proofInAToot
mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyz
is that just me?
"Here are some #MastoTips" https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/mastotips
T-t-thanks
No, that makes it sound just about right.
> A. Also, my husband blogs twice a day.
> B. Eeww, Yuck!
(Joke being that, for people not knowing what "blogging" is, but who want to appear worldly, it's safe to presume it's something really gross)
This is really stretching it.
Gimp is the worst offender amongst badly named products. Its name is both a kink sex term and a slur against disabled people.
"Toots" are in the same category as "Cockroach" DB. Not something you want to think about. From among similar feature offerings, I'd go for the one that wasn't horribly branded.
Calling them "farts" might be accurate but seems strictly unflattering.
The third use I hadn't heard about until you mentioned it.
Part of the solution though is to just pronounce it "jimp" which is the official way anyhow
(but seriously there are very very few things that "The Gimp" is good for these days when you have the option to use Krita)
however, remember how many people used to so confidently say things like, “i will never use the word tweet. i’m an adult with an adult voice!”
if Mastodon catches on, it’ll just naturally fall into vernacular just like tweet did.
It hasn't even used that name anymore for a while already.
is “tweet” copyrighted?
[as far as I know] hashtags were originally just a twitter thing and they spread outwards. obviously the word “tweet” is more interlinked with twitter’s name and identity, but, if it’s not copyrighted, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be able to spread like hashtags did
https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4806:hi...
(It seems Twitter actually has the "tweet"® trademark in two different classes, so I'm not sure which one you were originally linking too)
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85116717&caseType=SERIAL_...
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77715815&caseType=SERIAL_...
(Sorry!)
And it doesn’t matter if the effect is “psychological,” it’s going to have an effect on product outcome.
Are you able to "sign up once" and be able to log into every instance of Mastodon? Would having a "central profile" database break everything it stands for?
I really like the idea. At the end of the day though, people usually follow the path of least resistance. Hence why reddit "wins" over forums (obv forums are much better for many things but you know).
It seems like something I would be interested in. I have been, since before this twitter drama even started. Someone tried explaining it back then and it sorta made sense. Perhaps its changed in the mean time though?
In short, no. But this isn't a question that makes sense in context, it's like asking if you can sign into Yahoo with your Gmail account.
Let's be clear up front: mastodon is not Twitter. They look similar at first glance, but that's as far as it goes. Try to keep an open mind and appreciate mastodon for what it is instead of what it isn't.
Each instance is an independent server. The software is often tweaked, custom interfaces, and each instance builds a unique community with their own rules. The trick is that they all speak the ActivityPub protocol, which allows any server to talk to any other.
You don't need to log into other instances because your instance already knows how to show you content from another. You can interact with any account on any instance which talks to yours. Those remote accounts don't even have to be mastodon accounts! You can follow accounts on pixelfed, peertube, pleroma, etc all from your one mastodon account.
It's often compared to email. Anyone anywhere can spin up a server and start sending email to Gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc. No two email servers have any relation to one another, but since everyone uses the same protocol, you can generally talk to anyone.
Additionally, you can move your account between servers. It will transfer your profile and followers, but not posts. There's a general sentiment that posts should be ephemeral, and you have settings in your account to delete posts after a period of time.
Mastodon is fundamentally different from how we've been doing social media, and I think that's a good thing. I've been using it for a couple of years, and I haven't had fun on social media like this since I became friends with Tom on MySpace.
It's new and scary, but if anyone is considering trying it out, I enthusiastically encourage you to give it a good solid try for a week or two. The big servers are fine, but you really want to fine a small server with a community of interests similar to yours. (avoid mastodon.social like the plague)
Through the last few waves of people jumping ship, almost everyone remarks that it's a better experience. You get more and more meaningful engagement on your posts, even with 1/100th the follower count. It's a much more fun and human experience than machine-fed algorithmic crap.
> It's a much more fun and human experience than machine-fed algorithmic crap.
What happens when the bots show up?
Each server individually isn't a great target for spam, since the populations are low, and there isn't a good way to spam outside of your server, because the entire instance can block you.
Not foolproof in the least, but I haven't seen anything more than a dozen individual spam bots in the last two years.
And on the other side, it's a single checkbox to say "I want to filter any bots".
It's neither perfect nor failsafe. But with enough humans to moderate, report and help out, I'm sure it works better than any centralized, algorithmic setup can ever work.
I guess my only question now is, what if instance "collude" or you end up with powermods 2.0 from reddit? I remember I got banned by one mod on a powertrip in a local city sub and woke up with messages saying I was banned in half a dozen default subs (I never really visited either way though). Would it just completely block users from that instance? as if they didn't exist? Why not let the user make that call?
This is probably like asking "what if you don't agree with the moderation policy of the central authority" so maybe it really is just a "trade off" at the end of the day.
Server admin starts harassing people for whatever reason Users from that server start calling them out (usually with a #fediblock tag) Any sympathetic users will block the entire instance where the abuse is happening (this is called de-federation)
Any instance is basically a private space, and there is no external authority which can influence what happens there. Instead, that server gets blocked from interacting with other servers. A server in isolation isn't much fun, so those users tend to migrate elsewhere until the offending server is empty and shuts down.
The beauty is that there is no central authority which could potentially abuse users, but there is also no central authority to protect them. So we protect each other, and let the toxic servers stew in their own juices away from everyone else.
> You don't need to log into other instances because your instance already knows how to show you content from another.
If it takes 9 paragraphs to explain this concept, I can see why Mastodon is so confusing for so many people.
But also I am bad at words and tend to over-explain.
I replaced mastodon.xyz with my own instance and only got two posts.
So each instance has a fairly unique perspective based on its federation.
And that federation is decided through mainly two factors, what its users follow, and AP relays. AP relays are just a cheatcode that gives a small instance a lot of federation by subscribing to relayed "toots" from other instances.
But the true federation magic happens when users follow other users.
So clearly there is very little (almost none) overlap between my instance and mastodon.xyz because the only mention of this tag was rom 2017, and one linking the HN post now.
You only need to sign up (just once) if you want to follow people, or post yourself.
You can read all (public) posts on all instances either way.
So I swear this is not on purpose, but I went to try to see what thing I would be interested in. I searched "Mastodon Technology" and it leads me here:
https://mastodon.technology/about
It says it's shutting down though? So they can just shut down and if you don't migrate your account in time, you're SoL ?
I do understand a bit more now. I remember being interested in it around 2019 and it was a bit confusing then.
Your comment clears it up quite a bit.
That server got too big for its admin team to handle. The general sentiment around mastodon is that it's sad, but it isn't a bad thing. The admins did their best, but it's in everyone's best interest to shut it down gracefully rather than let it fester. All the users will migrate to new communities and continue on.
Mastodon has a problem with scaling individual instances. It works best when there are a lot of relatively small instances. Once you get too many users, server resources get tight FAST. My instance has gone down three times for upgrades this week, and the admin has had to suspend new user registration because the server just can't keep up.
That's totally fair. You're also SoL if you don't agree with their policies, etc. So I'm definitely not a fan of the way that works.
>Mastodon has a problem with scaling individual instances
That's unfortunate to hear. Seems like a "core" issue though... I mean, if it approaches anywhere near the number of DAU twitter has... no idea how that would work, logistically.
Seems it would have to come full-circle where hosters have incentive beyond "hobby" and "clout" reasons.
The idea is that by spreading the users amongst many smaller servers, everyone has a pretty responsive experience while still being able to (hypothetically) interact with as many users as on Twitter.
The general tone has seemed very defensive
Servers rise and fall, it's part of the life cycle here. The admins couldn't handle the size of the server, and it was causing a rapidly degrading experience for everyone. Shutting down the server was mostly in the best personal interests of the admin, but people seem to be respecting them for that. They did the responsible thing by shutting down new registration, making very loud announcements, and giving everyone as much time as possible to migrate their accounts.
In other words, any instance will shut down sooner or later, and the way the admin handled this particular case is the most respectful way to treat the users.
Sad that it happened, but much respect for handling it as gracefully as possible.
Just another thing for users to be worried about.
And when Twitter does eventually shut down, all of those users will lose their accounts and followers forever with no recourse. When a mastodon server shuts down, you click the 'migrate account' button and continue like nothing happened.
No. You can follow people in other instances and interact with them, but your account is tied to your instance.
Effectively, if you follow enough instances, it would look/feel like twitter? In the sense that you get a feed of interesting content from multiple users?
The local timeline is the real time feed of all activity exclusively on your instance.
Federated timeline shows the local timeline plus the public feeds of any account that someone on your instance is following.
With enough users on an instance, the federated feed shows you a good chunk of the entire fediverse traffic. It's one of the best ways to find new and interesting accounts to follow
If your instance dislikes the policy of the other instance, e.g. because the other instance hasn't cancelled the right people, they might refuse to federate with it (and the other way around), and then you won't see those toots.
Also, some instances will defederate any instance that itself federates with the "wrong" instances, sometimes forcing an instance to choose between letting others dictate its federation policy or having their users lose access to others they're following.
Maybe I have a misunderstanding but I can't imagine convincing something like that on reddit or discord would go over well at all.
Who and what you interact with can be changed by the whims of discord/reddit mods. Some even go so far as to craft tools/bots to extend their "power" to allow them to ban users across subs. This doesn't make it so you can't see the other users entirely though.
What if you join on "gaming" and it turns out the admin of "gaming" is a huge d-bag and all the other instances decide to not federate with "gaming" ? Will you have to recreate your entire account?
I could still be misunderstanding... but it seems like as time goes on, the chances of admins/mods having some ridiculous drama approaches 1. At least as far as discord and reddit have gone. Just look at the whole antiwork thing. Drama and struggles within the same subreddit, let alone different ones.
Not entirely, you can migrate to a new instance. This of course depends on the old instance still being around (as that's where your account lives until you choose to migrate it), and on your account still being accessible (so hopefully you're not banned from it) but it's an option. Your followers get migrated over but your posts do not.
So you do need to have some level of trust in the instance, but it's not necessarily a final decision.
no, you just move your account to a different server.
with reddit you’re at the mercy of the mods closing a sub down or locking down. same with discord. with mastodon we just move our account—when you move, you keep the same followers/following so in the very rare occurrence something like this happens, it’s a minimal disruption with an easy solution.
moving even redirects to your new account, so if someone has your old address, mastodon just directs them straight to where you moved to—god i wish email would do this.
So if someone said "look at this cool OSS I created." You would be able to comment and see other's comments like a typical comment section?
The one major difference is you cannot "subscribe" to a hashtag. You can do a hashtag view, but it will be limited to all the toots on your server (which I believe includes all the toots people in other servers that folks on your server have subscribed to).
Eugen (who created mastodon) has been trying to ditch the feature, which I think is a huge mistake. Almost every other server keeps it on, because it's a great part of what makes the fediverse special
In current Mastodon, there is no subscribing of a hashtag - only searching.
My belief is that in the newest version, you can subscribe, but it's still not global. Essentially it just saves you from doing an explicit search and adds it to your feed.
So if someone posts a toot in some distant instance with a certain hashtag, it may still not show up in my feed.
I never really subscribed to hashtags in the first place. Always seem to be filled with spam. On twitter, I just follow a few interesting people and they'll usually tweet or retweet interesting stuff, so it works out.
They're useful for limited, local current events. As an example, there was a sudden bush fire near my relative's house, and it was convenient to be able to track all the tweets tied to that hashtag to get the latest updates. For events like this, the local news media has only a tiny fraction of the (mis)information. You get a lot more (mis)information by following the hashtag.
I'm sure the content is great but no-ones ever gonna see it.
The page linked is not what people commonly see or use when interacting with "the mastodon network". It's a public view on a single instance of a single hashtag.
It certainly should be designed better. But you've clearly not spent any time to look into "the UX of mastodon" because if you did, you've known that the page you are criticizing, is an exceptional and hardly used one.
Also, please try to be civil and constructive. It gets your otherwise valid point across much better. Now you sound like a nitwit with a grudge, while the points you make do have some merit.
I've seen this said hundreds of times. It's said so often that it's become a running joke.
More Mastodon spamming.