Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

It must be true.

Is Mastodon real?

I rely on Twitter for three professional niches: biology, computer science, and numerical analysis. When I write that “I rely on Twitter,” I mean it. Nearly every collaboration of mine in the past three-four years started on Twitter. It’s been extremely nice to have all three (mostly disconnected) communities on one website. I was skeptical about, despite their rehetoric, whether these communities would move. Yet I feel like the entire biology community (or the subset relevant to me) moved to Mastodon this weekend. Today I see that the computer science community is starting to strongly consider moving. The numerical analysis community? Hopeless. They’ll likely move back to Usenet, if anywhere (this isn’t a joke, they continued to rely on Usenet and Listserv until the late 2010s). I don’t know whether Mastodon will be my new “home,” but I do hope I find one.

It's already feeling very comfortable, I have to say.

mastodon feels like it can serve the academic niches just fine, i think whatever various media outlets/members of the media choose could become the true twitter heir tho and i think the federatedness of mastodon doesnt lend itself to ease of sharing stuff like that, at least not in its current form

Apparently, getting a password reset email has been an impossibility on Mastodon, even prior to the Twitter migration. I'm still logged in on my mobile, but it wouldn't accept my login on desktop, so I was trying to reset due to that. The first time I tried was mid-last week and I haven't received an email from them yet.

The other thing that's been difficult about Mastodon so far is my inability to see who other people are following. For instance, I found someone on Mastodon who I recognized from Twitter and was hoping to poach some of his follows, because there is probably a sizable overlap between the two networks and I thought that it would save me time grabbing all these names again. According to his Mastodon account, he's following 300+ people. But when I click on the list of people he's following, it only shows me 3 people.

yeah to me it seems like 'professional niches' is probably the most likely twittery thing to happen

media / pr outlets and celebs / sports / politicians / "good general punditry" probably not so much

when I click on the list of people he's following, it only shows me 3 people.

The three people you're seeing will be ones who are on the same server as you. This might not be possible on mobile, but on desktop you have to click through to the account's home page on its origin server, then you get a full list of followers/following from all servers.

In general I am enjoying Mastodon (the instance I am on has upgraded their tech so it runs smoothly now), but there are definitely some not-so-user-friendly elements.

I am following you, emil.y, right?

Yep, I'm EK on mastodon.lol - not posting much but hanging out there frequently.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/21/tumblr-to-add-support-for-activitypub-the-social-protocol-powering-mastodon-and-other-apps/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAATkfHMi1jSTpSQ_PwB9QsQP0qI4VKRXOkTSsbUFPKqLx3TQ5YDzvZ6RVnSPFoBK5sFl3HkTiNvlou_dc4Nzbk39wb9FJMQTnkOZqNJx-0eJ9i_DYeZu8AA5WxrBZP75wVSytaqSlJ80-WnlYzuprY1YZkGK3p45rvpaA8M4fUqn

and here comes sic on his fiery steed

I’m @0x00b1 on @fediscience.org if people want to follow me! I think Ned is the only person I’ve found so far.

Hi there!

Have seen some actual funny toots today

My COmic SAns version of Moby Dick has been well-received on Mastodon

lol

👽 @joinmastodon official account has been banned on Twitter pic.twitter.com/qOSe7nRj2W

— Alex Barredo 📉 (@somospostpc) December 15, 2022

This guide should just have a link to this thread.

Here's a beginner 's guide to mastodon, the social network Elon Musk doesn't want you to know about, which you might want to use quite soon.https://t.co/o0XjdxS5v1

— Jayati Ghosh (@Jayati1609) December 16, 2022

is there an ilx-friendly server?

@TheMoviegoer✧✧✧@d✧✧.commun✧✧✧

But I'd be interested in an ILX-centric server.

https://dmv.community/@TheMoviegoeress

Is this better?

Yes

i signed up to a server but i'm on a waitlist and they haven't replied and literally every other server i've tried e.g. mastodon.lol has either removed their sign-up page or also operates a wait list :/

I see it as a quiet non-replacement for twitter

the thing that is kind of amazing is how non-commercial it is, at this point at least - not sure if /how that would change

Yeah, I think .lol is off-limits for a while. The guy who owns the servers has been overwhelmed.

try ravenation.club

nice

i found one btw

https://www.ft.com/content/de808736-2e05-4c3b-a53c-55b170ae9efd

Interesting - but can anything gold stay

wikipedia has. in fact i've just sent my annual donation.

I have read a few pieces pretty critical of their funding drives ie,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/

sure, i mean i think the criticisms there are fairly benign, but i get the messaging can be aggressively needy in tone. it was more to your original point – 'can anything gold stay'. assuming that anything needs some sort of revenue to run, and if you don't want wealthy individual philanthropy backing it, or private business owning it, that means donations if the answer is going to be 'yes'. for me, wikipedia remains an extraordinary enterprise from the early days of the internet, extraordinary partly because it exists, but partly too because it's endured – that's the 'gold' part of the equation. it's a resource I use regularly, at least once a week, probably more like once a day, so putting in a yearly donation seems right, ensuring it can can continue to endure – that's the 'stay' part of the equation.

I too kick a few bucks in Wikipedia's direction every now and then, in gratitude that there's at least one major resource on the internet that's not trying to suck me dry of data in order to enrich some amoral billionaire dickhead.

it's an interesting dilemma - I am happy the Internet Archive is so steadfastly non-profit. There are so many people who are willing to work for free because they believe in something. Much money to be made in things like Chat GPT but then some impertinent upstart offers a free open source version. I have donated this year to internet archive and probably will to my mastodon instance

so have i got this right?

home: just people i follow
local: everybody on that server
federated: everybody on that server plus everybody they follow

two months from now i'll come back with another extremely basic question, fyi

no this is helpful, speaking as someone who is not yet on it

home and local: yes that's right
federated is all posts on all servers that your server has sight of (though maybe that's effectively the same as what you just said)

just got a reply from chris 'blondie' stein.
yeah, i aint leaving 'don.

also, i genuinely enjoy the low level laid back vibes of the place ..

A distinct plus

I only wish more people I know were using it!

People don't want to log off.

Mastodon is civil, respectful, supportive, and terminally boring. It lacks jouissance - the horrible but compelling excesses which drag us back here day after day.

— Tom O'Shea (@DrTomOShea) January 12, 2023

"that's why YOU say Doctor o shay!" - Local Merchant

yeah, enjoying the slower more laid-back aspect of Mastodon, I'm actually considering posting some stuff on there (something I don't do on twitter, where it just seems like any comment I would make would just get lost immediately).

I'm a bit short on free time atm, but I was looking at how to integrate ILX w/ActivityPub. It doesn't seem like a perfect fit, tbh, but it's interesting to think about. I'd be happy to partner with someone who knows how to set up a Mastodon instance as well so long as I never have to say toot

also I know why people are precious about it, but I really really wish the fediverse had search

"It’s also facing new competition from established names: Meta has said it’s working on its own decentralized social network, code-named P92, which will reportedly connect to ActivityPub. And Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is getting ready to unveil Bluesky, a decentralized social media app that will come with a new protocol of its own."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/18/mastodon-users-twitter-elon-musk-social-media

Promising:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/05/a-new-onboarding-experience-on-mastodon/

Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is getting ready to unveil Bluesky, a decentralized social media app that will come with a new protocol of its own.

I was wondering what had happened to stevem

i always said stevem had a protocol all his own, nice to see it confirmed