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Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

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Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#91

Post by Markoff »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #3

DigitalOcean has a one click app that lets you setup a Mastodon instance ridiculously easily. For my own reasons I’m trying to migrate away from Twitter, and have found it relatively easy to sync Twitter profiles with a self hosted Mastodon instance so I can follow the accounts I’m interested in without directly interacting with Twitter. Configuring email sending and DNS is a little tricky, but if you use namecheap a…

> I can follow the accounts I’m interested in without directly interacting with Twitter

You could just use Nitter.net and put all handles you wanna follow separated by comma after slash like this https://nitter.net/handle1,handle2,handle3

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#92

Post by ALittleLight »

ranguna wrote: post #85
haunter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mastodon became popular in Japan after Twitter banned lolicon I'm not sure CP is a good advert for Mastodon.

It's not porn, it's just a fantasy drawing with almost no parity to real life except that they look like humans. It took me a while to realise this as well, but in the end, that's what it is. You should never fully compare anime to real life, it's a fallacy that can get you in trouble.

"It's not child pornography, it's drawings of child pornography."

This is one area I think Musk will have trouble with if he honestly does go in the "free speech" direction. There will immediately be speech that's so toxic it will drive off the majority of other users.

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#93

Post by JetAlone »

metamet wrote: post #57
JetAlone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unfortunately it looks like Mastodon still hasn’t renamed their “toots” Maybe we wouldn't have so many reasons to leave twitter if people had taken tweets less seriously in the first place. If everyone knows that artificially short posts with insanely widespread potential reach are all 屁s, that could help fix a lot of what's wrong in our world.

I suspect there's a limited number of people who want to be told so explicitly that they're just farting their thoughts out online.

You're probably right, and they're probably pretty interesting and fun to be around.

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#94

Post by lokedhs »

blowski wrote: post #65
unicornporn wrote: post #33

My recommendation to anyone having difficulties getting started or finding interesting people: try to find a small instance that suits your interests. Mastodon got so much better for me when I left the generalist instances. I now see my instance as a micro community with the ability to connect to a greater community.

How do you find interesting, valuable, non-toxic small groups?

That depends on your preferences. Following a handful of people that match your preferences is a good start, then follow the people they are boosting.

Once you see something annoying from someone you on your feed, just unfollow that person and you'll have a very non toxic feed.

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#95

Post by lokedhs »

tdhz77 wrote: post #4

I wish I could be happy to use this, but I’m afraid big tech is just too big for me to jump ship. (Network effect) I’m starting to think that Government should think about breaking up social media sites or highly regulate them. The twitter Elon saga makes me think it will be impossible in the United States.

This is a serious question, why is it that big tech is too big for you to jump ship?

What are you trying to get out the use of social media? To me, it's conversations with interesting people in a pleasant environment. I'm getting that from the Fediverse.

Unless you're a brand that uses social media for marketing purposes, I don't understand why it's sol important to use the big brand platform.

I kind of suspect the answer is going to be something like "the people I want to follow are on there". But there are equally interesting people on the other platform, it's just that you are not familiar with them because you're not on that platform.

Also, there is no need to switch completely. Follow both and perhaps you'll start paying more attention to the one that is friendly and not driven by engagement.

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#97

Post by INTPenis »

genewitch wrote: post #77
INTPenis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where the magic of federation comes in. Each instance can federate with any other instance, meaning posts from the other instance will show up in your local instance's federated timeline. On top of that they can add AP relays that will further add posts to your federated timeline. I run a very small instance focused on geographically local users and the federation is so rapid that I have to scale up my backgr…

is there a place to read up on relays (in general, or specifically misskey to mastodon/plemora)? I'm trying to populate my own server's timeline with stuff that won't scare off people, really.

Just search the web for ActivityPub relay, you might add github.com as the site because someone has gathered a list of known AP relays there.

But beware that once you start adding relays you'll get a flood of messages in the federated timeline and much of it will be Japanese or other asian languages. Which might scare potential users away. So just silence them one by one, refuse media files from them. People can still follow users on these instances but they won't clutter your federated timeline.

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#98

Post by temp8428i »

I felt the obligation to mention that Mastodon is not friendly at all, and you will have to resort to blocking and filtering all the time.

For example, there are instances which I won't name that are solely made to harass, doxx and stalk other people. There is also a significant amount of political extremism from both the right and the left, and drama is very prevalent just like on Twitter.

You really have to consider that for some, Mastodon is a place to gather if you have been banned from Twitter.

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#99

Post by i5heu »

temp8428i wrote: post #98

I felt the obligation to mention that Mastodon is not friendly at all, and you will have to resort to blocking and filtering all the time. For example, there are instances which I won't name that are solely made to harass, doxx and stalk other people. There is also a significant amount of political extremism from both the right and the left, and drama is very prevalent just like on Twitter. You really have to conside…

I think mastodons approach is a very good approach. You can as a user block entire instances. And if you are on a good instance many abusive instances are already blocked.

So everybody can have their little space without shitty people.

Especially because city people tend to accumulate in certain instances since they’re not welcomed on eg. mastodon.social

Re: Mastodon – A Federated Twitter Alternative

#100

Post by i5heu »

mattdesl wrote: post #87

How does this prevent a single instance growing to massive proportions, and then its property (and private data!) being sold to highest bidder? Those who self-hosted their data will have no problem, but the majority of users aren’t self-hosting, and will lose posts & media upon switching to a new instance (which may lead to the same network effects we see now with Twitter users not willing to migrate).

If a instance I sold, you can just move to another instance while you don’t lose contact to alle the people you follow.

There is even a feature which enables you to say “this is my old account, over there is my new one”

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