Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

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...

I am hoping people I know will leave Twitter and come to mastodon and that will be my feed

ambrosia

i am loving building a new crew that i follow/follow me on 'don to be honest.

yeah, outside of the aforementioned meta posts, it's all been great. I'm mostly following a bunch of modular synth folks.

I just saw someone (on twitter) say 'use Tusky' which is a client for Mastodon. It feels like a smoother experience. Anyone else using it?

Yes it's better than the default app but seems to be no way to admire I mean review just your own toots.

Looking into this "discord" business

Okay it looks like Discord is just a big group chat. I hate it

— Mr. Chau (@Srirachachau) November 18, 2022

Yes it's better than the default app but seems to be no way to admire I mean review just your own toots.

You can. To see your own posts, you have to first tap on your profile photo in the top left-hand corner. That opens up a panel with a list of various things like drafts and favourites. To view your profile and posts you then have to tap on your profile photo in the top left-hand corner of that panel.

I can actually click on another profile and see followers and following by clicking on those words some of the time. This is revolutionary.

lol thanks dubmill, that's an...interesting ux choice

lol thanks dubmill, that's an...interesting ux choice

I keep going back and forth between twittor and mastodon and twittor is like aaaahhh whaaaats haaapening aahhh - and mastodon is like "Hello! what do we have here? this coul dbe my new home? "

https://connecticuthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PuritanPioneers.jpg

in case wondering/interested

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/ri295h/what_is_federated_timeline/

I've seen a number of complaints (on twitter mainly) about Mastadon not being a safe space for marginalized communities/people, which is something to keep in mind, but that makes it, in a sense a bit more reflective of real life. As I understand it there is no central authority at Mastadon, so if someone is harassing you, or saying things you find offensive, there is no appealing to 'the owners' to deplatform; you can get your server to block them or their instance and that's about it, but there is no guarantee that will happen.

Saying Mastodon isnt a safe space is a bit like saying Reddit isnt.

Its up to the moderators/managers of that instance to make it safe, isnt it?

yes. I think the issue is that many people by default joined mastadon.social because it has the most obvious name and seems to be the biggest instance, and they seem to be pretty hands off w/r/t moderation

...wait, thogh I get you now, if theyre from elsewhere on Masto not much you can do. I get thats a problem.

Re: Dischord: I just see that as a modern IRC, has no appeal to me (I dont know how I kept up with IRC all the time like I used to in my late 20s)

my only experience with Discord is looking at what my kid is logged into and it makes my eyes bleed and brain shrivel up. no thank you.

yeah its meant for small groups with specific needs - the kids for eg will use it with their mates while theyre in a session of TeamFortress or whatever so they can yell at each other/swap notes.

I used discord for a class I was taking - like the class had a discord server. But the internet archive one seems very chaos

Someone could spin up a mastodon instance for a specific marginalized community and mod the hell out of it I think

I am still suprized to see how many bots i was followin g on Twittr

My Twitter follows is in the low 2 digits both out and inbound. I just never really used it.

mastodon is a thousand petty fiefdoms ruled by whim rather than profit, squabbling through fractious "federated" alliances -- the true technofeudalism. say what you will about the value form, at least it leads to predictable constraints and tendencies!

— Gavin Mueller (@gavinmuellerphd) November 18, 2022

lol i was breifly worried abt this academic with "teaching marxist theory" in his bio saying "the true technofeudalism" here -- i mean no -- but then i explored like two lines further and he admits he's just shitposting, as are we all tbf

Oh yeah he is a v good poster who switches to shitposting quite comfortably.

it's shitposting but it's not exactly wrong either, etc.

the federated nature of it really seems like a worst-of-both-worlds situation to me, not quite a lot of little independent online communities (and the messageboard is still the superior format for that, really) nor the single central website for everyone about all things, but it's trying to be both at once and isn't good at either as a result

The challenge for a everyone everywhere platform I guess is: 1) how do you scale so that 'everyone' can be on it and 2) how do you moderate it so that the worst ppl are kicked out.

Mastodon is trying to solve 2), but it probably won't be good enough at 1).

i don't think it's solving 2) because the politics of who's federated with who and different moderation standards and practices seems to get very messy very quickly