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Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

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Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#171

Post by none_to_remain »

elcapitan wrote: post #124
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #58

I really want to like Mastodon, and every few years I make an attempt to join. But then, I am faced with the decision of choosing a server - if I like cooking and golf, do I join the cooking server or the golf server? What if I choose wrong ? - and the choice overload makes me just give up. And even if I really joined, then apparently my server's administrator would be able to silently prevent me from seeing other "e…

Also, besides choosing a server, how do you figure out which other servers that server "federates" with or blocks entirely?

Generally they seem to have lists of blocked servers (often with the full domain censored with ****) on the about page. I don't know if the list is generated or manually updated.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#172

Post by phire »

xaduha wrote: post #143
DavidSJ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can’t choose wrong then why am I forced to choose at all? The user experience doesn’t add up.

Who should decide it for you then? Did someone mention blockchain already? But seriously though, if you start to make it more distributed than it already is it will look even less like Twitter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)

Most users don't care how distributed it is, or what it's architecture looks like.

They just want to sign up, and get an out-of-the box experience more or less like twitter.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#173

Post by the-printer »

silverwasthere wrote: post #123
the-printer wrote: post #83

Is there any space nowadays for tech that is essentially free of politicized rhetoric? I really don't care about democracy or decentralization on my social media platform. When I first discovered Tumblr, MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga, AIM, and Twitter I didn't care about any of their techno-political underpinnings.

Some servers enforce a rule where political messages are hidden behind a content warning. Check the CoC before you sign up.

That rule itself implies the sort of underpinnings that repel me from certain alternative social networks.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#174

Post by TJSomething »

whimsicalism wrote: post #154
gbraad wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.

Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without having to spend bucketloads on new servers. Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new registration/break down are at a few thousand members, maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented, but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or even Java service should be able to handle that many users on a single instance.

It's Ruby on Rails, which is the second slowest web framework I would consider reasonable for production use (after Django).

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#175

Post by elcapitan »

tedunangst wrote: post #169
elcapitan wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, besides choosing a server, how do you figure out which other servers that server "federates" with or blocks entirely?

Live and learn? It astonishes me that people would get so worked up about the possibility that somebody somewhere is posting and you might not see it. Guess what? They're already posting today and you're not seeing their posts.

Oh, I have no intention or reason to move away from twitter. My interest ist purely theoretical.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#176

Post by whimsicalism »

lrvick wrote: post #168
whimsicalism wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without having to spend bucketloads on new servers. Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new registration/break down are at a few thousand members, maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented, but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or even Java service should be able to handle that many users on a single instance.

Twitter makes -200m a year hosting their solution. Mastodon by contrast spreads out this load to servers paid for by users, not by ads. If you cannot join any servers, pay for a managed hosting provider to spin one up, or host yourself on a vps or a home server.

That may be well and true, but seems unrelated to the point i am making, which is that I would expect a single instance to be able to handle a few thousand users.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#177

Post by [deleted] »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #55
tomrod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally joined yesterday to a niche (academic) community that is moving from Twitter. 18k migrants in the 30 hours since it opened up with virtually linear growth. I can search other similar niche communities and they are seeing similar growth. It's not seeming like much of a desert, and is just starting to benefit from network effects as some of the more known members of the community announce their moves.

Right. I'm on the mathematics server https://mathstodon.xyz/ and it's already feeling like a big community.

[deleted]

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#178

Post by davoneus »

cratermoon wrote: post #2

Who do Mastodon's boosters believe is going to be installing and running Mastodon servers?

Yeah, it's a major issue (to some at least).

Lots of fly by night servers, stood up by (probably well meaning) people that have no idea if how hard it is to run and administer a server like that. Point in fact the "Mastodon.technology"(MT) server

If you read the heartfelt post from the MT owners/op on why it had to be shutdown. How much it took of his life to run it, and the choices he made. It doesn't matter that a new "like that" MT server is being stood up as a replacement. The MT server admins post shows the burden of running a server like that. For free (unless Patreon'ed I guess).

Activity Pub is a well designed protocol, but to my eye it has some major warts(). Add in it's decentralized nature and it shows how hard it will be to institute major changes, even if the community supported it.

I'd like to find a nice, professionally run Mastodon server, with clear rules and a believable investment in infrastructure and people. Absent that, I certainly can't see myself advocating for it, it recommending it to others. Shame too.

() Lack of encryption, lack of non-server discovery, lack of consistent, user controled server migration.p

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#179

Post by lrvick »

DavidSJ wrote: post #132
allan-a wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a small note, you can't really choose wrong because you can participate across the fediverse, with other "servers", and even non-mastodon federated social media. However if it irks one to join a specific community, there does exist general purpose instances.

If I can’t choose wrong then why am I forced to choose at all? The user experience doesn’t add up.

You chose an area code for your phone number. Often people choose area codes from a home state as a bit of nostalgia or affinity, but in the end you can use any number to talk to any number, so it really does not matter much.

In Mastodon you can choose a french server if you are french and agree with generally accepted french values of moderation, or you can choose a general purpose server, or host your own.

There are a lot of LGBT servers and special interest servers with strict moderation, and general purpose servers that moderate very little.

It is also a bit like choosing what city to live in... except it is -much- easier to move if you decide you do not like the vibe and wish to live somewhere else. Mastodon has built-in user forwarding to take your follows and followers with you.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#180

Post by deberon »

raarts wrote: post #156
zaik wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should join a server you think has a reasonable approach to moderating other servers. On any other service the administrator can also prevent you from seeing posts, this is not specific to Mastodon at all. For private messaging other standards exist, for example XMPP+OMEMO.

How do you find out if that is the case? Believe what they say? What happens if they die, or throw you out? Do you need to get another handle? Will this drop you from other people's contact lists? These are things I worry about.

If these are your concerns you may be well served by hosting an instance on a domain you own.
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