Forum Overview :: Lively: Google Creates Something Terrible
 
Mastodon, Twitter for FOSS nerds by skip 03/23/2018, 5:19pm PDT
Mastodon was the brainchild of a German guy who modded GnuSocial. It's decentralizd social networking that takes place in "instances." It's a very leftist mindset. He wanted to maximize equality of voices and minimize virality. So, there's built-in content warnings, per-post privacy controls, and mods of instances can silence/suspend other instances or users they feel are unsafe. You can't tell how many people have commented, favorited, or reposted a "Toot" (their even dumber name for a Tweet) until you expand it. No algorithms. Everything is chronological. You can retoot but not quote-retoot. You can mute and block others easily. A local timeline is when you only see the people in your instance. But it's all about the federated timeline.

This is where all the articles lie to you by making it seem like a federated timeline features everyone.https://qz.com/951078/the-complete-guide-to-using-mastodon-the-twitter-twtr-alternative/

The federated timeline extends the local timeline by one degree of separation. It shows all the public toots from people who are followed by the users of that instance. So the more people on an instance who follow others, the bigger the federated timeline. This is a bit like when someone at a big company copies the entire staff in an email. It’s a lot of people’s toots, constantly. Correction: An earlier version of this article said federated timelines show all public toots on all instances.


But if mods silence your instance, you won't be federated even someone there follows you. If mods suspend it, you can't be followed at all. This leads to a block list that's a minimum for most of them https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances Shitposter.Club

Positives:
- Because posts don't have indications of popularity until you expand them, this cuts down a lot on virtue signaling
- No quote-retweet features so no dogpiling
- Very little politics and the usual shrieky voices can only go so far because above
- Content warnings also mean that a lot of people hide their mental health/political posts
- The federated timeline cuts out large swaths of people that you don't want to interact with
- No search except by hashtag. No mining for "problematic" toots except manually
- The interface is much better than FOSS alternatives
- Content warnings are useful to hide essays (500 character limit here)

Neutrals:
- there's not a true public timeline
- everything's chronological. if it's not seen it'll disappear and no algorithm to save you
- no trending hashtags. OK no virality, but you can't even get pinged if someone uses a hashtag you're interested in. It makes finding people hard
- reposts are common because they're gone so fast
- fuckton of tech posts

Negatives:
- A lot of users have no idea how federated timelines work. Following should be encouraged but it's still treated like Twitter. If you think someone is funny/clever, just follow them and bring them into your timeline. Nobody cares about retoots or faves because nobody can see them in the timelines anyway.
- Until you hit some critical mass of followers, expect to have very few interactions because
- There's not a lot of people on this except the Japanese
- BOTS EVERYWHERE! BoingBoing has a bot.
- Fuckton of Tumblr on this. So many genders, pronouns, and fursuitfriday is a hashtag. Pronouns in profiles.
- I said English. Stop showing me hieroglyphics
- Liberal muting a must

I like it? It's nice to use a platform where there's no karma, favorites, algorithms, viral topics, obsession with verification and people just comment on what they like. You're better off muting all the politics/news bots. Needs more people to dilute the anxious sys-admins and better tools to find people with your interests. But it's not a bad way to have communities.

Which instance to join? This one has some decent options: https://gitlab.com/deutrino/open-speech-mastodon/blob/master/README.md Mastodon.social is the main one but also has the worst signal:noise and you can muted without notice. Octodon is the one Metafilter loves. elekk.xyz is the Gamergate instance. Multiple accounts are common because some mods are nuts. http://telegra.ph/Instances-to-silencesuspend-on-Mastodon-06-23

Unwilling to moderate hate speech and shitty content
Not proactively moderated
Bad/Ignorant Politics
Unresponsive to moderation messages - I sent a message to the instance's admin about the user pictured above. They did not respond for a week while being active at the time.


Imagine living like this.
NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
Mastodon, Twitter for FOSS nerds by skip 03/23/2018, 5:19pm PDT NEW
    I would love to see more indie platforms on the web by Blackwater 03/23/2018, 11:14pm PDT NEW
        It's like Twitter before it got political but with more genders, Linux and anime by skip 03/24/2018, 3:04pm PDT NEW
    There's now a Mastodon for prostitutes and johns, switter.at by skip 03/30/2018, 7:59am PDT NEW
    Will Wheaton flounces off of Mastodon by blackwater 09/05/2018, 3:08pm PDT NEW
        Re: Will Wheaton flounces off of Mastodon by bort 09/05/2018, 6:39pm PDT NEW
            ensign crusher banished back to his blog by a Water Filter Salesman 09/05/2018, 8:13pm PDT NEW
                Choking on the fruits grown of their own seeds. NT by Merchant, Water Filter Merchant 09/05/2018, 8:50pm PDT NEW
                    Re: Choking on the fruits grown of their own seeds. by Caltrops Fakenews Factchecker 09/06/2018, 4:21am PDT NEW
        Wheaton's the type of actor who needs to tone down his obnoxiousness to NT by play a guy like Wesley Crusher 09/30/2018, 9:34am PDT NEW
    Mastodon has really stupid implementation, though. by Mysterio 10/30/2022, 9:27pm PDT NEW
 
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