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

Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

blog.joinmastodon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#101

Post by [deleted] »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #47
braiamp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them They don't. They are addicted to it. Imagine a world where you scroll in Instagram and you reach the end. What are you going to do?

Not too long ago IG removed the notice that would appear that "you're all caught up" when you had scrolled down to the end of the posts of those you follow; now it just continues to show you "algorithmically suggested posts" so you can't even tell

[deleted]

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#102

Post by kccqzy »

runako wrote: post #36
WorldMaker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important. Twitter ran for enough of its early years without that and it still had "mainstream appeal". (Blogs and RSS for even more years.) I'm happier without algorithmic curation. I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them. Partly because algorithmic curation is a big business, tied in pretzel knots w…

I tried Mastodon before Threads & Bluesky, and I can say that the lack of algo was the part I liked the least. I tend to follow a lot of people, and like to see a mix of their posts. But on Mastodon, what I got instead was "who is posting right now?" I'm in EST, for example, which means that unless my Asian follows are up in the middle of the night, I will generally not see their posts on Mastodon. Also some people p…

Why don't you start Mastodon from the place on the timeline you previously got off? I do that, and I scroll up to see newer posts instead of scrolling down to see older posts.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#103

Post by insane_dreamer »

HanayamaTriplet wrote: post #99
insane_dreamer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too long ago IG removed the notice that would appear that "you're all caught up" when you had scrolled down to the end of the posts of those you follow; now it just continues to show you "algorithmically suggested posts" so you can't even tell

How long ago do you mean? I tested right now and still got the "You're all caught up, the rest of the posts you see will be suggested" notice. Could it be in A/B testing...?

I noticed it about 3 months ago. I never see it anymore. But yeah could be testing with a subset of users.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#104

Post by spartanatreyu »

lxgr wrote: post #85
spartanatreyu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most important one is that both your identity and your data are tied to whichever instance you pick [...] (i.e. the fact that you can't "port out" from an uncooperating server) really isn't [forgivable], in my view. You can "soft-migrate" to another Mastodon account and server my creating your new account, then pointing your old account to your new account. All the old content remains on the old account/server,…

> You can "soft-migrate" to another Mastodon account and server my creating your new account, then pointing your old account to your new account. Yes, on a cooperating outbound server. If it disappears, your handle is permanently gone, with no way for you to put up a redirect. Contrast this with DNS-based handles on Bluesky, for example. All I need to do to change hosting providers there is changing a TXT record. > I…

> Contrast this with DNS-based handles on Bluesky, for example. All I need to do to change hosting providers there is changing a TXT record.

Mastodon has a similar external identity pointer feature. It uses a html tag on the page the A record points to (which IMHO is better since we don't want anyone with just enough information to be dangerous to break their own DNS).

But the html tag is used to verify an account as the authentic account, not to handle redirects from one account to another.

Personally, I'm not sure I'm a fan of using an external identifier to also handle redirects...

If a social media handle gets hacked, you can put a notice on your website saying "Don't trust any account except this one: ", and by the same token: if your website gets hacked, you can put a note on your social media.

But with the external identifier controlling redirects, if your website gets hacked (or nameserver with the dns method), then both your website and social media are compromised at the same time.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#105

Post by marcus_holmes »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #75
allenu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to follow a lot of people, and like to see a mix of their posts. But on Mastodon, what I got instead was "who is posting right now?" This was a big issue for me. Some people I followed would constantly post, so your feed, over time, simply becomes whatever those extremely online users post. It becomes less of a "balanced media diet" if it favors people who are always online. Of course, you can just stop foll…

> Some people I followed would constantly post, so your feed, over time, simply becomes whatever those extremely online users post. It becomes less of a "balanced media diet" if it favors people who are always online. I saw this as a feature of sorts. If anyone starts spamming my feed: instant unfollow. Now my feed is curated towards a slow but interesting ephemerality, and not a firehose of psychological manipulatio…

> Now my feed is curated towards a slow but interesting ephemerality, and not a firehose of psychological manipulation designed to keep me hooked.

This. It's also not email - it's not vital that I catch every toot from everyone I follow. It's an entertaining list of posts that I can dip into when I have five minutes spare.

I love the no-algo thing. I love that I'm not being manipulated for maximum attention. This makes it actually practical for me to use because I don't get hooked into it for hours.

It's like the internet used to be :)

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#106

Post by s1artibartfast »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #75
allenu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to follow a lot of people, and like to see a mix of their posts. But on Mastodon, what I got instead was "who is posting right now?" This was a big issue for me. Some people I followed would constantly post, so your feed, over time, simply becomes whatever those extremely online users post. It becomes less of a "balanced media diet" if it favors people who are always online. Of course, you can just stop foll…

> Some people I followed would constantly post, so your feed, over time, simply becomes whatever those extremely online users post. It becomes less of a "balanced media diet" if it favors people who are always online. I saw this as a feature of sorts. If anyone starts spamming my feed: instant unfollow. Now my feed is curated towards a slow but interesting ephemerality, and not a firehose of psychological manipulatio…

>If anyone starts spamming my feed: instant unfollow.

How is that a feature? It would be entirely unnecessary with a feed mixer.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#107

Post by Vaslo »

jeffgreco wrote: post #68
bachmeier wrote: post #63

> lack of algorithmic curation They can get that elsewhere. Mastodon will never win that battle. It's not wrong to want algorithms feeding you content, it's just that Mastodon will always be like the tenth best option for those users, and they always will be. Mastodon's advantage is with users that don't want posts written for algorithms. (I used Twitter that way for many years, but when they killed off Tweetdeck I v…

Bluesky has the best of both worlds: reverse chronological primarily, and then rich alternatives for all sorts of content. Some are analogous to lists on Mastodon (though seem much more heavily used on Bluesky to me) and others more advanced. Reverse chronological can suffice if you’re spending all day looking at the timeline but algorithms can be helpful! Not all algos are engagement muck.

[flagged]

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#108

Post by dehugger »

Vaslo wrote: post #107
jeffgreco wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky has the best of both worlds: reverse chronological primarily, and then rich alternatives for all sorts of content. Some are analogous to lists on Mastodon (though seem much more heavily used on Bluesky to me) and others more advanced. Reverse chronological can suffice if you’re spending all day looking at the timeline but algorithms can be helpful! Not all algos are engagement muck.

[flagged]

sounds like the promised land, thanks for the strong recommendation!

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#109

Post by ekianjo »

mkl wrote: post #95
ekianjo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution was always: provide several algos on top of chronological order, and let people choose. Client side Algo cannot be implemented because the API does not give you enough controls (I know, I have written Mastodon clients)

If you can get the messages, you can run a client-side algorithm - just download everything in the last 24 hours or whatever, and algorithmically choose what to display in what order.

That's a huge waste of resources on the client side. If every client does that it will bring the servers to their knees.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#110

Post by [deleted] »

jeromegv wrote: post #24
andreamonaco wrote: post #19

I'm not very optimistic about the technical direction of Mastodon. Mastodon had a minimal HTML-only interface before, you could read posts and replies of each profile. They removed it some time ago, now you just see a blank page if you don't have JS, and I think it's a huge mistake; it was a clear albeit small advantage over mainstream social networks.

You can still get every user access through RSS And you can add the /embed suffix to any mastodon post url, to get a javascript-free version. But I understand its not the same as maintaining a JS-free version of their web UI. To be fair, with the little budget and little workforce they have, this was likely not high on the priority list.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN