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Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

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Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#361

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #356
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the Italians are rubbish at buildings (source: I went to Rome and half the buildings are in ruins)

I know that this is a (very funny) joke, but when I visited Rome I was absolutely astonished that humans could build something so long ago and still stand today. Most people don't have such a visible (obvious), lasting impact on the physical world.

Joking aside, Rome does have some amazing old architecture. The Pantheon's dome ceiling is remarkable and that's just one example.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#362

Post by vidarh »

weinzierl wrote: post #148
codeflo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't migrate your followers that way, can you? Which is (arguably) for many people more important than the content of their posts.

I haven't thought this through thoroughly yet, but I could not come up with a migration scenario where you could keep your followers. Your handle will change and as long as the old instance is banned I guess a redirect from there to the new handle does not work. So, fair point! I'd be curious what others think, maybe there is a way?

Mastodon supports user migrations that keeps your followers. It's pretty new and not supported everywhere yet, but it does work (I've used it) with the caveat that some followers on older software will still follow the old account at the moment.

It works by the old and new server "cooperating", so it won't let you move between two servers which won't federate with each other - in that specific scenario you'll need to go via a third server which both speak to.

The move appears to you as if your followers unfollows your old account and follows the new account, so they're all "redirected" to your new handle. E.g. you can see that here: https://mastodon.social/@vidarh

You indicate to the old server where you want to move to, and then to the new server where you're moving from, and the fact the old server will specify your new handle in your profile is used as proof when informing your followers instances of the new address.

If you do this, you can see mastodon.social returns a "movedTo" attribute for my old account:

    curl -H "Accept: application/activity+json" https://mastodon.social/users/vidarh | jq .movedTo

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#363

Post by rkapsoro »

rkapsoro wrote: post #288

I suspect this whole "Twitter blocking Mastodon links for anticompetitive reasons" narrative is wrong to the point of being disingenuous. People have been tweeting links ElonJet trackers on Mastodon instances (including the official @joinmastodon account!), getting both themselves and the target Mastodon instance domains flagged. This is edgelord behaviour. Twitter's policy is simple - do not dox people with real-tim…

Alas.

Since I made this comment, Twitter announced their new Third Party Social Media policy, and it looks terrible and unnecessary.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platfo...

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#364

Post by vidarh »

weinzierl wrote: post #183
yardie wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t own your followers. When you move they get a notification you moved and their following lists are adjusted accordingly.

Not when the instance you are on is banned or otherwise disappears and you use your exported data to "revive" your account on a different instance (with a different handle), which is the scenario I proposed above.

If it disappears, you're right. If it's "banned" (not a thing, assuming you mean defederated) then you can't move to one of the instances which have defederated it. Any followers from an instance which has defederated yours will also be lost, not because you can't move them but because the block on their instance will automatically cause them to unfollow you.

The solution to this is to move to an instance which hasn't defederated from the one you're on. Worst case, setting up your own.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#365

Post by vidarh »

pxoe wrote: post #355
vidarh wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you follow someone, you can mute just boosts from them if you like. Other than that, all of these things are things people can build using the API. I agree they're needed, and I think enough others do that things will get built. I certainly want to build my own algorithmic feed, because reverse chronology is already a nuisance to me.

huh. ability to mute someone's reposts in your own timeline won't do much for purposes of browsing through that particular person's tweets though. it's not about 'how someone's tweets appear in your timeline', but 'browsing someone's tweets'. to be fair, twitter doesn't let you just filter out reblogs from someone's profile timeline either (though one could just do a search like 'from:username'), but with visible lik…

I also don't like that difference in separation w/less visible likes/favourites.

Other than that I think what you're describing might well be a good feature for one of the frontends to support. Incidentally, since all of the profile info is available without auth, it's also possible to build an entirely separate profile browser that could offer that filtering for any profile.

EDIT: Mastodon in fact includes a profile browser for remote profiles; it's just that when logged out it will redirect to the remote profile instead of show the "local view" of it. So if someone wants to build a profile browser like that, all the necessary code for a good starting point is there in Mastodon already. Thought it might well be easier just to do it from scratch.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#366

Post by vidarh »

smcn wrote: post #51
codeflo wrote: post #39

I'm exactly in the target demographic that desperately wants a a return to the old, decentralized, protocol-based internet. We need working alternatives to Twitter to prevent a single mentally unstable billionaire from having this kind of power. But everything about Mastodon seems badly designed and engineered. The focus on "servers" seems technologically anachronistic, but worse, fragments the community and creates…

I agree with some of what you wrote, especially regarding selfhosting. I personally would like to see the ability to follow and post to local timelines, to ensure that you're able to be part of communities in a decentralised way. However. > you're basically required to trust your online identity and private message secrecy to an anonymous activist admin with a kitty avatar. Is this worse than trusting Twitter, Facebo…

In terms of local timeline inclusion that kind-of already muddies things, but WebFinger does provide for aliases and supports forwarding, so maybe the ability to have accounts on multiple instances but have them all forward to the same "follows"/"following" lists might work (likely not without changes, and there are many potential pitfalls there, though).

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#367

Post by sandworm101 »

scarface74 wrote: post #206
sandworm101 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to first get a little more extreem. They have to not just fight but start killing. Look at Napster. Napster was attacked and eventually died. But napster also won. CD sales are dead and we all download/stream music online. Mastadon will soon be attacked directly. It will also probably die as napster: a first cassualty of a revolution. What matters are the long-term changes that survive.

Napster didn’t kill CD sales. iTunes/iPods did

Delivery of music over the internet killed cd sales. Napster proved that people wanted online music. That enabled everything else. It forced the industry to adapt or die.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#368

Post by ceejayoz »

skissane wrote: post #172
ceejayoz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That server is swamped with registrations and had to pause them. Pick another.

This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose? Go with the one everyone talks about? Closed to new signups. Pick some other one, run the risk that it closes (the owner gets bored, it becomes too much work, they find keeping it up and stable too hard). Or else that it gets “defederated”, and hence you get effectively banned,…

> This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose?

It's important to know that moving between servers is fairly well implemented; a few clicks and your followers will automatially migrate over to the new one. Your first pick doesn't have to be final.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#369

Post by rcade »

codeflo wrote: post #39

I'm exactly in the target demographic that desperately wants a a return to the old, decentralized, protocol-based internet. We need working alternatives to Twitter to prevent a single mentally unstable billionaire from having this kind of power. But everything about Mastodon seems badly designed and engineered. The focus on "servers" seems technologically anachronistic, but worse, fragments the community and creates…

Mastodon looks workable to me.

Choosing a Mastodon instance is like signing up for an email provider. Email is decentralized and seems to be doing alright.

I picked an instance that was good-sized at 9,000 users with a focus I liked: indieweb.social. That gives me a Local feed of interesting indieweb-related content in addition to my Home feed of people I follow. I didn't have to trust my privacy to an anonymous activist. I know who is running the instance and support it via Patreon.

Re: Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion

#370

Post by rcade »

drexlspivey wrote: post #107
whitepaint wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can export your data and move it to another server. If you're banned on Twitter, you're done. Also, complete failures like banning important stories, banning presidents, banning journalists etc. cannot happen on Mastodon the same way that it has happened countless of times on Twitter and will continue happening. Mastodon is obviously superior when it comes to the freedom of speech. Elon is afraid, because he know…

What if your server that is run by a hobbyist suddenly shuts down without any notice? If they had an accident for example or they got hacked or whatever

Most instances follow the Mastodon Covenant, whose promises include giving users three months warning before a shutdown.

https://joinmastodon.org/covenant

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