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Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

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Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#201

Post by INTPenis »

bluesign wrote: post #59
andrewzah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get why the concept of mastodon is so confusing. It's basically twitter/microblogging* with multiple hosts, and you can see posts from other hosts. So instead of just @andrewzah, my handle becomes @andrewzah@ . You could visualize twitter as @andrewzah@twitter.com, but it's redundant as twitter is the only host. This is basically how email works, no? The only other difference is federation, so you have…

I guess problem lies in this part mainly. Choosing host is more important than it should be. Mainly because hosts are trying to do 2 things at the same time: being identity provider and being some kind of content host in federated environment (moderation etc). Because of this when you choosing a host, you are investing too much. Their future policy changes etc will effect you, you cannot afaik move to another host. (…

The choosing host part is exactly why I want to emphasize that nothing has changed in regards to hosting.

Just like before someone needs to host the "message board" and that someone needs to be relied upon.

I often see posts on fediverse related subreddits of people who are dismayed because their instance admin did something. They expect every instance to be a "Mastodon instance" and follow some sort of rules.

People need to be reminded of the internet that was. Before Facebook and Twitter started to run it for them.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#202

Post by INTPenis »

kowlo wrote: post #28
INTPenis wrote: post #13

I've hosted a mastodon instance since 2017 and I see one general misunderstanding over and over, on mastodon or on fediverse related subreddits. People think it's a completely new concept. People seem to have forgotten, or not been part of, all the message boards we used to have during the late 90s and all throughout the 2000s. The ONLY thing Mastodon brings to this is federation. You used to have accounts on over a…

I thought Mastodon was closer to Twitter than it is to the classic BBS. How is your instance going - did you build a community around it?

It's close to twitter in features but it's important to understand the hosting aspect.

Facebook and Twitter have been hosting our social media for years, in a centralized way.

Federation makes this possible for every person, denctralized.

So essentially we're back to 12-15 years ago when private people were still hosting message boards for each other. All that changes is that those message boards can now federate content.

And everyone who remembers those days know that hosting a message board that became popular was a struggle.

Which is why I've opted to keep my instance small through various steps I won't say here but they aren't ground breaking or secret. I just don't want to give away my identity because this is my secret account on HN.

After 4 years on the fediverse, listening to issues, reading threads, my opinion is that we should focus on many smaller instance rather than a few huge ones.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#203

Post by cutemonster »

cbozeman wrote: post #130
throwaway45349 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this purely a US phenomenon? I don't see this much at all from people who live here t(the UK), but we're really starting to feel the effects of social media censorship hit hard, and I know a lot of people are really angry about Big Tech pushing their own moralistic world view on our country.

America has a long tradition of being vocal and offensive in its communications. At the very founding of our nation, you could find political cartoons of George Washington on a donkey, with the caption, "An ass being led to Washington." In general Americans seem to be more thick-skinned than others. Or at least we used to be. EDIT: Here you go buddy... this is almost a word-for-word of the argument that was used in t…

> America has a long tradition of being vocal and offensive in its communications

Selection bias. I'd think that's how people you happen to hang out with, or talk with on the internet, might be.

But not people in general, at least not the ones I've met from the US (lots of people).

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#204

Post by LibertyBeta »

S-E-P wrote: post #27

I would argue that what is described in this post is inherent in all social networks. The wonderful thing about the Fediverse is that depending on the node you connect to, or the people you choose to federate with (in the event that you have your own instance) that your experience will be vastly different. It’s given me some of the most enjoyable interactions I’ve ever had online in the last ten years. You need to ha…

But does it have a flagship instance like Mastodon.social.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#205

Post by cbozeman »

cutemonster wrote: post #203
cbozeman wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a long tradition of being vocal and offensive in its communications. At the very founding of our nation, you could find political cartoons of George Washington on a donkey, with the caption, "An ass being led to Washington." In general Americans seem to be more thick-skinned than others. Or at least we used to be. EDIT: Here you go buddy... this is almost a word-for-word of the argument that was used in t…

> America has a long tradition of being vocal and offensive in its communications Selection bias. I'd think that's how people you happen to hang out with, or talk with on the internet, might be. But not people in general, at least not the ones I've met from the US (lots of people).

> Selection bias.

Check out the book Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism.

> I'd think that's how people you happen to hang out with, or talk with on the internet, might be.

You literally have no data to support that comment, whereas I'm referencing existing documents throughout American history that show just how vitriolic communications were.

You realize that our politicians used to get into fistfights on the floor of Congress, right?

> But not people in general, at least not the ones I've met from the US (lots of people).

What you've just described is selection bias, but I understand why would you feel that way. You're likely not exposed to a diverse selection of Americans. Do you know many corn farmers from the Midwest states? Do you know any deep sea welders from Mississippi? Do you know many club promoters from California? Do you know many book editors from New York?

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#206

Post by throwaway894345 »

rglullis wrote: post #187
throwaway894345 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even then, you can only pick one server per account, which seems asinine in this day and age. I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.

> I should be able to browse any topic with one identity. You can. Who said otherwise? Where did you get that idea? An account at Mastodon (or Pleroma/Misskey/Pixelfed/ anything ) lets you follow anyone you want. There is no restriction about server talking with each other at the protocol level. If the server is federating and its admin is not trigger-happy with federation, you are good to go.

I think you're mistaken. I have permissions to access posts from any server (apart from those that the administrator has blocked, anyway), but that doesn't mean I can view another server's local feed in the Mastodon UI, which is the question at hand.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#207

Post by jjoonathan »

saurik wrote: post #190
jjoonathan wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the idea of a spam filter won.

Spam filters can be opt-in. Spam filters can be federated. Spam filters can be local. It simply isn't true that decentralized censorship resistant systems fundamentally require users to be inundated with spam.

I wish that were the case.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#208

Post by phone8675309 »

cbozeman wrote: post #101
phone8675309 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wishful thinking. Several of the best/most successful trolls find plenty of time at work to shitpost.

That tells me they're not being challenged enough at work. :)

I’d say the majority of people aren’t being challenged enough at work, especially in the tech sector.

Busy with things, yes, but given opportunities for growth through learning in the job? Not so much.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#209

Post by tylerchilds »

jancsika wrote: post #171
tylerchilds wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fully sure what their use case is to speak to that. A good launching point to finding like minded people is this list though: https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers I joined before that link existed though, so I opted to join a really large instance, mastodon.social specifically in my case. From there, I started searching hashtags for topics I was interested in and engaging there. From my interactions, I g…

> I'm not fully sure what their use case is to speak to that. The article spells it out-- they don't want drive-by, low-effort engagement with their posts. > A good launching point to finding like minded people is this list though Perhaps I'm idiosyncratic, but I don't see any value in choosing a server or community based on interest. What I really care about is choosing a moderation policy, and viewing the content f…

I think that approach is just at odds with the concept of federation. What you're describing just sounds like reddit to me.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#210

Post by banana_maker »

rglullis wrote: post #187
throwaway894345 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even then, you can only pick one server per account, which seems asinine in this day and age. I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.

> I should be able to browse any topic with one identity. You can. Who said otherwise? Where did you get that idea? An account at Mastodon (or Pleroma/Misskey/Pixelfed/ anything ) lets you follow anyone you want. There is no restriction about server talking with each other at the protocol level. If the server is federating and its admin is not trigger-happy with federation, you are good to go.

Not every mastodon instance lets you browse their local feed if you're not registered to that instance. Now, it would be interesting if one could subscribe to multiple "local" feeds...
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