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GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

gnu.io

121–130 of 259 posts

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#121

Before the site has given me any reason to join, it makes me choose between 7 virtually indistinguishable options of providers with subtle technical advantages and disadvantages. Ah, GNU projects. Never change.

Yeah...as a tireless social media critic & privacy fanatic, I imagine I'm in their target demographic. But the presentation was so confusing that even I ran out of patience trying to understand what's going on.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#122
post #24

The https://quitter.se anti-capitalist message didn't resonate with me, so I joined the https://gnusocial.no federation. Much friendlier :)

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

The GPL couldn't work without one of the common features of capitalism: protection of intellectual property. Also, Stallman has never gone record saying capitalism should be abolished. He simply didn't feel computers should be constrained by IP. At worse, he's a Georgist on IP since IP to most modern Georgists is held in common like land.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#123
post #2

Neat product but the "familiar user interface" for a Quitter is literally a copy of Twitter. That's not a good look.

It implements the 2010 version of twitter, for once being outdated isn't much a regression.

If you run/host your own network/instance - which is actually encouraged - you can design it pretty much however you wish.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#124
post #24

The https://quitter.se anti-capitalist message didn't resonate with me, so I joined the https://gnusocial.no federation. Much friendlier :)

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

I didn't say that I wouldn't read from Quitter. I follow a few people from there. But, I said that I didn't register there. To me, registering with the service after reading that goal would be a vote in favour of that goal.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#125

I was excited to learn that GNU Social is in PHP, but quickly turned off because of the quality of the PHP code.

I can't defend any code quality (and I'm certainly not associated with the project, I merely host my own/private network)...but i suppose php was chosen as the stack for (hopefully) more universal adoption. Most low-cost/budget (old school) web hosting companies support php out of the box...and the intent is for folks to host their own network instead of hopping on others, etc.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#126
How hard/easy is it to switch servers and retain @accountname references (i.e. your username)?

When faced with a big list of servers to choose between, my hesitation is that I'll pick one now and realize later that another one is better. For example, I may someday want to host GNU social myself, but if I do so will I essentially be starting over (even if I can retain my data, will my connections still retain a relationship to the new server?).

A nice little diagram and/or technical details page would be much appreciated :)

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#127
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's only two services out of many. What about your mail server? What about your webserver where you host your personal website? What about your own git hosting? What about your own private slack-like service? If you follow the "host everything yourself" zealots consequently, all you do is maintain these services. Or you pay people to do that for you, which quickly gets more expensive than just paying for your…

It highly depends on the person. If a person is good with software engineering and system administration, they don't need to pay more than few minute of their time once in a while, so SaaS are more expensive. I run various software that can be either used on subscription or self-hosted (like Sentry, GitLab CE or Drone) and my time investment in it was negligibly tiny (like... I find a deployment recipe, and run it, t…

I agree and I think it is like with cars. I for one did basically everything from changing the tires to replacing the body of the car after a crash (I don't have a car anymore). For me it was part of the fun, tinkering with stuff, learning, etc.

Other people never touch anything in their cars and even pay for replacing the light bulbs. This obviously costs a lot of money if you let someone else do that for you. But you just have other priorities, that is ok.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#128
post #101

This software and discussion miss the reason you can't descentralized a twitter clone: analytics. One of the advantages of centralized services is the capability to quickly analyze what's going on from the content of the messages but you can't do that with a descentralized service.

For an enterprise, yes, analytics would certainly be more important; because you'd want to measure success of whatever...but those are goals more for a company. If I only wish to share with, say, my family and a few important friends (without resorting to email blasts) the types of things folks normally share on a centralized social network, then analytics isn't important for me. I just basically need to host "the party" but don't care as much about measuring the success of "the party". My goals are not necessarily all the same as twitter/facebook, etc. ;-)

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#129
post #66
post #48

Reading the comments here it seems that people are missing the point by just joining one of those instances. It is not about just using some alternative to Twitter, the real advantage begins when you host it yourself so that you can own your own content and post whatever you want (not what some company wants you to) and (perhaps) syndicate to other services like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. I just gave a small tal…

I don't see hosting myself as an advantage. In the end, all you do all day is to maintain all the tools and apps that you host yourself.

I think the idea isn't that every single person will host themselves. But you could have an account with a local provider, and the network will be a built-up federation of local providers linking together. In this way you individually don't have to manage your own instance, but everyone's data isn't centralized and owned by one corporate entity and you effectively limit your trust.

Given the way Facebook, et al, are evolving however, I think the market will make this question moot faster than we can answer it.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#130
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I've been running a Jabber server and a GNU Social node for about a year now and I can tell you it takes maybe 1 hour a week of my time for patching. I have automatic security updates enabled on both systems but I tend to login from time to time and do a dist-upgrade on them manually.

But that's only two services out of many. What about your mail server? What about your webserver where you host your personal website? What about your own git hosting? What about your own private slack-like service? If you follow the "host everything yourself" zealots consequently, all you do is maintain these services. Or you pay people to do that for you, which quickly gets more expensive than just paying for your…

The initial config was a bit rough, but the initial config included docker and jenkins. Jenkins is basically a dashbaord for deploying docker containers now. My "maintenance" is clicking a build button when I need an update, and I could probably configure it to watch docker hub or git and run the builds automatically.

I definitely don't "all you do is maintain these services"

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