Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

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

Although I have been lukewarm about Mastodon so far, it did enable me to purchase a piece of musical gear this evening for which I've been hunting around for a while.

Gave up on mastodon after the server I picked to stump up on just disappeared one day taking my account with it.

It's a party 24/7 over at ravenation.club

i haven't used any of these apps but mastodon strikes me as sort of being the dc++ to twitter's napster

mind you i never used dc++ either

I have no idea what dc++ is but you're probably right

So anyone signing up/coming back over or are you all friends of Jack's now? I don't think I will ever sign up for bsky, the slower pace of life on Mastodon is suiting me nicely.

I'm no friend of Jack. I have the occasional flash of "should I get an account there so no one else gets the user name I use everywhere on the internet?" but that's a key motivator in geting you to join a social media site anyway, right?

I had some problems with the instance I was on so I jumped to one of the big servers. I miss the previous one - it was Los Angeles-themed which made the Local timeline worth checking out. Anyway, I'm here now: https://mas.to/@quartzcity

i moved my bots over, just in time, but haven't picked a server for my main account yet.

What was the LA themed server?

https://onewilshire.la - named after the giant data center downtown.

So anyone signing up/coming back over or are you all friends of Jack's now? I don't think I will ever sign up for bsky, the slower pace of life on Mastodon is suiting me nicely.

― emil.y, Saturday, 1 July 2023 bookmarkflaglink

The pace on there is a full stop. Cannot figure it out. I shouldn't have to either.

Ideally, it's the place.

I posted this on another thread but the main thing I've learnt about finding interesting things on Mastodon is to use and follow hashtags. I never wanted to do this on twitter because there were too many aggressive randos, but Mastodon is smaller and more peaceful, so when I want to potentially be part of a larger conversation, I can use hashtags confidently. Following hashtags puts posts containing them directly in your feed, so choosing those well is essential.

I also think joining an instance that is generally themed around a topic you find interesting is a good idea, so you can browse local to find stuff. I loved .lol b/c it was queer and antifascist. The one I'm on now is specifically LGBTQ+ but I feel like it's less interesting to me w/o the explicitly political side. There's also the worry with facebook moving in about who federates with them and what that means. I might end up moving instances again, which is, to be honest, a massive pain in the arse.

I do see fewer entertaining shitposts and memes on Mastodon, which is why I've finally joined tumblr as well, ha!

I'm on .lol but I've not logged in months. Now I get 404

Oh, ha, you have been away! .lol closed down, it was just one guy running it and the first twitter influx got too much for him to handle. That is a big issue with the system - you don't want to go for a big instance for a variety of reasons but the smaller ones will always have the risk of folding.

I feel like I'm becoming the Mastodon proselytiser over here, but there are definitely issues with it. I'd like to see more people join and give it a proper try rather than automatically going to bluesky, but I think part of my enjoyment of Mastodon is that I genuinely want a smaller space now, and for lots of people that isn't what they want at all.

uh

https://www.neowin.net/news/admin-of-an-anarchist-mastodon-server-raided-by-fbi-insecure-user-data-gets-seized/

Gotta OPSEC yr instances.

"Oh, ha, you have been away! .lol closed down, it was just one guy running it and the first twitter influx got too much for him to handle."

Ah ok so I gotta rejoin under another instance. Will look to doing this. Any recommendations?

mas.to has been smooth sailing the whole time.

Thanks, will look