Now Available: Ivory for Mastodon by Tapbots
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I subscribed anyway, though, since it's a nice iphone app and hopefully I can help support the development of the mac app.
There’s an API built into Mastodon to save timeline location on your account.
Ivory is planning to support it, doesn’t currently, however it does save timeline location to iCloud, readable by Ivory on your other devices.
No idea if Ice Cubes is planning to implement the native API, or if it’s currently trying to and running into issues.
FYI, Ice Cubes is an iOS app. It does run on macOS by virtue of macOS supporting iOS apps, but its App Store listing notes that it's "Not verified for macOS".
This is the wrong question to ask. Last I used Twitter it bombarded me with unsolicited, unrelated content to an inescapable degree. On Mastodon, which so enthusiastically compensates for Twitter’s aggression that no new content is surfaced without an explicit request or first-degree vouch, I take a peek at instances' local timelines almost daily.
Beyond the timeline, consider the behavior of hashtags. On a single-user instance hashtags are useless for discovery.
Having everyone on GMail is not a good thing.
The reality, from what I’ve gleaned, is that the instance you’re on matters (for many), but you can’t come to appreciate that and what you want in an instance without first being on some instance and active on Mastodon/fediverse.
So I think the solution is that there is essentially a new-to-mastodon instance or domain (of multiple servers that all work the same). It’s for people feeling out mastodon and exploring. And there can even be a time limit for accounts there to prevent accounts sitting around forever.
That way there’d be one domain to point everyone to but the uniqueness of instances and the diversity of the fediverse can be maintained.
Main thing that needs to be cleaned up though is moving instance. It’s not hard now, but this idea would be more attractive if it was one-button-easy.
More generally, the portability of accounts across the fediverse is something I really think should be more of a thing.
My advice has been to just pick an instance and try it out, and then migrate to a different one after a month if they see one that looks like a better fit.
very good.
Like it a lot so far. Familiar with the interface as I come from Tweetbot. I am glad to be able to support the developers who've unfortunately have to retire their bird app.
If you're still looking to follow some folks on Mastodon, you can find me at @hankruiger@mastodon.nl.
For me the unified timeline is the key feature when switching between devices
// Update: Works if allow cross site tracking and turn off hide from trackers. Re-enable after getting token.
> If you choose not to subscribe, Ivory will still work but will function in a read-only mode where you won’t be able to Post, Follow, Fave, etc.
Interesting.
CameronBanga@mastodon.social for me! Feel free to reply your handle as well!
1) do you also contribute for the development of the server software? If yes, how much?
2) is there any type of feature/functionality that would you be willing to pay to have at your instance?
To answer your questions:
1) I don't support Mastodon directly, but I do support the server I am using monthly.
2) Personally I am a bit worried about instances gaining unique features and I hope we don't see too much deviation on that front.
> I have not been super enthused about the existing Mastodon apps.
Have you considered donating to the existing/contributing to the development of the existing open source clients?
> I do support the server I am using monthly.
If I may ask: how much? And what if I told you there is a commercial instance where accounts are priced at $10/year that for all intents and purposes is managed to your satisfaction, would you consider it?
> instances gaining unique features
I am not thinking of protocol level differences, but some type of improvement that could help people be more at ease when migrating to AP servers. E.g; a better search system, or a server level bridge that can let you (or other users of the same instance) follow people on twitter/instagram/youtube "transparently"
I have been doing $8 a month right now, it doesn't get me any benefits on the server and it is through Patreon. I have been wondering if that is too much but I can afford it and I know this can be expensive to run.
Search system I am not really sure about how I would feel, I would not want to feel like I need to switch instances. Just like I wouldn't want certain instances to have different media support. Sill not fully sure how I feel about that really.
Edit: Regarding the commercial instance option. I don't really see the point? Since all (most) of the instances are connected there isn't any value in an exclusive club... and tbh I am not really sure the other servers would not just block it.
My server seems to be moderated just fine, I think its better that those that can support while most can use it for free.
Because of "I have been wondering if that is too much but I can afford it and I know this can be expensive to run."
Yes, $8/month is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. But I'm yet to see any more efficient and fair method for price discovery than having different commercial instances trying to acquire users through a straightforward business model where accounts are paid. I wrote a bit about that on https://raphael.lullis.net/community-is-not-enough/.
I am reasonably sure that I can have a profitable business on communick if I have enough people paying me ~$0.50/month, as long as all of the users pay me at least that much. More importantly, I am absolutely sure that our society and level of civil discourse would be better if we got rid of "ad-funded/freemium/donation-based" services, and instead we let market forces act and if we could vote with our wallets.
The way I see it, you shouldn't be paying $8/month to make up for the 15 freeloaders and your server admins shouldn't be dependent on your generosity to be able to continue providing the service. Everyone, without exception, should be paying just enough for the admins to feel like it's a worthy endeavor and willing to compete for your patronage and to improve their service. And because the service is built on free-software and has no strong lock-in, any improvement would quickly be shared and spread throughout all services.
2) No, beyond reliability, which it manages well enough right now.
There likely is some sort of market for commercial instances, but it's not me.
The same 5€/month that you are spending on the instance you are on could be helping you and 9 other people. Network effects matter. If you can bring 9 other people, you'd accelerating the rate of adoption of social networks based on open platforms. The people you will be bringing will have someone that can help them with the initial questions. They will be less likely to give up on it because they already have some kind of support network. If they really like what they find and if they find themselves willing to support it and get their own contract, they will find "it's $10/year for a single account or $5/month for 10-account contracts" more affordable/more straightforward than "pay whatever you want, but the social pressure is to pay 5€/month just for yourself".
I totally understand that if you already on an instance that you are happy, you already have some form of emotional attachment to it. But perhaps consider that your 5€/month could have an even bigger if employed on a commercial instance.
It's doing that on the instance I'm on; the instance has 20k users and about 800 contributors.
It also means that non-paying users don't have any social capital at stake. They can come, create issues for the moderators and at worst they would get banned. Someone that comes directly through your invitation is less likely to cause any type of issue and if they do it also gives more information for moderators about the best course of action.
It also means that if the server gets an influx of new users and double in size, you would either and they would have to rely either on a corresponding increase in contributors on a bigger donation from the existing ones. My commercial instance can only grow in proportion to the number of people that have already committed to pay. This makes it easier to plan and manage its growth.
FWIW GotoSocial seems to work (although Ivory is showing that timeline under the wrong user for some reason - all the GtS timeline posts are shown as the user I logged into the Akkoma instance with.)
In summary, if you're not using a Mastodon instance, probably give it a month or two.
EDIT: Having said that, it's showing every timeline item on the GtS instance as the same one - I suspect they might be using integers for IDs (which is what Mastodon - but no-one else - does) and coincidentally this timeline has IDs that all start with `01`. Which would also explain the Akkoma problem since all those IDs are currently starting with `AR` and thus unparseable as integers.
None of the iOS Mastodon apps (except one that is proprietary and seemingly not published on the german appstore) properly support Akkoma notifications, but a somewhat broken Ivory would still be better than a halfway broken Metatext.
Depends how you implement it. e.g. If you use `int64` for your IDs, Akkoma and GotoSocial won't work. Or if you send your POST parameters in the URL, Akkoma won't work. There's other subtle stuff too - toot codes unset optional fields as `null` in the JSON it sends (rather than leaving them out) which breaks both Akkoma and GotoSocial.
In summary, someone needs to write a decent MastoAPI spec and get everyone to agree on that rather than this ad-hoc balkanisation.
Description: ID of the status in the database.
Type: String (cast from an integer but not guaranteed to be a number)
Version history:In other words, even the Mastodon API docs claim the ID isn't guaranteed not to be a string.
I'm sure there are undocumented differences, but if you base your data model on the spec then there's no reason to even assume you can just use a number.
Toot! seems to work with Akkoma/Pleroma now, but notifications are still somewhat lossy.
Few people will make a living from running a fediverse server but if you have enough of a dedicated audience, you can probably at least fundraise enough to help cover costs.
Ivory is literally illegal to own.
Other sources from long extinct sources like as a sibling noted, mammoths, are not. It’s not even THAT expensive. For instance, a guitar nut in mammoth ivory is about $30 vs $5 for “bone” or $10 for synthetic/graphite