Mastodon

[Monica Dream]

I love a good joke.

Operative word here being "good"...

 

[Monica Dream]

Social Media is a fucking joke.

Naw, most social media is either a horror show, tragedy or combination of the two.

 

[bubblesort]

After getting trolled yesterday, I found the actual admin for my mastadon server. Here's a toot, from the real admin:

We have now collectively gained 112,413 monthly active users in the last few days, and 149,720 compared to the end of March. That's a 62% increase. Total now at 384K MAU across Mastodon.

Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)

We have now collectively gained 112,413 monthly active users in the last few days, and 149,720 compared to the end of March. That's a 62% increase. Total now at 384K MAU across Mastodon.

mastodon.social

I don't think mastadon is actually hitting critical mass. I don't think it can, in it's current form. The learning curve is too steep. It would be interesting if it did, though. I wonder if Trump's Truth platform would federate with the rest of the world if it got big. Even if Mastadon is a failure as a social network, it is influential in social network design, kinda like My Space, and Live Journal.

 

[Khamon]

Several admins have closed their registrations and published statements claiming that any user can invite someone to join their server. But the instances I've applied to have that feature deactivated so, in fact, not any user can invite someone to join the server. Cry Khamon a river he'll just have to wait until registrations are available again.

 

[WolfEyes]

Several admins have closed their registrations and published statements claiming that any user can invite someone to join their server. But the instances I've applied to have that feature deactivated so, in fact, not any user can invite someone to join the server. Cry Khamon a river he'll just have to wait until registrations are available again.

I leave the hoop dancing to the pros.

 

[Isabeau]

You can always change servers after. It's relatively easy.

I have two accounts now. One for me, and one for plants, on two different servers.

Just like twitter, it may seem weird at first, but you have to follow many for your home timeline to be interesting. The other two timelines (regional and federation if I remember correctly) are more active.

For the time being, since I'm not following many people yet, I find it to be a giant Nobody Cares thread of random thoughts which isn't of much interest for me. When you know people, you may care about comments like;

- I'm so tired but can't sleep.
- Just woke up and having coffee.
- Fuck.
- I'm horny.
etc.

But from a bunch of strangers, not so much.

Eventually, after following people with same interests, you home timeline will get better. They also get to know you...

Twitter wasn't that great at the beginning either for me until I followed atleast 150

 

[Noodles]

I don't think mastadon is actually hitting critical mass. I don't think it can, in it's current form. The learning curve is too steep. It would be interesting if it did, though. I wonder if Trump's Truth platform would federate with the rest of the world if it got big. Even if Mastadon is a failure as a social network, it is influential in social network design, kinda like My Space, and Live Journal.

You are really not wrong. Especially right now. The influx of uaers have exposed a lot of the games in the system. Seems like nost instances did not have the power to support a lot of users. I can't post images at all on two instances, and one still never loads the timeline of everyone on mobile.

Hopefully aomeone takes note and gets a better isea of how to improve things.

Its a platform that has been around for a bit. I can't easily find a join date, but I set up an account years ago, a few actually, after hearing it mentioned on the TWIT podcast during a discussion about the "Fediverse".

It would be really great of the Fediverse ever took off. Its essentially, the old style web, where everyone ran their own hosts and ran their own blogs and such, with the addition of webhooks that give Social Media like features. Think of it like, I could run a Wordpress site, then "Reshare" your Mastodon Toot to my wordpress, and you would get the same sort of notifications and credits like people resharing within silos like Facebook and Twitter.

Like you said, its too complicated though, and right now, too unreliable and buggy.

As for Federated Truth, I beleive Gab, tried to make a Mastodon instance when they got dumped from every host, and it failed because every Mastodon Admin banned them.

 

[Free]

Operative word here being "good"...

Well, on occasion I still appreciate a bad one.

 

[Khamon]

I've discovered two attractive instances that are both on the verge of being handed off or being shut down. It seems, from the ensuing discussions, that a two-to-three year lifespan is typical for a topical, other than technology, server. This is an early impression so may not be accurate.

 

[Noodles]

I've discovered two attractive instances that are both on the verge of being handed off or being shut down. It seems, from the ensuing discussions, that a two-to-three year lifespan is typical for a topical, other than technology, server. This is an early impression so may not be accurate.

Yeah, that kind of feels like the curse of decentralization. You can make your own instance fairly cheaply and easily, but if it gets popular, running it becomes a headache and an expense.

The Instance I am on, the owner has been complaining about how some back end processing of images and videos in Mastodon's design, absolutely kills the server.

 

[Khamon]

We are now @eric@wandering.shop and have redirected Khamon@social.linux.pizza followers to the wandering account from whence we shall now post et. al. If you plan to redirect an old account to a new one, know this, you must first set up the alias (old account name) in the new account; then redirect the old account to the new. Fun Times!

 

[Khamon]

Does a feature exist that will cause a timeline to display threads rather than individual posts? I currently read a post, then realize that the next post precedes it, and three post later precedes that one, and the fifth one after that begins the thread that I've now read backward. This was a major point of confusion for me in the Twitter.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

With Twitter imploding it's worth taking a look at alternatives, and another look at Mastodon if you haven't already. Just a brief summary:

1. It is Twitter-LIKE, but it is definitely not Twitter. There are some new things you'll have to learn and get used to; but while having to learn them is annoying upfront, they are simple things and you only have to learn them once.

2. The main things that are like Twitter are: you can make posts and follow people. You can retweet their posts (it's called a Boost). You can like (Favorite) posts. You can use and search hashtags. You can search for people by actual name and by @name. You can post links and images and (I think) video clips.

3. Your feed is not algorithmically curated. Your Home feed is just posts by people you follow, and posts they've boosted from other people. You can also sort the people you follow into custom Lists and read each List's feed separately if you want - prolly not especially useful until you're following a LOT of people.

4. Liking/starring/favoriting someone's post adds it to your favorites list and sends a little notification to them that you've liked it; but a post that gets a lot of Favorites doesn't "show up higher" in anyone's feed because again remember, there's no algorithm that cares about something like that. If you want to boost a post's visibility, Boost it!

5. Search for some hashtags to find posts and people to follow. Search the #followfriday hashtag to find whole lists of people to follow. ^^ Put some hashtags in your profile, follow randos who share your interests, and follow people back who follow you out of the blue - you can always unfollow them later if they turn out not to be your mesh. The more you're followed, the more people will see the posts you make and the posts from others that you boost, and that's how everyone's feed comes alive.

6. The big thing that's not like Twitter is that instead of everyone on Mastodon all being in one basket, they are divided into many baskets called "servers" or "instances", that have their own admins and mod teams. However, this only LOOKS like a complication. People from different servers can still follow each other and see and boost each other's posts, the only difference you'll actually see is that the server-name at the end of their @-name will be different. Servers CAN function as a sort of smaller community within the larger service - but you don't have to worry about that right now. If you're new/just getting started, you will have to choose a server but just choose one of the mega "General" servers with thousands of people in it, like mastodon.social or mastodon.online. You can migrate your account to a different server whenever you want without too much effort (and still retain all your posts and be able to talk to all of your follows/followers like before), so as a newbie just consider servers to be like an advanced feature that you can look into later when you're more comfortable.

7. NO ADS

8. Elon Musk is not on Mastodon

9. Elon Musk cannot buy Mastodon even if he wanted to, and nor can anyone else, real or corporate.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I've not yet filled out my profile (hope to do that tomorrow) but I'm at @innula_zenovka@mstdn.social in case Twitter implodes. I probably won't post much, but and increasing number of twitter accounts I follow are setting up there.

This thread has some helpful suggestions

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

My infos are already out of date - because of the flood of new users in the last couple of days, the devs are now recommending that you join mid-to-small-sized servers instead of the biggest ones, lol. BUT, everything else I said still holds- as a newbie, the server you're on doesn't matter because you can follow/be followed and see and reply to the posts of your follows etc even if they're on a different server from you. So still, just like, pick a random one and don't spend too much thought on it.

 

[Beebo Brink]

So still, just like, pick a random one and don't spend too much thought on it.

I wanted to join the server for a science-fiction community with a goodly number of queer folk, but you have to be invited to join and I didn't feel like cold-calling someone to beg for an invitation. As a pretty good second best, I joined a group of queer Tech workers instead. I'll be exploring Mastodon over the next few weeks to see if it's a good fit or not.

I rarely posted on Twitter, I mostly just read other people's Tweets, so I'm mulling over just closing my account. I know some people are in the "stay and fight" camp, but honestly, this is not a public square, this is a commercial product. I don't really see the honor in standing your ground when the ground is on private property.

 

[Grandma Bates]

I wanted to join the server for a science-fiction community with a goodly number of queer folk, but you have to be invited to join and I didn't feel like cold-calling someone to beg for an invitation. As a pretty good second best, I joined a group of queer Tech workers instead. I'll be exploring Mastodon over the next few weeks to see if it's a good fit or not.

I rarely posted on Twitter, I mostly just read other people's Tweets, so I'm mulling over just closing my account. I know some people are in the "stay and fight" camp, but honestly, this is not a public square, this is a commercial product. I don't really see the honor in standing your ground when the ground is on private property.

Every eyeball on twitter is more support and money for Elon Musk. Furthermore, the vast majority of conservatives I have interacted with on twitter only care about arguing and do not know the difference between making a point and posting the last tweet in an exchange. I will miss the academics, editors, and reporters that I found on twitter. Other than that there is nothing of value. I have found that my life is brighter without twitter.

Mastodon is a little weird at first, but

Christoffer Olsen (@ctolsen@masthead.social)

Lotta complaining about the unintuitiveness and learning curve of Mastodon from people who use Excel on a daily basis.

mastodon.social

Also, some info on how to find journalists homes on mastodon:

Charles Seife (@cgseife@sciencemastodon.com)

For #journalists and other #media types trying to find each other: So far, there are two lists of #twittermigrants. One's at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13No4yxY-oFrN8PigC2jBWXreFCHWwVRTftwP6HcREtA/edit Please add yourself if you're not on it! The other is at...

mastodon.social

the two links:

mastodonpeople/mastojournos.txt at main · cgseife/mastodonpeople

Contribute to cgseife/mastodonpeople development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Lexxi]

Apparently I haven't logged in since, I think, April. And . . . no one I followed posted since April. yay? That or they moved and it didn't tell me they moved.

So, I followed three accounts on other servers just now, but it doesn't let me know I followed them on my own list of Following. So how do I find them again?

My home feed never actually loads, so I won't find them there. They aren't on Local or Federated.

Hmm. I just replied to someone. They are on another server. It required me to enter something into Choices boxes, but didn't tell me what that meant. Post appeared on my feed, but not on the other person's feed.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

 

[Lexxi]

Am I supposed to create a new account on every server? Sure I can follow them from the server I'm on, but I can't see their posts, my replies end up on my server not theirs, and I can't tell, on my server, that I'm following them. So....

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Am I supposed to create a new account on every server? Sure I can follow them from the server I'm on, but I can't see their posts, my replies end up on my server not theirs, and I can't tell, on my server, that I'm following them. So....

I think you see people's posts ("toots") posted only after you start following them. I followed a bunch of people yesterday whom I follow on Twitter and my Home tab had filled up by today with posts by them or ones they've promoted.

You need only to create one account, I think. You see all the new posts on your server, whether or not you follow them, on the Local tab.

My account is @innula_zenovka@mstdn.social, if anyone wants to follow me (and I'll follow back).