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Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

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Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#61

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #57
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that each node has its own set of moderators. So jerks will get moderated there. And when they do that, they'll probably jump servers. And so get cordoned off into wherever federated node that they isolate themselves into. Note that each server decides which other servers it will federate and share content with. So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get cut from most of the rest of the fe…

> So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get cut from most of the rest of the federation. Why do you assume the "jerks" wouldn't decide to federate among themselves. What's stopping them from creating a Splinternet (Splinterdon?) where they're free to say what they want? > So the platform isn't going to give an outsized "recommended" audience for crap just because it has high "likes" -- that's not how the p…

Nothing would stop them. That's already happened -- that's effectively what Truth Social is, for example.

And it wouldn't matter. Because the majority would be elsewhere. Or not. The point is that there's no centralized authority making this decision. And if I didn't like how the node I was on handled the moderation, and who it chose to federate with, I'd be free to move my account elsewhere.

I personally would just choose to hang out on whatever Mastodon node that had cut itself off the the Musk/Trump-ish node.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#62

Post by contravariant »

detaro wrote: post #17
twblalock wrote: post #13

Doesn't this prove the value to users of a centralized platform over a federated platform? The centralized platform made it very easy to find people. Now people who are moving to a federated platform miss the value of centralization, so they are writing a tool that will leverage that value and import it into the federated platform. Maybe if Mastodon was a centralized Twitter-style platform it would be more usable, an…

Not really, no. Imagine the reversed situation: Everyone is on Mastodon, and now this cool new thing called "Twitter" comes along and some people are switching to it. "find everyones Twitter account and follow it" would still be a useful thing to have, over manually checking for every single person you follow if they have an account, if they maybe have an account with a different username, ... and following those you…

In that scenario is Mastodon not centralized?

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#63

Post by leereeves »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #60
leereeves wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems likely to result in a split. Not a few isolated servers with jerks, but one big federation with free speech types like Elon Musk, and a different federation with heavy moderation. But returning to a chronological feed would be nice.

It's already heavily federated so it wouldn't be a binary split like you describe. Like, it wouldn't be "one federation with Musk types" vs "another with heavy moderation" but actually already a whole bunch of nodes with different types of moderation choosing to isolate away the Musk node. Or not. It would be up to each node. Note that "Gab" and "Truth Social" are both built on Mastodon. But they're isolated from the…

How does "it would be up to each node" work?

Suppose there are three servers (A, B, C), and A is federated with both, but B isn't federated with C, and there's conversation between people on A and B.

Do people on C only see the A side of the conversation?

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#64

Post by dd36 »

RobotToaster wrote: post #48
michaelwww wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is he supposed to do? When Twitter is flooded with threats of violence and calls to form mobs will he just do nothing? Is that what you are suggesting? He can take the site dark if he wants and he may have to.

Isn't it the job of the police/FBI to do something in that situation? Why are we expecting corporations to be a private police force, judge, jury, and executioner?

Not policing content would destroy Twitter.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#65

Post by michaelwww »

RobotToaster wrote: post #48
michaelwww wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is he supposed to do? When Twitter is flooded with threats of violence and calls to form mobs will he just do nothing? Is that what you are suggesting? He can take the site dark if he wants and he may have to.

Isn't it the job of the police/FBI to do something in that situation? Why are we expecting corporations to be a private police force, judge, jury, and executioner?

If you owned Twitter and the site was suddenly flooded with calls to attack election officials and raid election offices what would you do? You'd probably meet with your lawyers and find out what kind of liability you had, then you'd field calls from advertisers saying they are all leaving unless you stop it. You'd also field calls from all your friends telling you that you need to stop it. Then you'd go for a walk and contemplate how you feel about people using your site to facilitate armed rebellion. Then you'd figure out how much money you were willing to lose over doing it your way. The most sensible thing to do at the point is pull the plug for a few weeks for "technical issues related to the purchase' and go home and get a good nights sleep.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#66

Post by Zak »

colesantiago wrote: post #51
detaro wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, no. Imagine the reversed situation: Everyone is on Mastodon, and now this cool new thing called "Twitter" comes along and some people are switching to it. "find everyones Twitter account and follow it" would still be a useful thing to have, over manually checking for every single person you follow if they have an account, if they maybe have an account with a different username, ... and following those you…

But we all know this hypothetical isn't the case. Centralisation is more convenient in almost ALL cases, even in email (nobody except people on HN host their own email)

People do, however use multiple email providers, sometimes small ones like the small business they work for or their local/regional ISP. If federated social sharing becomes popular, the story will likely be similar: a few big providers have most of the users, but a limited ability to dictate how the system works.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#67

Post by cmrdporcupine »

leereeves wrote: post #63
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already heavily federated so it wouldn't be a binary split like you describe. Like, it wouldn't be "one federation with Musk types" vs "another with heavy moderation" but actually already a whole bunch of nodes with different types of moderation choosing to isolate away the Musk node. Or not. It would be up to each node. Note that "Gab" and "Truth Social" are both built on Mastodon. But they're isolated from the…

How does "it would be up to each node" work? Suppose there are three servers (A, B, C), and A is federated with both, but B isn't federated with C, and there's conversation between people on A and B. Do people on C only see the A side of the conversation?

I am not fully clear on how threads are handled, but, yes, in principle visibility of users and posts is based on who they choose to federate with. So C would not see any content that originated out of B. Which AFAIK includes replies, etc.

I'm a Mastodon newb and not an expert, I'm sure someone else more informed could give a better explanation of the subtleties.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#68

Post by mjmsmith »

fazfq wrote: post #32
michaelwww wrote: post #9

I find this whole situation to be incredibly depressing, especially with Musk tweeting out a fact free insinuation about Paul Pelosi (since deleted without apology.) The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan on Twitter on election night Nov 8 in America and I don't think Musk is prepared to handle it. I'd love to live in a country where we could have nice things, but apparently America is not it.

>The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan on Twitter on election night Nov 8 in America and I don't think Musk is prepared to handle it. What exactly is he supposed to do? I don't see how Nov 8 is megacorp's business.

I'd be reassured just knowing that he won't use his megacorp megaphone to amplify obvious misinformation about the results of the election, but given the last 24 hours, even that appears to be too much to hope for.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#69

Post by Cyberdog »

leereeves wrote: post #49
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that each node has its own set of moderators. So jerks will get moderated there. And when they do that, they'll probably jump servers. And so get cordoned off into wherever federated node that they isolate themselves into. Note that each server decides which other servers it will federate and share content with. So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get cut from most of the rest of the fe…

That seems likely to result in a split. Not a few isolated servers with jerks, but one big federation with free speech types like Elon Musk, and a different federation with heavy moderation. But returning to a chronological feed would be nice.

This more or less has already happened, though there are more than two "groups" depending on how you define such things. Broadly speaking, there are free speech instances which allow edgelord teens to come in and N-word their hearts out (as well as do more mundane things like question the mainstream narrative on elections, the pandemic, and, yes, this Pelosi story) so long as they don't do anything actually illegal, and there are more regulated instances where "hate speech" is explicitly forbidden. As the instances in the latter group don't like the practices of the former group, the former insulates from the latter by defederating those instances, meaning that insances in both the former and the latter can generally only federate with each other. (Then there are the pro-MAP/CP/lolicon instances, which are generally defederated by both of the previous groups and also can largely only federate with each other.)

Whether you think this is a good thing is up to you, but it does seem that both groups of people on either side of the Great Divide get what they want from the system, so I don't really see the harm in it.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#70

Post by etchalon »

RobotToaster wrote: post #48
michaelwww wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is he supposed to do? When Twitter is flooded with threats of violence and calls to form mobs will he just do nothing? Is that what you are suggesting? He can take the site dark if he wants and he may have to.

Isn't it the job of the police/FBI to do something in that situation? Why are we expecting corporations to be a private police force, judge, jury, and executioner?

Because they could.

When you see someone getting robbed on the street, you can chose to do nothing.

But a lot of people would think you're morally deficient for doing nothing.

And a lot of people would do something in that situation.

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