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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

#41

Post by afavour »

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…

> 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 mean... yes? No need to examine this through an ideological lens: the simple fact is that the future of Twitter is now very uncertain. Ad revenue is tanking, half the staff has been laid off, features are being modified on the fly. It simply isn't a service you can rely on right now.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#43

Post by MBCook »

badwolf wrote: post #3

That way everyone can subscribe to your company's professional toots on masto

Why did they have to choose “toot”? I know different instances can re-label it but… ouch.

I know people made fun of “tweet” but it was a logical and neutral word.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#44

Post by Levitz »

jefftk wrote: post #35
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…

Social media is better when the people you want to interact with are there, so when everyone else is moving is an unusually good time to move.

Hopefully we at least learn that "build your own social network" was never a reasonable point.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#45

Post by jefftk »

KindAndFriendly wrote: post #18
badwolf wrote: post #3

That way everyone can subscribe to your company's professional toots on masto

Exactly. Same way how people can subscribe to a company's Twitter account. Except that the company owns the content, server, and can define their own rules.

I think your parent was trying to point out how "toots" and "masto" are at odds with the professional image many companies try to present.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#46

Post by latchkey »

vsareto wrote: post #22

Fair warning about this Mastodon behavior that can lead to embarrassment/leaks as new people start to use it: https://mastodon.social/@mmasnick/109299348553543784

Well, that seems like a spammers paradise.

Hey, did you hear about this amazing product @insertYourNameHere?

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#47

Post by unicornporn »

KindAndFriendly wrote: post #28
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.

Yes, as others mentioned, there will be hosting providers doing this for companies. The big upside is that you truly own the content and define your rules. I assume the costs for running a larger Mastodon instance are trivial compared to how much it costs to run ads on Twitter.

> as others mentioned, there will be hosting providers doing this for companies.

https://masto.host/pricing/

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#48

Post by sdiacom »

MBCook wrote: post #33
sdiacom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the suggestion is for Mastodon to replace internal communication, but to use it as a social media outlet for your organization.

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/#verification

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#50

Post by dmonitor »

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…

Is Tailscale not good enough for a simple tunneling service?
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