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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

#81

Post by Arubis »

kenjackson wrote: post #71
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…

No one wants to do this. The HN type crowd always is willing (or says its willing) to do more work to get more privacy/freedom/etc... Almost everyone else will take convenience and cost over those things. That said, I have no interest in using Twitter now. But I want something that is basically Twitter, except without Elon Musk running it.

"Thing Elon built-or-owns, without Elon" turns out to be an entire market segment.

Anecdotally, most folks I know in the market for electric vehicles are avoiding Tesla so they don't have to think about a _specific_ billionaire each time they get into their car. Elon's especially visible right now, but generally, folks want their stuff to be theirs, not defined by someone else.

FWIW most of the people I'm thinking of skew technical and progressive.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#82

Post by xtracto »

seydor wrote: post #53
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…

should be wordpress-level easy at least. But last i checked it wasnt easy. Otherwise , mastodon hosters will become sneaky corporate spies, ad injectors and data resellers

Just today I paid for a domain name in name.com. As part of the package, they sold me a hosted & managed WordPress installation for $60 USD a year. I was positively impressed (last time I setup a WP server I paid $5 a month for DigitalOcean, which makes it $60 for something I have to manage).

Companies like name.com, godaddy and whatnot should offer that kind of option. Or even AWS should have a "managed mastodon" server maybe. At the end of the day, most companies nowadays have their infrastructure in one of the 4-6 main cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCS, Oracle, ...).

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#83

Post by phailhaus »

riffic wrote: post #72
phailhaus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what's the point of the closing line "Find us at https://toot.thoughtworks.com "?

find me at gmail.com

It's "email me at gmail.com". The article is about replacing a company's usage of Facebook and Twitter with Mastodon. They then link to their Mastodon instance, as if that's where we can find all sorts of external communication, the kind they'd usually have on Facebook. Nope.

As a nontechnical user, I am immediately confused and closed the page without learning anything. The idea that a company could "reach millions of users" with Mastodon is ridiculous.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#85

Post by ricardo81 »

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…

Lack of an alternative, lack of marketing, laziness? Convenience of others being there, network effects?

They don't seem like good answers, just happen-stance ones.

The idea of decentralising isn't bad IMO, maybe that'll be the next main topic.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#86

Post by alexb_ »

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…

My hardline 1TB per month up/down data cap says no to that entire idea. Can't selfhost when 1 person requesting a lot means you are out hundreds of dollars.

But I do wish selfhosting was just easy. It shouldn't be this hard.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#87

Post by mgraczyk »

I believe for internal communication, Twitter style social networks are a net bad.

At Facebook we used a facebook-esque product called Workplace for this sort of thing. I believe it harmed the culture because people would chase clout and visibility on the social network instead of doing real work. Social networks encourage that kind of behavior.

I think slack, discord, or similarly un-networked products are a better fit for company communication. Anything that shows "follower counts" is probably not good for companies.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#88

Post by mola »

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…

Wouldn't being the topic du jour exactly the right time to lean into promoting it? I mean Elon raised a massive PR storm for Twitter and alternatives. Mastodon have been trying to become mainstream since forever. Fowler believes it to be a good thing also, so he uses his media clout (blog readership) to lean in and push this message. Why is that a problem?

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#89

Post by NegativeK »

taylodl wrote: post #66

The Disney company should heed this device and call their server(s) Mousetodon. I think they'd kill it. Heck, they could automatically enroll everybody subscribed to Disney+. They could even have different servers for different sets of fanbases to focus on - Marvel, Star Wars, etc.

> Heck, they could automatically enroll everybody subscribed to Disney+.

God, please, fuck no.

Re: Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server

#90

Post by illuminati1911 »

afavour wrote: post #41
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 me…

Laying off staff of a company that has barely added any new features during the last 10 years and has always been operating at a loss is not necessarily a bad thing for the future of the platform.

You are right about the chaotic way things are added/removed right now, but I personally prefer it to what Twitter was before Musk: Force login on the main page and unfair ideological censorship.

We'll see what happens in the long run.

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