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I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

blog.joinmastodon.org

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Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#391

Post by bee_rider »

Angostura wrote: post #374
rckt wrote: post #357

Decentralisation on Mastodon is an illusion. For me a truly decentralised thing is where I am a node that transmits and can receive transmissions, like radios. When there has to be a server that's being administrated by somebody, this already puts me in a position where I depend on the people who own the server. This means that if for any reason these people don't like me, they can simply ban me and that's it. Basica…

There’s really nothing to stop you running your own server. One of my impractical, but dream ideas was to create a Mastodon client that had a server embedded in it. No more ‘Signing up for a server’ by default you had your own instance

What’s impractical about that? It seems like a great idea.

Well, I guess doing any big open source project is a bit impractical.

I wonder if it would be possible to (as a hack) come up with a set of scripts to smoosh the general Mastodon server into this shape…

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#392

Post by bayindirh »

amiga386 wrote: post #376
Angostura wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use your server only for you, and ingest the federated feed.

Even if you do that, you're still - legally speaking - liable for hosting all those federated messages. IANAL, but my understanding is the most effective way to run your own server is to have it completely hidden, e.g. behind classic HTTP authentication so that nobody but you can even see it's a Mastodon server, and definitely can't see anything the server is ingesting, without first logging in. Even then, if you're…

> liable for hosting all those federated messages.

Mastodon do not permanently stores these messages. They are cached, and evicted after some time. I linked to a video some time ago, and now that link is unreachable because it's expired.

The URL contained "/cache/", and I didn't understand what it meant until my video died.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#394

Post by bee_rider »

vasco wrote: post #355
rcxdude wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) They used 'Black' as opposed to 'black', which often is used specifically to mean a particular culture around african-americans specifically, not just a signifier of skin tone. b) The charitable interpretation is that they are Black and that they share 97% of their views.

Its impossible to think you agree with 97% of any group without assuming everyone from that group thinks the same way. Even people from just one country don't think the same way due to color of skin, if we were to assume the point is only about americans.

They didn’t say “agree with” they said “97% similar views.” This seems like a pretty informal measurement, and we don’t have much insight into what it really means.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#395

Post by roenxi »

grepfru_it wrote: post #256
thekid314 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met Stallman once when he was pamphleting outside a beloved book store because they were using meetup to organize a book signing. The guy is consistent.

I used to make so much fun of RMS in the late 90s. Then I met him and my entire view on that man changed. He absolutely is doing the world a favor and it would benefit everyone to think long and hard what a world would be like without GNU today

He's also an interesting study in having principles - a purist approach is rare, honestly confusing to most people and actually rather effective in a Cassandra-style way if watched closely. Quite effective in terms of outcomes too, it's really deceptive how much of an impact he managed to have because the part of the brain that judges success and failure seems to key off charisma and social proof rather than doing a technically outcomes-vs-intent comparison.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#396

Post by LtWorf »

almosthere wrote: post #310
krapp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't ruin RMS at all. He was momentarily cancelled then welcomed back to the FSF. He was blogging passionately about his pro-pedophilia views for years. His supporters literally couldn't have cared less, and rather swore a blood oath of vengeance against the people who called him out. I'm actually struggling to think of anyone who has suffered negative consequences over Epstein, besides Epstein himself. Even Ghi…

Well there's Virginia Giuffre and whether she was murdered or the story of suicide is true (I personally doubt it) - either way, she suffered.

rms defined epstin "a serial rapist"… if you call this siding with someone you might have to consider the idea of being wrong.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#397

Post by amiga386 »

bayindirh wrote: post #392
amiga386 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you do that, you're still - legally speaking - liable for hosting all those federated messages. IANAL, but my understanding is the most effective way to run your own server is to have it completely hidden, e.g. behind classic HTTP authentication so that nobody but you can even see it's a Mastodon server, and definitely can't see anything the server is ingesting, without first logging in. Even then, if you're…

> liable for hosting all those federated messages. Mastodon do not permanently stores these messages. They are cached, and evicted after some time. I linked to a video some time ago, and now that link is unreachable because it's expired. The URL contained "/cache/", and I didn't understand what it meant until my video died.

That's true, but while they're cached, if someone else could see them, they're hosted, and you're liable for hosting them.

I understand that Mastodon has a "local feed", and even if you're its sole user, if you don't block anonymous readers from access, that means someone could technically see a message by someone else that you're subscribed to, take umbrage at it, and sue you for making it available on your server, even temporarily.

From what I've seen of Mastodon, it does seem possible to block access to the server's local feed, but I don't know that for sure.

In addition to the local feed, there's also what you personally boost. I'm not sure how one strikes a balance, and if the software is still usable, if you were to hide the main URL for your feed (at least, the URL so that visitors from the web can read your feed on your server). Would it still be possible to participate in conversations, would people still be able to subscribe to you?

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#398

Post by talkingtab »

This is unfortunate and ultimately wrong. The ultimate stupidity is exemplified by Musk and Bezos, and others of their ilk. To step away from Mastodon because people compare you to them is an error.

We need not just Mastodon's but to find new ways - non-corporate - ways to come together and collaborate. I am beginning to suspect that Democracy is not a political system but an economic system.

A better way to address your situation is perhaps to work on implementing a distributed democratic system that works. We can incorporate, but can we indemocrate?

Just my 2cents

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#399

Post by dbingham »

talkingtab wrote: post #398

This is unfortunate and ultimately wrong. The ultimate stupidity is exemplified by Musk and Bezos, and others of their ilk. To step away from Mastodon because people compare you to them is an error. We need not just Mastodon's but to find new ways - non-corporate - ways to come together and collaborate. I am beginning to suspect that Democracy is not a political system but an economic system. A better way to address…

> We can incorporate, but can we indemocrate?

I'm working on this right now. I'm building a Facebook alternative that will be a nonprofit, multistakeholder cooperative if I can get it off the ground. It won't be owned by anyone, instead it will be governed by its workers and users in collaboration.

It's called Communities (https://communities.social) and it's in open beta now. We got the apps in the app stores last month.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#400

Post by jrm4 »

modo_mario wrote: post #337
jrm4 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels very analogous to my experience with the place. As a Black person (who absolutely loves the idea and model), it's weird. Feels very much like a "you become what you hate situation," in my case, interacting with Black folks with whom I share probably like 97% similar views on just about everything -- and yet, (it's mild, no worries, but) I have been on the receiving end of the literal worst behavior I've ev…

>(And for those curious/interested/familiar, yes it was "Bad Space" aligned people) What do you mean?

You'd have to be around Mastodon to know what that means, but basically there was an effort by some Black folks there to not just create their own server but to also flag and identify racist/toxic servers etc, and anyone who fit that as they saw was put on their thing called "The Bad Space."

Was it well meaning? Yes. Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy? Also yes.

I find that most everyone on Mastodon focuses properly, but too much on "Black people aren't much into Mastodon because of the racism," and not "Black people aren't much into Mastodon because it's boring as hell."

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