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Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

matduggan.com

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Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#31

Post by 8organicbits »

satisfice wrote: post #27

I just tried to check out the Fediverse and found utter confusion. I'm not saying its bad-- I'm saying I am bewildered. There are communities I can join, but I can't tell how I should choose a community. I could find no way to search for communities that might be a fit. Apparently there are a lot of different kinds of social media under the broad banner of the Fediverse. How should I choose, and what are the implicat…

If you don't want to choose, install the official mastodon app. It should direct you to create an account on mastodon.social, unless you go out of your way to pick something different.

I suspect the sign up flow has changed since you last tried.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#32

Post by nailer »

tamad wrote: post #21

> We all need pointless hobbies, but I care about YouTube stars like I care about distant stars dying. It’s interesting to someone somewhere but those people don’t talk to me. I mostly use social media as a place to waste time, not a platform to form para-social relationships to narcissists. I prefer my narcissism farm to table. I’d rather dig a grave with a rusty spoon than watch a Twitch “star”. I don’t really care…

It’s a British newspaper columnist style. Read anything from AA Gill if you like it.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#33

Post by darqis »

The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand.

The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is Also, fragmentation and visibility. It's neigh impossible to find interesting content if you're not on the main big instances.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#34

Post by nailer »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #24

This is nicely written but I found some of the views strange. The most disturbing one to me is that the author wants news from social media and claims they have troubles getting news (e.g. criticizing the Washington Post). Not only is it obviously problematic to attempt to get news from social media and everybody knows that, it's also very bold to insinuate that there is lack of access to news. Maybe US citizens get…

I want to know exactly how far the Iranians have gotten against the IGRC in the last 24 hours. I subscribe to WSJ but they don’t have that details. X and Reddit do, with some obvious caveats (I do find Community Notes on X very good though).

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#35

Post by 8organicbits »

_wire_ wrote: post #2

Puff piece with 1000+ words that doesn't ever assert anything in particular that the author was wrong about. But if you enjoy a babbling endorsement. However you will be left hanging about what corner of the largely inscrutable "fediverse" the author is bleating about. Make no mistake, mastodon feeds are prone to shameless promotions, scams, and attention whoring that infects all social media, but it's still marginal…

> mastodon feeds are prone to shameless promotions, scams, and attention whoring

My mastodon feed contains only the users I follow. If they post unwanted things I unfollow them. Mastodon doesn't force you to see content from people you don't follow.

The sfba trending list has engagement-bait, but you shouldn't look there (on any social media site) if you don't want that sort of content.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#37

Post by Synaesthesia »

nailer wrote: post #34
jonathanstrange wrote: post #24

This is nicely written but I found some of the views strange. The most disturbing one to me is that the author wants news from social media and claims they have troubles getting news (e.g. criticizing the Washington Post). Not only is it obviously problematic to attempt to get news from social media and everybody knows that, it's also very bold to insinuate that there is lack of access to news. Maybe US citizens get…

I want to know exactly how far the Iranians have gotten against the IGRC in the last 24 hours. I subscribe to WSJ but they don’t have that details. X and Reddit do, with some obvious caveats (I do find Community Notes on X very good though).

Iranians are not rebelling against the IRGC because why would they? Generally an outside attack makes the government more popular, not less.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#38

Post by Synaesthesia »

_wire_ wrote: post #2

Puff piece with 1000+ words that doesn't ever assert anything in particular that the author was wrong about. But if you enjoy a babbling endorsement. However you will be left hanging about what corner of the largely inscrutable "fediverse" the author is bleating about. Make no mistake, mastodon feeds are prone to shameless promotions, scams, and attention whoring that infects all social media, but it's still marginal…

>sfba.social

Seems pretty cool TBH

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#39

Post by onion2k »

darqis wrote: post #33

The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is Also, fragmentation and visibility. It's neigh imp…

What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand.

Are they choosing what people can read, or are they choosing what they're willing to federate? No one is stopping people writing and publishing things on federated services. People are only choosing what they're willing to broadcast over the part of the service they run.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#40

Post by jonkoops »

darqis wrote: post #33

The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is Also, fragmentation and visibility. It's neigh imp…

> And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture.

Most of the people who started on Mastodon are people of the LGBT+ community that were getting constantly harassed on other platforms. This 'cancel culture' is just a healthy attitude to having a zero tolerance policy on abuse, it is how it avoids being the enormous bigoted alt-right techbro mess that is now X.

Since Mastodon is federated, you can choose the instance you want to use, and what you see. Just don't expect other instances to actively want to engage there.

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