Mastodon Is Just Blogs | Hacker News Reader

Mastodon Is Just Blogs

simonwillison.net

69 pointsfariszr34 comments

This is a nice analogy for starters. It's inaccurate, but I think clarifying those differences is something that can happen later if explaining to a new user.

Fwiw main inaccuracy is:

> A Mastodon server (often called an instance) is just a shared blog host. Kind of like putting your personal blog in a folder on a domain on shared hosting with some of your friends.

This is technically true but in practice this kind of thing was never common for blogs outside of university servers, so imo doesn't make for a great analogy. It's also important not to fudge analogies like that because Mastodon's shared instances are different to a shared blog host in some interesting ways.

Most interestingly: moderation. The moderation model of Mastodon instances is pretty fascinating in practice. While it resembles moderation on oldschool indie bulletin boards, or subreddits, the federation aspect makes it really weird. If Mastodon takes off in a major way (overall network at modern corp social network scale) I think we'll start to see really insightful patterns of network interconnectivity emerging as a result of instance-level federation limit/suspensions lists.

I have been using mastodon for years and what I've observed is that most instances will basically ban/blacklist "free speech/hate speech" instances. I guess those servers start to federate amongst themselves or stay unfederated. Personally found it to be working well, i never saw content i didn't want to see.

That's been the case for a long time and it works well.

Already that will introduce some slightly interesting shapes in the network graph as not all instances will have matching blocklists, even though the reasons for blocks right now are similar.

It's also not a black and white action - instances can be blocked completely, or just limited (blocking files & attachments or post visibility without blocking user follows, etc.).

However I'm curious to see as the network gets a lot larger whether that network graph shape gets a lot more complex as certain instances start blocking others for a broader variety of reasons. For example I've seen discussions of blocking sources news/journalistic content on an instance intended for friendly community chat. I think it'll be interesting to observe what bespoke & unique moderation policies emerge.

The fact that you don't see bad content doesn't mean the moderation is good. You also need to check that good content isn't being filtered out.

That's not really how this works - it's instance filtering, there isn't content analysis happening. If there's "good" content on the filtered instances it'll also be blocked indiscriminately - that's known & intended.

The "solution" is to move instances (which is very well facilitated by the platform, including data portability).

> The "solution" is to move instances (which is very well facilitated by the platform, including data portability).

Can you move to an instance blocked by your current one, though?

Good question.

I don't know & haven't tried, but the fact the "blocks" are tiered/layered makes me think yes. Whether the ability to migrate is also tiered or is more absolute though I don't know for sure.

It would still be workaround-able with a double-move (hasslesome as that would be it would still be much easier than e.g. a Twitter->Mastodon move), but it might not be needed.

According to what definition of hate speech?

(For context, I just got perma-banned from reddit for hate speech; I left a comment saying I wouldn't bother with your (non-default) pronouns unless I know you, or they're obvious.)

Apparently that makes you a bigot now.

There is no definition of hate speech. That’s why it’s such a powerful tool.

>I left a comment saying I wouldn't bother with your (non-default) pronouns unless I know you, or they're obvious.

No person has ever been banned from Reddit for this and anyone claiming this is a liar.

A strong persecution fetish often accompanies bigotry.

I'm not lying.

Since they've deleted the comment, I cannot actually post it here.

I probably also said that if you're running with zi/zir or whatever the hell it is, I'm really just not going to fucking bother.

The mods on that site are losing their fucking minds.

Also, you're breaching the hacker news guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"come to Mastodon - you'll never see content you don't want to see"

I did consider extending that piece to talk about some classic shared blogs, such as Kuro5hin and MetaFilter and Artima - but I decided the piece had enough material already!

I think people wouldn't' be so confused by it if a lot of pages didn't look like facebook's layout... just my opinion!

Books is just long blogs on paper. Films is just blogs played out by actors in front of a camera. Blogs is just...

Isn’t mastodon like Twitter, with super short character counts? You can’t blog at that word count. You still get that Twitter-like inability to have discourse and nuance

Unless different instances lift that?

Each instance sets their own character limits and some instances are more generous than twitter's limit. But it seems that short posts are more common because many people use mastodon like twitter.

if mastadon is "just a blog" then why are you posting this on something that is quite literally _not_ mastadon? if you want to promote mastadon as a blogging platform, why aren't you using it as such? you built your own blogging platform, and you're trying to convince us that mastadon is the right choice? how does that work?

It's an analogy designed to help people understand how Mastodon works.

I did not intend to imply that it was a replacement for having a "full sized" blog. Hence my description "Every Mastodon account is a little blog."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging

I mean I get it, and I applaud your effort.

Twitter is just microblogs.

For blogs I'd prefer classic blog with activitypub support though, Plume for example. Also wordpress has activitypub plugin.

I am amazed that the barrier to Masto entry is apparently so high.

It's Twitter but a bit crapper. Just pick any server and start posting. Done.

It is more like email. Everyone can subscribe to the same email newsletters even though everyone is on a different server.

This is an unhelpful oversimplification.

Can you expand on why you think that?

I've had feedback from a lot of people that say they found it really useful.

Well it’s flat out wrong for one.

Simplifying something to the point where it stops defining the original object isn’t helpful, it’s distracting.

“An apple is just a sweet vegetable”, I mean, maybe if you squint hard enough, but it really just isn’t.

Same with this. Mastadon just isn’t a blog. Even if some parts kinda sorta could be described that way if you look hard enough.

I've seen several people say "OK I get it now" and sign up for an account, so it's been successful at least by that criteria.

What about my extended version of the analogy: "Mastodon is just blogs and Google Reader, skinned to look like Twitter"?

I think that’s too obtuse.

Comms is all about knowing your audience.

Non technical? Tell ‘em it’s a better twitter.

Technical? Go into detail about how it’s a censorship resistant microblogging service.

I think you lack a target audience and messaging tailored to them.

Again, anything that gets people thinking is ok in my book. Keep up the good work.

My intended audience was basically me a week ago, when I was trying to figure out what the heck this whole thing actually was!

I didn’t know I was criticizing a legend. For some reason I didn’t put two and two together.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Makes sense to you, it’s helpful to others, mission accomplished.

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