
Mastodon 3.2 - jrepinc
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2020/08/mastodon-3.2/
======
Vaslo
I’ll be that techno neophyte and say that I don’t really understand how to use
Mastodon properly. I’m able to get on and read posts but no idea if I’m where
I want to be. I want to be on a very free speech and open server, even at the
cost of having some human trash posting nonsense on there. What’s the best
approach? I’m tired of seeing a handful of kids at Twitter decide what is
appropriate to post or not.

~~~
rglullis
The best approach is always to run your own.

The second-best approach is to run a managed instance via something like
masto.host or spacebear
([https://app.spacebear.ee/](https://app.spacebear.ee/)).

The third-best approach is to join an instance that is (a) neutral in its
content and (b) not overbearing in its moderation policies. Most of those
listed on joinmastodon fail this test.

I am running a instance at
[https://mastodon.communick.com](https://mastodon.communick.com), and my
moderation policy is basically "don't post anything illegal and follow the
Silver Rule - don't treat others in a way you wouldn't like to be treated".

~~~
INTPenis
I don't advertise my instance, it also blocks registrations from anyone
outside of EU, but I have the same policy.

I'm as left as left gets, my family and friends are made up of several
activists. But I also am annoyed with how hate speech and right wing people
are moderated.

My opinion is that they should first of all be reasoned with. And if you can't
reason with them then each user may block them on their own.

But to just block their entire instance, or "Gab", is to sweep a bunch of
HUMANS under the carpet and not even attempt to communicate with them. That
goes against my core principles.

~~~
input_sh
I agree with you in theory, but in practice I just don't want to spend my time
on social media arguing with someone so fundamentally ideologically opposed to
me.

Sure, I could block the users individually, but I prefer to just use an
instance that de-federates from cesspools of such users.

~~~
INTPenis
I know what you mean. I picked someone from the public timeline a few days ago
and started to try and make sense of their argument.

Within just a few back and forths I realized that this person was either just
bored and trolling, or I was unable to understand their perspective and it was
relentless.

I still didn't block them, or their instance. I saw their message in the
public timeline, it didn't arrive directly to me in any way.

------
rglullis
Ah, so this is why there is a seemingly-random post to Pleroma on the front-
page as well.

Competition is good. I just wish this competition stays healthy and these
projects cooperate more to fight against the centralized social networks
instead of each other.

~~~
stryan
Pretty sure Gargron and lain talk on a semi-regular basis and are on good
terms with each other, so hopefully it will.

~~~
gargron
Correct, we're on good terms.

------
mxuribe
I like the personal note feature. Somewhat CRM-esque, and i can see it being
quite handy. I'm a pleroma user (run my own single-person instance), and
before that used/ran a gnu social instance, but i have always felt that what
gargron and the early mastodon folks have done for bringing more attention to
the fediverse for laypeople is a wonderful thing! Kudos to the mastodon folks
for this update! The more options that exist for the fediverse, the less
relevant the centralized silos become (i know, there's a looooong way to go,
but still).

------
Tenobrus
Does anyone know how I can filter out non-english posts from Mastodon? I set
up an account and followed some people back in 2017, but it's unusable for me
now since I can't read 70% of the content in any of my timelines.

~~~
bremensaki
In your account Preferences, under "Other" there's a checklist where you can
specify what languages you want to see on timelines. If you don't select any,
there's no filtering.

~~~
kabacha
it never really worked though.

~~~
gargron
It does work but not 100% which makes it feel like it doesn't. Language
detection is very far from totally accurate (we use the CLD3 library), so
sometimes it gives the wrong language. People can also just select which
language they post in because when that's done in good faith it's more
reliable than language detection, but of course it can also lead to some posts
not being in the language they're supposed to be in. Using language filters
cuts down on a lot of posts though, even if some slip through.

~~~
kabacha
I'm on few international instances and always had German and French pop up
even-though I have only english checked; Could it be that the instances
themselves are faulty here?

I guess it makes sense that the filter would be confused on tech based talk as
it includes a lot of english loan-words though it's a bit irritating when
browsing public timelines.

~~~
gargron
Language detection is more accurate on longer texts, short messages have a lot
of false positives and many English loan-words would only worsen the situation
indeed.

------
wronglebowski
If I just wanted to host my own instance for my family to post news and
updates on would that be a suitable use case for Mastodon?

I realize it can be federated, but just a singular isolated FB/Twitter clone
would be ideal.

~~~
rglullis
It certainly is a valid use-case, but if you want something that is simpler to
manage, look at pleroma and the Soapbox frontend. Pleroma takes way less
resources and you'd be able to run on a Raspberry PI.

Another thing to consider, though, is to _not_ run something like a social
network and instead just get matrix and create group rooms for your family?
Everyone would still be able to share updates and even call each other. Not
only you eliminate the need of Facebook, but also WhatsApp/Messenger.

~~~
lainsoykaf
I run a matrix server myself and can not really recommend doing so. It takes a
lot of resources and the way e2ee is done is at least questionable.

~~~
rglullis
What is the objection to their e2e?

------
roenxi
As is traditional, I can't work out what it does from this webpage.

Is this thing some sort of client or some sort of server?

~~~
gargron
It's a whole package, a default user interface is bundled with the server. If
you want to learn what Mastodon is, check out
[https://joinmastodon.org](https://joinmastodon.org)

------
anw
I'm happy there is a way to get people off of Twitter, but I do not see
Mastodon having a (good) long term future.

I have tried Mastodon off and on several times. For the few amount of good
posts I've found in my interests (art and music), venturing out of those
interests feels as if I'm wading into a toxic sludge of angry children who
can't see beyond their nose.

It seems to be that the Twitter format leads itself into being a great place
for angry people to constantly barrage their woes at the immovable world [0].

I understand that the world is cruel and unfair, but I also do not want a
constant 24/7 cry of lament that only people who meet every criteria of every
type of victim-hood can have a bad day and anybody else is an evil pig who
doesn't deserve to live, let alone speak. This can be seen in both to the
left-wing and right-wing instances as they both see themselves as perpetual
victims from those in power (police, companies, government, soceity on the
left, and media, companies, government, society on the right).

This kind of vitriol is already seen enough on Twitter. Seeing it even more so
in self-enclosed echo chambers like some Mastodon instances just drives away
any potential for normalcy, and therefore realistic ideas or normal
conversation coming into their community. The loudest voices drown out others,
claiming to have the right answer before they know the question, and not
hearing out any arguments or facts that could possibly counter them.

I wish the best for those who join, but hope we find better means of
communication than what is currently here. Perhaps a method where there is
more talking and hashing out ideas rather than following trends and hashtags.

[0] Somewhat reminiscent to this video by The Onion:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjonGtrCyVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjonGtrCyVE)

~~~
kabacha
This gets very apparent when you take a peek at ruleset of many instances. For
example my instance mastodon.technology just added a rule:

* No unsolicited advice to strangers.

when someone asked what's wrong with recommending alternative software to
people who complain about software the reply was:

> sometimes people just want to scream into the void

Which summarizes this micro-blog screamverse perfectly. The fact that this
sort of behavior is _encouraged_ is actually quite disgusting in my honest
opinion.

I've never used much Twitter but to me it already seems that Mastodon is just
as toxic as Twitter and it seems to be by design.

~~~
ShamelessC
That's such a strange rule to have for a tech instance. Is there really no
better reason for it than that people want to bitch about things without
actually wanting a suggestion on how to solve their issues?

~~~
detaro
There's a few related patterns:

\- it's often noise because you can't act on it (because you need to use X)

\- it's often noise because you already have done your research and are aware
of the options. Especially since many people reply even if they don't have
particularly novel information or even know a lot less than the person that
made the original post. Some people find it grating to get repeated trivial
"recommendations" on everything - on Twitter exasperated replies of "guys, I
can google myself!" aren't uncommon)

\- it's often entirely predictable (i.e. whatever Desktop OS you use, for sure
there's someone asking why you aren't using Linux/FreeBSD/MacOS/Windows10+WSL
instead (strike the one you are currently complaining about))

\- it's repetitive, and especially for more prominent people a large volume of
comments

~~~
ShamelessC
Thanks. It was really bugging me that I couldn't think of optimistic reasons
for that policy. I still don't agree with it, but I suppose anyone who doesn't
can just make their own instance or find one with different rules.

~~~
monadgonad
Remember that having that rule doesn't stop people from _asking_ for advice.
If someone wants to say, "this sucks! What's a better way of doing it?" they
still can. The rule-as-written doesn't even preclude a replier from asking,
"I've got a suggestion, if you're interested?" (although that might still be
frowned upon, it still comes across a lot better than "have you tried this?")

------
stiray
/rant

 _For those that dont agree (downvoters), feel free to self host mozilla sync
server and for added fun, try to do it on freebsd - then you will understand
my point. For developers on mastadon - I hope you did get my point and will
improve this as it might considerably increase your usage base._

My biggest problem with all "those" platforms is that I want to have it self
hosted. I expect one directory/executable (no, not docker) with everything I
need to run it, instead of fishing for different parts all over package
managers etc. I will exclude database from this. Or nginx/apache proxy
configuration.

Same issue as matrix - i would love to run it but what is too much is too
much. Maybe once the golang engine is finished, if they dont blew it and make
a huge dependency tree for nodejs.

I am so sorry but if I proceed with the philosophy that projects have for the
deployment, I will run out of storage and spend my whole life just updating
packages. Not to mention if I decide to not use it.

I think that all complex projects are doing the same mistake for last 20
years: they always ignore the "packing" or the end distribution form that
their project will have at the end - a huge number of different blobs with 3rd
party dependencies are created and it is just expected that this is trivial
for end user to set up and maintain.

/rant off

~~~
heavenlyblue
Do you expect the developers to build twice the backend interfaces to satisfy
a single use-case?

Now you could say it should be easy, but if it is easy then you could become a
maintainer of the implementation.

~~~
asutekku
It’s more of the fact that the approach the devs chose is suboptimal.

------
art4ur
That audio player looks fantastic.

~~~
kabacha
It does look great though now that I think of it I've never seen anyone share
audio on mastodon before; maybe this new change could help build musician
communities on Mastodon.

------
seemslegit
Come for the fun of having to setup and admin you own server, stay for the
feeds of furries pics and posts in languages you don't speak.

------
rawoke083600
The name always just sounds like some kinda "steriods" :/

------
nikolay
Wow! This is some heavy piece of software... given the managed hosting has
something like 20 reqs/sec. Are we back in the 90s?!

------
FreakyT
I still can’t believe they expect anyone to take Mastodon seriously when the
main action in the app is called “tooting”. Yes devs, we get it, it’s a
hilarious fart joke and you’re so clever.

~~~
procinct
I thought it was supposed to be more like a mastodon tooting with it’s trunk?

~~~
FreakyT
Well of course, but since the word can mean both things, it’s a pun regardless
of whether or not the devs intended it to be one.

------
MikeD9
Something I read on the internet the other day: Rails is so old technology and
it does not scale. It's days are numbered but until then, let's use mastodom
for private social network, host our projects on github.com, use stripe for
our payments, get funded on kickstarter, stream our videos on twitch.

~~~
joelbluminator
You were being sarcastic , not sure why you're downvoted. Yes, it's pretty
ignorant to say you can't build stuff of scale with Rails, there are so many
multi billion companies running on Rails it's getting ridiculous. Shopify is
slowly becoming the size of Oracle in terms of market cap. So the next
argument is yes you can build it with Rails but why not choose something
productive AND performant like (Go / Elixir / Kotlin / Crystal / Node etc
etc). I think you can build anything with anything nowadays. Rails is still
one of the leading options, it's a productive, battle tested, mostly stable,
well maintained and overall nice framework to build on. Can you build product
X with something other than Rails? Yes you can. Does that mean X is definitely
superior to Rails ? No it doesn't.

------
nurettin
My Mastadon experience: click fediverse, try to filter out sheets and sheets
of scrolling chinese, japanese (both authentic and weeaboo), spanish terrorist
propaganda, whore ads "in the bay area", anime style drawings of nude underage
girls, bots spamming their sensor readings, teens pouring their hearts out
into long poetry or whining about their sleep schedule, looking for anything
interesting. Sometimes I come across a bot that infrequently posts some
interesting art or news, or the account of some geniune productive person who
isn't into self-aggrandizement, but those are few and far between.

~~~
rglullis
Quick solution to your problems:

1\. Find the genuine productive people you are interested in following and
follow them.

2\. Don't use/ignore the fediverse timeline, especially if you are on a big
instance. That would be like trying to use twitter by checking the firehose.

3\. Profit.

------
throwawaysea
What is the point of Mastodon if its creators practice the very censorship
that centralized platforms like Twitter and Reddit practice? I feel like I
can’t trust a platform/protocol whose controllers harbor anti free speech
views. [https://reclaimthenet.org/mastodon-blocks-
gab/](https://reclaimthenet.org/mastodon-blocks-gab/)

~~~
egypturnash
It’s decentralized censorship. Run your own and you’re free to accept anything
you like. Be warned that if your instance’s about page says you’re all for
“free speech”, a lot of other admins will casually block your entire instance
if you and/or your users start violating their rules of behavior, what with a
general tendency for “free speech” instances to end up as havens for trolling
and racism.

~~~
DuskStar
Can I setup my own instance that peers with 5 of the top servers by user count
at the same time? So pawoo.net, mastodon.social, switter.at, joindiaspora.com
and gab.com?

Or will some instances ban you by association?

~~~
egypturnash
Yes, there are some admins who will ban any instance that federates with Gab
and its ilk. Personally I think that’s going a bit overboard.

