151–160 of 304 posts
I doubt anyone at Facebook is freaking out about Mastodon and setting out to censor all mention of it. It's probably just a keyword or link that tends to co-appear with other, actually rule-breaking content, and some automated system has learned to block it. Still, it does seem like the sort of thing that could get Facebook in trouble with a regulator if you squint at it.
How could it?
Also, interviewing for a job at Facebook has been one of the worst job interview experiences I have ever had.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a timeline that randomly mixes in posts from users from other instances whom users from your instance follow
Perfect. I'll give it a go. Any specific recommendations? I figured mastodon.social just because it's the largest, is that bad reasoning?
- the instance has grown too big and thus some consider it counter-productive towards the federated nature of the protocol
- disagreement with the direction its main developer / maintainer is taking Mastodon, such as intentionally hiding the local timeline from the official iPhone app
- some consider it under-moderated, or not responding quickly enough to reports
- disagreement over its content moderation guidelines
- in case of a mute, it could also be not wanting their federated timeline to be flooded with primarily mastodon.social posts
Lack of federation between these instances and mastodon.social could be a reason not to pick mastodon.social. (Similar situation applies to mastodon.online btw, which is a spin-off server of m.s.)
Another reason to pick a different instance could be not wanting to use mainline Mastodon software. For example because you want to run your own instance on limited hardware (Mastodon can get a bit resource intensive), don't like Ruby, miss certain features, don't like the front-end (though alternative external front-ends to Mastodon do exist), or some other reason.
Personally I've switched my primary use over to an account on an instance that runs Mastodon Glitch Edition, also known as Glitch-Soc (https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/), which is a compatible fork of Mastodon which implements a bunch of nice features such as increased post character count (Mastodon defaults to 500 characters per post, Glitch-Soc supports increasing this in the server settings), Markdown support (though only instances that also support HTML-formatted posts will see your formatting; mainline Mastodon servers will serve a stripped down version of your post instead), and improved support for filters / content warnings / toot collapsing, optional warnings when posting uncaptioned media, and other additional features.
Another alternative Mastodon fork is Hometown (https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown) which focuses more on the local timeline (showing posts only from your own instance) with the addition of local-only posts, to nurture a tighter knit community.
Aside from Mastodon there are other implementations of ActivityPub which can still federate with Mastodon instances, such as:
- Misskey (https://github.com/misskey-dev/misskey)
- diaspora* (https://diasporafoundation.org/) (which AFAIK inspired Google Plus back in the day)
- Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org//page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project)
- Peertube (https://joinpeertube.org/) (focused on peer-to-peer video distribution)
- Friendica (https://friendi.ca/)
- Pleroma (https://pleroma.social/)
- Socialhome (https://socialhome.network/)
- GoToSocial (https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial)
- Pixelfed (https://pixelfed.org/) (which started as a sort of federated Instagram alternative) and more.
Fediverse.party (https://fediverse.party/) is a nice way to discover various protocols that make up the bigger Fediverse.
Instances.Social (https://instances.social/) can also be used as an alternative to find instances, though I believe it is limited to Mastodon-based instances.
I doubt anyone at Facebook is freaking out about Mastodon and setting out to censor all mention of it. It's probably just a keyword or link that tends to co-appear with other, actually rule-breaking content, and some automated system has learned to block it. Still, it does seem like the sort of thing that could get Facebook in trouble with a regulator if you squint at it.
Yes, Facebook's upper management is definitely not freaking out about Mastodon. However, from my own experience working at a large, somewhat ethically-challenged organisation (not fb), it would not surprise me in the least if they gently yet actively pushed down a competitor, provided it can be done discreetly.
Interesting how "because COVID" has become the thinly veiled excuse here. A similar manifestation of the "think of the children" trope that can be used to manipulate emotions and shut down dissent.
If there's one job that doesn't exactly depend on what location you're working from...
No, the opposite is true: Any job that requires reviewing potentially private content must be done in a controlled environment.
I wouldn't be surprised if content reviewers weren't even allowed to have cameraphones at their desks.
Can't risk having someone snap photos of the screen while reviewing content flagged as sensitive. Doing this job from home is not an option.
Yep. Facebook censored me for linking to an entry about COVID-19 growth on my personal webpage — https://samiam.org/COVID-19 for the record — saying the post violated Facebook’s community standards, falsely claiming it was spam (no, I do not have a single ad over on my personal website). Also, interviewing for a job at Facebook has been one of the worst job interview experiences I have ever had.
However, the underlying idea that Facebook would block links to competitors is historically valid. As recently as 2016, Facebook blocked links to competing networks from Instagram (https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/3/11157124/instagram-blocks-...), and leaked internal emails from Facebook have shown that the company has an extremely broad view of what does and doesn't count as a competitor (https://panatimes.com/facebook-bought-instagram-to-neutraliz...). The company is extremely anti-competitive, it's not shy about this, and internal emails show that this anti-competitive attitude is entrenched very deeply and very consciously within upper management.
I think taking down this post in specific is very unlikely to be deliberate because:
A) Mastodon is likely not a large enough service to warrant it, and because
B) The explanation based on Facebook's AI being weird, opaque, and generally untested is a much cleaner, simpler explanation that requires fewer jumps in logic.
But it would be completely in character for Facebook to target a real competitor in this way. The reason it's unlikely to be deliberate is not because Facebook would never do something like this, and it's not because Facebook would be too frightened of regulators to do it so openly. Facebook has very openly done stuff like this in the past. It's just that there are other explanations that are more likely, and it's that if Facebook was going to start doing this, Mastodon probably wouldn't be among the first competitors they would target. I need a lot more evidence to show that this is deliberate before I jump off of the (extremely compelling) explanation that automated moderation is really buggy across the board and regularly does unexpected things.
The article comes off as a little uncurious to me, I feel like the author is jumping too quickly to a specific conclusion without a lot of critical thought. But part of why Facebook has these problems with people jumping to conclusions about how it tracks and moderates is because Facebook has a very real history of being openly corrupt in these areas, and Facebook has a real history of being deceptive about their motivations behind decision-making processes. The reputation hasn't come out of nowhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a timeline that randomly mixes in posts from users from other instances whom users from your instance follow
Perfect. I'll give it a go. Any specific recommendations? I figured mastodon.social just because it's the largest, is that bad reasoning?
https://joinmastodon.org/ Might as well see what FB is scared about
So, seems mastodon is fragmented or segmented into many independent networks. Do those interact with each other in any way? I'd hate to join one and miss truly interesting content on another...is it possible to distill multiple into one on the user end? Just asking, as I've never tried it before and the concept seems a little confusing.
There's also the option of adding "featured hashtags" to one's profile, allowing a user to search for users of a particular interest.
Along with the "Federated Timeline", which others have mentioned, and your follower's boosting posts (akin to retweeting) I've found it quite easy to find a diverse list of people to follow and interact with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Facebook's upper management is definitely not freaking out about Mastodon. However, from my own experience working at a large, somewhat ethically-challenged organisation (not fb), it would not surprise me in the least if they gently yet actively pushed down a competitor, provided it can be done discreetly.
There may be more reasons to see Mastodon as a potential threat. There's something of a different paradigm to it. First of all it is decentralized (federated), and anyone can spin up servers for themself or a community of users, set their own topic and rules (CoC, ToS) and connect with the larger social network (the Fediverse). Second of all this fediverse is based on open-standards and anyone can develop their own s…