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Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

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Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#231

Post by Karunamon »

themitigating wrote: post #217
Karunamon wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure do. One day I might write up a full article on it, but this is the summary you asked for. In the meantime I would ask you to remember that HN is not a journal, a debate stage, or an encyclopedia article, instead it is an informal discussion on the internet. As such, participants are allowed to recount things from memory.

In an informal discussion citing sources for disputed information is normal. I also don't need a longer version of your claims, I want credible sources to back up them up. How do I know you're not lying? I think you've been lied to so many times about this that you think it's true. A common tactic with right wing media. See hunter biden crimes in china, election fraud, etc

>How do I know you're not lying?

Assumption of good faith and an understanding of the obvious fact that not everything that happened on the Internet gets written about by a "credible source" (which often is a synonym for "the media", and given your unwarranted partisan swipe there, likely a synonym for "the media that agrees with me"). At least one of the things I mentioned above, namely fruitless reporting of terrorist content (where I specifically was the person clicking on the report button) while the CEO got involved with a Hollywood star's gripes, is something I was involved in. What source would even possibly exist?

You can either take my word for it as someone that's been here for over 10 years and isn't in the habit of making shit up, or you can not.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#232

Post by xaduha »

baq wrote: post #214
xaduha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like browsing a news group on Usenet or checking a subreddit before How would you do that on Twitter? Follow the hashtags. Why do you insist on limiting it to a server? That's not really how it is supposed to work anyway, it's not those things you mentioned.

But how do I know what hashtags are there? I don't know what to follow is my issue. I need to bootstrap my set of followed things and people and how do I do that?

If you're not a part of some clique that decides to move off Twitter together, then I doubt you'll be able to just recreate a similar environment.

Otherwise for someone who posts frequently and has a good following, then it's probably worth it to start posting on Twitter and Mastodon at the same time, that's the only way it happens. Big movers and shakers are either going to stay on Twitter or drag everyone else with them, basically unlikely to happen.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#233

Post by cratermoon »

zimpenfish wrote: post #29
cratermoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say "most". According to that site, of the 4880 instances list, 1909 are close and another ~300 are invite-only. > it's expensive to run this As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements and installation process, I decided that it…

> After perusing the requirements and installation process Was that the original Mastodon? That does have a reputation of being faffy to install and resource-hungry. Pleroma is much easier and less resource-hungry. Even I managed to spin up a Pleroma server without any trouble. > most likely any instance of moderate popularity is going to require a team. It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps…

> Was that the original Mastodon?

Likely. I didn't investigate alternative implementations.

> It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users will, surely?

I'm under the impression that the claims of Mastodon include "self-moderation" and, because of its supposed decentralization, 24/7 uptime is not needed for any one instance. I have been imagining it like torrents, where no single node matters. Once the initial seeding is complete, the content lives across many instances. If it's not like that, then claims for its decentralization are highly overblown.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#234

Post by nesarkvechnep »

whimsicalism wrote: post #154
gbraad wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.

Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without having to spend bucketloads on new servers. Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new registration/break down are at a few thousand members, maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented, but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or even Java service should be able to handle that many users on a single instance.

Or go with the best tool for the job - Erlang/Elixir.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#235

Post by cratermoon »

twmiller wrote: post #49
cratermoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say "most". According to that site, of the 4880 instances list, 1909 are close and another ~300 are invite-only. > it's expensive to run this As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements and installation process, I decided that it…

It took me about 45 minutes last night to install a pleroma server and get it set up. Also as 'just an experiment'. This was on a server that had nginx running on it but not much else.

In contrast, I set up IPFS[1] in less than half that time.

1 https://ipfs.tech/

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#237

Post by metadat »

Karunamon wrote: post #231
themitigating wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an informal discussion citing sources for disputed information is normal. I also don't need a longer version of your claims, I want credible sources to back up them up. How do I know you're not lying? I think you've been lied to so many times about this that you think it's true. A common tactic with right wing media. See hunter biden crimes in china, election fraud, etc

>How do I know you're not lying? Assumption of good faith and an understanding of the obvious fact that not everything that happened on the Internet gets written about by a "credible source" (which often is a synonym for "the media", and given your unwarranted partisan swipe there, likely a synonym for "the media that agrees with me"). At least one of the things I mentioned above, namely fruitless reporting of terror…

Having no sources makes it difficult or impossible to move the conversation forward in a meaningful way. What is the point of sharing stories with no credible backing or linkage back to reality? "Ah, I hear what you're saying. That's interesting."

It's not that I doubt your honesty, it's an issue of not enough information or context to figure out anything substantial at all.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#238

Post by weberer »

m3kw9 wrote: post #91

Imagine you need to choose a server every time you wanted to surf the net and some server you may not see certain things

>Imagine you need to choose a server every time you wanted to surf the net

??? I don't have to imagine. That's exactly what happens when you enter a URL.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#239

Post by zimpenfish »

cratermoon wrote: post #233
zimpenfish wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After perusing the requirements and installation process Was that the original Mastodon? That does have a reputation of being faffy to install and resource-hungry. Pleroma is much easier and less resource-hungry. Even I managed to spin up a Pleroma server without any trouble. > most likely any instance of moderate popularity is going to require a team. It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps…

> Was that the original Mastodon? Likely. I didn't investigate alternative implementations. > It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users will, surely? I'm under the impression that the claims of Mastodon include "self-moderation" and, because of its supposed decentralization, 24/7 uptime is not needed for any one instance. I have been imagining it l…

> I'm under the impression that the claims of Mastodon include "self-moderation"

That's "the instances moderate themselves", really, not "the users moderate themselves". With large numbers of users, you'll need assigned moderators.

> because of its supposed decentralization, 24/7 uptime is not needed for any one instance

Not sure where you've got that idea - decentralisation just means that I can talk to other instances from mine. But if mine is down, I can't log into another one with my account details and carry on Just Like That.

> If it's not like that, then claims for its decentralization are highly overblown.

If you're understanding "decentralised" to mean "seeded like a torrent", yeah, it'll seem highly overblown but at the same time it'd be very wrong.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#240

Post by moistly »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #58

I really want to like Mastodon, and every few years I make an attempt to join. But then, I am faced with the decision of choosing a server - if I like cooking and golf, do I join the cooking server or the golf server? What if I choose wrong ? - and the choice overload makes me just give up. And even if I really joined, then apparently my server's administrator would be able to silently prevent me from seeing other "e…

IMO, I should be directed to a federal-level or provincial-level provider for my primary id. And it should be easy to select a “better” one later, as I learn about the service.

Or better if I could buy a plug-n-play wall wart that would provide a secure server for friends and family, with some way to filter/receive the rest of the fediverse.

Maybe I’m the oddball but I care way more about twittering with/to friends and family, than following a celeb or journalist.

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