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Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

martinfowler.com

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Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#211

Post by dredmorbius »

phailhaus wrote: post #202
dredmorbius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"toot.thoughtworks.com" is equivalent to "www.thoughtworks.com" or "mail.thoughtworks.com". It's a hostname for a specific service. If you want to see the actual activity on the instance, click through the "See What's Happening" link which takes you to the public view: https://toot.thoughtworks.com/public > Note that a specific profile's public URL page will be, e.g., https://toot.thoughtworks.com/@mfowler That's the…

You just used the words "HTTP gateway" while trying to explain how to just view a profile. This is an absolute non-starter if Mastodon is going to compete with Facebook or Twitter with nontechnical users. Do you not see how comically user-hostile this is?

I'm pitching my explanation to the presumably technical audience of HN readers.

This is a world in which people are familiar with webmail (email access through an HTTP gateway), and of both Web- and App-based interfaces to services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, and Reddit.

I'm reasonably comfortable in the thought that whether or not the Great Unwashed Masses think in terms of "HTTP Gateway" or Browser vs. App, they'll work through this particular Sysiphian obstacle without a great deal of effort.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#212

Post by CJefferson »

alexb_ wrote: post #136
dtparr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is federated, so users of their instance are able to interact with the wider set of Mastodon instances, much like people with @google.com emails can interact with people with @microsoft.com emails, despite both instances being separately controlled and not open to people outside their respective companies. Not having an account on an instance, in other words, is not the same as it not being accessible.

Has anyone ever watched a single person try to understand what you just said? "I have a mastodon account. Why can't I view their mastodon posts? Mastodon is broken". End of story. Platform is done. The fact that people are trying to say this is good enough absolutely infuriates me, and is makes me wonder if people actually know the technical level of the average user , not the programmers they work with.

Can you point me to an example of someone saying that? I'd be interested to see it.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#214

Post by slg »

googlryas wrote: post #203
slg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Parody accounts that are labeled as parody accounts aren't banned. That isn't true[1]. >I just can't understand anyone that lists that as the first gripe or example regarding how he is running things poorly. Elon also lined up at billions of dollars from institutional investors to take Twitter private, and I'm fairly sure they had an understanding of Elon before a week ago. And yet they still gave him billions of do…

Yes it is true. The rules[0] state: > What is required under this policy? > To avoid confusing others about an account’s affiliation, parody, commentary, and fan accounts must distinguish themselves in BOTH their account name and bio In the screenshots[1], you can see that he said the account is a parody in the bio, but not the name. Only specifying it in the bio means that you would look like a real account when twe…

Fair enough, but I have never seen that rule enforced before. Plenty of parody accounts don't list that they are a parody in their display name. There are several specifically dedicated to Elon Musk that are just "[adjective] Elon Musk" like "Bored Elon Musk" and "Italian Elon Musk" that have existed on the site for years.

That page also lists permanent suspension as the third punishment that comes after warnings and a temporary suspension. This round of punishments seemed to mostly go straight to permanent suspensions, but that wasn't consistent. Kathy Griffin and Griffin Newman have received permanent suspensions, but Sarah Silverman didn't. Is there a reason for that? Who knows?

Part of the problem with Musk's management is that it is impossible to know what the current rules are at any given moment. Is that page actually Twitter's current policy or not? Who knows?

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#215

Post by seydor »

snapetom wrote: post #109
anderspitman wrote: post #34

Yes. But even more important is software like Mastodon needs to get easier for people to selfhost, by about an order of magnitude. It shouldn't be any more difficult or less secure to run your own Mastodon instance than it is to run an app on your phone. In my vision of the future internet, when you upgrade your phone, your old phone gets plugged into a power socket and USB drive in the corner and becomes your new se…

The self-hosting argument shows how out of touch fediverse developers are. Try explaining to the influencer celeb why they should self-host. In fact, just try explaining to them they need to pick a mastodon instance, any instance. "it's so easy." No it's not.

They have websites, dont they ?

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#216

Post by hdesh »

snapetom wrote: post #191
anderspitman wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this dream, I imagine people like Selena Gomez would pay for a Mastodon account to be hosted by a 3rd party. She would gladly pay thousands of dollars a year for her Twitter account if that was the only way for her to keep it, and not even notice the cost. There will be plenty of Mastodon providers willing to offer five 9s for far less than that.

> five 9s Lololol. Good lord. Tell me you don't work in product without saying you don't work in product. She gives zero fucks about Five 9's. Maybe her tech team gives like 1/8 of a fuck, but no more beyond that. She only cares about the number of people she reaches with one tweet/toot/whatever, and simply being faster/self-hosted/data owned/reliable/federated has nothing to do with that.

> Maybe her tech team gives like 1/8 of a fuck

r/suspiciouslyspecific

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#217

Post by dgudkov »

judge2020 wrote: post #135
snapetom wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self-hosting argument shows how out of touch fediverse developers are. Try explaining to the influencer celeb why they should self-host. In fact, just try explaining to them they need to pick a mastodon instance, any instance. "it's so easy." No it's not.

A good solution I can see is "choose an interest", with each public mastodon instance having some cheeky emoji and tagline in a list. So if someone typed "makeup" they might filter to the mastodon instance "beauty.social", instead of needing to find beauty.social before even getting started with creating an account.

A person typically have multiple interests. Associating yourself with a single interest is usually a bad idea as sooner or later your would want to talk about something else.

It would be way more natural to have interests as channels for a person's account. People could subscribe to only particular interests instead consuming the full stream of the person's posts. I'm not sure if Mastodon supports this, but it's sorely lacking in Twitter.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#219

Post by MBCook »

sdiacom wrote: post #48
MBCook wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Mastodon doesn’t have an equivalent to Twitter’s (old) verification system. So it’s on users to check if each individual is who they claim. But if there is an official CNN Mastodon instance, it’s suddenly real easy to see if someone claiming to be a CNN reporter is real or not. Are they @john.smith@cnn.news? If not they’re a fake. It would also work for official Microsoft accounts or Colgate-Palmolive or the g…

That's right, and self-hosting on a trusted domain is indeed the recommended form of indicating that an identity is trustable in the Mastodon docs. Note, however, that Mastodon has a sort-of identity-ish verification system, in that a website link in your profile will be shown with a green check if the website links back to your profile with a `rel=me` attribute. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verificati…

Oh neat. Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#220

Post by r00fus »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #99
afavour wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? It involves work. Before Musk's takeover Twitter was reliable, predictable and somewhat boring. Now it is none of those things, for better or worse. I think people see federation as a means to avoid a similar outcome in the future. > Now that Elon owns it, well, now it sucks and is bad. I me…

To date there has been no change in my Twitter experience.

As of this week, Twitter will release the new verified/blue where "verified" means "payment for $8/mo authorized". No actual verification of identity [0].

If this wasn't enough, Musk has confirmed the timeline will essentially shadowban non-verified accounts [1].

So anyone can take anyone's else's name as "verified" and the non-verified will not be seen.

Essentially this means if you have the money you can run dozens or thousands of verified accounts that claim to be anyone.

[0] https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1588304086792667136

[1] https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1588876465915166721?...

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