Mastodon and Keybase • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#101

Post by zaarn » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:09 AM UTC

mgoia wrote: post #64

Kye wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translation: every weird niche interest can have its own server for its community with its own rules, culture, and user experience while still communicating with other servers.

That is correct in theory. But in practice, other servers will block your server if the rules deviate from the mainstream rules, effectively isolating your server.

Your server will be isolated from some other servers, but it's actually pretty hard to isolate your instance so that you're completely alone in the fediverse.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#102

Post by zach43 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

labster wrote: post #100

zach43 wrote: post #15

Just wanted to say that i moved from twitter to mastodon sometime late last year amd couldn't be happier with it. Keybase integration is interesting to me, but not realky useful since i don't want to tie mastodon with my real life identity. the Fediverse as a whole has a very different 'feel' to it compared to Twitter. Twitter feels significantly more commercialized amd stressful...mastodon / pleroma feel a lot more…

Okay, how do I sign up for Mastodon? I went to mastodon.com, and I got a page that the domain was for sale. Are they having funding problems? Okay, I'm not that dumb, but some users are. And I really don't know how to get started. Not that I've ever been a big social media user, but I'm enough of a hipster to want to say I was on Mastodon before it was ruined.

I know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network?

I'm honestly fine with the mastodon devs not having to spend 1000s of dollars to get the mastodon.com domain. Evidently that domain is so expensive that even the popular heavy metal band "Mastodon" haven't bought that domain (they seem to be at https://www.mastodonrocks.com/ )

BTW, if you're having difficultly finding an instance that caters to your interests, https://joinmastodon.org has a signup flow that shows mastodon instances based on interests. That might help.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#103

Post by zach43 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #56

jeena wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be cool to see everyone's Mastodon usernames/domains, I'm on my own self hosted instance where it's a bit more difficult to find other people. Mine is: https://toot.jeena.net/@jeena

What has your experience been with self-hosting? I'd love to self-host a Mastodon instance that two-way mirrors my Twitter account and acts as a Twitter client (letting me pseudo-follow folks from Twitter). But in any case, I'd want to ensure that no content from people I follow gets mirrored/hosted on my own instance; the only content actually hosted on my own instance should be the content I post.

I've had a pretty good experience self-hosting with Pleroma. Its quite amazing that I can run a social media server with just a $5 VPS.

Not sure if there are bots / apps that can easily let you follow Twitter users on Mastodon, but I've definitely seen mastodon - twitter crossposter apps before.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#104

Post by AgentME » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:39 AM UTC

Bug report: I just connected my Mastodon.social and Keybase profiles. On my Keybase profile, the "post" link next to my Mastodon.social profile link doesn't go directly to the proof post, but instead just links to my profile again.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#105

Post by twblalock » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 4:50 AM UTC

zach43 wrote: post #102

labster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, how do I sign up for Mastodon? I went to mastodon.com, and I got a page that the domain was for sale. Are they having funding problems? Okay, I'm not that dumb, but some users are. And I really don't know how to get started. Not that I've ever been a big social media user, but I'm enough of a hipster to want to say I was on Mastodon before it was ruined.

I know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network? I'm honestly fine with the mastodon devs not having to spend 1000s of dollars to get the mastodon.com domain. Evidently that domain is so expensive that…

> I know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network?

Yes it is, because when people thing of $something, they assume the website is $something.com.

If Mastodon plans to appeal to the general public then it will need to be easier to find.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#106

Post by baroffoos » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

metildaa wrote: post #92

dwighttk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened a Mastodon account and me and one other person I know who opened an account toot at each other every 6 months or so... I guess there is another person I know who opened one but never toots... I try to pretend it doesn't matter to me, but calling individual posts "toots" really does keep me from talking about the service with other people.

There are lots of interesting people on Mastodon, I would recommend searching by hashtag and joining an instance that matches your interests (eg: sdf.org, sergal.org (furries), cybre.space, etc). Many instances block Mastodon.social and other massive instances, and different instances will have different views of the network (based on who the users of the instance follow and how long toots are retained).

I do wish mastodon had the concept of groups so I could join all the groups I'm interested in rather than having to sign up for an account on each one.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#107

Post by 0xb100db1ade » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

dcbadacd wrote: post #42

0xb100db1ade wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that Keybase could work with the Signal team on something. Signal has a lot of experience in UI [1] and security, and Keybase had the identity proofs. I'd love to see them work together rather than compete. [1] Signal UI used to be horrible but as of the past few months it's improved a ton! It's now my preferred SMS client.

The phone number requirement is a killing feature for me, makes it useless. I wouldn't put it even close to the UX bar Keybase has for me.

I do, to some extent agree.

I think the idea is that privacy != anonymity. Signal provides the former, but not the latter.

It's tough. I think that usernames could become messy, but I also think it'd be amazing to anonymously tip a news reporter via Signal, but at the same time the latter would not be as safe as Tor etc.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#108

Post by egypturnash » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

dbasedweeb wrote: post #77

arthur_pryor wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw, after reading this post, i searched "boop snoots" (with quotes) on both duckduckgo and google, and came up with nothing disturbing in the first page of results for either search. nothing that even indicated a connection to furry subculture, far as i could tell. maybe other variations on that search come up with much more risque results?

I didn’t just google “boop snoots;” I googled that, googled “furries” and went down the rabbit hole a bit. ...A decision I now heartily regret. The two major things I found is that some people are very weird, and some other people hate the weird ones disproportionately considering their prevalence and general demeanor.

Welcome to the Internet!

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#109

Post by zach43 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:25 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #105

zach43 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network? I'm honestly fine with the mastodon devs not having to spend 1000s of dollars to get the mastodon.com domain. Evidently that domain is so expensive that…

> I know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network? Yes it is, because when people thing of $something, they assume the website is $something.com. If Mastodon plans to appeal to the general public then i…

I'm personally not at all attached to the 'mastodon.social' domain (i'm self-hosting my own account on a different instance), but I am somewhat surprised at this perspective on TLDs.

Most users of the internet have been exposed to TLDs other than ".com". For example, wikipedia is at a .org TLD, US government sites are at .gov domains, university websites are at .edu domains. Most non-US users will frequently interact with their country's (and neighboring countries') ccTLDs, like .de, .uk, .in, ... I find it surprising to assume that users of social networks who have already understood abstract concepts like "like vs retweet" or "like vs share" would find it difficult to understand the difference between .com and .social.

Also in a sense, it is more accurate for Mastodon to be at a .social TLD instead of a .com since Mastodon is a Patreon-supported FOSS project, and isn't a commercial entity like twitter.com or facebook.com. But yeah, I know that .com doesn't really mean "commercial" anymore, and is more of a general-purpose TLD now.

Mastodon has a number of issues that could stifle broader adoption, but I can't convince myself that the TLD is really relevant here. Most users will just be linked to Mastodon from other sites, or find it from a web search. Once its in their web history, web browsers will just autocomplete the site name in the address bar. And isn't the domain squatting and exorbitant pricing on ".com" the main reasons why the new TLDs have been released anyway?

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#110

Post by founderling » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:34 AM UTC

This seems backward.

They want ActivityPub servers to apply to a central service (keybase) to offer cross server identities.

And they want users to trust that central service to decide who is who.

It's always amazing, how strong the force of centralization is.

Even when the whole value proposition of a technology is that it is decentralized, users will soon flock to centralized services built around it and end up in the mercy of a few organizations again.

Reminds me of all the people who think they hold crypto currency while in reality they "hold" yeah-we-promise-we-owe-you-somethings by some exchange.

Reminds me of how little resistance the Ethereum elite faced when they flushed "code is law" down the toilet and forced all users to switch to a fork with rewritten history.

What makes this attempt of centralization even more tragic is that it does not bring anything to the table. If you want to run a service that let's people claim they are joedoe@host1 and joe_the_doe@host2, just let them publish two messages. "I am joedoe@host1" on joe_the_doe@host2 and "I am joe_the_doe@host2" on joedoe@host1. Neither the integration with the hosts nor the crypto spiel is needed.