Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

190 pointsnull4bl366 comments

So far I really like the fediverse, but I am really missing some cross server follow suggestions. I was hoping someone here had some good suggestions on who to follow?

View on HN

Mastodon has been the social media experience we've been hoping to someday find. Much more content rich than twitter, and discussions that go somewhere interesting. There are too many bright people on Mastodon, and it's wonderful... just a few...

Rob Carlson (author of "Biology is Technology...") @rob_carlson@mastodon.world

George Dyson (great for history of science posts) @gdyson@sciencemastodon.com

Rudy Rucker (mathematician, author, artist) @rudytheelder@sfba.social

Alberto Cairo (data visualization - infographics) @albertocairo@mastodon.social

James Gleick (author of "Chaos", "Genius", etc.) @JamesGleick@zirk.us

Anne-Sophie Pereira De Sá (data visualization) @wonderveilleuze@vis.social

Maggie Koerth (Senior science writer at @FiveThirtyEight ) @maggiek@sciencemastodon.com

Vicky Veritas (Geologist, GISMS Earth science, kind person that gets people connected) @vickyveritas@c.im

this is barely scratching the surface.

I know this is asking about people, but following hashtags are where it's at. And it's a great way to find people, besides.

Here's mine, for example, a giveaway cross section of my interests...

#linux #unix #weather #bendoregon #orwx #railroad #history #caving #caves #seti #train #motorcycle #bicycle #openstreetmap #osm #amtrak #railfan #nasa #usgs #hacking #computerscience #math #programmerhumor (some real groaners) #astrophotography #astronomy #rustlang #space #science #programming

And then mute people whose stuff you don't want to see.

As for people, I follow my friends and:

@openstreetmap@en.osm.town

@royalastrosoc@astrodon.social

@stephenfry@mastodonapp.uk

@georgetakei@universeodon.com

@archlinux@fedi.lynnesbian.space

@nasa@mstdn.social (I think this is unofficial)

@sdf@sdf.org

Tags are the way, the whole ethos of federation is about not being a sheep who needs to participate in some self-important global cult of personality to feel like they matter. Just follow your interests.

I wish there was an easier way to keep on with tags on more instances though, following users I don't have to worry about that.

I ... follow writers and gamers I like on Twitter.

Masto newbie here, how do you follow hashtags?

In the standard web client, search for the hash tag (including the initial `#`) in the "Search or paste URL" form in the top-left corner. Hash tags matching your search will appear just below that form. Click on one you want to follow. A column of toots with that hash tag will appear. At the top of the column on the right-hand side is a small person icon with a "+" in it. Click on that, and you will be following that tag.

Seems like there ought to be a simpler way. I just kind of stumbled into this approach.

fedi.lynnesbian.space has been gone for a while, and no way that wasn't a shitposting account

Well, shit. It doesn't show up for me when searching (edit: unless I search for it exactly), but this appears to be the official: @archlinux@fosstodon.org

Anil Dash https://me.dm/@anildash

Julia Evans https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk

Simon Willison https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon

Steve Ruiz https://mas.to/@steveruizok

Molly White https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff

Mekka Okereke https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke

Just wanted to share a tool (Chrome extension), that has made following people on Mastodon much easier.

Mastodon View Profile: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-profile-r...

Basically you click to view someone's profile, then click this extension's button in your toolbar and it will take you to YOUR instance, where you can follow that person with just one click (no copy+paste+search)

From looking at the source on Github, it appears that this extension attempts to work with simple string rearrangement AFAICT. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't generalize, as I discovered myself while attempting to build a similar extension.

It will work in many cases, but it will also fail in other cases. It's not universal.

The only reliable method is to use the search field on your instance, or to directly query the Mastodon API.

Good feedback. I've used the button now around 60 times. The times when it "failed" were typically related to a temporary outage of the instance, or rate limiting. For example I used this thread to follow about a dozen new people, and eventually was blocked by "rate limiting".

The issue I'm talking about isn't about rate limiting, it's about user name and server name mapping.

Take one example below: https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon

This does not map to https://myserver/@simon@fedi.simonwillison.net but rather https://myserver/@simon@simonwillison.net

This simple code works for me:

    let your_instance="masto.ai";

    document.location=(
        "https://"
        + your_instance
        + "/authorize_interaction?uri="
        + encodeURIComponent(document.location)
    )

Before you turn it into a bookmarklet, set your_instance to the Mastodon instance you use.

You can use my bookmarklet editor to turn it into a bookmarklet:

https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor

This seems to work, thanks!

Your code works, but there's a slight delay in comparison to the extension. Thanks for sharing!

Not a Chrome user, but thanks for creating this. I generally find Mastodon's UX better than its reputation, but following from the web is terrible.

Just a clarification: I did not create this, just sharing it ;-)

Please don't just post a bunch of links! Try to give a short introduction or explanation on why that person is interesting or otherwise worthy of following.

@breakingtaps@universeodon.com: electron microscopy images and hobbyist nano-scale maker and tinkerer. Has a youtube channel.

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz: the science fiction author, mostly posts about math.

@danluu@mastodon.social: tech writer/blogger, his articles often make HN's top page.

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz: famous physicist, posts about math.

@TechConnectify@mas.to: whimsical and eclectic youtuber, thorough explainer of things like dishwashers, toasters, and LEDs.

@TomDuff@mastodon.social: inventor of Duff's device, posts about music and pen plots.

@robpike@hachyderm.io: inventor of Plan 9 and Go.

@aram@mastodon.sdf.org: don't follow this guy!

Also mathstodon.xyz, math-oriented mastodon instance.

Kind of reminds me of the early days of the web, you have a feeling there's good websites out there, but there's no established mechanism to find them.

Yep, which is exactly what makes it exciting an awesome too. Lots of people experimenting and no centralization of dominant ideas. it’d be cool if mastadon stays more like the early web

Has this problem been fixed?

I started building a fediverse spider and search engine but the death threats and toxicity made me decide to work on other stuff.

Sounds like you are on to a billion dollar idea. Push on..

what if it's not a problem. what if it's a feature?

The people who post to hashtags that I'm interested in, mostly. Try searching for your interests and you'll get cross-server results that should help you build up a network of people from other servers.

https://mastodon.social/@PragmaticAndy - Andy Hunt, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer among other endeavours. Also tends to boost interesting or funny stuff.

https://mastodon.social/@jonoxer - Jon is an awesome bloke in Melbourne, Australia who is really in to electronics and home automation.

https://theblower.au/@cathywilcox - Australian political cartoonist. If you followed on Twitter, follow here instead.

https://blackrock.city/@spolsky - Joel Spolsky. If you followed on Twitter, follow here instead.

https://mastodon.matrix.org/@matrix - Matrix, Element, etc.

https://mastodon.social/@oatmeal - Because he is a funny bugger.

@simonstalenhag@mastodon.art Great Sci-fi art

@fasterthanlime@octodon.social Hacker

@tlalexander@queer.party Working on open source farming robots

@fchollet@sigmoid.social Deep learning stuff, creator of Keras

Hey that’s me! Thanks for the shout out.

Until recently, I most of my stream was politics, and I was missing the gamer crowd I used to hang with on Google+. Turns out they're all on dice.camp, and now that I found them, my stream is happy again.

So I'm mostly following a lot of RPG designers, but a few non-RPG-related names are: Cory Doctorow (super interesting of course), Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry (sometimes receives a lot of pointless responses, which makes it frustrating to engage) and George Takei (always receives a lot of pointless comments; I'd like to be able to hide other people's comments from his posts, because it's all noise).

Of course not everybody I'm following is on Mastodon. I'm not even on Mastodon. The Fediverse is a lot bigger than that.

Here are some of the more notable mathematicians from Mathstodon.

John Baez (https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez)

Vi Hart (https://mathstodon.xyz/@vihart@mastodon.social)

Greg Egan (https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF)

Katie Steckles (https://mathstodon.xyz/@stecks)

Marcus du Sautoy (https://mathstodon.xyz/@MarcusduSautoy)

Eugenia Cheng (https://mathstodon.xyz/@DrEugeniaCheng)

Terry Tao (https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao)

Tim Gowers (https://mathstodon.xyz/@wtgowers)

Matt Parker (https://mathstodon.xyz/@standupmaths)

(Me) (https://mathstodon.xyz/@OscarCunningham)

@futurebird@sauropods.win -- science, math, entomology

@librarianshipwreck@mastodon.social -- pithy critiques, cats

@nomdeb@mstdn.social -- history and other random things

@OkieSpaceQueen@scicomm.xyz -- science communications, conspiracy deconstruction

@tprophet@defcon.social -- writer at 2600

@kjhealy@mastodon.social -- pithy sociologist

@notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com -- urban planning

@enron@tilde.zone -- hacks and snark

@HelenBranswell@scicomm.xyz -- infectious disease reporting

@Jessicascott09@infosec.exchange -- misc infosec

@harshad@sharma.io -- farming in india

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron

https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs

https://infosec.exchange/@troyhunt

https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog

https://infosec.exchange/@malwaretech

https://infosec.exchange/@hacks4pancakes

https://infosec.exchange/@tinker

https://merveilles.town/@neauoire

Has anyone written a Chrome extension yet to take the username/server combinations of the top posted names and make them easy to click links? Like I can't click: "Rob Carlson (author of "Biology is Technology...") @rob_carlson@mastodon.world"

hello I found it for you

https://github.com/masrly/mastodon-link

Thank you so much! I found it initially didn't work but once I put in my instance in the extension settings, it worked great. Awesome find.

The, one and only, Ron Gilbert: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@grumpygamer

Maybe just list your top 4 or 5 and a brief summary why you like them would be more helpful than just dropping a long list of people.

There's an Observable notebook on this topic too who-to-follow-on-mastodon https://observablehq.com/@mauforonda/who-to-follow-on-mastod...

For folks from India, these are some random India specific accounts which toot frequently:

@tendstofortytwo@tech.lgbt

@rashi@mas.to

@chenthil@mastodon.social

@sridala@mastodon.social

@anniezaidi@mastodon.social

@sharanyamanivannan@mastodon.social

@vaditi@india.goonj.xyz

@Calamur@mastodon.social

@nixxin@mstdn.social

@rahulbhatia@mastodon.social

@nilanjanaroy@mastodon.social

@hackiechan@mastodon.social

@nikita32@india.goonj.xyz

I feel that everyone should follow God on mastodon - quite refreshing!

https://shitposter.club/users/nousnaut / @nousnaut@shitposter.club

Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive) @brewsterkahle@mastodon.http://archive.org

Richard McElreath of Statistical Rethinking: @rlmcelreath@nerdculture.de

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediFollows

https://mastodon.online/@streetartutopia

https://spacelase.rs/@dekaminski

https://infosec.exchange/@troyhunt

https://a.gup.pe/u/histodons # This is a group that boosts every post mentioning it. supposed to be history related but it can be abused of course.

https://heath.social/@carl

https://mstdn.social/@simonegiertz

https://mastodon.social/@elonjet

https://mastodon.social/@Popehat

https://fosstodon.org/@PINE64

https://hachyderm.io/@nova # Imho the best fediverse admin.

https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs

https://infosec.exchange/@cisacyber

https://mastodon.social/@oatmeal

https://wandering.shop/@cstross

https://mastodon.world/@JeriLRyan

https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor

https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei

https://njalla.social/@njalla

https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff

https://atomicpoet.org/users/atomicpoet

https://social.data.coop/@cryptohagen

https://mastodon.archive.org/@internetarchive

https://mastodonapp.uk/@aliceroberts

https://mastodon.social/@neilhimself

https://mastodonapp.uk/@stephenfry

https://mastodon.nu/@gretathunberg

https://m.brokep.com/@peter

https://mstdn.social/@kathygriffin

https://mastodonapp.uk/@zsk

https://social.coop/@dajb

https://social.network.europa.eu/@EUSPA # Just a twitter relay so far

https://bsd.network/@solene

https://merveilles.town/@neauoire

https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral

Vitalik Buterin

Terry Tao and Zack Weinersmith

Nobody. I'm not interested in social media at all.

In no particular order within the respective sections.

No BS, down to earth infosec folks

Filippo Valsorda - https://abyssdomain.expert/@filippo

Marcus Hutchins - https://infosec.exchange/@malwaretech

Tavis Ormandy - https://social.sdf.org/@taviso

Royce Williams - https://mastodon.social/@tychotithonus

The Grugq - https://infosec.exchange/@thegrugq

Alex Bloor - https://bloor.tw/@bloor

Andrew Tierney - https://infosec.exchange/@cybergibbons

The usual Rust crowd

Mara Bos - https://hachyderm.io/@Mara

Aaron Turon - https://hachyderm.io/@aturon

Luca Palmieri - https://hachyderm.io/@algo_luca

Tim McNamara - https://mastodon.nz/@timClicks

Raph Levien - https://mastodon.online/@raph

Game Dev

Ólafur Waage - https://mastodon.social/@olafurw

Godot Engine - https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@godotengine

Celebrities (Stephen was one of the first people I followed on Twitter, so it is a tradition. The others are canaries.)

Stephen Fry - https://mastodonapp.uk/@stephenfry

Kathy Griffin - https://mstdn.social/@kathygriffin

Greta Thunberg - https://mastodon.nu/@gretathunberg

Honorable mention

Dan Luu - https://mastodon.social/@danluu

Absolutely nobody. I refuse to play in some capricious individual's walled garden. After Elon's acquisition, twitter became good enough for me.

But...

Nevermind.

Yeah, let's repeat twitter, but with an even less controlled messaging system. That'll go well.

Clearly troll bait, but I just wanna say that no one is repeating twitter. This is decentralized. Even if corporations move in and create their own instances it will still remain decentralized. Even if it splinters into pockets of federation, it will still be more of a public domain than twitter ever was, being owned by one corporation.

With all the dangers of disinformation and "echo chambers", but a bit bigger. And what for? So more people can feel they have followers and spend time cultivating that?

Yes, let's all stay in the existing disinformation echo chambers.

If you see disinformation and find yourself in an echo chamber on a platform where you can chose who you see and engage with, I am afraid it's not the platform's fault.

If you get cancer from smoking, it's not the tobacco's industry's fault. If you get shot in a classroom, it's not the gun seller's fault.

...yes? that's the point.

The libertarian's point of view?

You have to take the good with the bad. People seem to like being social online.

I never understood it myself, was never active on anything but IRC. But ActivityPub seems truly magic when it comes to promoting communication across boundaries such as corporations and software stacks, so I jumped on it back in 2017 and loved seeing it blow up in 2022.

There are clearly a lot of very nice, and very normal, people on there who just love the concept of microblogging. Who am I, or you, to stand in their way? And why should they depend on one corporation to communicate when they can take it into their own hands?

It's really a very natural progression, just like we have many ISPs, phone companies, or anything else in society.

> There are clearly a lot of very nice, and very normal, people on there who just love the concept of microblogging. Who am I, or you, to stand in their way? And why should they depend on one corporation to communicate when they can take it into their own hands?

Because many are not nice and the platforms clearly have been abused, drive division in society and are bad for mental health. That's why we can't have nice things.

I can't disagree, it's all about the dopamine hit to most people. I've felt myself slipping down that slope.

But at the same time I just learned of a protest here in my town, via social media. So it's also helping people organize IRL.

People need to see this play out again in order to rule out the possibility that the problems Twitter had and caused were just due to that particular platform, in that particular scenario. If Mastodon (or any of the other alternatives) go down the same road, they'll begin to wonder if the cause may be something deeper. But, they won't arrive at that conclusion by abstraction, or else they would have already.

Another possibility is it'll work out great.

I admire your positive attitude, but facebook nor snapchat nor tiktok have shown any other trend. "Social" media are social in name only.

> else they would have already.

Except it doesn't work that way. People are some mixture of dumb, greedy and vain.

> Another possibility is it'll work out great.

What would be the positive outcome? Preferably one that wasn't heralded 20 years ago and has not borne out.

I'm a pessimist too, however you may be discounting the effect of capitalism in your analysis. To me it seems reasonable that efforts of a group of cooperatives instead of a group of for-profit companies could lead to a different result.

Of course there are and will also be highly negative effects, but the hope is they will be more easily isolated as a result of many cooperatives taking action to exclude those negative effects and their propagaters, rather than rely on policies and practices of a small number of profit-seeking companies.

It’s not capitalism, it’s society. The problem wasn’t twitter, the tech or the company, but the way it was used and consumed. The same actors with the same audience will have the same effect on Mastodon. Only this time there won’t be someone to moderate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com