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Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

martinfowler.com

111–120 of 245 posts

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#111
post #96
post #22

Fair warning about this Mastodon behavior that can lead to embarrassment/leaks as new people start to use it: https://mastodon.social/@mmasnick/109299348553543784

Interesting that Mastodon's [Back] button triggers a javascript:back event, so it takes me back to this forum. I don't know if in 2022 that is the expected behaviour haha.

It might be intentional design, in case you linked from another mastodon instance.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#112
post #41

If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? Charitably it would seem that this is just the topic du jour and "top of mind" for many people due to recent changes at Twitter. But if running your own Mastodon server is a good idea today, surely it was a good idea two weeks ago. Cynically, it seems that many of these people seem motivated b…

> If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? It involves work. Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. Now it is none of those things, for better or worse. I think people see federation as a means to avoid a similar outcome in the future. > Now that Elon owns it, well, now it sucks and is bad. I me…

>Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring.

In what ways? And in what ways do you think federated servers that don't agree on what rules to apply and lack any sort of mechanism for global, centralized control will make Mastodon reliable, predictable or even somewhat boring?!?

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#113
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hardline 1TB per month up/down data cap says no to that entire idea. Can't selfhost when 1 person requesting a lot means you are out hundreds of dollars. But I do wish selfhosting was just easy. It shouldn't be this hard.

If a federated protocol causes the average user to use more than 1TB of traffic in a month, then it's a bad protocol. There very well may be exceptional cases (famous people regularly going viral), but they wouldn't want to be hosting from a home location anyway.

Virality is a big part of social media. The fact that a lot of people wanting to see something I made punishes me with hundreds of dollars worth of overage fees means that it's just bad to use it. You are punished for "succeeding".

It's not about the average user, but when said average user gets their 15 minutes.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#114
post #86

Yes. But even more important is software like Mastodon needs to get easier for people to selfhost, by about an order of magnitude. It shouldn't be any more difficult or less secure to run your own Mastodon instance than it is to run an app on your phone. In my vision of the future internet, when you upgrade your phone, your old phone gets plugged into a power socket and USB drive in the corner and becomes your new se…

My hardline 1TB per month up/down data cap says no to that entire idea. Can't selfhost when 1 person requesting a lot means you are out hundreds of dollars. But I do wish selfhosting was just easy. It shouldn't be this hard.

[deleted]

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#115

If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? Charitably it would seem that this is just the topic du jour and "top of mind" for many people due to recent changes at Twitter. But if running your own Mastodon server is a good idea today, surely it was a good idea two weeks ago. Cynically, it seems that many of these people seem motivated b…

Mastodon and ActivityPub in general have UX issues. I can't imagine trying to explain to non-technical users why they have to open a pop-up window to another website just to be able to follow someone, or why people keep changing handles, etc etc. For most people using social media outside of the context of a professional organization, it also means trusting whoever operates the instance, most of which will probably b…

In an alternate, saner universe we normalized running "apps" backed by email rather than only backed by the Web, and Twitter and Facebook are just special email readers made by companies worth low-tens-of-millions of dollars.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#116
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? It involves work. Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. Now it is none of those things, for better or worse. I think people see federation as a means to avoid a similar outcome in the future. > Now that Elon owns it, well, now it sucks and is bad. I me…

Let's assume that Elon decides to burn 44 billion instead of running a mostly successful business like he's generally done in the past with his other businesses. What exactly are the dangers of using Twitter if it might stop existing say 3 years from now?

Your brand will have lost 3 years of opportunity to build up its footprint on an alternative - for whatever that's worth.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#118
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? It involves work. Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. Now it is none of those things, for better or worse. I think people see federation as a means to avoid a similar outcome in the future. > Now that Elon owns it, well, now it sucks and is bad. I me…

Let's assume that Elon decides to burn 44 billion instead of running a mostly successful business like he's generally done in the past with his other businesses. What exactly are the dangers of using Twitter if it might stop existing say 3 years from now?

[deleted]

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#119

If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? Charitably it would seem that this is just the topic du jour and "top of mind" for many people due to recent changes at Twitter. But if running your own Mastodon server is a good idea today, surely it was a good idea two weeks ago. Cynically, it seems that many of these people seem motivated b…

I don't have a twitter account (requires a mobile number that I won't give them), so I am a bit at a disadvantage here. But am I right to assume that twitter will only show you tweets from people you follow (or their own re-tweets)?

If it is the case, I don't see how Musk takeover could possibly affect their personal experience with the platform, since if they think some tweets should be censored, surely they won't follow the people writing those tweets or re-tweeting them in the first place?

If this is the case the only possible reason for leaving twitter is that they don't want to use a platform that enables people they disapprove of to communicate between them. But isn't it exactly what Mastodon does?

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#120

Yes. But even more important is software like Mastodon needs to get easier for people to selfhost, by about an order of magnitude. It shouldn't be any more difficult or less secure to run your own Mastodon instance than it is to run an app on your phone. In my vision of the future internet, when you upgrade your phone, your old phone gets plugged into a power socket and USB drive in the corner and becomes your new se…

The self-hosting argument shows how out of touch fediverse developers are. Try explaining to the influencer celeb why they should self-host. In fact, just try explaining to them they need to pick a mastodon instance, any instance. "it's so easy." No it's not.

It's actually infuriating to read. If it's harder than "App downloaded, account made" then you've already lost. Anything more complex than that is a complete non-starter.
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