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Mastodon.technology Shutdown

ashfurrow.com

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Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#491

Post by [deleted] »

HellsMaddy wrote: post #464
proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

[deleted]

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#492

Post by Kamq »

HellsMaddy wrote: post #464
proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

> Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on?

There's no central server, and not all of the instances talk to each other.

Where... where would you put the account data?

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#493

Post by KirillPanov »

somat wrote: post #489
HellsMaddy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

because that is your identity, the full "user@domain" the domain you are on is an intrinsic part of addressing to get to your account. so the question then becomes why can't you change your name? and it has mainly to do with avoiding name conflicts in administratively isolated systems. A major problem in distributed systems is names. one solution is to do what dns did, you can have nice names but you only get to pick…

> because that is your identity

That seems like a very, very poor choice. I have the same concern with Matrix.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#494

Post by HellsMaddy »

Kamq wrote: post #492
HellsMaddy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

> Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? There's no central server, and not all of the instances talk to each other. Where... where would you put the account data?

I imagine it working similarly to IPFS, where the data is distributed across the network.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#495

Post by JasonLABS »

HellsMaddy wrote: post #464
proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

Mastodon confused me for the longest time as well. Which community do I join? If I create an account on "federatedplumbers.example" why would I interact with a community and follow people at "federatedshoelacecollectionists.example"? Shouldn't I create an account at both communities and interact with each separately? This is what we do now by having a twitter account and a facebook acount, and a etc... A twitter account doesn't ever talk to a facebook account.

Then I saw someone do something I hadn't seen before...

They made their own mastodon insance: toot.firstlastname.example and their identity was @joey@toot.firstlastname.example

Joey could make his own toot feed of social media posts that anyone at any community could subscribe to.

Joey could then subscribe to the entire community at federatedplumbers.example, or he could follow just one user: @phoebe@federatedplumbers.example. Then @monica@federatedshoelacecollectionists.example could follow @joey@firstlastname.example and so on.

It doesn't matter where you start an account. You can join a community that you really like or start from scratch with your own instance and go and make friends in other communities. The real advantage with starting your own is that you have control over your content and aren't in danger of having your account shut down if a community decides it can no longer maintain the server.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#496

Post by tootie »

dredmorbius wrote: post #444
blep_ wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples?

Current Affairs recently ran "NPR Is Not Your Friend", which highlights some of the issues: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/npr-is-not-your-frien... > The upshot of that piece is that NPR itself remains part of the neoliberal ideological propaganda apparatus: Like all press outlets, NPR has a particular point of view. Its bias is just as profound as the likes of MSNBC or Fox News. NPR’s ideological bias is tow…

That article has loads of assertions of personal opinions of the author and besides a glaring lack of evidence, didn't even bothering googling how the local public radio editorial policy isn't centralized. Consider that NPR does not have a radio broadcast at all. Affiliates do. Affiliates who can air any combination of content produced in house, by NPR or by other affiliates all catering to local markets. Local affiliates derive most of their funding from members but NPR is prohibited from soliciting which is why they also have corporate sponsors. The sponsors do not exert editorial control and don't even have access to affiliates who determine what goes to air.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#497

Post by somat »

KirillPanov wrote: post #493
somat wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because that is your identity, the full "user@domain" the domain you are on is an intrinsic part of addressing to get to your account. so the question then becomes why can't you change your name? and it has mainly to do with avoiding name conflicts in administratively isolated systems. A major problem in distributed systems is names. one solution is to do what dns did, you can have nice names but you only get to pick…

> because that is your identity That seems like a very, very poor choice. I have the same concern with Matrix.

It is actually a better question than I initially thought.

the question actually challenges all sorts of assumptions we make about how the internet works. in this regards it reminds me of IPFS.

And while ipfs has some very cool tech the main thing it has problems with are names. ipfs has no names, which sucks. there is a name system ipns but it does not help much.

ipfs does a publish/subscribe subsystem which I find one of the most compelling parts. it is however considered experamental and inefficient.

this did not stop me from writing a distributed video streaming system using it. which turns out to suck, no names, and, even on my local network I was getting ~ 2 minutes of lag, no one would put up with that for streaming.

https://nl1.outband.net/fossil/ipfs_stream/doc/tip/readme.md

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#498

Post by semanticist »

HellsMaddy wrote: post #494
Kamq wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? There's no central server, and not all of the instances talk to each other. Where... where would you put the account data?

I imagine it working similarly to IPFS, where the data is distributed across the network.

Think of it as more like email. You have an account on a specific server, but can send or receive emails from anyone on any server.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#499

Post by dezren39 »

Kamq wrote: post #492
HellsMaddy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

> Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? There's no central server, and not all of the instances talk to each other. Where... where would you put the account data?

Ya'll are describing SSB protocol and ManyVerse.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#500

Post by _zywo »

HellsMaddy wrote: post #464
proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…

Can someone explain why a Mastodon account is so intrinsically tied to the instance it was registered on? This has always confused me and is part of the reason I haven't started using it, I couldn't decide on which instance to use. Why can't an account be globally unique and not tied to a specific instance? Why, as a user, do I have to deal with the low-level concept of an instance? Is this all just a consequence of…

It's because of the sybil problem. If accounts are globally unique, then a bad actor can register as many accounts as they want, and can do things like e.g. reserve other people's usernames and charge real money to have them unreserved.
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