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Just wanted to say that i moved from twitter to mastodon sometime late last year amd couldn't be happier with it. Keybase integration is interesting to me, but
by zach43 7y ago
Just wanted to say that i moved from twitter to mastodon sometime late last year amd couldn't be happier with it. Keybase integration is interesting to me, but not realky useful since i don't want to tie mastodon with my real life identity.
the Fediverse as a whole has a very different 'feel' to it compared to Twitter. Twitter feels significantly more commercialized amd stressful...mastodon / pleroma feel a lot more relaxed and pleasant in comparison.
Maybe i just accidentally joined nicer communities, but i see a lot of small-scale chitchat and genuineness on mastodon than i rarely see on twitter.
I've also had zero issues with the platform from a technical perspective...overall i think Mastodon, etc have done decentralization "right", and have a lot of potential for growth in the future
- jeena 7y agoIt would be cool to see everyone's Mastodon usernames/domains, I'm on my own self hosted instance where it's a bit more difficult to find other people. Mine is: https://toot.jeena.net/@jeena https://toot.jeena.net/@jeena
- yogthos 7y agomine is: https://mastodon.social/@yogthos https://mastodon.social/@yogthos
- prophesi 7y agoYeah, I self-hosted my own instance of Pleroma for a while, but eventually switched to a more popular instance with people who have similar interests as me (art + religion (specifically, rediscovering religion after rage-quitting Christianity @social.theliturgists.com)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 7y agoWhat has your experience been with self-hosting? I'd love to self-host a Mastodon instance that two-way mirrors my Twitter account and acts as a Twitter client (letting me pseudo-follow folks from Twitter). But in any case, I'd want to ensure that no content from people I follow gets mirrored/hosted on my own instance; the only content actually hosted on my own instance should be the content I post.
- StavrosK 7y agoWhat do you mean? No content other than what your users generate will be hosted on your instance.
- bisby 7y agoThere is a concept of a federated timeline, which does get synced to your local instance. If you follow someone on a remote instance, that instance feeds content into your instance so it can be loaded.
- StavrosK 7y agoIt syncs the people you follow, right? So presumably the only additional content on your instance is content from the people you follow, which should generally be low-risk.
- bisby 7y agoI believe once you follow someone, you become federated with their instance. and you potentially receive all content from that instance... I think? there are also admin controls for managing moderation and federation.
- metildaa 7y agoYou can also block just media if an instance is known to host images that are illegal in your country or your users don't want to see (silencing is a better option for the latter tho).
- JoshTriplett 7y agoI still don't want to host anyone else's content, for much the same reason I'm never going to have an unmoderated comment system on a site.
- zach43 7y agoI've had a pretty good experience self-hosting with Pleroma. Its quite amazing that I can run a social media server with just a $5 VPS. Not sure if there are bots / apps that can easily let you follow Twitter users on Mastodon, but I've definitely seen mastodon - twitter crossposter apps before.
- StavrosK 7y agohttps://mastodon.host/@stavros https://mastodon.host/@stavros
- silvermast 7y agohttps://sunbeam.city/@silver https://sunbeam.city/@silver
- lokedhs 7y agoI switched to Mastodon about a year or so ago. I fully agree with the grandparent post in that the atmosphere is very different compared to the major social media platforms. As you allude to, discovery is harder since you don't have an algorithm pointing you in the direction of content you're likely to engage with (yes, engage with, and not necessarily enjoy) but once you have found the right people to follow, it's more rewarding because it's your community, not owned by a single corporate entity. Although I didn't use G+ much in the later days, its closure showed my how irresponsible it is to rely on proprietary platforms. I'm committed to never be active on a proprietary, closed social media platform again. My main account is here: https://functional.cafe/@loke https://functional.cafe/@loke
- thinkloop 7y ago> I'm committed to never be active on a proprietary, closed social media platform again. Including HN?
- lokedhs 7y agoThat's a good point. Clearly I still use this platform, but I do see a difference between them. I don't “post” on Hacker News. I do comment, but I don't think anyone who are interested in following whatever it is that I may have to say would come here to look up my posts. Or, to put it in another way, if this place would introduce some social media features, such as the ability to follow people and post to followers, then it is highly unlikely that I would be interested in using those features.
- Diti 7y agoI don’t think OP meant “proprietary, closed” as “centralized”. If it’s about the code: https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki
- lokedhs 7y agoI referred to both, actually. It's about whether I own my own presence on the network. Of course, I'm not hosting my own server, so I am in some way in the hands of its administrator, just like I was in the hands of Google when I used G+. However, I can talk to him directly, which is a huge benefit. Also, if he decides to shut down the server, I can still join a different instance and reconnect with all the people I was following on the old server.
- seishan 7y agoMine is: https://mastodon.social/@sei https://mastodon.social/@sei
- djsumdog 7y agoI run my own instance too: @djsumdog@hitchhiker.social I also made a guide for making your own Mastodon CSS: https://penguindreams.org/blog/using-custom-css-with-mastodon/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/using-custom-css-with-mastodo...
- caffeinewriter 7y agoI'm https://takeoverthe.world/@caff https://takeoverthe.world/@caff :) Self-hosting Mastodon has been an adventure, for sure. However, relays have definitely helped with federation. :)
- ragebol 7y agohttps://mastodon.technology/@Loy https://mastodon.technology/@Loy
- TeMPOraL 7y agohttps://mastodon.technology/@temporal https://mastodon.technology/@temporal
- LukeHoersten 7y agohttps://nth.io/Luke https://nth.io/Luke
- tracker1 7y agoI literally haven't actually posted or done anything on it... https://mastodon.technology/@tracker1 https://mastodon.technology/@tracker1 I've thought about putting one up for social.bbs.io or bbs.land
- Kye 7y agoMastodon is great. snouts.online is one of several furry instances. We boop snoots instead of boosting toots, but it talks to other instances just fine.
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoI understood atleast a couple of those words
- Kye 7y agoTranslation: every weird niche interest can have its own server for its community with its own rules, culture, and user experience while still communicating with other servers.
- mgoia 7y agoThat is correct in theory. But in practice, other servers will block your server if the rules deviate from the mainstream rules, effectively isolating your server.
- Spivak 7y agoWell yeah, what's the point of having rules on an instance if you can just break them by moving to another but still participate?
- mgoia 7y agoThen the comment I replied to was wrong. There is no interconnected network of servers with different rules.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- metildaa 7y ago
- mirimir 7y ago> Keybase integration is interesting to me, but not realky useful since i don't want to tie mastodon with my real life identity. Ummm. I mean, https://keybase.io/mirimir https://keybase.io/mirimir has nothing to do with my "real life identity".
- skybrian 7y agoThat's a good point but on the other hand, when you have no reason to connect accounts, connecting them in this way might not be good opsec. I guess this could be useful to make switching mastodon servers smoother.
- dwighttk 7y agoI opened a Mastodon account and me and one other person I know who opened an account toot at each other every 6 months or so... I guess there is another person I know who opened one but never toots... I try to pretend it doesn't matter to me, but calling individual posts "toots" really does keep me from talking about the service with other people.
- metildaa 7y agoThere are lots of interesting people on Mastodon, I would recommend searching by hashtag and joining an instance that matches your interests (eg: sdf.org, sergal.org (furries), cybre.space, etc). Many instances block Mastodon.social and other massive instances, and different instances will have different views of the network (based on who the users of the instance follow and how long toots are retained).
- dwighttk 7y agoeh, I don't really even use Twitter to talk with randos online... I get enough of that here. But I can see that people do use Twitter and Mastodon that way...
- baroffoos 7y agoI do wish mastodon had the concept of groups so I could join all the groups I'm interested in rather than having to sign up for an account on each one.
- metildaa 7y agoGenerally you just follow people, making accounts on each instance would be rather silly.
- ryu2k2 7y agojust call them "posts" or "microposts" if you don't like "toot"
- 7y ago
- crunchiebones 7y agoit's basically twitter when you're not following very many people and all the people you are following share your political views.
- labster 7y agoOkay, how do I sign up for Mastodon? I went to mastodon.com, and I got a page that the domain was for sale. Are they having funding problems? Okay, I'm not that dumb, but some users are. And I really don't know how to get started. Not that I've ever been a big social media user, but I'm enough of a hipster to want to say I was on Mastodon before it was ruined.
- zach43 7y agoI know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network? I'm honestly fine with the mastodon devs not having to spend 1000s of dollars to get the mastodon.com domain. Evidently that domain is so expensive that even the popular heavy metal band "Mastodon" haven't bought that domain (they seem to be at https://www.mastodonrocks.com/ https://www.mastodonrocks.com/ ) BTW, if you're having difficultly finding an instance that caters to your interests, https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org has a signup flow that shows mastodon instances based on interests. That might help.
- twblalock 7y ago> I know you're joking, but if you found your way on to a site called "Hacker News" at a URL like https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com , it it really going to be so much more complicated to understand that https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social is the website of the Mastodon social network? Yes it is, because when people thing of $something, they assume the website is $something.com. If Mastodon plans to appeal to the general public then it will need to be easier to find.
- zach43 7y agoI'm personally not at all attached to the 'mastodon.social' domain (i'm self-hosting my own account on a different instance), but I am somewhat surprised at this perspective on TLDs. Most users of the internet have been exposed to TLDs other than ".com". For example, wikipedia is at a .org TLD, US government sites are at .gov domains, university websites are at .edu domains. Most non-US users will frequently interact with their country's (and neighboring countries') ccTLDs, like .de, .uk, .in, ... I find it surprising to assume that users of social networks who have already understood abstract concepts like "like vs retweet" or "like vs share" would find it difficult to understand the difference between .com and .social. Also in a sense, it is more accurate for Mastodon to be at a .social TLD instead of a .com since Mastodon is a Patreon-supported FOSS project, and isn't a commercial entity like twitter.com or facebook.com. But yeah, I know that .com doesn't really mean "commercial" anymore, and is more of a general-purpose TLD now. Mastodon has a number of issues that could stifle broader adoption, but I can't convince myself that the TLD is really relevant here. Most users will just be linked to Mastodon from other sites, or find it from a web search. Once its in their web history, web browsers will just autocomplete the site name in the address bar. And isn't the domain squatting and exorbitant pricing on ".com" the main reasons why the new TLDs have been released anyway?
- captainbland 7y ago> Keybase integration is interesting to me, but not realky useful since i don't want to tie mastodon with my real life identity. Yeah, this is it for me. Also I don't want to tie my various online profiles together in general. Providing an open, strong, independently verifiable cryptographic link between my online profiles seems like something that a bad actor could exploit to harvest data about me far more easily and with a far higher degree of confidence than would be the case without it. It might even be hard to get rid of if integrating websites aren't careful about deleting your keys when you want them to, leading to a bunch of cryptographic litter linking your profiles even when you don't want that.
- rStar 7y ago+++
- Not_anchovie 7y agoI'm also willing to bet the personal attacks are kept to a bare minimum at Mastadon, where as with Twitter, you just have be idk...opposed to one popular political thing publicly to be regularly attacked and harassed.
- rtkwe 7y agoHow much of that is just because there aren't as many people there though? Both in the lack of enough people to make a critical storm of people and just not enough people to form an audience for that kind of action. I doubt that would remain the same if Mastodon took off and became a huge thing.