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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

#221

Post by Karrot_Kream »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #159
Spivak wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by irrational fear and hatred towards Musk All your other point are good but this one surprises me. I think at this point people can have very rational fear and hatred of this guy. He's a 50 year old man with literally the world view of and politics a 14 year old edgelord on Fortnite but with enough money and following to do real damage with that. The biggest fears people seem to have is that he actually succeeds a…

> All your other point are good but this one surprises me. I'll tell you where it comes from. I used to like Musk in early SpaceX / first Falcon landing / Tesla Model S era. Then I disconnected from the news a bit, for a couple of years, and started to pay more attention recently (~last year). I saw constant hatred of Musk on-line. I tried to investigate what he did to make people so upset, and besides a name calling…

Similar thing happened to me, but I think a lot of the souring happened due to the weird debacle with Musk calling the diver that saved those stranded kids a pedophile. Still, I don't know how that turned Musk into another culture war badge. Is he an out-of-touch, insensitive, crappy rich person? Seems like it, one of tens of thousands. But his culture war badge status is a bit weird.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#222

Post by sneak »

gpm wrote: post #51
sneak wrote: post #12

No organization wants to do this, unfortunately. Twitter and Instagram are “free”. Running servers costs money, made more expensive by the choice in the Mastodon design to not support virtual hosting on a per-domain basis. You have to run (and admin) a complete new instance of Mastodon for each domain you wish to support.

Hey look, a major organization doing this: https://social.network.europa.eu/about It would be really really nice if it was easier for small organizations. For big organizations they're already in the business of running their own websites and this isn't anything new.

I don’t think most big organizations run their own webservers.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#223

Post by gpm »

sneak wrote: post #222
gpm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey look, a major organization doing this: https://social.network.europa.eu/about It would be really really nice if it was easier for small organizations. For big organizations they're already in the business of running their own websites and this isn't anything new.

I don’t think most big organizations run their own webservers.

My experience is that for large enough definitions of big they definitely do. I'd be shocked if any company with a market cap of >$100B didn't for instance (there are 120 of those), or any country with a GDP > $200B (there are 51 of those). As you start shrinking to more reasonable definitions of big I'm sure you'll start collecting some outliers who don't, but I bet you have to get reasonably small ($1B market cap as a wild guess?) before the majority don't

I count "administering VMs allocated on someone else's hardware" here, since it counts for running mastodon - the real giants probably almost all run some of their own hardware, but that probably drops off much faster.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#224

Post by kornhole »

mberning wrote: post #30

If the idea of federated Twitter was so good and so important why did everyone seemingly only get interested in it right now? Charitably it would seem that this is just the topic du jour and "top of mind" for many people due to recent changes at Twitter. But if running your own Mastodon server is a good idea today, surely it was a good idea two weeks ago. Cynically, it seems that many of these people seem motivated b…

Very few people knew this was even an option before last week as there was next to zero mention of it in the corp media they see. Now every big media outlet is suddenly explaining it. People also tend to only act when on the precipice. This does not bade well for other problems around the corner.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#225

Post by phailhaus »

dredmorbius wrote: post #211
phailhaus wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Why is Mastodon still hoping that the Great Unwashed Masses will come up with an explanation for the technical guts of their platform? It's been six years and articles still fall over themselves trying to explain what it is, and usually land on a variant of "it's just like Twitter, but more complicated."

What I'm getting at is that Mastodon has a serious UX and communication problem, because they're not able to pitch the platform in a way that laypeople would care. Regular people don't care about the merits of decentralization. What matters is the experience, and Mastodon seems to be trying really hard to look as much like Twitter as possible. But that's a death sentence: Twitter is always going to be the best at being Twitter.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#226

Post by bradgessler »

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.

I’d like to see us get back to using domain names for identity. An influencer celeb could have their own domain and their entire website would be “followed” to provide “updates”

All of their content could be self-hosted: videos, music, ebooks, etc. It’s a rails server, so in theory all of that stuff could be baked in.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#227

Post by rakoo »

anderspitman wrote: post #155
rakoo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install yunohost. Clicks in a UI. Install pleroma. Or mastodon. Or pixelfed (for images). Or peertube (for videos). Or plume (for blogging). Clicks in a UI.

But what about step 0: have a working Linux installation with root privileges, and understand all the security implications of operating said installation.

The comparison started with wordpress. The vast majority of installs don't bother with that. Just take a VPS.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#228

Post by rakoo »

Saris wrote: post #157
rakoo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install yunohost. Clicks in a UI. Install pleroma. Or mastodon. Or pixelfed (for images). Or peertube (for videos). Or plume (for blogging). Clicks in a UI.

That's still way too complex for something that wants to be widely used. It should just be an app on your phone or PC.

The comparison was WordPress. No one installs WordPress on their phone or PC.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#229

Post by rakoo »

snapetom wrote: post #185
rakoo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lost what, exactly ? Contrary to the capitalistic world of Twitter, where bigger faster is always better, the fediverse is not about that. If you don't want to adapt and are just trying to recreate Twitter, it's a complete non-starter.

If bigger/faster/better isn't the goal of the fediverse, then let's stop talking about it right now. All this incoming hype is about Elon and Twitter. Let's agree to stop talking about it. And especiallyt the fediverse needs to step up and say, "We're not a twitter replacement" instead of all this "Welcome aboard! You're in control! Democratize information!" snake oil that they're fueling.

Everyone in the fediverse community says "we're not a twitter replacement". It's a space for taking back control of communication. You don't join the fediverse, you are a part of it and contribute to build it.

I don't know where you got that snake oil but it doesn't reflect the pulse that's been there for years.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#230

Post by rakoo »

alexb_ wrote: post #144
rakoo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lost what, exactly ? Contrary to the capitalistic world of Twitter, where bigger faster is always better, the fediverse is not about that. If you don't want to adapt and are just trying to recreate Twitter, it's a complete non-starter.

Lost the ability to actually reach people. Lost the ability to actually talk with people in your communities. Lost the ability for fucking anybody who isn't a wizard to know how to even read something. I mean Jesus, bulletin boards are easier than this.

How did you lose anything ? The fediverse is one way to communicate. IRC, email, BBS, gopher are all ways plebiscited by fediverse enthusiasts to also communicate because there is no one tool that can do everything. If mastodon is not for you, use something else; no one blames you
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