Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

Are you joining the servers

Thinking about it! Various friends there already so I'm asking around.

tried this some years ago last time twitter was Over and i didnt like it. would prefer to just stick to various web forums for my posting

Literally zero interest.

Would rather go back to tumblr than this

people are saying its not very intuitive - they seem lost - weird that join a server instead of just "having an account"

Well, FWIW

https://spaceballs.masto.host/@nedraggett

Search: lasted about 27 million years

Destroy: wiped out by the last Ice Age

i couldnt figure this out, why not just go and sit in a meadow idk

So is this thing in the vein of IRC, where you'll only see people if they join the same instance/server as you? That seems quite the opposite of what social media is, in some ways.

Or can you be on multiple servers?

lol i would absolutely follow ned anywhere . . . apart from spaceballs, which is just awful

I'm at https://mastodon.online/@quartzcity

can we start a mastadon ILX? haha.

Ha. Not my server! I just needed an entry point.

Basically as I am sensing it now, to answer Trayce’s question — you can talk internally on your server but you can also basically talk to anyone on another server if that server doesn’t block yours for any reason. And basically as you follow people you create your equivalent of a Twitter feed, and there are list options etc. And you can set your posts to public or private. So it’s nowhere near as easy an entry as Twitter but once you get the hang of it it functions as it in practical terms. Seems worth a go.

can we start a mastadon ILX? haha.

Yeah are they like minecraft or dischord servers - ie you have to actually have physical server space? I can seeyou have to moderate, which sounds unfun. I dunno - Masto looks very small. I've known about it for years but the only people I knew who ever bleated about it were hackers/devs and assorted nerd ne'er do wells.

its a bunch of connected fiefdoms instead of a dictatorship

surely we have a baron(ess) among us

so to speak

I like the old school FidoNet-powered-by-gnutella feel of the place.

Let’s go

i've been on mastodon on and off since 2017 (it was mentioned somewhere and i was curious): in 2018 there was a little mini-excursion there among three overlapping social circles i'm in, i forget even why (tho it was partly triggered by ppl that some of us followed being twitter-banned) -- it was a little nine-day wonder and then faded (the accounts in question crept back onto twitter w/new names and thrived, slightly less abrasively)

since then had two instances die under me (both small)

• the first i'd picked totally randomly, it was extremely japanese which made my federated experience soothing (i read no japanese) and its mod one day decided he didn't want to mod any more and kicked everyone off (he gave plenty of warning and moving between instances is p easy)
• the second i'd picked bcz a tiwtter-exile i enjoy following wz pals w/its mod and it had an entertaining shitposty vibe; i then went on mastadon hiatus for a long time and when i returned this second instance had vanished (i think there was beef involved? the tale is probably on reddit somewhere)
• so then i signed up a second time, this time to mastodon.social, so that i'd have some kind of microblogging bolthole when elon musk got round to destroying twitter 4 years later as i knew he always would (mastodon.social is the default instance, large and mainstream, headed by mastodon founder eugen aka gargron, and currently down a lot as it handles many many flustered sign-ups)

— mastodon is larger than two weeks ago but it is still very very small and very curiously shaped: it lacks several features dear to journalists and also to harassers which will be combination aggravation and relief
— twitter's sense of centrality was of course a vasr value but as a practical unchallenged fact it is always going to be wildly contested; as a straight-forward quality it was never long for this world and eventually came apart (which is basic politics: the ineluctable fact of empires is that they die)
— it is still somewhat flimsy (cf the outages plus eugen is just one person and can't move at speed) and also somewhat leaky i believe (my feeling abt strangers reading my DMs is that since they're probably even more annoying than my public posts tweets and toots THEY'RE WELCOME HAHA… but i understand many have actual reasons for minding abt privacy and so on) (like centrality, privacy is an ideal verging on a myth, but it's not a bad myth after all)

(FB is of course much bigger but even b4 u start in on its many other flaws it's also massively pre-siloed -- yes it's very centralised as a corproate entity but users have no sense of or access to that centrality)

er so anyway dubdobdee at mastodon dot social, as long as it can be accessed i will never quit any platform, least of all ilx or indeed twitter

https://media.tenor.com/U5RwBfkG6t8AAAAM/elmo-flames.gif

in conclusion and tl;dr i arrived somewhere on the internet before ned so i win

I joined mastodon.lol sever but for the last couple of days the app just says 503 so either the server has busted or Mastodon lol?

I will probably delete the account and try again

mastodon.social has been up and down ftb large recent influx, i *think* the decentralised servers means that mastodon as a whole chugs on even when there's local outage so yes, maybe try another server aka instance (call it by its name)

it's *possible* that someone calling their server "lol" did not have a serious purpose to their project

I only joined because it was called that. Joke is on me.

When I go on account settings it does "Server upgrades, check back later <3".

Anyway, this looks like a good thread on it

Apparently there is a crossposter you can use.

To mirror my tweets to Mastodon, I use this cross-poster. Others are also available. I have it set to mirror all my Tweets except replies.

If I don't feel a Tweet was RIGHT for mastodon, i just pop over quickly and delete it after posting it here. Simples https://t.co/eTXBJFgczo

— John Bull (@garius) November 5, 2022

Once I got through the basics of it it all seems pretty reasonable enough. The mobile app version is quite nicely designed.

Useful general thread here (though speaking from a high follower standpoint) -- also notes how you can make Mastodon look like Tweetdeck, which suits me for sure.

Right. As a heavy tweeter/content creator who is now maintaining BOTH a Twitter and Mastodon presence, here is a short guide to what I have set up, how to do it and lessons I've learned, for others.

TLDR: It's been WAY less hassle than I expected thanks to tips from followers /1

— John Bull (@garius) November 5, 2022

Although that may be the same thread featured above! Well, repetition, etc.

I'm on the waitlist for mastadon.social, but yeah it would be cool if we could figure out how to get an ILX mastadon server; though, perhaps that would just be redundant?

Not really -- since you can move your accounts between servers as desired, having some sort of ILX server even as a stopgap might not hurt.

i meant redundant with ILX itself.

I joined and am hoping to a return to the simpler/more enjoyable days of Tumblr communities.

@sctttn✧✧✧@ms✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧

Try it as a URL!

Weird formatting there!

https://mstdn.social/@sctttnnnt

I don't get it at all, but I am here https://mstdn.social/@akmonday

@lathamgr✧✧✧@ravenat✧✧✧.c✧✧✧

that's right , I ravve

what the hell - diamonds??

@lathamgr✧✧✧@ravenat✧✧✧.c✧✧✧

@lathamgr✧✧✧@ravenat✧✧✧.c✧✧✧

please lord help

v

https://ravenation.club/web/@lathamgreen

ilx has disguised emails for like 15 years dude, write it out like i did

at lathamgreen at whichever dot whatever

great, lathamgreen is now the only person I am following on mastadon. I hope lathamgreen will not be pushing me disinformatioons.

u can say yes to my pending friend request and then follow me if u like :D

or not no pressure

I didn't get one (if that was directed at me). One thing I don't quite get: on mastadon.social, if I search for @quartzcity or @mrnedrick, I see your profiles aand am able to follow you. but this doesn't seem to be generally the case; for instance, tried to follow Damon K. but he's on a different instance entirely but I can't seem to do that without also having an account on that mastadon server? maybe I'm doing this incorrectly. we'll see how long I stay interested, I give it two days.

tried to find people but doesn't seem to work. looks very unlikely that I'll ever use it anyway, seems like a bit too much of a commitment to have a new social media app. anyway https://mastodon.world/@centuriesofsound

I’m on there - @Jelbu✧✧✧@m✧✧.t✧

It works for like 10 minutes of every hour as far as I can tell

Jelbugle mas to

yes sorry, this is me mark s (dubdobdee) talking to you akm (akmonday)

i'm in mastodon social, which may or may not be the same server as mstdn social (probably not the same, which might "explain" the non-connection)

it's telling me follow request is pending approval at the moment -- i know it sometimes takes time to clear (especially at the moment with lots of new ppl joining)

you dfon't need to have an account in more than one server to follow accounts in other servers, but with some inter-server hook-ups it is a bit more intricate (and apparently counter-intuitive, i remember having to puzzle it out when i first joined but can't now recall what the error was that i was making)

(there are actually also some servers which have entirely blocked other servers but that's unlikeley to be an issue for anywhere ppl are currently moving into)

The only alternative to Twitter is the Statscock

I got onto the app but just getting 503 errors

I mean, I have ILX, Facebook, a Viber account, Reddit, a twitter I dont use, an IG I dont use, I still have my livejournal ffs, and I have a blog that I never update.

Fuck am I going to do with more crap to log into. Personally I wish everyone'd start up a subreddit to sit and chat in, but I know thats never gonna happen.

I signed up for a Mastodon account with relative ease, but now that I'm on there have no idea what to do. For me, it suffers from the same flaw as Instagram: you can only search by hashtags. So trying to find interesting accounts to follow by just typing in various artists or writers or bands is impossible.

Me, I'm all for a return to Usenet.

it's funny how nobody is talking about going to Facebook even as a joke

— blaine capatch (@blainecapatch) November 5, 2022

LOL thats because everyone who is on twitter left FB to go there. Its the only reason I even have a twitter - to keep up with a few close friends who straight up do not post anything anywhere else.

xp I'm totally prepared to go back to store-and-forward in case the Internet segments back into national/local networks.

BBS style!

Bring on ilx.i-love-everything and ilx.i-love-music!

A vision!

Usenet is just sitting there for the taking. There's great clients, better ways to block spammers, alas....

I mean the whole point of the original host of ILX was Usenet functionality on the web

For several years, I ran the message boards for Spiritualized and The Church off of a Usenet nntp server app that ran on a spare System 9 Power Mac 7500 in my apartment closet. I still miss those days

Isnt usenet a hive of scum and villany porn spam?

I tried setting up a mastodon account and kept getting forbidden errors with no detail about which field was being rejected. I might try again later.

In other words...

tweeters trying to figure out mastodon pic.twitter.com/Iy49vIZhuj

— Eric Allen Hatch (@ericallenhatch) November 6, 2022

suggesting Mastodon to most people as a twitter replacement is like if you ordered a steak at a restaurant and the waiter handed you the map to a cow pasture and a bolt gun

— 👨🏻‍💻☕️ (@hunterwalk) November 5, 2022

Add me on mastadon https://t.co/CMGUq9o5Z1

— Don Hughes 🎄🎁 (@getfiscal) November 5, 2022

the library of alexandria dril museum but it just contains a single @getfiscal tweet (that one)

Don is truly the masta

proof if proof be need be:

So the guy who coded Mastodon is...Russian.

Just FYI.
🤣

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) November 5, 2022

The guy who coded it is German apparently.

https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109294013603133150

Basically it's really creaky. See where it goes, it may not cool either if twitter dies in a few weeks.

eugen rochko aka gargron, german citizen, lived in germany since age 11 (2004), born in russia of russian-jewish family (source wikipedia)

for eric g = much to ponder

it's time for some game theory!

it's not very big at all and it's made up of lots of mini-communities run by ordinary computer-users giving their time (generally unpaid, tho some have patreons etc)

will it survive a genuinely huge influx in one go? twitter = c.400m (inc many bots of course); mastodon is currently like 700,000 i think? (which is roughly double what it was at the beginning of the week, acc.gargron)

of course every single joining mastodon user could start their own instance, it's a software you download -- that wd be maximally decentralised and stable (it would miss the influx problem) but it wd also manifest as huge problems against social connectivity

it's time for some goyim theory

https://fedi.tips/mastodon-and-the-fediverse-beginners-start-here/#whyisthefediverseonsomanyseparateservers

Would people use an ilxor server? I’d maintain and pay for it if people would use it.

sure, but it's not clear to me what the advantage to any one server is over any other; ie: can we restrict posts to one server to only accounts set up on that server? does that mean all of us ilxors would have to have accounts on the ilx server if we wanted to see the interactions there, or can we keep our accounts that we setup elsewhere? etc.

I think you’re overthinking this. Think of like e-mail. You can use whatever host you’d like and interact with anyone else, from whatever host.

Will keep trying with Mastodon.

Yeah imma just have to go down with the ship this ain’t it. pic.twitter.com/EsAWDoEmC8

— Evil Darkskin Nigga (@FTate05) November 6, 2022

"What is ActivityPub?
Mastodon uses a standardized, open protocol to implement federation. It is called ActivityPub. Any software that likewise implements federation via ActivityPub can seamlessly communicate with Mastodon, just like Mastodon websites communicate with one another."

"Because Mastodon is simply software that can be used to power any website, potential users of Mastodon have the option of choosing a service provider from already-existing Mastodon websites, or to create their own Mastodon website if they wish."

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/#:~:text=Mastodon%20uses%20a%20standardized%2C%20open,websites%20communicate%20with%20one%20another.

I think you could refuse to accpt a user to a mastodon instance if you wanted to restrict it to certain people

The main drawback to the different servers I see so far is it limits your ability to find people. Ned and I, for instance, are on different servers. I found him because I knew to search for him. So following him is no trouble. But when I look to see who he’s following—because after years of being friends on other social platforms I expect to find mutuals—I can only see people he follows *who are on the same server as me*. He might be following 50 or 100 people but I can only see the 8 or 9 who chose the same server as me.

I imagine that as things go on and I find more people to follow and we all get in the habit of reblogging each other, I’ll be less inclined to search for people this way and this drawback will fade away.

No, if you click on the link to (for example) Ned's profile *on his server* (it's very easy - try it!) you can see who all of his followers are and who he's following. That's how I connected with you.

Semi-obligatory dumb Twitter jokes:

Trust me I’ve been trying to join Mastodon for years now but those dudes play FAST

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) November 6, 2022

TECH WRITERS: Joining Mastodon isn't as tricky as it seems.
ME: (Attempting to learn the bass part of "I Am Ahab") I don't know this is pretty challenging!

— Hunter Felt (@HunterFelt) November 5, 2022

This screenshot might be fake but if it's real it makes me slightly optimistic (Eugen is the CEO):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fg6qqoQWYAER-zP.jpg

What was that social network site that I think was more of a Facebook replacement? It was all black in there too.

Diaspora? Ello?

No, if you click on the link to (for example) Ned's profile *on his server* (it's very easy - try it!) you can see who all of his followers are and who he's following. That's how I connected with you.

But if you try to click on one of them to follow and they're on a different server you have to then reload your own server and search their specific name and follow that, rather than just click 'FOLLOW'.

The mastodon mobile app is a much more pleasant experience than the web.

Am also on this thing now, I guess. https://journa.host/@rozlatiff

xpost Yes, even though I've gotten used to the desktop version, the official app is pretty slick, and I've seen reports that other third party apps might be even better.

Diaspora? Ello?

Yes.

I forgot about Diaspora, I think that was initially a livejournal replacement wannit?

one side-effect from reactivating my 2018 mastodon acct is that i'm also suddenly reconnecting with foax from an oldschool messageboard i always liked but did kinda desert round the time i was doing my book (mainly earnest timesink avoidance, never intended as a flounce) = unfogged

more to the point maybe they're reconnecting with me, im guessing this means im more visible there than i was on twitter?

https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109301335584873764

Continuous server upgrades etc. They are v committed and trying their best.

lol

trie to sign up, currently waiting confirmation email.
has been over 30 mins, so suspect its not happening.
i guess i try a different server ?

I'm not following this at all. I wanted to join mastodon.social because it seemed like the largest and most important server? But I couldn't find it when I searched for servers so I just joined another server. But how do I now switch to mastodon.social? I have the app but the search screen just lets me search for posts, hashtags etc. and not servers. How do you get a full list of servers from within the app?

i don't know if there's a way to see other servers/instance *within the app* (and i'm absolutely certain there isn't a way to see *all* of them, some servers hide theemselves by design) but if you already *know* the server you want to join, then go to settings then account then "move to a different account" and the account you move to will be yrs except with the new server switched in

however i'm not certain if mastodon social is currently letting more ppl in, its influx is currently huge (it is the largest but i don't know what "most important" really means in this context: yes its chief mod is also basically site founder but he's also kinda busy at the moment)

tbh i would wait a while and see how things are, or else look around *outside the app* for other suggested servers / instances

Thanks, that's very helpful.

do I get Negronis if I join y/n

absolutely not

here's me for now

https://ravenation.club/@Moodles

I've been able to follow a few people, but I can't see most users on other servers. There were a bunch of you that I tried to add but couldn't find in the lookup. I'd like to be able to look at who other people follow regardless of server. Is there a way to do this or do I have to hop around from server to server looking for people?

this feels a bit like Quantum Leap where you leap from century to century

it's perplexing to me because 3/4 of the people I'm following are on different servers, so clearly that is possible, but then I can't add or see certain other people, so there appears to be some limits.

ok, seems to work better when I include someone's server in the search, although search is just generally working better on the android app than in the browser. One big problem seems to be that a lot of people are on @mastodon.online, and that particular server seems to be fucked, I just can't access it at all

moodles try clicking e.g. on my profile and look thru my follows and followers -- some i expect will be hidden since some servers are delinked from others but others u shd just be able to follow there and then via the + sign? anyway u will recognise some ppl there

mastodon online is probably experiencing a surge r/n

Yeah I can't see anyone you are following lol.

try "browse more on the original profile" (it updates quicker but doesn't have a + sign so you have to click thru to each one)

I found this works best in a browser, on my PC in Chrome I right-click their user name and select open in new tab. Doesn't work so well to follow the link in the main tab.

it has real caractacus potts breakfast-making machine vibes, all gimcrack machinery clicking whirring and stiffly and jerkily undertaking its tasks in the background

eventually the boiled egg rolls down onto yr plate or the floor

So here's a tip -- if you install this app on Twitter to review your account:

https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/

You can check who you're following and see if they have a Mastodon account based on their own settings. Was able to find a slew of people that way. (I grant you might be leery of third-party apps on Twitter at this point but this seemed like the easiest blunt force method and I'll likely uninstall it now that I've used it.)

this is very helpful!

This entire thread should be posted to the backward tech innovations thread.

I'm so confused.

I seem to have signed up for something Irish? mastodon.ie?

Talk to me like I'm a child: Is there one of these servers where everyone is going so that it can be a free-for-all like Twitter and not everyone grouped into chosen silos? Or is it actually *good* to have to choose a silo for a reason I don't understand?

Also, can I change servers if I want to? And keep my username?

Every "let me explain Mastodon" tweet just leaves me more confused and less interested in trying it out.

it turns out it does not matter which server you use to sign up.

discoverability of other accounts is hard though if you are not on a bigger server, I guess. you basically need to know the name of an account you want to follow.

Every "let me explain Mastodon" tweet just leaves me more confused and less interested in trying it out.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0),

what if Ezra Klein wrote an explainer

xp

my workaround for this is looking at who other people are following

It's easy to get lost in the whole decentralized/fediverse rhetoric and there are certain unavoidable elements that do result from that but from dipping my toes in the water on Friday at this point I have a slew of familiar names in my feed and because it's not an overwhelming crush of posts and reblogs (yet, obv.) I can treat it as less of a firehose, and the basic functionality is that of Twitter. *shrug* Works for me? My FB presence is private and I can have more general rambly discussions there, same with IG in terms of the low key use I have for it, so this addresses that aspect of things and allows me to post shorter public thoughts instead of in the venue I was using up until now.

Searching for hashtags and things seems to not work , or there really are not many people using this

I do find I can locate people now if I have their full address.
Hard to knwo what is a shortcoming of mastodon and what is just broken at the moment

lol this thread is more siloed than mastodon

yeah, there are degrees of social media experiences:

ilxor/message boards- for like-minded enthusiasts to enthuse and fight

Facebook-- place to post photos and explain your jokes to your relatives

Twitter-- place to watch a bunch of famous and non-famous people embarrass themselves in front of millions

Mastodon-- who knows? Seems somewhere between message board and Facebook at this point, but in the future could be cool kid twitter or cool kid Parler

maybe mastodon will just be something to add and keep the rest until our cup runneth over with social media

mastodon is where we can practice playing nice so we get the respite to be more horrible everywhere else

Very pro this kind of thing on principle as the original reason I had for checking out of twitter a few years ago was visceral disgust over whatever tiny role I'd played as a longtime user (since the SMS days!) in building up the heft of this thing to the point where it was an appealing lever for people looking to (for example) commit securities fraud or incite a nuclear conflict. Granted, that's just a particularly absurd synecdoche for the broader gnarl of modernity but at least in this case I felt like I could make a choice to opt out.

In practice I'd be really surprised if mastodon represents a stable/viable paradigm. I'm getting the vibe that it's stuck in an awkward middle ground between the goal of delivering something that looks/feels/acts like a familiar web 2.0 platform and the logistical realities of a ton of different people maintaining infrastructure on an ad hoc basis.

But it's worth a good faith effort and we'll have some laughs regardless of how it shakes out: https://mastodon.sdf.org@catniptwinz

Btw was never on sdf but was delighted to see that they had a mastodon instance.

The reason I never used twitter was because it was a "here have all the posts in the world mauahahaha" sort of firehose as Ned says. It was just too bloody much, and I have less than 100 followers/following. But they all retweet endlessly, so I see everything except the people I actually hear from?

But then I realise that, unlike 10 years or more ago, I Do Not Care to blather on about my life to an unseen online audience anymore. So I dunno what the point of any of this is now uuuughhhh *drowns self*.

Well you could create an account, construct a feed of those you want to read and not post otherwise. No reason it can't be used that way!

followed ya moodles

there's kind of a giddy excitement that's not unrelated to how drab the experience is at first. oh how cool! I'm seeing posts from one person I know, and literally nobody else! ~no static at all~

fantastic, I may just post someday

this isn't so bad. seems to be working for the most part. https://ravenation.club/@manthonyslc

ahhh fuggit.

https://masthead.social/@trayce

Went for the journo/writers/bloggers instance - it has loads of ppl, is accepting signups and is the kinda ppl I'd likely want to see.

i'm getting the impression that ravenation.club was started by louis tomlinson?

watching federated is like staring at oncoming traffic on the freeway

some euro thing called #fotomontag is fun, also #catsofmastodon

Are different instances faster/slower? I notice a couple of you are on ravenation and that seems to take forverrrrrr to load up?

Also my apologies but I dont know who Catnip Twinz is haha sorry man :(

I haven't noticed any slowness, but it could have to do with your location vs the location of the server?

Maybe yeah.

I think I'm just gonna stick with ilx and the Instagram account I check once a week

ravenation was being really slow for me there for a while

xp All good, no worries

captnip twinz seems like an interesting person and i welcome their presence in my feed.

mastodon is an apt name for this because it's slow like the ice age !! haha

@catnip: I dont mean I wont follow you! I just dont recognise your handle, are you an ILM person or have u changed handles and I'm just slow.

ravenation.club heating da fuq up

Camila_Cabello
Camila Cabello :verified: @Camila_Cabello

When I was in high school I loved doing group work.

Harry Styles :verified: @Harry__Styles

The awkward moment when i reply to a fake @Louis_Tomlinson Haha!

of course i know these are fake.

reader: for a minute he thought they were real.

xxp Ha okay, sorry for any confusion.

Longtime ILM reader, brief stint posting last year when I thought 'if I value "olde internet" spaces like this (hopefully not an objectionable characterization?) I should probably participate more in the interest of keeping them going' before a new job unexpectedly burned up every last shred of mental energy that I had for participating in this or anything else and I dropped back off the face of the earth for a minute. Not at all someone you "should recognize" in a Cheers sense!

Like (I imagine) everyone else in this thread I'm trying to get my head around Mastodon, have been following people thinking "oh yeah I remember Twitter circa 2007; you just had to follow a bunch of people who were probably going to be fun to talk about records with and let things take their course from there". After a few follows, thought "I should probably say hi in the thread too, so people know what's up."

Anyway, feel free to follow or not; I have no idea whether I'll be all that engaged with Mastodon or in what way, and I absolutely 1000% get being like "don't know who this is, not worth it" in response to a follow request on the internet of 2022.

sort of feel like it makes a difference what server you join. like i could enjoy watching the 'local' feed if it wasn't a bunch of louis tomlinson fans posting about how the louis tomlinson account is fake??

i hope some high value twitter people start using it. though maybe it's more interesting as a 'start fresh' kind of deal and see where it goes, maybe nowhere, maybe something small and interesting.

the thing that will keep me coming back for a while is that it's open source and not for profit, that is naturally appealing to me even if it keeps the content limited and quiet.

Yes its not cavalier like days of yore, I agree there.

Mastodon is like a nice quiet visit to the library - nod your head politely to people you know, maybe the odd whispered conversation here or there - and then off again into the big bad world.

http://philip.greenspun.com/images/pcd0133/monument-valley-goats-40.1.jpg

RETVRN

got my verification email in the middle of the night.
but looks like the server i chose is pretty wobbly to say the least.
have sent a few follow requests to various folks here while i try and figure my way around.

Mastodon.lol mod telling me to log off

"Last update for tonight: The queue is starting to go down, slowly.

For now the best thing you can do to help things recover faster is stay off Mastodon for a few hours. It means less jobs get added to the queue and the delay will get shorter.

Good night"

It is like a library - you have to wait for the inter-library loan!

lol mod otm

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.

Molly JongFast had a post pointing out how Mastodon reinforces the point that quote retweets are destructive and generally are invites to dunk and bully

I see that ravenation has stopped registrations, these servers are all getting overwhelmed

Can't find the twitter thread this morning, but I saw one last night about a guy who got his Mastodon account nuked when the person who ran the server (federation? - not sure of the right term yet) he joined on decided to stop doing it and didn't follow the proper protocol for allowing users to move to a different one. Not sure if that's a one off thing or a wrinkle that still needs to get addressed as it grows more popular.

lol mod otm

― mark s, Tuesday, 8 November 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Rude

"I've got a lot of messages on how to donate to help with server costs, please check the post pinned on my profile for the Patreon (it's always been there!) :blobcat:"

Love how the emoji description is pasted.

person who ran the server (federation? - not sure of the right term yet)

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

i think the obvious appeal with this is that it's not for profit. if that goes away it will become Just Another Platform. that, more than the creakiness / slowness, is what would kill it imo. i think the fact that it works at all is a minor miracle. open source is cool, says someone who is too lazy to do open source.

apparently germany is all over it

i think the obvious appeal with this is that it's not for profit. if that goes away it will become Just Another Platform. that, more than the creakiness / slowness, is what would kill it imo. i think the fact that it works at all is a minor miracle. open source is cool, says someone who is too lazy to do open source.

― ꙮ (map), Tuesday, November 8, 2022 4:15 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

though the more i learn the more it's sinking in that this isn't a "site," it's many sites. some may institute more for-profit things as they grow? but also the fact that there isn't just one or two servers but many should make the basic model a lot more resilient to being "bought out" or w/e.

anyway it's great, i didn't expect it to be so nice.

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...

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

Agreed.

I think if there were standards and these could be enforced that might be a way of solving 2).

But not at scale.

yes all that we need is a technology and a top-down constitution that solves political messiness, no i am not a neolib crackpot

People seem to be pushing Hive as an alternative all of a sudden; seems to have a lot of Twitter-like features except you can also add a song to your profile like MySpace (which was my favorite obnoxious feature).

Solve like we did and let mod bots operate. 50 strikes and you are out (one week only) xp

happy I'm not well known like Wesley

"In brief, he's tired of being harassed constantly by random internet people, and the straw that broke the camel's back was getting run out of Mastodon by malicious users reporting his account simply for being there."

https://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/

I did it: @AlfredS✧✧✧@l✧✧.s✧

l✧✧.s✧ you say?

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

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

Done. That's a smoking fast server!! So I think I was really unlucky last time. We'll see.

Actually want to post there

I am @✧✧@lgbt✧✧✧.sp✧✧✧ if anyone wants to follow my sporadic posts about music and nonsense (including far too many posts about old Eurovisions, I apologise).

Argh, forgot about the redactions - EK is the first bit. lgbtqia.space is the second bit.

We're following each other there, I think?

Yep, we are.

is there a way to find bands easy on this thing

Following this on Mastodon.

Prime Numbers bot won't be tweeting anymore due to Twitter's API and policy changes. The bot lost API access a few days ago, and won't be coming back, but it lives on in a few different places:

web/rss: https://t.co/ujQjfo0AMA
mastodon: https://t.co/FJhv5cV0PJ

— Prime Numbers (@_primes_) July 5, 2023

currently relearning the process of finding people and adding them to a list i have set up : not the easiest of processes to say the least.

is there a way to find bands easy on this thing

If they're on there, you should be able to search for the name of the band and unless they've given themselves a comedy username they'll come up. I don't think bands make themselves accounts there as a matter of course, though, so you might not have much luck unless you're sure they're there already. You also can't search for text within posts so you can't just look for any reference to the band (unless it's a hashtag).

If you're just looking for bands who are on there and to maybe discover something new, there are two options:

1) browse the music servers from joinmastodon.org/servers. See if there's anything you like the look of and then browse their local timeline. For example, https://synthwave.social/public/local.

2) search for hashtags, like #DIY or #ElectronicMusic or #BlackMetal or whatever. You can follow those hashtags to get new posts about them straight in your feed and keep an eye on anyone new posting about the topic.

back into the swing of things now.
however, i clearly need to use hashtags more.

Can someone familiar with the "fediverse" answer a basic question? (I've used Mastodon a little while, but still don't understand some of the underpinnnings.) When it comes to these other platforms that use ActivityPub to talk to each other... how do they actually interact? Like, when I search for a hashtag on Mastodon, should I also theoretically be seeing posts using that hashtag on "Akkoma" and all the others? Or is there more to it? Thx

switched to mastodon since Tuesday

am missing about 50% of the interesting things that Twitter would show me BUT I've had zero right wing posts promoted at me so far so that's probably a win. (and is probably a case of finding the right accounts to follow)

I liked it for a while but the clunky elements (most relating to finding people/topics) eventually sapped my interest. I found Bluesky more rewarding.

Although tbh I’m considering giving up on all social media

didn't bluesky and threads both have their problems. latter is Facebook owned and was algorithmic-only iirc.

but i think bluesky night be winning. I've had this mastodon account for a while though, when bs was still invite only, without really reading it, but swapped my Twitter bookmark to it on Tuesday.

> I found Bluesky more rewarding

I think I want less rewarding from my social media these days.

Most of the academics, scientists, programmers I was following on Twitter moved to Mastodon and quite a few field-of-interest-specific instances have thrived. Everyone else moved to Bluesky.

Yeah it's kinda split audiences but there's no problem with that -- there are good people I've gotten to know strictly through Mastodon, including locally, and as it was where I was after I essentially bailed out of Twitter when Musk bought it, I'll always be glad for it. I'm posting/engaging a bit less there compared to Bluesky but I'm not leaving it either.

I use blusky and mastodon and facebook. they are like different eCAfes in town with their own crowds but I find them all worthwhile

Hey this might not be feasible, but imagine if there was an ilxor mastodon instance. Would anyone be interested in that?

Could be good! I'm fine on mine but could be a nice entry point.