You know, I think Reddit is actually the best positioned Twitter alternative. You can use your real name, or anonymous account. You go there to follow particular subreddits, but there no reason why I shouldn't also be able to follow people and see their non-topic (ie, not part of any subreddit) microblogs interweaved with posts from subreddits. They deal with spam and trolls reasonably well. They have all the pieces,…
Reddit's censorship is even worse than Twitter's, so I would expect Reddit to be next on the list of places to liberate on the Internet.
"Censorship" has always been a dog whistle for "not letting propaganda and incitement run rampant".
> 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?
I was just investigating this. You can run your own Mastodon instance on your custom domain (e.g. masto.host), but due to how Mastodon federation works, your instance will 1. host all your content 2. handle a ton of requests when people interact with you or your content: follow, favorite, boost, etc. Also every time a user follows you from an instance not federated with your instance it's a whole complicated process…
Seems like there must be some sort of possibility for someone to create some sort of "lightweight hosting" option here. Where you get your own bespoke "host" where you own all the data and identity, etc. but it is actually physically managed on someone else's infra (something higher level than a vhost). Pay a small fee, get a subdomain, get your own masto node, get your own data, all encrypted, but someone else handles all the legwork of setting it up, federating it, etc.
How reasonable an idea is it to run your own mastodon instance for solo purposes? (eg. as one would run their own email server, or at least point a host's mx to their own domain) How much would this cost, and is it possible to reliably secure an instance to run as a one-person federated instance easily?
Run a wordpress instead and put the ActivityPub plugin on it. There are many places you can host PHP/MySQL very effectively and it is much lighter in weight than Mastodon's stack.
I was just investigating this. You can run your own Mastodon instance on your custom domain (e.g. masto.host), but due to how Mastodon federation works, your instance will 1. host all your content 2. handle a ton of requests when people interact with you or your content: follow, favorite, boost, etc. Also every time a user follows you from an instance not federated with your instance it's a whole complicated process…
Seems like there must be some sort of possibility for someone to create some sort of "lightweight hosting" option here. Where you get your own bespoke "host" where you own all the data and identity, etc. but it is actually physically managed on someone else's infra (something higher level than a vhost). Pay a small fee, get a subdomain, get your own masto node, get your own data, all encrypted, but someone else handl…
> "host" where you own all the data and identity, etc. but it is actually physically managed on someone else's infra (something higher level than a vhost)
Isn’t this just a normal Mastadon instance but with custom domain support just like email providers?
You can be a part of a large or small instance and your consumption/conversation is not limited to users on that instance. You can follow people from other instances as well as scroll through a timeline that is posts/toots from across the fediverse (not just your local instance)
Got it. Does it make any difference where I register first? E.g. if that instance disappears overnight, will I be able to recover my account or not? I understand that I can access posts from all instances in the instance I use, but not sure how account handling/ownership works.
>Does it make any difference where I register first?
Yes; Each instance has its own posting rules and an instance may suspend (block) another instance for different reasons. Mastodon.social has suspended quite a few instances, for example. Always read the about page of the instance before registering.
many people don't care that it is decentralised, hence gmail, an open protocol is irrelevant. In mastodon's case decentralisation is a hindrance since they want centralisation back. email isn't a social network and lots people outside of HN don't self host them as such.
Gmail isn't a protocol, nor is it open. People don't self host email because 1) the protocol doesn't make it easy to deal with incoming spam on a small scale, and 2) giants like gmail tend to automatically flag unique email domains as suspicious. Which is a valid criticism of the federated model, or rather the people using it. If more people found value in decentralization, in theory they would also be more critical…
Gmail is especially bad because they'll spamblock your domain for no reason, but Google customers are allowed to violate ToS and spam everyone.
I was just investigating this. You can run your own Mastodon instance on your custom domain (e.g. masto.host), but due to how Mastodon federation works, your instance will 1. host all your content 2. handle a ton of requests when people interact with you or your content: follow, favorite, boost, etc. Also every time a user follows you from an instance not federated with your instance it's a whole complicated process…
Seems like there must be some sort of possibility for someone to create some sort of "lightweight hosting" option here. Where you get your own bespoke "host" where you own all the data and identity, etc. but it is actually physically managed on someone else's infra (something higher level than a vhost). Pay a small fee, get a subdomain, get your own masto node, get your own data, all encrypted, but someone else handl…
Yes, you are describing a hosted instance. Masto.host looks good, and the cheapest option is only $6/month. The problem with this federated approach is that the actual federation features can become pretty expensive. Hosting is cheap but if you have thousands of followers from different instances federation processes will become very expensive.
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 a…
I'd do exactly what I would do if I saw someone threatening someone in real life, call the police and give them all the information I had. Twitter has dates and IP's, in a lot of cases that's as good as an address. Pulling the plug would be the easy way out, and would stop people incriminating themselves. Worse case scenario it drives people stupid enough to use a public un-encrypted network to plan a crime onto a se…
Twitter has dates and IP's, in a lot of cases that's as good as an address.
At this point, I can’t put anything past Elon.
The way the texts between Secret Service personnel went missing, even after congressional requests to preserve documents and data, if Twitter becomes the headquarters for seditionists, disinformation and threats of violence that impacts the outcome of which party controls Congress, don’t be surprised if tweets go missing…
> 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 Ac…
> 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.
I quite like the sound of this, do you have any references you can suggest?