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Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

blog.joinmastodon.org

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

#131

Post by Grumbledour »

mvdtnz wrote: post #54
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.

A truly overwhelming majority of users browse with JS enabled. Designing or even considering those who don't is (in the most literal way possible) a waste of time.

No, because this is about more than just supporting non-js use cases, it is about the type of design from the ground up and how you structure your application. JS is very welcome on these kind of interfaces, but also really unnecessary for what it actually does. It just adds bells and whistles. Or it should "add", if designed correctly. As another comment pointed out, now it takes more network round trips and uses more ressources. And now it does not work without JS anymore.

A good designed web app works just with plain html and minimal ressource use and than adds on top of that the get even better with css and js niceties. This used to be called progressive enhancement, if the client supports a feature, make your website better for these clients. It's just better and well rounded design with the added bonus of supporting clients with less capabilities.

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

#132

Post by sph »

dehugger wrote: post #108
Vaslo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

There's social media for leftists, there's social media for those on the right, there is no social media for those that do not care about anyone's politics (or other hot-button topics)

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

#133

Post by BeFlatXIII »

BeetleB wrote: post #51
runako wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can make lists in Mastodon, and put the noisy people there and exclude them from your main feed. You can put all your Asian follows in a separate list as well if you want to quickly catch up with them. No algorithm has its down sides, but I doubt they'll put in an algorithm that I'll like more than "no algorithm". I'll add that I think algorithms should be the responsibility of the client, and not the server. The…

Too much work for not enough reward.

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

#134

Post by n4r9 »

whyenot wrote: post #115
NoboruWataya wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mullenweg, Zuckerberg, Musk, whoever runs Reddit now... there's no shortage of CEOs happy to enshittify their platforms.

Have you seen Reddit's recent stock prices? Bemoan enshtification if you want, but management's decision to include many long term users in the IPO and decisions since then have made many loyal redditors a lot of money ($34 -> $164.82).

"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

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

#135

Post by runako »

kccqzy wrote: post #102
runako wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That wouldn't solve most of the issues I indicated.

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

#136

Post by Ruthalas »

brianbest101 wrote: post #120
whyenot wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Reddit's recent stock prices? Bemoan enshtification if you want, but management's decision to include many long term users in the IPO and decisions since then have made many loyal redditors a lot of money ($34 -> $164.82).

Stock prices do not help me find fixes for my 3d printer.

But they can [organically] suggest a great replacement to purchase!

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

#137

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

glenstein wrote: post #41
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know right, almost like an internet forum or something

It's a legitimate point - the criticism carries more weight if its part of a unified collective consensus (e.g. the Unity fees debacle) than if it's a bunch of all-over-the-map criticisms that all contradict each other (Gamergate). Seems straightforward enough to me. The latter can be especially important to observe because sometimes people are just full of it and it's all just a bunch of vibes, where people agree so…

I don’t see how this argues for or against the point about JS in Mastodon, but yeah, I too would go so far as to say that vibes, pseudo-consensus and internet mobs manufacturing things might have something to do with it.

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

#138

Post by pabs3 »

esperent wrote: post #126
pabs3 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is just a small JS shim from the extension to the Python code, but yes. The benefit is that you don't need to enable arbitrary code execution in your browser. A variety of benefits flow from that; static pages, almost no advertising, fewer working paywalls, smaller attack surface etc.

> static pages I'm not sure I agree that it's a static page if there's a web extension running JS involved in the page render. I guess it's a grey area. > almost no advertising, fewer working paywalls We're talking about Mastodon, right? I thought it would not have those. > smaller attack surface This one I'll give you, but what kind of attacks would you expect from a Mastodon instance? If all of this is a big enough…

I was mostly speaking to the general advantages of not enabling JS.

> static pages

As in it won't change after you load the page.

> almost no advertising, fewer working paywalls

Indeed, haven't seen these with mastodon instances, but you never know when that will start happening.

> smaller attack surface

The instance could have been hacked, or you could have angered the admin, or you could have angered some other user who knows of a vulnerability they could leverage to send you custom JS.

The JavaScript sent by Mastodon is obfuscated, so it isn't reasonable to expect to be able to audit it and mark it as safe. You could YOLO and allowlist an JS from trusted instances of course, but that opens you up to the scenarios above.

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

#139

Post by esperent »

pabs3 wrote: post #138
esperent wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> static pages I'm not sure I agree that it's a static page if there's a web extension running JS involved in the page render. I guess it's a grey area. > almost no advertising, fewer working paywalls We're talking about Mastodon, right? I thought it would not have those. > smaller attack surface This one I'll give you, but what kind of attacks would you expect from a Mastodon instance? If all of this is a big enough…

I was mostly speaking to the general advantages of not enabling JS. > static pages As in it won't change after you load the page. > almost no advertising, fewer working paywalls Indeed, haven't seen these with mastodon instances, but you never know when that will start happening. > smaller attack surface The instance could have been hacked, or you could have angered the admin, or you could have angered some other use…

> Static page... As in it won't change after you load the page.

That's not what static means in the context of web development. It means that the html is delivered from the server in a static form and doesn't need to be changed in any way to be displayed.

> The JavaScript sent by Mastodon is obfuscated, so it isn't reasonable to expect to be able to audit it and mark it as safe

This is what file hashes are for. But agreed, you do need to trust the upstream file provider. I had assumed that a federated system like Mastodon had considered this already and had a way of confirming js hashes to ensure against rogue nodes. Is that not the case? If so it seems like an oversight.

But anyways, thanks for replying to me. I asked because, as a web developer, I'm always curious about why people disable JS. I have yet to be convinced of any valid reasons for most people to do it, but I can understand that some people have stronger security concerns. For those people though, it always feels like it would make more sense to spin up a VM and browse inside there with all the unsafe JS, rather than enduring a daily struggle through a litany of websites that don't work properly.

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

#140

Post by consumer451 »

sph wrote: post #132
dehugger wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's social media for leftists, there's social media for those on the right, there is no social media for those that do not care about anyone's politics (or other hot-button topics)

On Bluesky at least, you can remove all Bluesky created feeds, create your own feed algo's, and create specific user list feeds. You can also define mute words so that posts with those words never appear for you. Those mute words can also have a time window, in case some common word is temporarily annoying you.

I believe that you could create the experience which you described on Bluesky. This may also be possible elsewhere, I just happen to know about Bluesky.

It's largely how I use the platform. On most days, I am blissfully unaware of what "the discourse" is that day. I personally enjoy human curated lists of devs and scientists.

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