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Comment by 8bitsrule | Hacker News Reader

For 3 months I visited the Fosstodon server daily (and tried to participate, but ...) My overall impression: there were few incidences of conversation going on. It was like a blog for a group of hundreds of people who had somewhat related interests ... but (unlike HN) no sense of community. I left disappointed; the technology worked, the experience pleasant enough (if museum-like) but something very essential was missing. (A critical mass? Forums?)

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I have the same experience so far but also acknowledge that it will take a very long time for communities to form around individual Mastodon instances. Of course, that might never happen at scale (a large number of instances with functioning communities). Twitter (and Reddit, IG, etc) certainly benefited from mixing different people together and not being limited to a specific niche. On the other hand, niche forums and discussion boards in the 90s and early 2000s had a wide variety of amazing communities. So maybe it's just a question of time.

I think what's missing is that Mastodon doesn't cultivate the "Local timeline" in a way to encourage people to act like a community. On their iOS application I believe they actively removed the possibility of accessing it - which was hated on at the time, but the devs were very adamant to keep it like that.

There is a mastodon fork called Hometown, that gives the local timeline a higher importance, but I haven't used, I don't know the details.

Timeline should not be focused on posts from local server. It should be tag oriented. I think it would be better to show users posts about their interests and hobbies from all around the network, on whichever sever they were posted.

What if I started my own server, just for me to manage my own data? What would "local timeline" look like then?

You might be right from a purely theoretical perspective, but through the way the ActivityPub federation mechanism works, there' will be an inherent difference between local content (in easy reach on the same server) and remote content which would require additional HTTP requests to make sure you have the latest versions of the objects related to it (authors, recipients, etc).

Just tried fosstodon and the european commission has an account there?? Cant these political creeps stay the heck out of our daily lives? I dont want to see government propaganda creeping into foss, please! Even if its the eu - sets a precedent for others to follow. Keep politics out of all this.

What? People are free to make accounts. So are companies. So are you. The EC is no different.

I am a people but the EC is a government. It doesnt have the same rights. I mean we debate government control and surveillance all day long yet these try and invade everything in our lives. Should use political channels for their propaganda. Else we are back to square one. Today its the ec, tomorrow the ccp, then trump, then we argue we dont want trump and the ccp then we argue about censorship then we argue about what is even censorship and so on. I for one wont be using this server until these creeps are banned.

I’m trying to come up with a reasonable discussion to have with you but you’re just so off base that I’m not sure it’s possible.

1. What “rights”, dude? The right to sign up to an instance? Anyone can. And all those instances have different rules, different instances they federate to, etc.

2. Who do you think works at the EC if not people?

3. What does the ccp or trump have to do with this?

4. Do you realise how insane it is to even ban individuals because they work in politics? Or because of where they work in general? Does your ban apply if they left their position? Does it apply to congresspeople? Mayors? Neighbourhood watch? Any government employee? If yes then teachers too yes? What about other countries political systems?

I… don’t know why I’m even entertaining your post.

Resorting to straw man arguments and horse laugh doesnt much add to this debate.

Are you suggesting they should pre-ban all people and entities you don't want to see on the instance?

You're going to be really upset when you discover how much FOSS is funded by governments around the world.

Not an issue, but they need to stay away for social interaction. Whats this communism and there is an agent infiltrated everywhere just to be sure we are constantly fed propaganda?

The EU has their own instance. You likely saw messages from that one that was federated with your instance.

They may also have created an account before their instance was live, but their posts should all be from their instance now so if you don't want to see it you can just block the EU instance

Thanks for the clarification. I guess my concerns are more of a philosophical nature and what direction we want this new social network concept to head towards.

That's fair, and a concern I share with you. I've been a heavy user of the Fediverse since 2017, and what I see right now is a bit of an eternal september moment. I'm hoping it'll return to some kind of normal once the current storm settles, but there is a risk that this time will be the one that changes the Fediverse landscape forever.

The EU instance has been nice, and I'm following several of their accounts, and they're mostly posting policy information as well as updates on various programs, but I can't expect every singe organisational account to be similarly nice. Especially if new ones arrive that post much more controversial content.

If only there was a way to mute, or block individuals or whole instances from your own account. :P By which I mean: there are some knobs in your profile to ensure that you can do all of that.

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