Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Exploring Mastodon

martinfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 248 posts

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#161

Post by stewbrew »

pwinnski wrote: post #145
toofy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, the panic people are putting forward about server choice is really strange. my account is on a friends invite server and 99% of the people i follow and interact with are on all kinds of other servers. my timeline is almost entirely people from dozens of other servers. im not at all sure why people are panicked about this.

The key phrase in your statement is "on a friends invite server." Okay, so if you don't already have a friend on Mastodon, then what? Have you actually looked at the list on https://joinmastodon.org/servers recently? Half the comments here say it doesn't matter what server you choose, and half are saying to be sure to choose the one that aligns with your interests, which... see the list above for why that's an issue.…

While it's confusing at first I don't think it really hampers acceptance. I think the general advice is to first create an account on mastodon.social and then to move on once you find something you like more.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#163

Post by yborg »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #97
chris_st wrote: post #12

I'm on a discord server with a lot of non-nerds, and various ones are interested in Mastodon, due to Twitter issues. It's amazing to see how much trouble they're having... "Do I have to create a log in on every Mastodon?" ("No, and it's pretty much impossible"), "Can I follow someone on another server?" ("Yes, but it's incredibly hard -- try to follow them on whatever server you're on, maybe someone else is following…

Mastodon is built for the world some people wish we lived in, not the world we actually have. It has way too many issues that are disqualifying on their face to most people, starting with there’s no way to preview the community without signing up, but the list goes on and on.

>no way to preview the community without signing up

This is incorrect. You click the "Discover Users" from the instance home page, and you can view (public) profiles and as well as posts that they have made. I agree that it would be better to just be able to view the local timeline.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#164

Post by Kye »

_ph_ wrote: post #72
chris_st wrote: post #12

I'm on a discord server with a lot of non-nerds, and various ones are interested in Mastodon, due to Twitter issues. It's amazing to see how much trouble they're having... "Do I have to create a log in on every Mastodon?" ("No, and it's pretty much impossible"), "Can I follow someone on another server?" ("Yes, but it's incredibly hard -- try to follow them on whatever server you're on, maybe someone else is following…

I consider myself quite a nerd, but honestly, I am struggling with exactly those questions. I do think better introductions for newcomers are needed so the explanations are understandable for people who are thinking in "twitter" terms. There should be just a page with a quick checklist/cheat sheet for twitter users.

I think nerds often have an overthinking problem with it on both the learning and explanation sides. For example: extremely normie comedian Kathy Griffin got on via a short primer in an aggressively mainstream publication and started teaching her friends how things work. Lots of recent happy users are non-tech journalists and other professionals who got it from similar publications or had a friend helping. Meanwhile, serious tech journalists are having conniption fits, and nerds are wailing and gnashing teeth.

There's some disconnect between how people who really understand it on a deep level are explaining it to other people who understand other technical things on a similar level and how people with 30 minutes and a publication deadline are explaining it.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#165

Post by riffic »

pwinnski wrote: post #153
riffic wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edited: make a monetary contribution to the project along with your PR

> submit a pull request then. Thanks for this! I now have a go-to example of why mastodon is not a viable replacement for twitter, one literally everybody should understand.

it's not intended to be a full replacement, cool we're in full agreement here.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#166

Post by MivLives »

nimbius wrote: post #65
MivLives wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except even that tool sucks. I can't even use the list to filter for things that are say... less then 1k users, have an uptime of 95% or higher, and have A+ grade HTTPs. Whatever A+ HTTPS that means, it's also not explained on that site. Hell you can't even filter on registrations and actually up at the same time. Sorry for the rant, my previous instance went read only, and I had to go find a new one. I know what i w…

Then lets work to make it better! most of your mastodon stuff is open source. Reach out to the maintainer on Github and let them know :) https://github.com/TheKinrar/instances

You know, this is a good call out.

I've been looking for a small project to work on and this is perfect.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#167

Post by pwinnski »

stewbrew wrote: post #161
pwinnski wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key phrase in your statement is "on a friends invite server." Okay, so if you don't already have a friend on Mastodon, then what? Have you actually looked at the list on https://joinmastodon.org/servers recently? Half the comments here say it doesn't matter what server you choose, and half are saying to be sure to choose the one that aligns with your interests, which... see the list above for why that's an issue.…

While it's confusing at first I don't think it really hampers acceptance. I think the general advice is to first create an account on mastodon.social and then to move on once you find something you like more.

Which is great advice--except that mastodon.social is not accepting new users, throwing everyone who has received that advice into confusion from step 1.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#168

Post by rakoo »

radarsat1 wrote: post #56

The thing that surprised me a bit about federation is that it puts instances front and center. You have an account at your "home instance", and that's the first thing you see. When I first read about federation I had thought that the idea was to have one big network of independent but equal instances that just transparently share data under common topics. But instead I discovered that you are identified with your ins…

I used to agree but I don't anymore. The crucial point, and the reason reddit works so much today, is moderation. If anyone can post to a generic programming forum, it will be automatically submerged under spam. There is no way around it. Centralizing the rendezvous point means it is possible to settle on rules and appoint moderators to enforce them.

Note, though, that federation as implemented by the fediverse means that I post content on my instance, and you post content to your instance, and both are "tagged" with a central identifier. It is definitely possible to get all content from all instances in one place.

There are interesting ways towards decentralized moderation: basically, anyone post anything, moderators "pick" what they deem correct, and you as a user "pick" moderators. When you feel a moderator isn't doing a correct job, you switch the set of moderators. But there still is an element of centralization in that moderators decide what is good and what is bad. And if the history of computing taught us one thing, it's that it is impossibly hard to migrate people away from default settings.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#169

Post by pwinnski »

toofy wrote: post #160
pwinnski wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key phrase in your statement is "on a friends invite server." Okay, so if you don't already have a friend on Mastodon, then what? Have you actually looked at the list on https://joinmastodon.org/servers recently? Half the comments here say it doesn't matter what server you choose, and half are saying to be sure to choose the one that aligns with your interests, which... see the list above for why that's an issue.…

> The key phrase in your statement is "on a friends invite server." why is this a key statement? my point is that being on a friends server hasn't altered the experience at all. i migrated to my friends server a couple days ago from mastodon.social--i literally haven't noticed any difference at all, the experience from everything i can tell has been identical as it was prior. the server im on made literally no differ…

Today, I cannot sign up at "your friend's server" nor mastodon.social, so neither of those things help me.

The phrase is key because it reflects a familiarity which new users do not have. Have you never in your life been introduced to an environment you didn't understand and felt put off by everybody using words you didn't know, or words you did know in ways you didn't understand? Never, in any situation?

Because that's exactly how it feels for many, many, many new users of mastodon now.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#170

Post by riffic »

timmytokyo wrote: post #154
riffic wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edited: make a monetary contribution to the project along with your PR

I can't tell if this is meant to be sarcasm. I feel like it should be sarcasm.

cynicism at this point.

anyone finding faults with Masto should take the AP protocol and write their own implementation. The monoculture of the Mastoverse is less than ideal and the space is much more interesting when you figure out the secret sauce (ActivityPub)

Post reply on HN