS nesting. I dislike BEM because it requires modification of CSS classes to change how something looks - you add and remove classes to your `.login-box` to make it bigger or bluer or wider. I prefer CSS auto-nesting (using Svelte) or SASS nesting (for older projects) so I can just modify my `.login-box` to add whatever styles it needs and not touch my HTML.

Please read my comment above, also here's how the above "nesting" compiles to:

.compose-form .compose-form__modifiers .compose-form__upload-description input::placeholder { opacity: 1; }

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#24

Post by mrisoli »

redmaniack wrote: post #8
k_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thumbs down on FontAwesome is a little harsh imo. Maybe there should be a thumbs down on FontAwesome using the CSS classes flavor, but I don't see the new version as being a bad thing at all.

The thumbs down was meant to be for the use of an icon font nowadays, in this case, FontAwesome. Don't get me wrong, I'm still using FontAwesome for many projects. The thing is there are so many good reasons to use an SVG icon font system nowadays: pure vector, control over the individual shape symbols, positioning is easier thanks to knowing its exact size etc.

I just tried out Mastodon quickly after reading this, and what a disaster.

Icons are overused, there's no onboarding of the UI and it just throws you in with a bunch of icons, I wasn't sure what most of them did.

I started at mastodon.technology and it immediately follows the instance creator which confused me, when I checked his profile there was an icon with which I could unfollow(an X on top of a person icon), which I didn't know if it meant blocking or unfollowing.

No icon has helper text on hover or anything, you're just thrown in and there's already messages popping in your timeline and I didn't really know that I already followed these people, and I could click Local/Federated timeline and there wasn't much info on what those were.

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#25

Post by whostolemyhat »

nailer wrote: post #20
mikekchar wrote: post #17

Kind of off topic, but like the author I was looking at Mastodon yesterday (reading the ruby code, ha ha!). One thing struck me, though. The documentation seems to imply that it doesn't matter what instance you're on and to simply look for an instance that has people you get along with. However that doesn't seem to be a good idea in some cases and I'm wondering if I'm wrong. Some instances are blocked by other instan…

> https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances Wow. tootcafe, according to their own page, blocks any instances where free-speech is tolerated. Not threats, or harassment, just social views they deem unlikable.

> "Free speech zone": a place where it's okay to promote e.g. National Socialism because the argument is that open discussion is more important than people's sensitivities or the denazification laws of Germany/France/etc.

It blocks hate speech, as clearly mentioned in that link.

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#27

Post by nl »

nailer wrote: post #20
mikekchar wrote: post #17

Kind of off topic, but like the author I was looking at Mastodon yesterday (reading the ruby code, ha ha!). One thing struck me, though. The documentation seems to imply that it doesn't matter what instance you're on and to simply look for an instance that has people you get along with. However that doesn't seem to be a good idea in some cases and I'm wondering if I'm wrong. Some instances are blocked by other instan…

> https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances Wow. tootcafe, according to their own page, blocks any instances where free-speech is tolerated. Not threats, or harassment, just social views they deem unlikable.

I’m 100% behind the idea that instances should be able to refuse to carry (literal) nazi propaganda (read the footnote; this is what we are talking about here. I agree that isn’t great wording though).

Isn’t that the whole idea of federation? Instances can do what they want?

Also Nazism is a threat. I have Jewish and gay friends and Nazis want them executed.

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#28

Post by nailer »

nl wrote: post #27
nailer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances Wow. tootcafe, according to their own page, blocks any instances where free-speech is tolerated. Not threats, or harassment, just social views they deem unlikable.

I’m 100% behind the idea that instances should be able to refuse to carry (literal) nazi propaganda (read the footnote; this is what we are talking about here. I agree that isn’t great wording though). Isn’t that the whole idea of federation? Instances can do what they want? Also Nazism is a threat. I have Jewish and gay friends and Nazis want them executed.

> I have Jewish and gay friends and Nazis want them executed.

Same here. Wanting someone executed is already covered by banning threats, as mentioned in the comment you're replying to.

Removing unwanted speech which isn't threatening isn't necessary. The most likely outcome of blocking free-speech nodes is control of conversation, eg, deeming supporting national borders as 'hate speech'. Which is fine if you want that, but makes tootcafe seem like a play pen for people who don't like to be around others who disagree with them if you don't.

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#29

Post by redmaniack »

languagehacker wrote: post #26

I expected a bit more from this article. This was really just an opinionated UI/UX audit. Nothing they're doing is all that bad, and the frontend looks just fine, honestly. Seems like a good way to plug yourself, sure, but maybe not terribly informative.

Well, I also somehow expected this kind of feedback too.

I agree my findings are far far away from a specialized audit, but nor did I intended to do one.

I just wanted to check out some of the best practices & stuff, based on my daily experience as a web user and developer.

Re: I inspected the mastodon.social website

#30

Post by nailer »

whostolemyhat wrote: post #25
nailer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances Wow. tootcafe, according to their own page, blocks any instances where free-speech is tolerated. Not threats, or harassment, just social views they deem unlikable.

> "Free speech zone": a place where it's okay to promote e.g. National Socialism because the argument is that open discussion is more important than people's sensitivities or the denazification laws of Germany/France/etc. It blocks hate speech, as clearly mentioned in that link.

Yes, I read that. That massive (and likely deliberate) mischaracterisation of free speech is exactly what the comment you're replying to is objecting to.

> it's okay to promote e.g. National Socialism

Not, it's not OK. If you promote Nazism I'll point out you're an idiot and so will most right minded adults. Something being not banned in not the same thing as it being 'OK'.

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