Would Mastodon be a useful platform to, collaboratively, define the requirements of software?
Perhaps it could be used to define the next iteration of Mastodon, then.
How Does Mastodon Work?
121–130 of 186 posts
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#122I joined a server. It was alright. Then I looked at the federated timeline and decided I did not wish to be a part of Mastadon.
Too much hate and virtue signalling. It was like what Twitter already was.
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#123I joined a server. It was alright. Then I looked at the federated timeline and decided I did not wish to be a part of Mastadon. Too much hate and virtue signalling. It was like what Twitter already was.
I don't understand this. The Federated timeline is always going to be full of the same kind of crap that Twitter (and other social media) has. The whole point of Mastodon is that you can avoid that by joining an instance that matches your interests, and then only look at your notifications and the local timeline.
By doing that you can see only things said by, or boosted by, people who you have chosen to associate with. Then you get most of the benefits of social media without getting the crap from the uncontrolled firehose.
But sure, if you want it to be like Twitter, and then reject it because your experience is like Twitter, then by all means. I just don't understand your reaction.
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wish the author had expanded on migration from one instance to another and what it entails (similar to the questions and responses here). Account migration is not a thing yet, and conceptually requires a new namespace for referencing accounts (such as public keys). There is a multi-year-long actively-discussed open issue thread about this problem. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/177
This should work like Domain web Hosting type. So you can register your id at one place (similar to domain with any tld registrar) and change to another instance (web hosting). So you do not lose the need to change the id when changing instance.
This would lead to IDs being globally unique, which means if you have a common name you are unlikely to get a handle that you want. Secure scuttlebutt has a method to allow multiple people to share the same "public id" (multiple people may be named "Jill" for example) but preserves uniqueness by addressing individuals by a public key associated with their public name. I'm not sure how the mapping from public key to handle is done though.
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will be easier for governments to shut down small instances and smear the owners. I don't think decentralisation has much security value.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole
This always ignores the fact that several things like networks and server hosts are still fairly centralized.
Unless everyone is running instances on their mobile phones using a giant global mesh, it is perfectly within the capabilities of modern nation states to shutdown these networks.
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#126I'm not sure if this will be relevant to its longer-term success, but I notice that the word "Mastodon" seems to be very easy to misspell -- In the comments here alone I already find "Mastadon", "Mastadoon", etc.
I am curious why they have misspelled the Mastodon? In many languages it is written and spelled in the same way. I am not native speaker but I would pronounce mastadon and mastodon in the same way (ˈmæstədɑn), but hardly I can imagine to write down as mastadon.
> First attested 1813, from the New Latin genus name Mastodon (1806), coined by French naturalist Georges Cuvier, from Ancient Greek μαστός (mastós, “breast”) + ὀδούς (odoús, “tooth”), from the similarity of the mammilloid projections on the crowns of the extinct mammal's molars.
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#127I understand HOW mastodon works. I've got my account. But I still don't understand WHY. I got into twitter and facebook when I was a university student who gave a crap about broadcasting myself to the world. Now I'm old and don't care anymore, and I'm not deluded enough to think that anyone else cares. Is there a use case that goes beyond teenagers chatting at the lockers?
You clearly see value in HackerNews—my use case for Mastodon isn't that different from my use case for HN. My instance (https:/fosstodon.org) is mostly focused on free and open source software (hence the name). Conversations there tend to be a lot like conversations on HN, but with the benifit of a local community where you get to know the regulars. (I'm not saying that there's no purely personal talk—but think "offi…
Just a friendly heads up, I'm getting a certificate error on your site (cert expired 30 April).
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is unfortunate. I consider myself a highly skilled technical user, and the burden of running and maintaining my own Mastodon server, or even my own Nginx server to redirect WebFinger requests somewhere else, exceeds the free time I have to devote to the problem. (Keeping another VM alive, updated, and configured through the years costs mental energy, time, and money.) Whereas, adding an SRV record to my existin…
I totally agree. And it seems like Mastodon devs are starting to take the issue seriously. So perhaps there's hope.
To the best of my knowledge they have always taken account migration seriously. But it's a hard problem, and there are many, many issues to be sorted. As a result it has been and is being discussed in detail in the background while other features have been implemented and rolled out.
Some of those other issues were contentious exactly because there was insufficient prior discussion, so the question of account migration is taking its time. As I say, it's hard, so it won't be happening in the immediate future.
But it is happening.
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#129> If we use our email analogy; think of Mastodon as email as a whole.
Shouldn't that be ActivityPub instead of Mastodon?
Re: How Does Mastodon Work?
#130Apologies for the vulgarity, but I am presuming someone has informed the initial design team that toot is slang for a fart (at least in England) - which leads to the phrase "a mastadon toot" being quite a double entendre. How well ingrained is the name? Is it as commonly used in the community as a tweet in twitter? As in do the users identify the messages they send as toots, and are likely to say as such? https://www…
Is someone who uses Twitter a twit? Silly names that mean things in different places don't seem to deter Americans (I'm a Brit but I've never heard the slang "toot" before; I guess it might be very regional)
I rather delicately confirmed with a few co-workers and they are aware of the usage, so it could be regional? They're rather reserved PHD kind of people (I'm not), but seemed to find it hysterical.
With regards to Twit, that's a great point - although in that instance it seemed like a more intentional slur, as I think I'd normally default to "tweeter".
Because it is a verb substitution it has this kind of wordbomb effect of corrupting every sentence it could be used in. Some examples!
-the latest release by the Jonas brothers made me so happy i just had to toot.
-these toots are a breath of fresh air.
-Welcome! Let's get you tooting!
For when Mastodon social gets it's first celebrity president:
-President Trump released another obnoxious toot in his seemingly never-ending tirade
and finally,
-I toot, therefore I am.