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Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

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Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#131

Post by INTPenis »

toastercat wrote: post #80

As much as I'd love to use Mastodon, both times I tried, I got bored and gave up because I couldn't find interesting people to follow. All of the people I do find interesting are only on Twitter.

Yeah that's how it is now. The federation sort of blends into the background so disregarding that part I feel like I'm using a big message board in the early 2000s.

But actually worse, because at least those message boards had better defined topics. I can follow some hashtags that I enjoy but in the web gui it's very limited. I've been thinking about writing my own software to help me follow tags alone. Just to participate in relevant discussion.

Otherwise you're just watching people rant in the public feed and if you're lucky you might catch the occasional interesting post.

But I persist because I truly believe in the fediverse concept.

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#132

Post by zrav »

saurik wrote: post #114
betwixthewires wrote: post #79

People interested in this stuff should check out alternate software as well. Hometown is a fork of mastodon that has a few extra features but one very interesting one in particular: you can post to the local server only, which is an excellent community building feature. There's also pleroma, which I've run and is pretty great and low on resource requirements. And there are tons of other social UX paradigms like link…

> ...you can post to the local server only, which is an excellent community building feature. The idea of building a local community that you have to have an account and associated identity on a specific server to access is the kind of mal-aligned incentive that tends to cause federated systems to become de-facto centralized silos and, eventually, return to the status quo of a controlling oligopoly :(.

... but its an essential feature if you're using the software to run, say, an internal company microblogging service.

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#134

Post by thesketh »

trutannus wrote: post #113
john_moscow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder: if you feel passionate and excited about someone else being denied employment, or otherwise punished based on their views, you are likely being manipulated. By caring about those things you care less about demanding a better deal for yourself, and that's exactly what the media wants. USSR was built on that kind of manipulation and now it's coming here.

> USSR was built on that kind of manipulation and now it's coming here Can you link to where I could read up on that? Propaganda tactics are fascinating, and this one is one I never knew about.

I believe what they're talking about is more commonly referred to as "McCarthyism".

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#135

Post by Zababa »

Kye wrote: post #88
Zababa wrote: post #7

There are lots of files at the root level, which means I have to do 5/6 complete scrolls to get at the beginning of the readme. I see this pattern a lof with Go project. I've always wondered if it has an impact on the popularity of the project. If anybody from Github is reading this, that could be a blog post idea. Something like an invisible pixel at the top of the readme, and the number of top level files + directo…

There's a way too hard to notice Readme link on the sidebar of repositories with the file. It's right between the tags and license.

Thank you! I never saw that link before.

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#136

Post by master-12 »

zrav wrote: post #132
saurik wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...you can post to the local server only, which is an excellent community building feature. The idea of building a local community that you have to have an account and associated identity on a specific server to access is the kind of mal-aligned incentive that tends to cause federated systems to become de-facto centralized silos and, eventually, return to the status quo of a controlling oligopoly :(.

... but its an essential feature if you're using the software to run, say, an internal company microblogging service.

Isn't this like saying you need your own slack instance for your team? It should be IMO possible to limit conversation on mastodon to a group of people as an alternative to limiting it to an instance.

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#137

Post by rapnie »

INTPenis wrote: post #131
toastercat wrote: post #80

As much as I'd love to use Mastodon, both times I tried, I got bored and gave up because I couldn't find interesting people to follow. All of the people I do find interesting are only on Twitter.

Yeah that's how it is now. The federation sort of blends into the background so disregarding that part I feel like I'm using a big message board in the early 2000s. But actually worse, because at least those message boards had better defined topics. I can follow some hashtags that I enjoy but in the web gui it's very limited. I've been thinking about writing my own software to help me follow tags alone. Just to parti…

> But I persist because I truly believe in the fediverse concept.

It helps to see Fediverse as the early web, where things aren't that smooth yet, and everyone is just experimenting. From that perspective as a techie it is a joy to explore the possibilities.

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#138

Post by nivenkos »

INTPenis wrote: post #130
kixiQu wrote: post #49

I admin and use a Mastodon instance. It takes a while to get used to the differences from Twitter, but it's far more polished than people seem to expect. The reading I tend to recommend if people have questions is Darius Kazemi's https://runyourown.social/

Another admin here, and yes I agree. But one major aspect of fediverse, that people rarely talk about when promoting it, is the spam. To summarize my impressions over the last 5 years I'd say there is no way to run a big open instance without funding. The best way for small single actor instances to survive is to be invite only or approve each member account. And even then I'd suggest using Geo blocking to fence off…

> My personal wish is to see the fediverse made up of smaller, localized instances that federate across borders. So for example a Finnish instance that only accepts finnish users, but it federates with every other instance.

This would be great to stop the American-influence dominating every conversation like happens on Reddit, etc.

Re: Mastodon: AGPLv3 FOSS social network server

#140

Post by wombatmobile »

From slate.com

Everything That Went Wrong With Donald Trump’s New Social Network in the First 24 Hours

> Truth Social will be a lot like Twitter, with the primary interface consisting of a feed of short posts from users you follow. However, these posts will be called “truths” instead of “tweets,” and reshares will be known a “retruths.” While the platform wasn’t supposed to have its soft launch until next month, users found a way to access the site and were setting up accounts within hours of the announcement. (One vandal claimed the @donaldjtrump handle and posted a picture of a pig with extremely large testicles.) Truth Social eventually cut off access, though screenshots of the interface taken before then suggest that the platform is basically just a fork of Mastodon, the open-access software that allows users to make spinoff social media networks. Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko has said that he will be seeking legal counsel since Truth Social appears to be breaking his product’s terms of use by not sharing the code or license with the public. Truth Social’s terms further claim that the source code is proprietary, which could also violate Mastodon’s license.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/donald-trump-true-socia...

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