Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

right term = "instance" viz active copy of the software enabling a mini-community

the "server" will be the server the instance runs on, viz what server normally means (which probably hasn't been nuked, tho it may have been wiped). you can run several instances on one server, but i don't think (?) you can run a single instance on more than one server

a federation is a constellation of interconnected (but different) instances

thanks, genuinely still just trying to wrap my brain around how it all works. my post wasn't meant to disparage Mastodon btw, it was just an aspect that i never really considered before.

yeah, it's not an easy concept to get used to or see the implications of after decades of centralized social media platforms imo!

basic question :
i have no registered and got all set up, and finding my feet.
but, as there are some very specific servers, can i register on other servers using the same email address/username ?

yes i believe so: the specific account name consists of a user name yoked to an instance, but you can open up other accounts on other instances using the same user name if it isn't already taken there

but this is a separate account, not automatically linked to the original -- so you'd have to post toots in each separate place, tho there may be plug-ins etc that enable crossposting

(i think this is correct anyway)

thats what i thought ..
and yes, i was totally of the idea re literally having seperate accounts on different servers but would be easiest to use the same email address each time (username is not as important).

so one account for my general gubbins i.e. the one i have now,
and then popping over to other topic specific servers as and when, as their 'local' feeds would to totally different.

its an interesting concept now that i have got my head around it.

i think there isn't necessarily any reason to have an account on one server vs another one unless you like the name of the other server more, no? or is it just for discoverability of posts (is there some way to see 'posts from just this server'? i can't remember)

its the 'local' feed aspect that interests me.

surely if you are on a dedicated topic server, then the 'local' feed will be toots (yuck) about that servers specific topic ?

as far as i can tell, you can't see a different servers 'local' feed ?

Yeah I think you're right

another thing that I like about mastadon: free so far of twitterspeak. I never need to read another statement about how something 'hits different' or is 'giving' something or anyone going 'that's the tweet'. let that shit burn with twitter.

so far I like Mastadon but I'm not following many people, only people from here and a few stray other accounts...but what I like about it is the insularity of it, I feel like I could more easily only follow ILXors et al and keep my feed about music and cultural issues and avoid politics entirely.

― akm, Tuesday, November 8, 2022 bookmarkflaglink

This is my plan.

in a sense that's basically what I pared FB down to as well, but I still dislike going there

Kind of tto bad - it seems you cant look at someone's followers or followed - unless you are on the sam e server??

that's inconsistent IME. there is usually a link at the bottom (if you're on the web) that lets you go to the users' profile on the other server and see them.

Finally moved off of the giant crush at mastodon.online. New address: https://onewilshire.la/@quartzcity

I did find out how to see followers using the web site

and meeting new people!

have enjoyed discovering this new toy.

however, i fear the influx that is killing performance is going to kill the love.
i blame the arrival of stephen fry and greta of course.

also, i have followed folks here and even if they follow me back i am still unable to see their followers, or who they are following.
there is a link to login via the web browser, but thats only for locally registered server users as far as i can tell as my instance login gets refused ?

so, still struggling to find followers of my followers.

seems like the only option is to publish my own groove here and there

https://mastodonapp.uk/@marke23

not that my server is in action at the moment.

So I picked an instance that said it was for journos/writers/bloggers and it had a lot of ppl on it, which I figured was a good sign, and today I log on to a message from what I assume is the instance host/mod that seems to imply hes a fucking cooker:

Announcing an incredible new TV Chanel on Amazon Firestick and Roku.

Its called Https://freedomdigitalbroadcasting.tv , we as a Free Speech Social Media Platform have partnered with them.

Everyone has the right to the truth and the TV Channel has lots of interviews with all the worlds top scientists etc that the MSM deny a platform to.

(bolding mine)
Am I paranoid or is this coming across as antivax/nutbaggy

I mean, I think its coming from my instance's host? It showed up as an "announcement" as opposed to a post.

Saw a post that likened the experience of joining to being at a social gathering having to listen to someone explain the tedious rules of a board game for half an hour which is otm. I’m sure this will be fun once it gets going but could we not just hang out idk

I joined mastodon.social in 2018 but only posted once and only followed my pal (who never even posted once). I’ve come back to it but I don’t really have the time to figure out all the bollocks so that may have to wait, I have followed a few ilxor chums tho. At the moment it seems like literally the only posts on there are mastodon explainers lol, and none of these explainers seem to apply to the iOS app. “You may be wondering why you see three timelines, local federated and the other one” no I am not because none of these are a thing on the app. “If you can’t see who someone’s following, go to their instance and *then* click on their profile” ok but this doesn’t seem to be a thing on the app either. Not gonna use this thing in safari, does the “it’s like the old web!” fetishism extend to it only being useable on desktop or is there a third party app that works

am currently using Metatext on iOS which I like better than the main mastodon app - you can toggle between your own, local and federated feeds. but for people on other servers that you're not already following, you do still have to open their profile on a web browser to see their whole posting history/people they're following.

LEST WE FORGET

During the brief left Twitter exodus to mastodon, the hell dude made a toot that I still think about to this day pic.twitter.com/u5mTpGXbd7

— 𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐍™ (@Devon_OnEarth) May 5, 2020

I guess we will see how much of a total trainwreck twitter becomes - then maybe mastodon will develop. Of course maybe Musky just sells it at some point in the future to someone everyone doesn't hate (Chris Rock?)

I see Max Kennerly (I don't know why I followed him) complaining that people are saying you have to have a Content Warning on any political posts. is that a thing? That seems stupid.

that said it would make it easier for me to avoid those posts (which I know I explicitly said I wanted to do, and then I went and followed some journalists like an idiot)

It's a bit of a thing -- clearly part of the idea was to have a place to not have to think/talk politics 24/7, which...political junkies on Twitter very much do! So a few of them are kinda miffed to learn that their overriding interests are in fact not universally loved. The flip, as a few people have rightfully pointed out, is that you can't escape reality, and there are things that the wider community needs to work on so it doesn't become a dreamworld -- but as a lot of fediverse types, particular queer/nonbinary posters, said they settled in over there years back precisely BECAUSE they were sick of always having to be on defense and dealing with assholery, how exactly can you blame them?

It's unusably slow for me every time I try to log on, gah.

the CW causes the toot in question to fold up into something very brief, which merely states the description of the signalled content ("politics", "trump" etc) and to read it you have to click it (or choose not to).if you think this is dumb you can tick a box in preferences that says like "always expand content warnings"!

it was funny watching midsize bigfoots like josh marshall wrestling out loud with the lack of respect it showed his profession (tho tbf JM came thru the other side saying "ok i get it")

my main complaint currently is same as wins: too many difft noobs non-stop tootsplainin the rules of the mastoverse (this shd also come with a CW!)

but i am very good indeed at skimming past stuff that i suspect will be boring, where did i learn this, i er shall not say right now

It's unusably slow for me every time I try to log on, gah.

try migrating your account to a different server. though, maybe most of them are struggling under load now.

I am seeing a lot of people from Academia - which makes sense - maybe in the future universities will have their own instances for hosting. Mastodon seems like it would appeal to education since it is a set of protocols rather than a proprietary profit-based thing like Twitter ( ideally Twitter would be profitable)

Mastodon sounds a lot like IRC as social media instead of chatroom.

yeah pretty much

IRC is a good comparison because I think anyone who has used it understands more how 'protocol' is at the forefront and the platform is less important. It's also an ancient concept and core to how the internet works.

a solid 50% of my feed are posts about the philosophy of mastodon, which I know is a topic of great interest to many, especially long-time users, but it's a lot

yeah it's actually annoying. alsso I'm not really following this CW thing, there seem to be issues on both sides; long-time Mastadon users who insist on CW for anything political/racial, BIPOC/marginalized users who are new who got chastised for not using CWs, BIPOC/marginalized users who insist on CWs because they don't want to be triggered....

welcome good gentleman to Mastadon, please pull up a comfortable chair (oh no not the comfy chair!!!) and get ready to dive into the bizarre yet fascinating world of Mastadon-lore, let me begin by describing how completely wonderful and lovely and unique everything is here, we have pictures which are blurred until you tap them, fancy that (no not porn, why would they be porn!? it's a sunset, what is wrong with you?), we have a search function which doesn't work, at all, we have some of your friends from twitter, they're going to retoot (yes, retoot) Emma Kennedy, they've been doing it all the time and you didn't know because you muted her in the other place. Surprised? Well there's a lot more where that came from...

there is an option to disable all the CW stuff, which i have done, meaning the blurring thing no longer happens.
also, the IRC comparison is spot on.
i loved IRC which is probably why i am really enjoying this new toy.
also, re performance - yeah, this is very server specific.
thankfully the main uk server seems to have been given a boost, and things are working pretty well at the moment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33545541

I refuse to believe anybody is seriously irritated by seeing a blurry post & having to tap to reveal it, how could you possible care about that even a bit

I have unfortunately seen some emma Kennedy content boosted (I believe this is the term, not retoot) - not from anyone I follow, just while exploring/trying to figure this shit out - of course the whole “let’s all just be jolly nice” thing is gonna be coöpted by some of the worst shits & grifters who’re glad to be free of the toxicity (ppl disagreeing with their wrong and bad posts) but eh you can mute her on there too (I’ve just done it haha)

The tweeness and endless smelling-our-own-toots about How Mastodon Works is a big turnoff for sure, and yeah the search sux

if im honest i find the masto-push to be a bit nicer useful bcz it's counter-manifesting as a push to be a bit meaner elsewhere and i feel i need to lean into this

ppl i have been beloved for too long, time for me to svck

Good thread on Mast

it works differently, it has different affordances, its architecture encodes politics in a very different way.

— hugo reinert 🐑 (@metaleptic) November 13, 2022

lol i followed metaleptic's randomised bot = notaleptic like a decade ago and only grasped that metaleptic exists and runs notaleptic (or more accurately lets it run w/o paying attention to it) this morning

I am thinking it is going ot be hard for workplaces to block mastodon instances since there is not one central site but many sites...

if easy to block facebook.com

not so much https://ravenation.club/ etc etc etc that are all in the "fediverse"

point in favor imo

i wonder if toots can be as easily embedded as tweets can? or does the federated part make that a lot more complicated

cw: disgusting fingernails. if you're taking a picture of something, no one wants to see your huuuge yellow unclipped disgusting fingernails surrounding it.

https://wandering.shop/@daviddlevine/109348616337901383

GOOD POINT! PUT BLAUBARRY ON TABLE OR SOMEthing

feet even norse

I just created a filter that blocks twitter, elon musk, fediverse, and federated. Let's see how this goes.

pondering adding mastodon to my filter as well, but that may be a bit much

I find a lot of twitter stuff is behind a CW screen anyway 0

but let me know how that goes and dont you dare block mastodon

Meanwhile

I just have little interest in endless meta posts about either social network and that was a very large portion of my feed

It's starting to burn out some but yeah for a few days there...