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Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

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Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#261

Post by sigmar »

rootusrootus wrote: post #243
sigmar wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's federated. Much like email. You can follow people on other servers and it pulls their feed. If you want to switch servers, you just make a new account (and just like email you'll need to tell your followers where you are going)

> It's federated. Much like email. How feasible is it to have a username at a custom domain? In case the server you sign up on goes out of service. Do you have to set up your own instance in order to do that? Is there a barrier from setting up a new instance and then participating immediately in the wider federated network?

Feasible, but I don't think everyone having their own individual server was the intent of the design. Yes to question 2. I'm not sure about question 3, if there is a barrier, it isn't large.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#262

Post by twblalock »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #184
twblalock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait and see what happens. The fundamental incentives for Twitter as a business have not changed. It is a free service that needs to convert user engagement into advertising dollars. Unless Twitter moves to a paid model, that will always be true no matter who owns it. And if Twitter fails, any potential replacement will need to deal with the same incentives and solve the same problems Twitter did.

> The fundamental incentives for Twitter as a business have not changed. Have they not changed? This is a genuine question. How much control does Elon actually have? Can he decide to take the company in a direction that don't match the business incentives? Can he tell an employee: "Do this or your fired" because it may make him feel better? Or because he misunderstood the situation and couldn't be told otherwise unti…

He could make bad decisions that make the company fail, although frankly the previous leadership was on that path already.

It’s clear from his recent announcements that he understands how much Twitter depends on advertisers.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#263

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

rootusrootus wrote: post #245
ceejayoz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a mastodon.art user is banned from mastodon.art - everyone who followed them will have to find them on another instance and subscribe again? To be fair, that's an improvement over, say, Twitter, where they'd just be gone.

IMO the bigger issue isn't getting banned, it seems the more likely scenario is having the operator of the server decide for whatever reason to shut it down. This isn't likely to happen with Twitter.

It's perhaps less likely for Twitter than any one given Fediverse server/Mastodon instance. But the impact on the whole ecosystem is very different too. A single Fediverse instance shutting down could be annoying/sad, but it would only affect a subset of users, and those users could still, if need be, create a new account on another instance. Twitter shutting down closes everything for everyone.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#264

Post by jeena »

rootusrootus wrote: post #243
sigmar wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's federated. Much like email. You can follow people on other servers and it pulls their feed. If you want to switch servers, you just make a new account (and just like email you'll need to tell your followers where you are going)

> It's federated. Much like email. How feasible is it to have a username at a custom domain? In case the server you sign up on goes out of service. Do you have to set up your own instance in order to do that? Is there a barrier from setting up a new instance and then participating immediately in the wider federated network?

Because you can move between different domains without losing your subscriptions and subscribers, there is no real need to use your custom domain. But because it's not possible to move your old content (I assume because moving files is difficult), I still am self-hosting so I can own my own content.

Another way of doing it is if you're already posting your notes, pictures, etc. on your own website, you can make it ActivityPub aware and use your website instead of Mastodon.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#265

Post by jeena »

rootusrootus wrote: post #244
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The migration tool automatically moves your followers. It's a bit janky, it took an hour or two for it do its thing for me (there must be some batch component, I dunno). I don't know how it works between banned instances, or what your options are for when a server goes down fully. But all the of the follower/following data is available via CSV export any time, too. And there's obviously an open API as well. And hones…

How are permissions managed so that you can change your followers configuration to point at your new account if you move, but otherwise not allow anybody else to pull that same stunt against your wishes?

On your old account you have to start the process.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#266

Post by jupp0r »

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)

Of course people use a variety of email providers, what are you talking about?

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#267

Post by agentultra »

augustuspolius wrote: post #95
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #44

I was skeptical on Mastodon. But I'm actually realling enjoying it. It's having a surge in popularity the last few days. When I checked it out a couple years ago it didn't click with me. But now I'm liking it, and I think there's potential there. It won't "replace" Twitter. But a good crowd of people has collected around there, and there's quite a bit of enjoyable content coming through.

Is there a non-niche general Mastodon instance that's really popular? That would be the easiest way for me personally to embrace it. I checked a few instances and it's all very niche and very empty. (To clarify, I don't mind niche instances, just at this stage there isn't enough discussion or interesting profiles to follow.)

It’s also pretty easy to have alts. Most good clients can log onto and track several accounts. You can then flip between various communities; post about work stuff on one, alt for your hobbies or shitposting.

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#268

Post by davidw »

sigmar wrote: post #233
davidw wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a big weak point. I went to check it out just now and it's like "pick a server" and... I don't know, which one is best? Can I change later? Seems confusing, pass for now.

It's federated. Much like email. You can follow people on other servers and it pulls their feed. If you want to switch servers, you just make a new account (and just like email you'll need to tell your followers where you are going)

Ok, but which one is hotmail and which one is gmail?

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#269

Post by malermeister »

yosito wrote: post #251
cpeterso wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I’m sure this is probably against the ToS of every social media service, even those that might still provide a client API. :( Otherwise someone would have done this. OTOH, I think there are services that companies use to manage and post to all their social media accounts.

I'd imagine part of mandated interoperability would be regulation forbidding such ToS.

That's actually a part of the EU's planned Digital Markets Act!

Re: Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon

#270

Post by malermeister »

hedora wrote: post #203
wrycoder wrote: post #103

You would want to think very carefully about giving Twitodon these rights to your Twitter account: Things this App can view... People who follow you and people who you follow. All the Tweets you can view, including Tweets from protected accounts. Any account you can view, including protected accounts.

Twitter just handed that and more to a plutocrat. I'm not seeing why anyone should assume an internet rando is less trustworthy.

Oligarch might be a good term to describe Musk and his ilk, too
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