311–320 of 604 posts
Does anyone have an idea about the infrastructure requirements and the cost of running an instance with the size of mastodon.technology?
If you have DC and power sponsored you can get real far.
Ash: I'm sorry to hear about the health issue that precipitated this. I wish you the best outcome but realize that that does not always happen. Rest: As someone who does not (yet) use Mastodon, I'm curious about the impact of a single node shutting down. At least in this case this is happening in an orderly manner and with warning. I'm also curious if this is a problem with Mastodon in general or did this particular…
This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…
E: called them tweets
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look, I like open source federated ecosystems like Mastodon, but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable. I'm not sure I could reliably predict whether Twitter or Mastodon will live longer.
Let’s use Google+ as an example. It did shut down and still not all wounds have healed yet. For example, the indie RPG scene laments its demise. Edit: A Reddit thread as citation https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/udegsl/does_anyone_hav...
Their email about shuttering went into a tab in Gmail and didn't spot it, a suddenly my entire YouTube channel was deleted.
Hundreds of hours of work of crafting early videos of Elite: Dangerous and the beauty of its simulated galaxy just gone.
Luckily backed up on a NAS but I've never put them back up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30447645
I think it was only a matter of time before the human resources issue came front and center. My hope is that there can be a good balance between small federated instances kept alive by altruistic volunteer admins and larger instances with enough moderation and funding to handle the number of users that a social network expects but increase centralization. Maybe the conclusion will be that no matter how the technology scales, finding a way for the instances to be kept alive will be a social problem that requires constant attention.
The reliability issue also makes me wonder how much of the Fediverse is setting itself up for link rot and the loss of unique content after their maintainers lose passion or move on. And that wouldn't be because of a business decision that is hard to empathize with (in the case of Google+), but simply because a single human body has its limits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from Why did you feel the need to mention this 100% obvious fact? Of course I meant that the new owners wouldn't shut down something they just spent $44 billion on, thereby throwing their investment in the trash, not that Twitter would magically get…
You called it an investment, it is not an investment, it is an acquisition. It was not 100% obvious what you were implying, obviously
Okthanksbye.
> It was not 100% obvious what you were implying, obviously
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And I keep thinking that it's just not sustainable. I've worked in ops for over 20 years, I feel like that background has given me a healthy scepticism and a respect for Murphy's law.
So when I launched my Mastodon instance 4 years ago I decided from day 1 that it should be focused on my country, my language, and require new users to request access.
Just like the old BBS scene, you have to write a short motivation on why you want an account. This motivation is 100% for vetting out robots. Because let me tell you, I get on average 2 robots a week trying to sign up. Why? I have no idea. But my strategy has brought the number of spam robots on my instance down to 0.
I could never imagine being one of those admins who just left their doors wide open. Because I've been online since the 90s, I know how we used to exploit web services back in the day. I was part of that whole 4chan scene, doing online hooliganism.
If you're opening your doors to anyone, and hosting their content online on your domain, there is a whole slew of problems coming your way. And the "main" instance mastodon.social got to feel that when an AV vendor blacklisted them. Someone had been using their public profile to host C&C. Of course, why wouldn't they?
So now I see a very sad thing, my fellow admins are begging for rent and food money on Mastodon. Because they're spending so much money keeping their instance running. And God only knows how many robot accounts are taking up those resources.
I've said this so many times, but I'll keep saying it; keep the instances small and put focus on federation rather than fast growth. We want many, small, well connected instances rather than a few huge monoliths that need corporate money to keep going.
I don't care what all the naysayers in this thread are whining about, ActivityPub is amazing. Until someone launches a completely decentralized network that WORKS, AP is the one for me. Scuttlebutt looks interesting though.
I'll never get over the magic of looking at my public timeline and seeing posts cascade in from all over the world. A dozen different software platforms, some homemade, some unpublished, some open source projects, they're all talking. Thousands of forums from dozens of countries are all communicating with MY little instance. It's magic.
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> Let's talk once twitter shuts down. Because it will. Bingo. I say this all the time, Twitter is not immune from being a member of this list (Defunct social networking sites, wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network... The Fediverse (or Federated Social Web as it was previously referred to in 2007[0] or so when it was first envisioned) will never close. Single installations may, but t…
>Bingo. I say this all the time, Twitter is not immune from being a member of this list (Defunct social networking sites, wikipedia): It is if people who've decided it's "de facto infrastructure" get their way and the government nationalizes and regulates it. Then we're all stuck with it forever.
I'd like to see RSS come back in a big way, but replace RSS with ActivityPub and instead of nationalizing shitty centralized commercial services, adopt the protocols that allow for distributed and federated social activities.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/05/introducing-the-mastod...