Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

blog.joinmastodon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#41

Post by danso »

yborg wrote: post #20
abstractbeliefs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On bans, there are frequent waves of new users who migrate away from Twitter to mastodon because they're told that mastodon has instances that are more suited to their personal (typically) political inclinations, and that the other side isn't permitted here and that discussion is more reasoned. It's not really true. What really happens is that people are told that mastodon is the land of milk and honey, and people of…

Mastodon IS better ... at not stuffing ads in my face. So it's not the same noise as Twitter, in that I don't have to share a home with a billboard in every room.

The appearance of ads is not the only metric that matters for people. The fact that no one is yet apparently spamming or otherwise attempting to profit from Mastadon is more a reflection of how little it is currently used, rather than something inherent to the service.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#42

Post by _7gt4 »

I run deadinsi.de. I wrote some kubernetes definitions and they work, but in the end there was too much overhead, uncertainty about storage stability and cost to keep it running on k8s.

But if you have access to a cluster and want to try it, here you go: https://github.com/SerenityLaboratories/cluster

It includes a storage provider I wouldn't trust all too much yet and the docs are sparse, but you should be able to get it running if you know Kubernetes.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#43

Post by yorwba »

abstractbeliefs wrote: post #17
djsumdog wrote: post #7

I currently run my own Mastodon server, and wrote some scripts if you want to run your own on Vultr: https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/ I'm really glad I set this up. Mastodon is an interesting platform; like one big lopsided chatroom. You do have to follow a lot of strangers to get started (unless you can convince a bunch of your friends to join). People also go pretty ban crazy on there. I've been called a "Nazi stoog…

On bans, there are frequent waves of new users who migrate away from Twitter to mastodon because they're told that mastodon has instances that are more suited to their personal (typically) political inclinations, and that the other side isn't permitted here and that discussion is more reasoned. It's not really true. What really happens is that people are told that mastodon is the land of milk and honey, and people of…

> people end up on hyper-polarised instances where war is waged with blocks, bans, and federation filters

> here you can build all the walls you want to isolate yourself from anyone who doesn't completely agree with you

Shouldn't isolation of opposing viewpoints lead to less war overall? If everyone is interacting in the same space, every controversial post can potentially provoke an aggressive reply, and each response draws in more followers to participate in the battle. On HN, that is counteracted by having too many comments weigh down a submission (the famed flamewar detector), but on engagement-based platforms like Twitter, the fighting never ends.

If everyone chooses an instance with people that think alike and that filters content they strongly disagree with, it's not going to lead to more people changing their minds; but at least they won't constantly see things that make them mad and draw them into useless fights.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#44

Post by _7gt4 »

sdrothrock wrote: post #31
sprokolopolis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Mastodon is decentralized, the interface has a federated timeline that shows toots from all instances that the server federates with. I have found this to feel similar to a centralized, real-time stream of posts like Twitter. The user can still follow hashtags/keywords from most of the users out there. Many of the more popular instances do not federate with a few of the more toxic, anything-goes servers,…

> the interface has a federated timeline that shows toots from all instances that the server federates with This is the issue; many servers are picky about who they federate with and this creates a real bubble.

Mastodon instances are not public spaces. Users can pick how much they want to engage in political discussions by picking their instance or, if they can, hosting their own. (The second part of the argument is flawed because most people can't just throw up a rails app and maintain it, be it cost or lack of knowledge)

What most people don't get about "bubbles", mostly because it doesn't affect them, is that sometimes, if your mere existence is political, getting some rest from it can be quite hard.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#45

Post by r3bl »

ISL wrote: post #15
s73v3r_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running your own instance ensures that the idiot admin of the instance isn't gonna ban you, but other instances can choose not to federate with you.

Running your own instance appears to be the only way to have a permanent identifier, no?

At the moment, yeah. Although there is now a way to indicate that you've moved between instances.

See my old profile for example: https://mastodon.social/@r3bl

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#46

Post by StavrosK »

gemma wrote: post #26
forrestthewoods wrote: post #6

What Mastadon servers do folks here frequent? Which ones are worth your time?

https://mastodon.technology is chock full of geeks, so the local timeline is all people's hacks and bugs and side projects. It's one of the older instances, and it's maintained by this guy: https://ashfurrow.com/

Do you know of any people with cool side-projects to follow? The current timeline on the front page is just people's randomness, which is to be expected.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#48

Post by iuwhagtr »

kragen wrote: post #30

I'm finding Mastodon (I'm at https://nerdculture.de/@kragen at the moment) to be much more pleasant than Twitter, and much richer than IRC. The vicious culture war stuff on Twitter almost doesn't show up in my Mastodon timeline at all.

Of course it doesn't show up: most if not all Mastodon servers ban you for having the wrong political ideology, it's in the server rules of most of them.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#49

Post by wyoh »

gemma wrote: post #26
forrestthewoods wrote: post #6

What Mastadon servers do folks here frequent? Which ones are worth your time?

https://mastodon.technology is chock full of geeks, so the local timeline is all people's hacks and bugs and side projects. It's one of the older instances, and it's maintained by this guy: https://ashfurrow.com/

They block too many instances for weird reasons like libertarian ones.

Re: Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary

#50

Post by progval »

abstractbeliefs wrote: post #17
djsumdog wrote: post #7

I currently run my own Mastodon server, and wrote some scripts if you want to run your own on Vultr: https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/ I'm really glad I set this up. Mastodon is an interesting platform; like one big lopsided chatroom. You do have to follow a lot of strangers to get started (unless you can convince a bunch of your friends to join). People also go pretty ban crazy on there. I've been called a "Nazi stoog…

On bans, there are frequent waves of new users who migrate away from Twitter to mastodon because they're told that mastodon has instances that are more suited to their personal (typically) political inclinations, and that the other side isn't permitted here and that discussion is more reasoned. It's not really true. What really happens is that people are told that mastodon is the land of milk and honey, and people of…

> where war is waged with blocks, bans, and federation filters

I wish all wars were waged like this. It would solve a lot of worldwide issues.

Post reply on HN