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Mastodon.technology Shutdown

ashfurrow.com

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Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#81

Post by naavis »

elikoga wrote: post #74
monkin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who will pay for that openness and decentralization? Let’s hypothetically say that Twitter is closed, millions of users discover Mastodon and move. Mastodon instances will be down in matter of seconds. How do you approach this? By volunteers adding more instances(that they can close anytime)? This will not change anything. Everything cost money and living in an “free” world bubble isn’t helping in any project ado…

> Mastodon instances will be down in matter of seconds what, why? The load is hardly that high.

For reference, based on quick Googling, Twitter publishes around 10 000 tweets per second on average.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#82

Post by LocalPCGuy »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #14

This is why I haven't gotten into mastodon. What server do I choose? At best they're internet forums from the 90s where the admin eventually has to move on (for often valid reasons, like in this case.) Also why does this random guy have MY data? Why does he need to trust a new admin with my data for a succession plan to be possible? I don't worry about any of this with my RSS feed. Mastodon federated at the wrong gra…

I think the entire point is that those concerned about those things and who have the technical ability will create their own instances. And invite their network to their instance. As I understand it (probably poorly), people generally shouldn't just be joining random instances that end up getting really large, but rather there should be a LOT of instances, all interconnected, that are effectively run by the handful of "techies" in each given network. But sadly we still gravitate to a centralized model, trying to find the "right instance" to join, even though (again, as I understand it), people can communicate cross-instance just fine (assuming not blocked, etc.) I say this as someone who does not actually use Mastodon, I just haven't found the reason, even though I know folks whose instance I could likely join.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#83

Post by afavour »

Taek wrote: post #46
cmeacham98 wrote: post #44

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.

In some sense of the word they are already shut down. Moderation is very heavy on both and certain topics just can't become widely shared. For example, a recent thread by a sex worker had something like 8/30 tweets censored off the platform (despite none of the content being graphic, offensive, or illegal). So sure, Twitter will run for a long time. But it doesn't have very strong guarantees to its users about how it…

> In some sense of the word they are already shut down.

C'mon. Let's call a spade as spade: you wanted to complain about moderation and you shoehorned it into conversation. In no way does it make Twitter "shut down".

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#84

Post by pookha »

Barrin92 wrote: post #8

>Why Not Transfer to a New Admin? Users have put their trust in me with their data. Choosing a new admin would require a massive amount of trust, since they’d have access to over a half decade of user data. Not just data from my local users, but from users they have interacted with. I think that's a very salient and responsible choice. With the freenode debacle coming to mind immediately I think it's important to rem…

I don't at all think this is a reasonable choice. A group of like minded adults should be able to establish some form of stewardship. it's the basis for human civilization.

That said the maintainer has my sincere prayers for his family and for his path in life.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#85

Post by proactivesvcs »

monkin wrote: post #67
proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

And who will pay for that openness and decentralization? Let’s hypothetically say that Twitter is closed, millions of users discover Mastodon and move. Mastodon instances will be down in matter of seconds. How do you approach this? By volunteers adding more instances(that they can close anytime)? This will not change anything. Everything cost money and living in an “free” world bubble isn’t helping in any project ado…

Pay for what? It's not about making money.

> By volunteers adding more instances(that they can close anytime)?

"That they can close anytime", just like twitter in this example. Partly, yes. But that sort of total exodus would mean a lot of additional people contributing ideas and code to the Fediverse, not just servers, but by making it easier to run your own instance. Who's to say it couldn't be run just like an email client with the right ideas and effort? It's such an extreme example that I'm not even sure it's useful to discuss.

What traffic is it prepared for? It would be interesting for you to provide the numbers and the evidence which backs this up.

As for real life scenarios...there are upwards of a million people using it right now. I've made friends, networked professionally and found several homes there. I am literally a real life scenario and so are the people behind most of the posts there.

And today you are right about "anyone can start their own instance", but it's a darn sight easier than running your own twitter.com, and it'll get easier every year.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#86

Post by mschuster91 »

egypturnash wrote: post #70
mschuster91 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fediverse needs this as well: just plop a binary on your VPS or homeserver and you're running. Such lean and simple servers are being worked on, but Mastodon itself is a huge, slow and hairy beast. Even if you get the tech stack solved to an easily deployable package: The problem is you still need to invest immense amounts of time on moderation. Some of that responsibility is enforced legally (e.g. CSAM, warez,…

I run an instance and I really have none of these problems. Keeping open applications off solves a lot of them, you have to ask me for an invitation and I’m not going to give you one if I think you’re going to be a problem. There’s a Patreon for it that pays the server bills despite it only being a few hundred users. My users even say thanks for running the place now and then. Running a small node of The People’s Glo…

Yeah, but what point does a social network have if most of the instances are closed off to "unknowns" due to the abuse potential? The few that have open registration still have to do the workload I described => most of the users will flock to these centralized sites that somehow have to deal with the effort required.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#87

Post by rvz »

monkin wrote: post #67
proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

And who will pay for that openness and decentralization? Let’s hypothetically say that Twitter is closed, millions of users discover Mastodon and move. Mastodon instances will be down in matter of seconds. How do you approach this? By volunteers adding more instances(that they can close anytime)? This will not change anything. Everything cost money and living in an “free” world bubble isn’t helping in any project ado…

Yes, hosting is a cost and it is not 'free', hence the frequent downtime with Mastodon instances, even when they had traffic during Elon's takeover of Twitter many of then could not even handle the new users.

Also, these users don't even know which instance to go to, since there is little to no-one to talk on there. If there are 'hundreds of thousands' of users then that means they have just recentralized on Mastodon.social, the "main" instance, defeating the point of it all.

> PS. Please do not say anything about “anyone can start his own instance”. No, average Twitter/Facebook consumer can’t start his own instance.

This is why Mastodon has failed in the first place after almost 6 years with this system.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#88

Post by afavour »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #78
noirscape wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would advise against soapbox actually. The developer got kicked off the Pleroma project after badgering other maintainers[1] (which he admits to doing) for reverting a technical decision he forced through after it was deemed to be not very useful to the project and encouraged bad practices (the fediverse uses a protocol called WebFinger to find other users, the developer wanted to add a bunch of alternate endpoints…

Can we stop villifying people we disagree with? I've seen it so much, I'm more inclined to believe it absolutely didn't happen that way.

Is it vilifying when you provide sources of a person's negative behavior?

"I'd recommend against this open source project because it has a solo author who has a track record of not playing well with each others" strikes me as statement of fact, not vilifying.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#89

Post by proactivesvcs »

EarlKing wrote: post #69
proactivesvcs wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> much like Mastodon and friends which are rendered useless by racism and porn. I think you and I were on very different servers, and considering I've perused dozens, you must have gotten a really raw deal.

You don't have to look very hard to find screaming racists, furries, and lolicons. They make no effort to hide themselves since operators apparently endorse that sort of behavior as long as it fits their own particular biases and kinks. I note for the record that this is precisely the sort of thing that doomed Voat. They got invaded by racists who decamped there after being given the boot from Reddit and promptly beg…

> You don't have to look very hard to find screaming racists, furries, and lolicons. They make no effort to hide themselves since operators apparently endorse that sort of behavior as long as it fits their own particular biases and kinks.

Of course not. It's on the Internet. I don't have a problem with furries, people with bias or kinks. What if I'm one of those people, should I not be allowed to make public comment?

None of the instances I've used tolerate the harmful examples such as racists or lolicons, that you've incorrectly lumped together with perfectly cromulent lifestyles, and thanks to that I've barely seen any. And on the odd occasion I do, I just ban the user or the entire instance and move on. This happens maybe five times a year, if that.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#90

Post by smcn »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #68
fleg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving to another instance is pretty easy: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration It doesn't move your toots, but followers don't have to do anything to still follow you on your new account.

> It doesn't move your toots does that even count as migrating then

Of course it does, but I do agree that it would be better if it did.
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