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Comment by somehnacct3757 | Hacker News Reader

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 granularity.

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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.

> I don't worry about any of this with my RSS feed.

Where do you host your blog?

If all you are doing is consuming blogs then yeah RSS is a lot easier than choosing a Mastodon instance.

But if all you want is to just consume Mastodon, you can do that with RSS too. Almost every public profile in Mastodon has an RSS feed that's easy to discover (and most auto-discovery tools will do it for you).

The complication, just as with Blogs come from when you want to post. With RSS you still have to pick a blog host. Do you pick one of the big name cloud hosts like Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, or Medium.com? Do you pick a smaller host or self-host? If that, which blogging software or static site generator do you want?

Mastodon federated at the exact "same" granularity as RSS, it's just that generally more people assume they will post on Mastodon today (and more people have private/semi-private feeds) rather than just only consume public feeds. Choosing an instance is exactly like choosing a blog host. There are the big giant instances that are easier to get started but you "own" less control of them. There are the small community instances. There are instance hosting providers. There are plenty of opportunities to self-host if you have the technical determination. There are even multiple software options to consider: Mastodon, Pleroma, Mastodon-forks like Hometown, Pixelfed, and many more (those are just the ones off the top of my head that federate with the ActivityPub "Fediverse").

Trusting an instance admin is just like trusting a blog hosting provider. They have "your data" because you've asked them to host it for you.

> I don't worry about any of this with my RSS feed.

With all due respect an RSS feed is not "your" data, it's just data that you aggregated. You're not comparing it to the fediverse in good faith. If you must make a comparison you can do it with email: do you have an email address? Do you trust your email provider with your data? It's the same with ActivityPub based servers.

I pay a monthly fee to a business for my mail server, and I chose a business that makes data privacy a top selling point.

Tweets are microblogs. RSS technology is fine for publishing them. The Twitter client only needs to be an RSS reader. Replies, retweets, and likes are empty calories for end users. They're the engagement bait social media uses to power an attention economy.

The fediverse copied the wrong features. There's no point for it to have an attention economy because no one is monetizing the attention. Therefore there's no need for the empty calorie features, and no need for my data to be on someone else's server.

> I pay a monthly fee to a business for my mail server, and I chose a business that makes data privacy a top selling point.

And you're free to pick a mastodon instance that offers the same (if that's something you cared to do). Do you also complain that it's possible for any rando can spin up their own email server and start passing out free email addresses?

Your perspective on "empty calories" social engagement is very narrow in my opinion, because you seem to equate all social interactions by the measure of existing, objectively bad, services. I think that over time the rise of small indie servers that will work on a social graph but in a similar way to email, will prove that "meaningful" social networks can exist, and my personal hope is that they won't be focusing on monetization. I don't see any reason why companies won't be able to build on that and offer you the same guarantees about your data that your email company gives you.

My position is that anonymous conversation is low value and a more advanced internet society will not do it much. The "meaningful" social networks you theorize will be meaningful specifically because anonymous conversation is absent. If someone posts something interesting I'll DM them about it somehow because I'll know them well enough to do that. Replying on Twitter is the equivalent of sending Reply-All emails to the whole company.

Yet here we are doing just fine having that anonymous conversation. It won't change your life, but I bet you found out a thing or two from this thread.

Empty calories in our information diet.

If that were so, then why are you posting?

If you don't trust anyone with your data, just host it yourself.

Well, where do you expect your data to be stored? In the ether?

On a server that I personally own or rent. Why does my data need to be anywhere else?

Well, don't use someone else's instance then. Boom, solved.

So then run an instance yourself on your own server?

Oh, you sound like exactly a new fediverse user.

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