*waves* new Masto thread
November 30, 2022 9:34 PM Subscribe
Mastodon isn't just a replacement for Twitter Users flocking to the platform will need to shift their expectations for social media and become engaged democratic citizens in the life of their networks.
This may serve as a continuation of: the last active FPP on Mastodon; the comments in the Post FPP
There are a number of primers for Mastodon. I'm in the middle of reading this one by Zeb Palmer.
Reflections from the hachyderm.io instance owner/moderator: Experimenting with Federation and Migrating Accounts
And a history thread from f00fc7c8@kind.social: Since Mastodon saw its initial popularity circa 2017, I've noticed that most users and those reporting on it either don't think about the Fediverse as anything more than Mastodon, or treat its history as beginning with Eugen Rochko and the beginning of Mastodon. In fact, Mastodon is the latest in a long line of federated social networks going at least back to Identi.ca, and though I wasn't around for all of it, I find this history pretty interesting. (Thread; boosts welcome!)
This may serve as a continuation of: the last active FPP on Mastodon; the comments in the Post FPP
There are a number of primers for Mastodon. I'm in the middle of reading this one by Zeb Palmer.
Reflections from the hachyderm.io instance owner/moderator: Experimenting with Federation and Migrating Accounts
And a history thread from f00fc7c8@kind.social: Since Mastodon saw its initial popularity circa 2017, I've noticed that most users and those reporting on it either don't think about the Fediverse as anything more than Mastodon, or treat its history as beginning with Eugen Rochko and the beginning of Mastodon. In fact, Mastodon is the latest in a long line of federated social networks going at least back to Identi.ca, and though I wasn't around for all of it, I find this history pretty interesting. (Thread; boosts welcome!)
(I say that recognizing that I contributed a lot to that derail. Sorry.)
posted by JHarris at 9:41 PM on November 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 9:41 PM on November 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
There's also: Mastodon: A Partial History
And: Can Mastodon be a Twitter refuge for marginalized groups? where Mefi's Own creatrixtiara is interviewed.
Tim Bray: Over on Mastodon, there are many people who enjoy not being in the grip of software like Facebook or Twitter that single-mindedly tries to maximize “engagement”, which means the amount of time you stare at the screen so they can show you ads. These algorithms don’t care what they’re showing you and if it turns out that showing you exclusively stories vilifying or praising Donald Trump (depending) maximizes engagement, then that’s what you’ll see. So the chant over there is “No algorithms on Mastodon!” This chant is wrong, and the discussion around it teaches us that we need clarity on what algorithms are, what moral weight they can carry, and whether they can be avoided.
Spencer Ackerman: Until The Twitter Wars Take Us
And, The Whiteness of Mastodon
posted by cendawanita at 9:46 PM on November 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
And: Can Mastodon be a Twitter refuge for marginalized groups? where Mefi's Own creatrixtiara is interviewed.
Tim Bray: Over on Mastodon, there are many people who enjoy not being in the grip of software like Facebook or Twitter that single-mindedly tries to maximize “engagement”, which means the amount of time you stare at the screen so they can show you ads. These algorithms don’t care what they’re showing you and if it turns out that showing you exclusively stories vilifying or praising Donald Trump (depending) maximizes engagement, then that’s what you’ll see. So the chant over there is “No algorithms on Mastodon!” This chant is wrong, and the discussion around it teaches us that we need clarity on what algorithms are, what moral weight they can carry, and whether they can be avoided.
Spencer Ackerman: Until The Twitter Wars Take Us
And, The Whiteness of Mastodon
posted by cendawanita at 9:46 PM on November 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
Maybe this will allow the massively derailed post on Post to go back to being about Post.
I mean, my lunchtime is almost over and I still haven't set up my Post account.
posted by cendawanita at 9:50 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I mean, my lunchtime is almost over and I still haven't set up my Post account.
posted by cendawanita at 9:50 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you're thinking of setting up a Masto server, please, please, do two things:
1. read up on what it was like to run a Usenet server. The dynamics are very similar in that you are responsible for policing your own users so that your server isn't blocked. Mastodon is Usenet with a REST API and a character limit.
2. (CW: dark, seriously dark) Read this recounting of what it was like to keep LiveJournal useable.
My feeling is that if you set up a Masto instance the same way people set up low key Discord instances, and keep it Monkeyspheric, it can be manageable. Only accept users you know. Other people can find other Masto servers and communicate with your users, so you're not wronging anyone to send them elsewhere. Discords work nicely if either 1. they're for cliques of personal friends or 2. they fanatically keep things On Topic.[0]
[0] (For some values of work. Topic discords get crowded, and on too many of them I got reminded that "if you find you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room." It's a low bar on the Internets, and I've cleared it (and left the Discords) to let the fedora clad user base enjoy the company of other people than me.
posted by ocschwar at 9:57 PM on November 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
1. read up on what it was like to run a Usenet server. The dynamics are very similar in that you are responsible for policing your own users so that your server isn't blocked. Mastodon is Usenet with a REST API and a character limit.
2. (CW: dark, seriously dark) Read this recounting of what it was like to keep LiveJournal useable.
My feeling is that if you set up a Masto instance the same way people set up low key Discord instances, and keep it Monkeyspheric, it can be manageable. Only accept users you know. Other people can find other Masto servers and communicate with your users, so you're not wronging anyone to send them elsewhere. Discords work nicely if either 1. they're for cliques of personal friends or 2. they fanatically keep things On Topic.[0]
[0] (For some values of work. Topic discords get crowded, and on too many of them I got reminded that "if you find you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room." It's a low bar on the Internets, and I've cleared it (and left the Discords) to let the fedora clad user base enjoy the company of other people than me.
posted by ocschwar at 9:57 PM on November 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
I can't help quoting one of the comments in the Tim Bray link:
Mastodon has an intriguing feature, the Local timeline. In a small instance like mefi.social is so far, that seems like a cool thing-- a way to get other perspectives from people not likely to be annoying.
posted by zompist at 10:38 PM on November 30, 2022 [41 favorites]
Mastodon users are going to discover this basic fact soon enough as the excitement dies down and people realize how tedious and boring it is to wade through posts in chronological order, and how much they miss on a daily basis once they follow enough people, and how little interaction they get as others miss their posts as well.Because... wow, this guy wants something really different from what I want. I don't want a "nice algorithm." What I want, really really, is to see all the posts from the people I follow, since the last time I checked. That's what I've wanted for 11 years, and I've never found it tedious. I use Tweetdeck to get as far as I can from the engagement algorithm.
Mastodon has an intriguing feature, the Local timeline. In a small instance like mefi.social is so far, that seems like a cool thing-- a way to get other perspectives from people not likely to be annoying.
posted by zompist at 10:38 PM on November 30, 2022 [41 favorites]
And another thing, per the Partial History link:
Few if any of the journalists encouraging people to check out Mastodon mention the safety issues, or let their readers know that Mastodon lacks basic anti-harassment functionality that's available on Twitter'(like controlling who can reply to your posts), let alone anything like Block Party. Maybe they don't realize it, just as most Mastodon users don't know that valuable anti-harassment functionality isn't available in Mastodon mainline code, even it's been in forks (variants of the code base) for years. What's up with that? Are0h continues:
"The refusal to see outside of what they see is best is one of the most defining characteristics of white people in the fedi and one of the main obstacles to progress, as we are clearly seeing the need for an improved fedi experience across the board."
Indeed. So one good reason to look at Mastodon's real history is to do better going forward – a topic I'll return to at the end of this post in The view from 2022.
Another good reason is that Mastodon's early history is an amazing case study of community-led innovation – and in particular, innovation led by a very queer community. As Flowers warns, it's important not to use this history to avoid critiquing the whiteness of Mastodon or other power inequeities. Two things are true simultaneously:
- Marginalized queer, trans, and non-binary people drove a lot of Mastodon's key fucntionality, including content warnings, instance blocking, and local-only posts
- Mastodon has a long history of being inhospitable to marginalized users – including people of color and disabled people as well many of the queer, trans and non-binary people who contributed to its success.
posted by cendawanita at 10:49 PM on November 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Few if any of the journalists encouraging people to check out Mastodon mention the safety issues, or let their readers know that Mastodon lacks basic anti-harassment functionality that's available on Twitter'(like controlling who can reply to your posts), let alone anything like Block Party. Maybe they don't realize it, just as most Mastodon users don't know that valuable anti-harassment functionality isn't available in Mastodon mainline code, even it's been in forks (variants of the code base) for years. What's up with that? Are0h continues:
"The refusal to see outside of what they see is best is one of the most defining characteristics of white people in the fedi and one of the main obstacles to progress, as we are clearly seeing the need for an improved fedi experience across the board."
Indeed. So one good reason to look at Mastodon's real history is to do better going forward – a topic I'll return to at the end of this post in The view from 2022.
Another good reason is that Mastodon's early history is an amazing case study of community-led innovation – and in particular, innovation led by a very queer community. As Flowers warns, it's important not to use this history to avoid critiquing the whiteness of Mastodon or other power inequeities. Two things are true simultaneously:
- Marginalized queer, trans, and non-binary people drove a lot of Mastodon's key fucntionality, including content warnings, instance blocking, and local-only posts
- Mastodon has a long history of being inhospitable to marginalized users – including people of color and disabled people as well many of the queer, trans and non-binary people who contributed to its success.
posted by cendawanita at 10:49 PM on November 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Really, really don’t understand the algorithm affection after spending years turning that shit off every chance I get. People WANT to be manipulated into having fascist bean worms?
posted by Artw at 11:05 PM on November 30, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:05 PM on November 30, 2022 [12 favorites]
What I want, really really, is to see all the posts from the people I follow, since the last time I checked.
Criminy, yes. One of the things that I was on the edge of leaving Twitter over for a long time before the sale was the ongoing deprecation of third-party clients. I had mine set up so it was no adverts and reverse chronological feed and that was how I used Twitter. I followed as many people as I felt I could read and no more, and regularly used tokimeki unfollow and disabling retweets to keep my follow list/timeline manageable.
The algorithm that surfaces the interesting stuff in your feed becomes necessary when you're following too much stuff to keep up with. If you don't follow that much stuff, you don't need the algorithm.
And, Masto-specific: I love the local timeline on the Metafilter instance. I'm going to end up unfollowing some of the people on the local instance because I actually use the local timeline and read a lot of what's on it. It's great!
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:10 PM on November 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
Criminy, yes. One of the things that I was on the edge of leaving Twitter over for a long time before the sale was the ongoing deprecation of third-party clients. I had mine set up so it was no adverts and reverse chronological feed and that was how I used Twitter. I followed as many people as I felt I could read and no more, and regularly used tokimeki unfollow and disabling retweets to keep my follow list/timeline manageable.
The algorithm that surfaces the interesting stuff in your feed becomes necessary when you're following too much stuff to keep up with. If you don't follow that much stuff, you don't need the algorithm.
And, Masto-specific: I love the local timeline on the Metafilter instance. I'm going to end up unfollowing some of the people on the local instance because I actually use the local timeline and read a lot of what's on it. It's great!
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:10 PM on November 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
In regards to algorithms, your use-case is not going to be the same as, say, a professor of geology who cares deeply about a) geology and b) teaching practices. Yes, for me it’s strictly reverse chronological, but those features were there to help other people.
posted by The River Ivel at 11:42 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 11:42 PM on November 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I never created an account on Twitter, first due to not really understanding what it was for, later due to philosophical opposition, so I don't really have a good perspective for comparing it against Mastodon; my only interaction with Twitter was when threads got linked here on MetaFilter. I created a Mastodon account on octodon.social a few years ago, and never quite figured out what to do with it so just kind of ignored it for a long time. With the Twitter meltdown and people talking about Mastodon again, I figured I'd give it another try. I've ended up creating two additional accounts and I've been having a good time with it; it now feels like there's something there for me.
My experience with octodon.social has been that there's a bunch of weirdos, in a good way, and I enjoy hanging out and seeing what's going on, but I don't quite feel like I "fit in". The local timeline is a fun window into approaches to life that are mostly different from mine. The federated timeline is particularly international in a way I appreciate, mostly European but some other voices too, in languages I don't read but like to see. Overall it feels like a busy city street where I can people watch, but I don't quite know what to say.
After seeing that octodon.social supports Markdown text formatting, I was curious if embedded LaTeX is an option (since sometimes those go together). A quick search revealed that there's a fork of base Mastodon specifically for this purpose, in use by a couple of math-focused instances. On this basis I created an account on mathstodon.xyz. My experience there has been very different. The local timeline is, predictably, full of math nerdery, with a relatively heavy computer science weighting. There's a lot more "professional" activity in both the local and federated timelines, with people posting about academic-related things they're doing, but plenty of random chatter as well. It's easier for me to follow some of the chatter and feel like I have something to add.
A few days after joining mathstodon.xyz, a post came across the local feed about a list for neuroscientists, especially those leaving Twitter. I added the list to my follows, and added my name to the list. Suddenly, my home feed is full of my colleagues! Many of them are big names in my field, and some of them are people I already know personally. Despite having hardly posted anything yet, over 150 people have followed me. Every day people post links to papers they've read or published, and there are already some interesting conversations starting to happen. I can understand why many of those people liked Twitter for professional discussions, and I'm excited that they're switching to Mastodon. The fact that very few of them are on the mathstodon.xyz instance doesn't seem to cause any trouble in me seeing what's going on, or them seeing me; federation seems to be working just fine as a model here. This account is naturally starting to feel like my "professional" account.
Most recently, when Pronoiac set up the mefi.social instance, my experience has been that this is the most "home" feeling, pretty much immediately. It's great seeing and getting to interact with folks I already know from MetaFilter in a slightly looser format. The local feed feels like a small neighborhood with people I either know casually or have seen around town. So far things have been really relaxed there. Knowing human nature, I'm sure some kind of wild drama is inevitable eventually, but at the moment it's lots of cat pictures and pleasant chatter about topics that interest me. I might migrate my octodon.social account into this one, but it's kind of nice to be able to wander across a few different instances and explore the local feeds.
Anyway, that's been my Mastodon experience so far. I think there are some important criticisms of the platform, its architecture, and the way in which it may not offer adequate tools for protecting people with marginalized identities who are subjected to harassment. But I hope that as interest in it has increased and there's more people using it, there will be positive pressure to address those criticisms and improve the platform, and the underlying ActivityPub protocol for federation. I think that on both the technology and on the cultural side, the people building and using Mastodon over the last several years have produced a really solid foundation for a better model of what social media can be.
posted by biogeo at 12:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [19 favorites]
My experience with octodon.social has been that there's a bunch of weirdos, in a good way, and I enjoy hanging out and seeing what's going on, but I don't quite feel like I "fit in". The local timeline is a fun window into approaches to life that are mostly different from mine. The federated timeline is particularly international in a way I appreciate, mostly European but some other voices too, in languages I don't read but like to see. Overall it feels like a busy city street where I can people watch, but I don't quite know what to say.
After seeing that octodon.social supports Markdown text formatting, I was curious if embedded LaTeX is an option (since sometimes those go together). A quick search revealed that there's a fork of base Mastodon specifically for this purpose, in use by a couple of math-focused instances. On this basis I created an account on mathstodon.xyz. My experience there has been very different. The local timeline is, predictably, full of math nerdery, with a relatively heavy computer science weighting. There's a lot more "professional" activity in both the local and federated timelines, with people posting about academic-related things they're doing, but plenty of random chatter as well. It's easier for me to follow some of the chatter and feel like I have something to add.
A few days after joining mathstodon.xyz, a post came across the local feed about a list for neuroscientists, especially those leaving Twitter. I added the list to my follows, and added my name to the list. Suddenly, my home feed is full of my colleagues! Many of them are big names in my field, and some of them are people I already know personally. Despite having hardly posted anything yet, over 150 people have followed me. Every day people post links to papers they've read or published, and there are already some interesting conversations starting to happen. I can understand why many of those people liked Twitter for professional discussions, and I'm excited that they're switching to Mastodon. The fact that very few of them are on the mathstodon.xyz instance doesn't seem to cause any trouble in me seeing what's going on, or them seeing me; federation seems to be working just fine as a model here. This account is naturally starting to feel like my "professional" account.
Most recently, when Pronoiac set up the mefi.social instance, my experience has been that this is the most "home" feeling, pretty much immediately. It's great seeing and getting to interact with folks I already know from MetaFilter in a slightly looser format. The local feed feels like a small neighborhood with people I either know casually or have seen around town. So far things have been really relaxed there. Knowing human nature, I'm sure some kind of wild drama is inevitable eventually, but at the moment it's lots of cat pictures and pleasant chatter about topics that interest me. I might migrate my octodon.social account into this one, but it's kind of nice to be able to wander across a few different instances and explore the local feeds.
Anyway, that's been my Mastodon experience so far. I think there are some important criticisms of the platform, its architecture, and the way in which it may not offer adequate tools for protecting people with marginalized identities who are subjected to harassment. But I hope that as interest in it has increased and there's more people using it, there will be positive pressure to address those criticisms and improve the platform, and the underlying ActivityPub protocol for federation. I think that on both the technology and on the cultural side, the people building and using Mastodon over the last several years have produced a really solid foundation for a better model of what social media can be.
posted by biogeo at 12:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [19 favorites]
I have to admit I'm surprised by the visceral dislike some people have had toward Mastodon.
I get that's an inevitable reaction to what feels like boosterism, but this highly upvoted comment from the previous thread, "[Mastodon is] a confusing mess run by a bunch of hall monitors," comes across as nothing but meanspirited when you consider that almost everyone involved in Mastodon is volunteering. Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
Doesn't Metafilter pride itself on active moderation, or do we think our moderators are just hall monitors too?
posted by adrianhon at 12:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [37 favorites]
I get that's an inevitable reaction to what feels like boosterism, but this highly upvoted comment from the previous thread, "[Mastodon is] a confusing mess run by a bunch of hall monitors," comes across as nothing but meanspirited when you consider that almost everyone involved in Mastodon is volunteering. Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
Doesn't Metafilter pride itself on active moderation, or do we think our moderators are just hall monitors too?
posted by adrianhon at 12:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [37 favorites]
I can't say mefi.social will remain cozy forever, but at the moment I can easily read everyone's posts, and I've done my best to be as welcoming as I can. Hello, everyone!
I, too, was wondering what was behind that hall monitor comment.
posted by JHarris at 12:58 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I, too, was wondering what was behind that hall monitor comment.
posted by JHarris at 12:58 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
The whiteness that drove a lot of the earlier CW discourse probably informed the hall monitor comment, and in which case, fair.
posted by cendawanita at 1:00 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 1:00 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?Since discussing StackOverflow.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 1:15 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Mastodon is unbearably white only if you're unbearably American:
As one of hundreds of Indians who migrated in 2019 because Indian Twitter was flooded with trolls & actively censoring anti-BJP critique & anti-caste handles, having Mastodon instantly respond to hate speech, casteism, trolling suggested possibilities. Possibilities that were entirely outside the American (white/Black) experience of Twitter discourse...posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:21 AM on December 1, 2022 [26 favorites]
Even more American is this framing of "Marginalized users self-moderating will subject themselves to violence." Who is currently moderating violent content on Twitter? Marginalized Global South workers, employed in highly precarious Big Tech fronts in far-flung corners of Asia.
Something that was confusing people in the other thread: to join the Metafilter Mastodon instance, you need to put an email address in your Metafilter profile, then post in this Metatalk thread. It's invitation-only, so you cannot sign up from the site itself.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:25 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:25 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
Working in regulation, I often hear people talking about too much or too little regulation, but this is a false dichotomy. The reality of many industries is that some level of regulation is essential, and the key difference is between good regulation and bad regulation. Similarly, moderation can be either good or bad, and you are setting out a false narrative by suggesting criticism of any moderation is criticism of all moderation.
posted by biffa at 1:30 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Working in regulation, I often hear people talking about too much or too little regulation, but this is a false dichotomy. The reality of many industries is that some level of regulation is essential, and the key difference is between good regulation and bad regulation. Similarly, moderation can be either good or bad, and you are setting out a false narrative by suggesting criticism of any moderation is criticism of all moderation.
posted by biffa at 1:30 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I get that's an inevitable reaction to what feels like boosterism, but this highly upvoted comment from the previous thread, "[Mastodon is] a confusing mess run by a bunch of hall monitors," comes across as nothing but meanspirited when you consider that almost everyone involved in Mastodon is volunteering. Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
I was one of the people who faved that comment, even though I joined mefi.social and would like mastodon to do well. ‘A confusing mess run by a bunch of hall monitors’ captures some of my first impressions of mastodon as confusing, ramshackle and full of people telling new members that they’re doing it wrong.
I was motivated enough to join anyway, and I’m rooting for it to succeed, but.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:36 AM on December 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
I was one of the people who faved that comment, even though I joined mefi.social and would like mastodon to do well. ‘A confusing mess run by a bunch of hall monitors’ captures some of my first impressions of mastodon as confusing, ramshackle and full of people telling new members that they’re doing it wrong.
I was motivated enough to join anyway, and I’m rooting for it to succeed, but.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:36 AM on December 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
But I'm not suggesting Mastodon's moderation is free of criticism. I'm saying that there's no need to personalise the issue by calling moderators "hall monitors" rather than, I don't know, "ineffective moderators" or "overworked moderators" or "unwise moderators". It's a theme I've noticed across so many criticisms of Mastodon, not just here but from Elon Musk or on tech podcasts, the idea that surely the only people who'd want to run or moderate a Mastodon instance is some precocious high school student who loves telling people off.
posted by adrianhon at 1:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by adrianhon at 1:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
I think the complaint was, if I recall, not about empowered moderators but about the community self-policing.
(There is a very interesting discussion to be had about how internet communities don't really self-police, to their detriment, but this is probably not the time to bring that up.)
posted by Merus at 1:54 AM on December 1, 2022
(There is a very interesting discussion to be had about how internet communities don't really self-police, to their detriment, but this is probably not the time to bring that up.)
posted by Merus at 1:54 AM on December 1, 2022
I hang my hat on two mastodon hosts. It’s oulipo.social that I find most fun. It’s a bit famous, but If you don’t know, that community has particular orthographical limitations; consult oulipo.social’s “about” link for additional info if you wish. It’s a lot of fun, posting and browsing what folks say. That said, I occasionally want to do kinds of wordplay that’s off limits by oulipo’s policy, or hang out casually, so that account is kind of just an alt. But my alias is aubi.
Possibly owing to that additional friction, oulipo’s local flow of toots isn’t too fast to stay on top of. It’s fairly chill.
posted by aubilenon at 2:06 AM on December 1, 2022 [12 favorites]
Possibly owing to that additional friction, oulipo’s local flow of toots isn’t too fast to stay on top of. It’s fairly chill.
posted by aubilenon at 2:06 AM on December 1, 2022 [12 favorites]
Re: mefi.social: It's invitation-only, so you cannot sign up from the site itself.
I feel I must emphasize that this server is unofficial. I'm on the Steering Committee, but I talked it over with SC members and they feel it's not in the site's best interests to make it official, at least right now. Pronoiac, who maintains it, is a long-standing member, a good person I think, and runs the MeFi Wiki. And he's talked it over with jessamyn. Still, for the time being at least, it is not a site organ.
posted by JHarris at 2:23 AM on December 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
I feel I must emphasize that this server is unofficial. I'm on the Steering Committee, but I talked it over with SC members and they feel it's not in the site's best interests to make it official, at least right now. Pronoiac, who maintains it, is a long-standing member, a good person I think, and runs the MeFi Wiki. And he's talked it over with jessamyn. Still, for the time being at least, it is not a site organ.
posted by JHarris at 2:23 AM on December 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
Last time I had a go at Masto I had an account on octodon.social. When Musk started blowing up twitter more recently I created an account on a smaller instance (mastodon.lol - which has a stated queer vibe), picked largely at random.
I love my new 'hall monitor'. They seem really nice. They're obviously antifascist. They've put in loads of work to cope with the influx, they've upgraded their hosting arrangement funded via Patreon, and recently (after a vote from the actual patreon givers) allowed themselves some income from the work, rather that just funding the hosting (I think ~€15/day is what they're looking at).
If I really wanted to get a bit more 'like twitter' experience I should probably be on aus.social, getting furious with all the old #auspol mob on twit (granted: with far less Murdoch/Ninefax influence so far).
For me mastodon.lol has more dick-pics than I'd have on twit, but they're labeled and consensual.
Very importantly to me, I can follow the #auspol tragics I want to follow, without being deluged with Murdoch/Ninefax frame-setting.
People outside Victoria, Aus won't be aware how daft so much media was before our recent election. If you lived here, you'd know how the result was going to go. The betting markets knew FFS. Our media was all "Oh Labor has to go because, ummm, people in Sydney think so". Twitter blue-tick media accounts reflected and amplified this daft idea.
I don't want to reject all of the old #auspol mob, but it's nice to be able to pick and choose a bit, rather than having the stuff that annoys one the most being top of one's feed.
posted by pompomtom at 4:05 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I love my new 'hall monitor'. They seem really nice. They're obviously antifascist. They've put in loads of work to cope with the influx, they've upgraded their hosting arrangement funded via Patreon, and recently (after a vote from the actual patreon givers) allowed themselves some income from the work, rather that just funding the hosting (I think ~€15/day is what they're looking at).
If I really wanted to get a bit more 'like twitter' experience I should probably be on aus.social, getting furious with all the old #auspol mob on twit (granted: with far less Murdoch/Ninefax influence so far).
For me mastodon.lol has more dick-pics than I'd have on twit, but they're labeled and consensual.
Very importantly to me, I can follow the #auspol tragics I want to follow, without being deluged with Murdoch/Ninefax frame-setting.
People outside Victoria, Aus won't be aware how daft so much media was before our recent election. If you lived here, you'd know how the result was going to go. The betting markets knew FFS. Our media was all "Oh Labor has to go because, ummm, people in Sydney think so". Twitter blue-tick media accounts reflected and amplified this daft idea.
I don't want to reject all of the old #auspol mob, but it's nice to be able to pick and choose a bit, rather than having the stuff that annoys one the most being top of one's feed.
posted by pompomtom at 4:05 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Our media was all "Oh Labor has to go because, ummm, people in Sydney think so".
which is weird, because in Sydney I think the general vibe was 'does seem like Dan Andrews is gonna get re-elected, the other guy seems a bit shit'.
Speaking of #auspol, I know that Twitter is kind of important to Q&A, so I'm curious if they cut the cord and go for Mastodon next season, or if they treat it as an opportunity to not get accused of left-wing bias as the site drifts further right.
It’s a lot of fun, posting and browsing what folks say.
I bet replies are a bit tricky, and I'm not sure how you'd favourite.
posted by Merus at 4:28 AM on December 1, 2022
which is weird, because in Sydney I think the general vibe was 'does seem like Dan Andrews is gonna get re-elected, the other guy seems a bit shit'.
Speaking of #auspol, I know that Twitter is kind of important to Q&A, so I'm curious if they cut the cord and go for Mastodon next season, or if they treat it as an opportunity to not get accused of left-wing bias as the site drifts further right.
It’s a lot of fun, posting and browsing what folks say.
I bet replies are a bit tricky, and I'm not sure how you'd favourite.
posted by Merus at 4:28 AM on December 1, 2022
Is this the thread where I get to talk about how the "Tusky" app seems to be better than the official Mastodon app, but I am afraid to tell people that for fear that the very idea of having two apps from which to choose will seem confusing?
I am curious if there is a better appp than Tusky out there... One which supports the edit function in-app?
Also, while photos seem to load faster in Tusky than they did in the official app, they are still kinda slow. I sometimes have to wait a minute or two (or scroll back up to see if it's loaded yet a minute or two later) to get more than a blurry placeholder. Is this problem due to my app, my phone, my internet connection, my instance, or to the nature of Mastodon somehow? Does anyone else have this issue?
Obligatory disclaimer - these minor confusions on my part have not really impaired my enjoyment of Mastodon as a social media platform. The fact that my experience of it is getting better as I learn more about it does not mean I had a bad experience when I first started. Just try it! It's not scary.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:29 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I am curious if there is a better appp than Tusky out there... One which supports the edit function in-app?
Also, while photos seem to load faster in Tusky than they did in the official app, they are still kinda slow. I sometimes have to wait a minute or two (or scroll back up to see if it's loaded yet a minute or two later) to get more than a blurry placeholder. Is this problem due to my app, my phone, my internet connection, my instance, or to the nature of Mastodon somehow? Does anyone else have this issue?
Obligatory disclaimer - these minor confusions on my part have not really impaired my enjoyment of Mastodon as a social media platform. The fact that my experience of it is getting better as I learn more about it does not mean I had a bad experience when I first started. Just try it! It's not scary.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:29 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Editing (which some iOS clients or web interface can do), and one more thing... Which I've forgotten. Oh yes, following hashtags in your home feed. Though with mefi.social being on a hometown fork i think that update isn't committed/propagated yet (i have no idea what's the terminology here). ETA: i mean the editing! Though some forks/client had that enabled already...
posted by cendawanita at 4:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by cendawanita at 4:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
in Sydney I think the general vibe was 'does seem like Dan Andrews is gonna get re-elected, the other guy seems a bit shit'.
In Melbs the vibe was "The other guy has lobster dinners with N'Drangheta. He spent his time as planning minister approving everything his mates wanted, over-ruling local planning rules, and has thus permanently fucked up the Maribyrnong. The only skyscraper he ever didn't approve was the proposal on St Kilda Rd which would block Alexander Downer's view. Now that he got back to be oppo leader he's just courting full-on cooker nazi types."
So, yeah, "a bit shit" does cover it, but we're talking the extreme-shit end of that.
...but the Syd-driven media was all "very close call here". Like fuck.
posted by pompomtom at 4:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
In Melbs the vibe was "The other guy has lobster dinners with N'Drangheta. He spent his time as planning minister approving everything his mates wanted, over-ruling local planning rules, and has thus permanently fucked up the Maribyrnong. The only skyscraper he ever didn't approve was the proposal on St Kilda Rd which would block Alexander Downer's view. Now that he got back to be oppo leader he's just courting full-on cooker nazi types."
So, yeah, "a bit shit" does cover it, but we're talking the extreme-shit end of that.
...but the Syd-driven media was all "very close call here". Like fuck.
posted by pompomtom at 4:46 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Speaking of #auspol, I know that Twitter is kind of important to Q&A, so I'm curious if they cut the cord and go for Mastodon next season
No farking way. Too confusing, too independent.
posted by pompomtom at 4:48 AM on December 1, 2022
No farking way. Too confusing, too independent.
posted by pompomtom at 4:48 AM on December 1, 2022
I switched over to mastodon and I'm very much enjoying it. I kept my Twitter account active but deleted my entire 15 year history after archiving it. I only follow my local weatherman now, lol.
I think this article has a good point in that Mastodon requires a bit more engagement than the birdsite. My relationship with Twitter was a complicated one, both technically and psychologically I guess. I had been using the "Better Twitter" plugin for years to remove all the trending crap, ads etc. My muted words and blocked list were a mile wrong. But I stayed because I had good friends there and those conversations were meaningful.
Here's what I'm finding fascinating: I work in a field where the "famous" names in the field can have 100K+ followers. I respect and work professionally with many of these people and am friends with a few. These same folks are often quick to post their reactions to political events or to call out others acting in poor ways, including the dipshit-who-shall-not-be-named who now runs the place.
However, many of them are staying put on the site, and I think it's because the ego pull is strong. If you pack up your bags and go to Mastodon, you are starting all over again, and maybe you don't get that same endorphin rush when you post a random question and 30 of your followers answer in the first 5 minutes. And just maybe, that ego stroking has become more important to your life than you'd care to admit.
I guess my point is that I see this as an interesting test going on. Mastodon is a bit of a messy experiment for sure, and I'm not judging people who stay on Twitter for professional reasons. But I will be curious to see what the "last straw" is for people who are attached to their follower count.
posted by jeremias at 4:52 AM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think this article has a good point in that Mastodon requires a bit more engagement than the birdsite. My relationship with Twitter was a complicated one, both technically and psychologically I guess. I had been using the "Better Twitter" plugin for years to remove all the trending crap, ads etc. My muted words and blocked list were a mile wrong. But I stayed because I had good friends there and those conversations were meaningful.
Here's what I'm finding fascinating: I work in a field where the "famous" names in the field can have 100K+ followers. I respect and work professionally with many of these people and am friends with a few. These same folks are often quick to post their reactions to political events or to call out others acting in poor ways, including the dipshit-who-shall-not-be-named who now runs the place.
However, many of them are staying put on the site, and I think it's because the ego pull is strong. If you pack up your bags and go to Mastodon, you are starting all over again, and maybe you don't get that same endorphin rush when you post a random question and 30 of your followers answer in the first 5 minutes. And just maybe, that ego stroking has become more important to your life than you'd care to admit.
I guess my point is that I see this as an interesting test going on. Mastodon is a bit of a messy experiment for sure, and I'm not judging people who stay on Twitter for professional reasons. But I will be curious to see what the "last straw" is for people who are attached to their follower count.
posted by jeremias at 4:52 AM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
Some famous people are keeping their Twitter accounts and also setting up Mastodon accounts, posting the same content on both sites. That allows them to slowly build up their follower list on Mastodon while staying on Twitter (for now).
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:55 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:55 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mastodon users are going to discover this basic fact soon enough as the excitement dies down and people realize how tedious and boring it is to wade through posts in chronological order,
That's how i read Twitter so I'm not really seeing any difference here. I never, ever used the "Home" option and always read the chronological timeline.
posted by octothorpe at 4:59 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
That's how i read Twitter so I'm not really seeing any difference here. I never, ever used the "Home" option and always read the chronological timeline.
posted by octothorpe at 4:59 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
So we’re doing BBSs again!
posted by iamck at 5:02 AM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by iamck at 5:02 AM on December 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm fine with doing BBSs again.
posted by pompomtom at 5:07 AM on December 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by pompomtom at 5:07 AM on December 1, 2022 [16 favorites]
I originally joined Twitter for the science side as part of an online fellows program I was part of--lots of links to cool papers and job ads and nature videos. Over time, I started following more Black Twitter because as an Atlantan it helps me actually understand what's happening here, and as a chronically ill person, disability twitter is also a very important place for me, especially in Pandemic Year 3 when no one outside of disability twitter gives a shit what happens to people like me anymore. I've chosen to join a Mastodon science server, and most of the folks I'm most interested in following have been easy to find on Mastodon, although there is no real server in common. The ecoevo.social Local feed is fun and interesting, if a bit heavier on posts in German and Dutch than my usual feed. Unfortunately, very little of Atlanta Black twitter or disability twitter is moving to Mastodon, for all the reasons in The Whiteness of Twitter article that cendawanita posted above.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:13 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 5:13 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
I have been enjoying the aggressively idiosyncratic honk, which speaks Activitypub and thus is compatible with Mastodon. It was easy to set up on the cheapest digitalocean instance. Reportedly it will also run on several cloud providers' free tiers, but I would rather pay than deal with whatever aggravation the free tiers impose. When my server dies (as these things do, though not, in my experience, often), I will restore from backup, having probably missed a few posts. I will live without them.
It's nice to use something a little minimalist,. that's easy to set up and not so hard to change. Of course, it would be easier to change if the functions had clearer names than "donksforhonks" (actual exanple).
Running my own instance means I don't have to worry about being defederated because some asshole tooted something dumb, unless that asshole is me, in which case, it's on me. And I don't have to worry that my instance admin will defederate from a server that still.has people on it that I want to read. I expect that eventually the Fediverse will have to work out an antispam system, at which point this whole thing might become more annoying. I am kind of tempted to make my own antispam thing, but I am not quite sure how exactly it should work.
posted by novalis_dt at 5:25 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's nice to use something a little minimalist,. that's easy to set up and not so hard to change. Of course, it would be easier to change if the functions had clearer names than "donksforhonks" (actual exanple).
Running my own instance means I don't have to worry about being defederated because some asshole tooted something dumb, unless that asshole is me, in which case, it's on me. And I don't have to worry that my instance admin will defederate from a server that still.has people on it that I want to read. I expect that eventually the Fediverse will have to work out an antispam system, at which point this whole thing might become more annoying. I am kind of tempted to make my own antispam thing, but I am not quite sure how exactly it should work.
posted by novalis_dt at 5:25 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Appreciated the Zeb Palmer primer in the FPP. :-)
I still don’t know if I’ll sign up for Mastodon or any other of these things. I generally feel guilty and empty after looking at the Internet. Like, what a waste of my time! I never feel that way after reading a book. Like, never ever. (Oh, look, I’ve used “like” twice now.) Anywho, I enjoy reading my smart and plugged-in Metafilter friends talk passionately about the Internet. Don’t mind me.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:39 AM on December 1, 2022
I still don’t know if I’ll sign up for Mastodon or any other of these things. I generally feel guilty and empty after looking at the Internet. Like, what a waste of my time! I never feel that way after reading a book. Like, never ever. (Oh, look, I’ve used “like” twice now.) Anywho, I enjoy reading my smart and plugged-in Metafilter friends talk passionately about the Internet. Don’t mind me.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:39 AM on December 1, 2022
On this basis I created an account on mathstodon.xyz. My experience there has been very different.
This is very much what my experience has been, and I joined ecoevo.social straight away based entirely on the fact that it was where most of the people on my Debirdify profile had gone. EEB folks moved more or less en masse to a single instance because an enterprising postdoc spun it up quickly and is now considering going to the professional societies and figuring out how to secure funding for hosting it from them; I think he will be successful in the medium term. I wish someone in neuro had done the same but y'all have such a wildly different attitude to professional societies culturally, I feel like that's part of why it's been so much messier.
Remind me to hit you up for that neuroscience list, though: my experience was VERY MUCH that following my EEB contacts through ecoevo.social was much, much easier than following my neuroscience contacts, such as they are. I'm not entirely sure I would list myself as a neuroscientist at the moment--certainly not when my biggest work gripe right now is that I am listening to a lot of behavior genetics and absolutely losing my tiny mind with the level of sloppiness that is apparently allowable in population genetics groundwork--but I'm working on trying to regather up some of those connections.
I am actually fairly curious about the ongoing complaints that Disability Twitter is now harder to find, because my experience has been that there's a pretty strong disability presence in my feed. I don't know if that's because I mentioned in my intro post that I'm currently doing neurodivergence-related animal work with an #actuallyautistic perspective, so I've got a pretty big specifically neurodivergent presence, or if it's because I check Debirdify every few days and add everyone I haven't already followed to my Mastodon as people migrate. I followed a number of people active in disability advocacy, especially in academia, and I might have just gotten lucky enough to sweep then into my net at a good moment. There are also a number of specifically disability oriented instances that I remember doing the rounds when I first started, and I can probably go dig that up if folks want.
What I would very, very much like is the ability to check the local feeds of instances that aren't mine easily from a single page. Just to glance and see if anyone is saying something interesting, to catch the vibes of the place, etc etc. I actually don't follow the local feed of ecoevo.social that much--mostly I'm hanging out with my contacts--but I really wish it was easier to glance at other instances and get a feeling for what they're doing.
posted by sciatrix at 5:45 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is very much what my experience has been, and I joined ecoevo.social straight away based entirely on the fact that it was where most of the people on my Debirdify profile had gone. EEB folks moved more or less en masse to a single instance because an enterprising postdoc spun it up quickly and is now considering going to the professional societies and figuring out how to secure funding for hosting it from them; I think he will be successful in the medium term. I wish someone in neuro had done the same but y'all have such a wildly different attitude to professional societies culturally, I feel like that's part of why it's been so much messier.
Remind me to hit you up for that neuroscience list, though: my experience was VERY MUCH that following my EEB contacts through ecoevo.social was much, much easier than following my neuroscience contacts, such as they are. I'm not entirely sure I would list myself as a neuroscientist at the moment--certainly not when my biggest work gripe right now is that I am listening to a lot of behavior genetics and absolutely losing my tiny mind with the level of sloppiness that is apparently allowable in population genetics groundwork--but I'm working on trying to regather up some of those connections.
I am actually fairly curious about the ongoing complaints that Disability Twitter is now harder to find, because my experience has been that there's a pretty strong disability presence in my feed. I don't know if that's because I mentioned in my intro post that I'm currently doing neurodivergence-related animal work with an #actuallyautistic perspective, so I've got a pretty big specifically neurodivergent presence, or if it's because I check Debirdify every few days and add everyone I haven't already followed to my Mastodon as people migrate. I followed a number of people active in disability advocacy, especially in academia, and I might have just gotten lucky enough to sweep then into my net at a good moment. There are also a number of specifically disability oriented instances that I remember doing the rounds when I first started, and I can probably go dig that up if folks want.
What I would very, very much like is the ability to check the local feeds of instances that aren't mine easily from a single page. Just to glance and see if anyone is saying something interesting, to catch the vibes of the place, etc etc. I actually don't follow the local feed of ecoevo.social that much--mostly I'm hanging out with my contacts--but I really wish it was easier to glance at other instances and get a feeling for what they're doing.
posted by sciatrix at 5:45 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Following hashtags is the other thing I’m really liking - probably does a better job of surfacing posts of interest from people you don’t follow than the algorithmic feed did, and relies on no mystery. Highly recommended, as is hashtagging any posts you want to be discoverable.
posted by Artw at 5:51 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 5:51 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
I gotta figure out hashtags. Is there a way to insert followed hashtags into your main feed?
posted by sciatrix at 5:55 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by sciatrix at 5:55 AM on December 1, 2022
Support varies by mobile app, but on the web interface you should see a follow icon up top when you click on a hashtag.
posted by Artw at 6:01 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 6:01 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Personally I use Twitter in a very limited way -- I set up an account in order to bypass the popups that would sometimes show up when browsing without an account, and so as to be able to follow a small set of accounts. It took a few days of repeatedly clicking "not interested" when Twitter would try to suggest new topics to follow, but then that stopped and hasn't come back. I'll move to a new service if or when those accounts that I'm following move, but that hasn't happened yet. I've never tweeted or replied to someone's post, and doubt I ever will.
The descriptions of Mastodon here and in the other thread make it sound like a great way for small communities to establish and connect, but definitely not a one-to-one replacement for Twitter at all, and not suited for how a lot of people use Twitter currently (by design, apparently).
>>Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
>I think the complaint was, if I recall, not about empowered moderators but about the community self-policing.
Pretty much the entire first page of search results for "hall monitor" in MetaTalk is people arguing about community self-policing here. I'm sure if you go back further in the search results you can find where people are using the term to grumble about the moderators, but that's not the immediate results.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:23 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The descriptions of Mastodon here and in the other thread make it sound like a great way for small communities to establish and connect, but definitely not a one-to-one replacement for Twitter at all, and not suited for how a lot of people use Twitter currently (by design, apparently).
>>Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
>I think the complaint was, if I recall, not about empowered moderators but about the community self-policing.
Pretty much the entire first page of search results for "hall monitor" in MetaTalk is people arguing about community self-policing here. I'm sure if you go back further in the search results you can find where people are using the term to grumble about the moderators, but that's not the immediate results.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:23 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Where do posts using the followed hashtags appear? Is there a list of all your followed hashtags somewhere?
posted by lazugod at 6:25 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by lazugod at 6:25 AM on December 1, 2022
Where do posts using the followed hashtags appear?
Mixed into the home tab chronologically.
Is there a list of all your followed hashtags somewhere?
Haven’t found one. If there isn’t one there should be. Right now I’d have trouble unfollowing a tag if I didn’t know the name of it.
posted by Artw at 6:35 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mixed into the home tab chronologically.
Is there a list of all your followed hashtags somewhere?
Haven’t found one. If there isn’t one there should be. Right now I’d have trouble unfollowing a tag if I didn’t know the name of it.
posted by Artw at 6:35 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's a theme I've noticed across so many criticisms of Mastodon, not just here but from Elon Musk or on tech podcasts
Elon Musk also has a bee in his bonnet about the "woke mind virus", so I'm inclined to dismiss his opinions out of hand and not worry about them except to the extent that the fucker still has more money than anybody else in the world even after pissing 44 billion up the wall on the self-promotion exercise du jour.
Sooner we ship him off to Mars the better, I say.
posted by flabdablet at 6:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Elon Musk also has a bee in his bonnet about the "woke mind virus", so I'm inclined to dismiss his opinions out of hand and not worry about them except to the extent that the fucker still has more money than anybody else in the world even after pissing 44 billion up the wall on the self-promotion exercise du jour.
Sooner we ship him off to Mars the better, I say.
posted by flabdablet at 6:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Elon Musk's catastrophic takeover of Twitter inspired me to deactivate my account there, and to take a second look at mastodon, which I'd looked into a few years ago, on which occasion it didn't take for me.
This time around my attempt coincided with some changes in my personal life...I've recently re-discovered my interest in ceremonial magic, and knowing that certain mastodon instances were centered around specific interests helped me to find a place that feels worthwhile to visit regularly. The local feed is delightful...the user base is mostly younger than I am, and mostly operating in a witchcraft paradigm rather than the Hermetic framework I favor, but they're all chatty and sarcastic and enthusiastic in a way that makes for really fun reading.
And my reading list has exploded, just from taking note of what other people are talking about. My real-world social life has shrunk pretty dramatically over the past couple of decades, which I believe isn't unusual, but which still leaves me feeling lonely quite a bit. Mastodon has turned out to be a real positive for me.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:40 AM on December 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
This time around my attempt coincided with some changes in my personal life...I've recently re-discovered my interest in ceremonial magic, and knowing that certain mastodon instances were centered around specific interests helped me to find a place that feels worthwhile to visit regularly. The local feed is delightful...the user base is mostly younger than I am, and mostly operating in a witchcraft paradigm rather than the Hermetic framework I favor, but they're all chatty and sarcastic and enthusiastic in a way that makes for really fun reading.
And my reading list has exploded, just from taking note of what other people are talking about. My real-world social life has shrunk pretty dramatically over the past couple of decades, which I believe isn't unusual, but which still leaves me feeling lonely quite a bit. Mastodon has turned out to be a real positive for me.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:40 AM on December 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
I jumped on photog.social and found a really nice and supportive community there.
posted by octothorpe at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
particular orthographical limitations
I saw what you did in that contribution. I lack sufficient concentration to prolong my own try past any minor frustration at all.
posted by fedward at 7:12 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I saw what you did in that contribution. I lack sufficient concentration to prolong my own try past any minor frustration at all.
posted by fedward at 7:12 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
The analogy that several Black users have said, is "Mastodon is the digital equivalent of fleeing 'regular' racism in the deep South, just to experience 'racism doesn't happen here!' racism in Boston."--mekka okereke
Mastodon has more cultural norms around not talking about racist abuse, than around preventing it from happening. I don't know how to convince y'all that this is bad.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:14 AM on December 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
Twitter was the last social media platform I was actively using and quit (well, permanently logged out) the day Emerald Fucker bought it. There are a lot of accounts I miss (especially the random restaurant bot), but my mental health has improved dramatically since then.
I've tried Mastodon a few times over the years and never really took to it. However, after signing up and browsing mefi.social, it's starting to feel a lot more like a place I want to hang out and post stupid jokes.
posted by slogger at 7:28 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I've tried Mastodon a few times over the years and never really took to it. However, after signing up and browsing mefi.social, it's starting to feel a lot more like a place I want to hang out and post stupid jokes.
posted by slogger at 7:28 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mastodon, for me, is less like a massive worldwide feed on which my friends and I can participate and more like a local feed on which my friends and friends of friends hang out. It also gets some things piped in from the larger world in something like the way an old school small newspaper would get syndicated or wire services content.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:32 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:32 AM on December 1, 2022
I probably would not have bothered with Mastodon at all if it weren't for the mefi.social opportunity. I tried to engage with Twitter several times over the years, had finally found a way to enjoy it by following lots of Star Trek stuff, and then deactivated when the Elongation occurred. Being able to follow a bunch of familiar usernames right away has a good hold-my-hand-while-I-try feel to it.
posted by briank at 7:36 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by briank at 7:36 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
sciatrix: Is there a way to insert followed hashtags into your main feed?
You can enter a hashtag in the search box and click on the search result. There should be a "+" icon next to it that you can select to follow that hashtag the same way you would follow an account.
posted by Surely This at 7:37 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
You can enter a hashtag in the search box and click on the search result. There should be a "+" icon next to it that you can select to follow that hashtag the same way you would follow an account.
posted by Surely This at 7:37 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I can’t believe there are people saying “you’re gonna miss Twitter’s algorithm!”. I follow Jeff Minter, a legendary independent game developer who also has a flock of sheep. Every morning he goes out and feeds them and hugs them and posts about them. Twitter hid this from me even if I tried making it only show me sequential stuff. Mastodon? Good morning, here’s your sheep posts from Jeff. It’s *great*. I have nothing to say about these sheep posts but they are such a delight.
posted by egypturnash at 8:02 AM on December 1, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 8:02 AM on December 1, 2022 [12 favorites]
I'm probably doing it wrong but Mastodon reminds me a little of Facebook without the real life social vetting--longer posts, more pictures. Same big names making posts, too (yes, I am going to see George Takei content on multiple social platforms until one of us dies).
Musk seems to be moving in the same direction of letting people post long, which seems to defeat the purpose of Twitter more than his politics ever would (the politics are awful, but nobody on either side comes to Twitter to read screeds).
posted by kingdead at 8:05 AM on December 1, 2022
Musk seems to be moving in the same direction of letting people post long, which seems to defeat the purpose of Twitter more than his politics ever would (the politics are awful, but nobody on either side comes to Twitter to read screeds).
posted by kingdead at 8:05 AM on December 1, 2022
(Although I do like the idea of your ActivityPub client having multiple ways to filter your timeline in ways *similar* to what Twitter or Facebook do - but with YOUR hands on the controls, YOUR hands deciding how much “people like you reacted to this” stuff gets added, YOUR hands deciding how much you want to suppress posts from people you follow.)
posted by egypturnash at 8:05 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 8:05 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I get that's an inevitable reaction to what feels like boosterism, but this highly upvoted comment from the previous thread, "[Mastodon is] a confusing mess run by a bunch of hall monitors," comes across as nothing but meanspirited when you consider that almost everyone involved in Mastodon is volunteering. Since when we do dismiss moderators as "hall monitors", as if they secretly enjoy ordering people around?
Because every time I've read anything about Mastodon or waded into it, it does indeed seem to me that the people running a lot of Mastodon instances "enjoy ordering people around" and exercising power in arbitrary and frankly bizarre/esoteric ways, with no room for questioning. Keep moving, students, we've got 5 minutes to change classes!
I made that comment and I stand by it.
posted by rhymedirective at 8:07 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Because every time I've read anything about Mastodon or waded into it, it does indeed seem to me that the people running a lot of Mastodon instances "enjoy ordering people around" and exercising power in arbitrary and frankly bizarre/esoteric ways, with no room for questioning. Keep moving, students, we've got 5 minutes to change classes!
I made that comment and I stand by it.
posted by rhymedirective at 8:07 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I've been on Mastodon/the Fediverse since 2017, not long after mastodon.social launched. I'm no longer on mastodon.social, instead I moved to icosahedron.website, an account I'd set up as a backup during the initial growing pains of the first Twitter exodus. (Same username as here, so if you folks on mefi.social wanna follow, it's @sanspoint@icosahedron.website)
Having been on the network for five years, I think that it's essential that people go into it expecting something that isn't like Twitter in terms of the culture and the network effect. Mastodon was designed explicitly to avoid some of the pitfalls of Twitter, particularly in regards to virality. Its search is designed to avoid having people squatting on searches for keywords looking for things to reply to, either for spam or harassment purposes. It's harder for things to go viral. There's no quoting. All of this is by design, and I much prefer it.
Part of Twitter's original sin was the clout-chasing, Favrd-type shit that lead to the start of influencer culture. (Which, yes, reached its apex via Instagram, but the roots can be found in Twitter's past.) Mastodon very specifically tries to prevent this, and if you're the sort who wants to either follow influencers or become one on the platform, you're going to be disappointed. Mastodon is really optimized for community, not for going viral and that's a strength that I think people miss.
posted by SansPoint at 8:12 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Having been on the network for five years, I think that it's essential that people go into it expecting something that isn't like Twitter in terms of the culture and the network effect. Mastodon was designed explicitly to avoid some of the pitfalls of Twitter, particularly in regards to virality. Its search is designed to avoid having people squatting on searches for keywords looking for things to reply to, either for spam or harassment purposes. It's harder for things to go viral. There's no quoting. All of this is by design, and I much prefer it.
Part of Twitter's original sin was the clout-chasing, Favrd-type shit that lead to the start of influencer culture. (Which, yes, reached its apex via Instagram, but the roots can be found in Twitter's past.) Mastodon very specifically tries to prevent this, and if you're the sort who wants to either follow influencers or become one on the platform, you're going to be disappointed. Mastodon is really optimized for community, not for going viral and that's a strength that I think people miss.
posted by SansPoint at 8:12 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Am now transfering to wandering.shop, so wish me luck. It'll be interesting seeing what a more focused local feed is like.
posted by Artw at 8:27 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:27 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Every morning he goes out and feeds them and hugs them and posts about them.
I would say that in general the #SheepOfMastodon hashtag is surprisingly good.
posted by advil at 8:38 AM on December 1, 2022
I would say that in general the #SheepOfMastodon hashtag is surprisingly good.
posted by advil at 8:38 AM on December 1, 2022
I joined Mastodon months ago and got really active on it a few weeks ago; I mainly look for content by searching the #Humor tag, but I'd still like to know where all the funny people tend to hang out.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:52 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:52 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Don't know if this has been listed, but I looked and didn't see it (but that may just mean I didn't look hard enough:
For all the academics, here's a big list of instances for you.
posted by eclectist at 9:08 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
For all the academics, here's a big list of instances for you.
posted by eclectist at 9:08 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
but it's kind of nice to be able to wander across a few different instances and explore the local feeds
I'm looking for a smaller home instance (currently on mastodon.social), and I came across a handy feature in Metatext (and maybe other apps?). You can add an account for the local feed of a specific instance to browse it. I've got a few candidates loaded up, so I can easily browse their local timelines to figure out which one might be the best neighborhood for me. You can't reply, favorite, or boost, only browse, but I find it helpful to grok particular instances.
Some (most?) instances also let you browse the local timeline from the web page, too.
posted by fogovonslack at 9:11 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm looking for a smaller home instance (currently on mastodon.social), and I came across a handy feature in Metatext (and maybe other apps?). You can add an account for the local feed of a specific instance to browse it. I've got a few candidates loaded up, so I can easily browse their local timelines to figure out which one might be the best neighborhood for me. You can't reply, favorite, or boost, only browse, but I find it helpful to grok particular instances.
Some (most?) instances also let you browse the local timeline from the web page, too.
posted by fogovonslack at 9:11 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
After reading the Tim Bray post, I think he has a point but he's overstating the case and being needlessly fighty. (Also, his hairsplitting about 'algorithms' is... *eyeroll*. Yes, quicksort is an algorithm. But we all know that's not what anyone means when they talk about Twitter or Facebook's "algorithm". If you want to wage war against that terminology, go yell at Facebook's engineers.)
It's certainly possible, even probable, that as Mastodon/ActivityPub-based networks grow, people will want more flexible control over what's in their 'Home' feed. But I can't imagine anyone clamoring for an opaque algorithm designed to maximize engagement and eyeball time, which is what FB/Twitter have, and basically any other advertising-supported, for-profit site is going to have. Maybe not immediately--FB and Twitter didn't start out that way--but the pressure to optimize for more engagement, more eyeballs on the ads, is very strong when that's your primary source of revenue. I do not trust any ad-supported for-profit social media system to not go down this road; it would be a radical departure from pretty much every system yet developed if they did not.
What I think people want is a combination of transparency and control.
People want transparency, in the sense of knowing why a particular post is being escalated or prioritized. In a chronological feed, you have that, because... it's chronological. Yes, there are corner cases (he makes a point about Boosted posts--do you use the original posting date or the Boosting date? What happens if two people you follow Boost the same post? Etc.), but in general you can look at a post in your Home feed and have a pretty good idea of why it's there.
The thing people want to avoid--myself included--is that weird behavior that FB/Instagram love to do, where you're talking to a friend about, I dunno, getting a haircut, and suddenly you're bombarded by ads for DIY hair trimmers or whatever. (Actual example: my IG feed is full of ads for a thing called the "Snatch Flasher"--no I am not making that up--which is some sort of pulsed-light hair removal tool, and I have no idea why. Presumably mentioning it here will make it even worse, but I'm a sucker for punishment.)
And then of course control is just the ability to make the algorithm work for you, rather than the operator of the service, to maximize enjoyment (however defined) rather than 'engagement' or eyeball time or post frequency or any of the other metrics that a commercial service might optimize for.
Personally, I don't think ML approaches to timeline curation are going to be something that most people want, because they tend to be opaque. At some point, somebody will probably try it, just because it's relatively easy to implement (you just have a 'more of this' and 'less of this' button on each post). But I'm not sure that's really a solution people are going to want.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
It's certainly possible, even probable, that as Mastodon/ActivityPub-based networks grow, people will want more flexible control over what's in their 'Home' feed. But I can't imagine anyone clamoring for an opaque algorithm designed to maximize engagement and eyeball time, which is what FB/Twitter have, and basically any other advertising-supported, for-profit site is going to have. Maybe not immediately--FB and Twitter didn't start out that way--but the pressure to optimize for more engagement, more eyeballs on the ads, is very strong when that's your primary source of revenue. I do not trust any ad-supported for-profit social media system to not go down this road; it would be a radical departure from pretty much every system yet developed if they did not.
What I think people want is a combination of transparency and control.
People want transparency, in the sense of knowing why a particular post is being escalated or prioritized. In a chronological feed, you have that, because... it's chronological. Yes, there are corner cases (he makes a point about Boosted posts--do you use the original posting date or the Boosting date? What happens if two people you follow Boost the same post? Etc.), but in general you can look at a post in your Home feed and have a pretty good idea of why it's there.
The thing people want to avoid--myself included--is that weird behavior that FB/Instagram love to do, where you're talking to a friend about, I dunno, getting a haircut, and suddenly you're bombarded by ads for DIY hair trimmers or whatever. (Actual example: my IG feed is full of ads for a thing called the "Snatch Flasher"--no I am not making that up--which is some sort of pulsed-light hair removal tool, and I have no idea why. Presumably mentioning it here will make it even worse, but I'm a sucker for punishment.)
And then of course control is just the ability to make the algorithm work for you, rather than the operator of the service, to maximize enjoyment (however defined) rather than 'engagement' or eyeball time or post frequency or any of the other metrics that a commercial service might optimize for.
Personally, I don't think ML approaches to timeline curation are going to be something that most people want, because they tend to be opaque. At some point, somebody will probably try it, just because it's relatively easy to implement (you just have a 'more of this' and 'less of this' button on each post). But I'm not sure that's really a solution people are going to want.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
ML is incredibly costly computation-wise and generally doesn’t offer advantages over other means of sourcing suggested content, which is basically what the fees would be, so best avoided.
posted by Artw at 9:22 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by Artw at 9:22 AM on December 1, 2022
Note: If the above instructions for following a hashtag aren’t working for you, it’s probably because this is a new feature in Mastodon 4.0, while some servers (including mefi.social) are still running software based on Mastodon 3.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:35 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mbrubeck at 9:35 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
It’s a lot of fun, posting and browsing what folks say.
I bet replies are a bit tricky, and I'm not sure how you'd favourite.
Favourites are "Stars," Search is "Inquiry," Home is "Origin, and Federated is "Global."
That's how i read Twitter so I'm not really seeing any difference here. I never, ever used the "Home" option and always read the chronological timeline.
But Twitter's chronological timeline is not a purely chronological timeline of just your follows, as Mastodon is.
After Musk took over, I started seeing all sorts of posts in my Twitter timeline from Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, and other slimeballs just b/c those accounts were followed by Andrew Feinberg or "Washington Post" or some other news org I follow. Lots of muting. :(
posted by mrgrimm at 9:36 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I bet replies are a bit tricky, and I'm not sure how you'd favourite.
Favourites are "Stars," Search is "Inquiry," Home is "Origin, and Federated is "Global."
That's how i read Twitter so I'm not really seeing any difference here. I never, ever used the "Home" option and always read the chronological timeline.
But Twitter's chronological timeline is not a purely chronological timeline of just your follows, as Mastodon is.
After Musk took over, I started seeing all sorts of posts in my Twitter timeline from Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, and other slimeballs just b/c those accounts were followed by Andrew Feinberg or "Washington Post" or some other news org I follow. Lots of muting. :(
posted by mrgrimm at 9:36 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
All that I ask for is a platform where opinions I don't like are immediately censored and their users banned. I need my safe space.
posted by drstrangelove at 9:45 AM on December 1, 2022
posted by drstrangelove at 9:45 AM on December 1, 2022
You and Elon both, apparently.
posted by flabdablet at 9:51 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 9:51 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
So we’re doing BBSs again!
Don’t I wish!
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:08 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Don’t I wish!
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:08 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Some (most?) instances also let you browse the local timeline from the web page, too.
Yep. Just slap a "/public" onto the end of most instance URLS to see a sampling of posts from that server. Add "/explore" to see profiles of users on the server.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Yep. Just slap a "/public" onto the end of most instance URLS to see a sampling of posts from that server. Add "/explore" to see profiles of users on the server.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
mefi.social is working swimmingly so far, because its entire userbase has joined based on their membership in and affection for the blue. Given how MetaFilter has evolved over time to be (not perfectly, but largely) anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ, feminist, pro-labor, anti-ableist, pro-fat-acceptance, and just about any other hey-what-if-we-were-just-decent-human-beings-to-people -ism/-ist you want to name, the vibe is very good. It is for now at least, hopefully pretty low effort for pronoiac on monitoring/moderating.
Throw in the preponderance of OG blog/message board peeps glad to see something like that online again, and the general shared relief to be off Twitter and it's pretty cool over there.
I do know there is a serious ongoing issue for BIPOC users, particularly Black folks, with racism, particularly when it comes to essentially having to play server roulette when choosing an instance. And I know that even when people start on a friendly instance, that's no guarantee that when they post to the wider Fediverse about their interests that real pieces of shit won't find them and hop into their mentions.
But so far, at least, mefi.social seems a friendly landing pad for pretty much any MeFite.
(And if you experience racism or discrimination of any kind on Masto, let us know, and your fellow MeFites will block and report. If that doesn't work, I will hit some assholes with a lead pipe.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:29 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
Throw in the preponderance of OG blog/message board peeps glad to see something like that online again, and the general shared relief to be off Twitter and it's pretty cool over there.
I do know there is a serious ongoing issue for BIPOC users, particularly Black folks, with racism, particularly when it comes to essentially having to play server roulette when choosing an instance. And I know that even when people start on a friendly instance, that's no guarantee that when they post to the wider Fediverse about their interests that real pieces of shit won't find them and hop into their mentions.
But so far, at least, mefi.social seems a friendly landing pad for pretty much any MeFite.
(And if you experience racism or discrimination of any kind on Masto, let us know, and your fellow MeFites will block and report. If that doesn't work, I will hit some assholes with a lead pipe.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:29 AM on December 1, 2022 [9 favorites]
First time I saw the "hall monitor" term was in a tweet by Elmo the Birdsite CEO when dismissing Mastodon, so I've been trying to avoid it.
But jeez, the admins of popular instances have to be way more than hall monitors. They need technical chops and technical resources, because Mastodon instances don't scale easily and the best practices doc is a WIP. They also need lots of management/people skills -- for moderation disputes, volunteer recruiting, deescalation, inter-instance politics, etc. It's a big job.
I guess they've muddled on in the pre-Twit years as a sort of democracy, and have had their share of controversies. But after reading some of the #fediblock traffic, it seems like a bad actor (or even a well-meaning actor?) could easily Balkanize the federation among any number of political lines, especially if there are further mass migrations from Birdsite.
But I like it, so I hope they (we?) figure it out. I do feel the need to censor myself a lot more than on here, despite the lack of direct negative feedback, so I wonder if that's a common thing. It might just be the knowledge that there's no algorithm hiding my posts from people that don't care about them.
posted by credulous at 11:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
But jeez, the admins of popular instances have to be way more than hall monitors. They need technical chops and technical resources, because Mastodon instances don't scale easily and the best practices doc is a WIP. They also need lots of management/people skills -- for moderation disputes, volunteer recruiting, deescalation, inter-instance politics, etc. It's a big job.
I guess they've muddled on in the pre-Twit years as a sort of democracy, and have had their share of controversies. But after reading some of the #fediblock traffic, it seems like a bad actor (or even a well-meaning actor?) could easily Balkanize the federation among any number of political lines, especially if there are further mass migrations from Birdsite.
But I like it, so I hope they (we?) figure it out. I do feel the need to censor myself a lot more than on here, despite the lack of direct negative feedback, so I wonder if that's a common thing. It might just be the knowledge that there's no algorithm hiding my posts from people that don't care about them.
posted by credulous at 11:10 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
The collision of approaches to CWs and to an extend quote tweets, and it’s intersection with the racism/moderation discussion would seem like the biggest exploitable flaw if you really want to fuck things up.
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
A list of Spanish-language Mastodon servers compiled by @cri@mastodon.uy:
https://mastodon.uy/@cri/109277231923314179
posted by umber vowel at 11:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
https://mastodon.uy/@cri/109277231923314179
posted by umber vowel at 11:41 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I will hit some assholes with a lead pipe.
Seems like it'd be easier and less awkward to just bonk 'em over the head.... It's certainly an amusing mental image, though.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:27 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Seems like it'd be easier and less awkward to just bonk 'em over the head.... It's certainly an amusing mental image, though.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:27 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
how MetaFilter has evolved over time
I think that's the key... that evolution has been rocky and to disprivileged people probably frustrating, slow, and not yet complete. But there's been education. I get the impression (mostly from posts boosted by cendawanita) that Mastodon in general has a lot of 1990s-style white-dude optimism, and people who push back when POC point out the evolution that needs to happen.
posted by zompist at 12:54 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I think that's the key... that evolution has been rocky and to disprivileged people probably frustrating, slow, and not yet complete. But there's been education. I get the impression (mostly from posts boosted by cendawanita) that Mastodon in general has a lot of 1990s-style white-dude optimism, and people who push back when POC point out the evolution that needs to happen.
posted by zompist at 12:54 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
What phone apps are y'all using for Mastodon? There seem to be several options.
posted by quiet wanderer at 1:55 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by quiet wanderer at 1:55 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I (Android user) settled on Tusky as the one that doesn't do anything UX-wise that specifically annoys me, like the others I tried did.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:11 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:11 PM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
What phone apps are y'all using for Mastodon? There seem to be several options.
On iOS at least, I am very happy so far with the confusingly named Metatext app.
posted by jeremias at 2:49 PM on December 1, 2022
On iOS at least, I am very happy so far with the confusingly named Metatext app.
posted by jeremias at 2:49 PM on December 1, 2022
I use the web UI on my phone. (You can “install” it to your home screen for a more app-like experience.)
posted by mbrubeck at 2:49 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 2:49 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Web UI also very solid in lieu of an iPad app.
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yeah, Tusky is pretty good, the free iOS apps are not. No lists. The Web UI is more robust than any of the free apps. I haven't tried the paid apps for iOS.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:15 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mrgrimm at 3:15 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I used the web UI happily for years on my iPhone, yeah. It works just fine in general, you don't need an app per se. I've finally started experimenting with Toot! in recent weeks mostly because I think I'm gonna get a slightly better image uploading experience that way and I'm aiming to do all my art project liveblogging on Masto now vs. Twitter as I used to. So far Toot! is good and worth the like four bucks it cost.
posted by cortex at 3:30 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by cortex at 3:30 PM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Still makes replies look like a fucked up git history though.
posted by Artw at 7:56 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by Artw at 7:56 PM on December 1, 2022
I like Fedilab, which is $4, it has tabs for your lists! For some reason, Mastodon requires that you follow someone to add them to a list, but you could just follow everyone you want to add then use lists as your primary browsing experience.
posted by JHarris at 8:36 PM on December 1, 2022
posted by JHarris at 8:36 PM on December 1, 2022
Thanks all! I'll take a look at Toot!, Fedilab, and Tusky. I do really need a good image uploading UI.
posted by quiet wanderer at 2:02 AM on December 2, 2022
posted by quiet wanderer at 2:02 AM on December 2, 2022
Toot! is my favorite. It’s great if you put your followers into lists because you can switch between lists with one click (with Metatext you have to click around in menus). And it’s full of whimsy. Try the “Relax” button in the menu ;)
posted by antinomia at 4:18 AM on December 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by antinomia at 4:18 AM on December 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Thanks to everyone who posted helpful stuff in both threads. I could never get past choosing a server before.
posted by eckeric at 3:00 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by eckeric at 3:00 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
First time I saw the "hall monitor" term was in a tweet by Elmo the Birdsite CEO when dismissing Mastodon, so I've been trying to avoid it.
Elmo stole it from Nate Silver, who posted a few days earlier that Mastodon was "a honey trap for hall monitor types" or something, and said Elmo would be doing the world a service if all those folks left Twitter.
So, yeah, another reason to avoid using it.
posted by mediareport at 8:07 AM on December 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
Elmo stole it from Nate Silver, who posted a few days earlier that Mastodon was "a honey trap for hall monitor types" or something, and said Elmo would be doing the world a service if all those folks left Twitter.
So, yeah, another reason to avoid using it.
posted by mediareport at 8:07 AM on December 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
LOL wow I guess years of people calling him out on his bullshit really did sting.
This really is a purification of the Twitter eco-system into fash, chuds and grifters only, isn’t it?
posted by Artw at 8:17 AM on December 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
This really is a purification of the Twitter eco-system into fash, chuds and grifters only, isn’t it?
posted by Artw at 8:17 AM on December 3, 2022 [6 favorites]
Someone created a malicious instance that’s causing outages by overwhelming servers with requests.
posted by umber vowel at 9:16 AM on December 3, 2022
posted by umber vowel at 9:16 AM on December 3, 2022
fash, chuds and grifters, oh my lol
posted by mediareport at 12:45 PM on December 3, 2022
posted by mediareport at 12:45 PM on December 3, 2022
@neolithicsheep has a thread on how he's considering one of the pitfalls of masto's decentralization is leaving open smaller instances to legal action they might not be equipped for, leaving activists at risk for more guaranteed negative action, though he's careful to use DMCA examples instead.
posted by cendawanita at 5:06 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by cendawanita at 5:06 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
This seems like a pretty good use case for some form of insurance. (Ideally not-for-profit, member-owned.) Instance owners could pay dues/fees toward legal defense that they may never personally need, but will mean they get way more legal defense than they could otherwise afford if they end up needing it.
posted by biogeo at 8:33 PM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 8:33 PM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
FWIW there's a webinar this week on the 8th (american time - around lunch; but way past midnight for me but who knows I'll probably be awake) with the dev of the Hometown fork (that mefi.social is running on), Darius Kazemi, on Trust & Safety in the Fediverse.
posted by cendawanita at 9:16 PM on December 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by cendawanita at 9:16 PM on December 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just found this: Bridgy Fed .
You'll need to be a bit technically savvy but if you already have your own website you might already be: Bridgy Fed turns your web site into its own fediverse account, visible in Mastodon and beyond. You can post, reply, like, repost, and follow fediverse accounts by posting on your site with microformats2 and sending webmentions. Bridgy Fed translates those posts to fediverse protocols like ActivityPub and OStatus, and sends fediverse interactions back to your site as webmentions.
This isn't syndication or POSSE! You don't need an account on Mastodon or anywhere else. Bridgy Fed lets your site act like a first class member of the fediverse. People there will see your posts directly from your site, and vice versa.
posted by cendawanita at 7:06 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
You'll need to be a bit technically savvy but if you already have your own website you might already be: Bridgy Fed turns your web site into its own fediverse account, visible in Mastodon and beyond. You can post, reply, like, repost, and follow fediverse accounts by posting on your site with microformats2 and sending webmentions. Bridgy Fed translates those posts to fediverse protocols like ActivityPub and OStatus, and sends fediverse interactions back to your site as webmentions.
This isn't syndication or POSSE! You don't need an account on Mastodon or anywhere else. Bridgy Fed lets your site act like a first class member of the fediverse. People there will see your posts directly from your site, and vice versa.
posted by cendawanita at 7:06 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Nexus of Privacy liveblogged the Trust & Safety webinar. Some positive indications in coming together in a loose consortium for privacy and moderation standards as well as sharing resources.
In the meantime some on the alt-right/freeze peach advocates tried to do a charm offensive this week in getting people on board their 'federation of instances' - basically they hit the ground running launching that consortium idea but to codify moderation behaviours (an opinionated summary of some of the main points) that wouldn't address harassment.
posted by cendawanita at 7:44 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
In the meantime some on the alt-right/freeze peach advocates tried to do a charm offensive this week in getting people on board their 'federation of instances' - basically they hit the ground running launching that consortium idea but to codify moderation behaviours (an opinionated summary of some of the main points) that wouldn't address harassment.
posted by cendawanita at 7:44 PM on December 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Seen on my TL, someone is also doing a list of place-based instances, so if it's safe* and you know admins and people who might benefit, here you go.
*Just reflecting on my RL political environment - i still believe it's safer for people like me to mingle in instances that's not immediately actionable by state-linked actors.
posted by cendawanita at 8:20 PM on December 13, 2022
*Just reflecting on my RL political environment - i still believe it's safer for people like me to mingle in instances that's not immediately actionable by state-linked actors.
posted by cendawanita at 8:20 PM on December 13, 2022
Seen on my TL, someone is also doing a list of place-based instances, so if it's safe* and you know admins and people who might benefit, here you go.
Very surprised the two main Aotearoa/New Zealand instances are not listed there: mastodon.nz and cloudisland.nz. Two very safe and well-moderated instances and I can recommend either for anyone with a kiwi connection. The latter is paid though, and mastodon.nz requires some sort of link to Aotearoa/New Zealand.
posted by vac2003 at 8:40 PM on December 13, 2022
Very surprised the two main Aotearoa/New Zealand instances are not listed there: mastodon.nz and cloudisland.nz. Two very safe and well-moderated instances and I can recommend either for anyone with a kiwi connection. The latter is paid though, and mastodon.nz requires some sort of link to Aotearoa/New Zealand.
posted by vac2003 at 8:40 PM on December 13, 2022
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posted by JHarris at 9:40 PM on November 30, 2022 [8 favorites]