
A Mastodon-exclusive week - blinry
https://morr.cc/woolly-week/
======
x1798DE
I'm less than impressed by the federation model of Mastodon (though it doesn't
need too many tweaks to make it work). The main problem I have is the fact
that you are pretty tied in with your instance. I think most of the problems I
have _viewing_ content from other instances can be solved with better clients:

\- tag searches only cover posts that your instance knows about (i.e. it
searches the federated feed rather than querying a list of federated
instances) \- You can't customize your "federated" feed to merge multiple
instances' local feeds (especially important on small instances and when
looking at small instances).

The more fundamental issues that I think has to be addressed at the "protocol"
level is that I'd really like my identity to be portable. As it is now, if I
like 10 different small instances, I have to join all 10, then I might have to
repeat or boost my posts from all the relevant instances to get them to show
up in the local feed - plus people who want to follow me will find 10
different accounts on different instances and not know which ones to follow.
If, client-side, I just create a bot that auto-posts on multiple instances, if
my followers on a given instance are following different versions of my
account, the federated feed on that instance will be spammed with multiple
posts.

I think some sort of customization where an identity is at least partially
independent from its instance is required here.

~~~
cemerick
Portable identities as a feature is definitely being worked on, but IIRC it
will only help in the "I need to move from one instance to another" case. I
don't have a project issue number handy, but it's there.

Multiple identities seems like a problem best solved by client-side tools
(e.g. tweetdeck handles this usage really well IME).

~~~
x1798DE
> Multiple identities seems like a problem best solved by client-side tools
> (e.g. tweetdeck handles this usage really well IME).

I agree in the sense that I might want something like a role / brand identity
and a personal identity, but I was considering something more like instance-
specific aliases or identities. The first-pass solution at this would be one
where you can specify that different accounts on different instances are all
the same person so that posts duplicated on multiple instances (i.e. in the
local feed of that instance) can be de-duplicated in a federated feed that
includes more than one of the aliases.

External clients won't be able to stop people from following one of the alias
instances and not the "canonical" instance, and they won't be able to make
servers de-duplicate content that is cross-posted to multiple instances. If
this isn't addressed in the protocol, you'll get people hacking together
"boost bots" that duplicate your identity to multiple instances (with the
issues that comes from hacking something like that into your client) in the
same way that they are already using "follow bots" that just randomly follow
tons of users on other instances to force more thorough federation between
instances.

------
dkhenry
I don't like the idea of walled gardens and echo chambers, which is the major
benefit Mastodon is providing over Twitter. Already this isn't morphing into a
community where people have more control, its encouraging people to insulate
themselves into communities where everyone thinks the same way and dissenting
opinions can be squashed by the site moderators. I would like to think this
kind of freedom would lead to greater exchange of ideas and open lines of
communication, but everything I have seen online points in this going the
opposite direction.

~~~
cemerick
The whole premise of federation is that you're not limited to talking with
those on your home instance. What about Mastodon will yield more insular
experiences than Twitter?

As it is, the fact that I can see and interact with people on the local and
federated timeline (much like one used to in the oldold days of the twitter
firehose) means I am in _less_ of an echo chamber than I am on twitter, in
every sense.

Your definition of "dissenting opinions" is essential to this. If it's
"genuine points of conflicting dialogue", I don't see any squelching of that
in the slightest. If it's "hate speech, advocation of violence, etc", then
yeah, that stuff has been shut down pretty hard, and I'm happy for it.

~~~
dkhenry
Mastodon will yield a more insular experience because it allows moderation to
happen by a few people and, since they are effectively own your online
identity once you have established presence on their server you are bound by
their decisions. Once given that power it is extremely unlikely that any
server admin, unless they are explicitly committed to free and open speech,
will continue to allow dissent when it is so easy to control it.

This is effectively a repeat of the sub-reddit moderation scheme, but applied
to a twitter like messaging platform. Go look around reddit for a general
discussion forum where there is healthy tolerant community, outside of very
specific limited topics where moderation is focused solely on keeping people
on topic you will find moderators who have used their ability to create
insulated echo chambers.

~~~
cemerick
"We'll see how it goes" and "it can't be worse than what we have now" are my
basic postures to this kind of critique. It's very, very clear that Twitter
(for example) is hardly an exemplar. If you are concerned about moderation
being in the hands of just a few people, I presume you're super-concerned
about Twitter, facebook, etc etc.

Again, I think it's important to be explicit about what you mean by "free and
open speech", "dissent", etc.

I don't really see the analogy to sub-reddits, or shared forums in general. On
my instance, the only stuff that's eligible for ejection is illegal porn, hate
speech, abuse/harassment, etc. If that's an "echo chamber", then we don't have
a shared vocabulary here.

~~~
dkhenry
I don't think it will start out as an echo chamber, but as time goes by the
desire to limit the speech of not just those limited categories will lead to
at least some, and if history is an indicator most, of the instances limiting
their connectivity to the network to keep out speech they don't agree with,
but that decision will be made by the few who run the instances and control
the peering, and even those who have good intentions will be faced with going
along with the swarm ( limit speech ), or face their node being cut off as
well. These kinds of protests and ultimatums are common on twitter (
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=petition+to+remove+an+account+on+t...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=petition+to+remove+an+account+on+twitter&t=ffab&ia=twitter)
) ,but thankfully no one has enough clout on twitter to make them actually do
anything. That will not be the case on a Mastadon instance when 25% of your
server threatens to jump ship if you don't de-peer a node over some comment
they don't like.

~~~
cemerick
To paraphrase what you're getting at with the ~slippery slope argument:

""" 'Free speech' means absolutely nothing can be off limits, ever, because in
some theoretical future timeline, that means we won't be able to voice
controversial opinions. Bluntly, if oven memes are at risk, then that means we
won't be able to have dialogue on race relations or tax policy. """

You're right that, in general, this has been the state of affairs on Twitter,
and it's a top-3 reason why a lot of people are interested in exiting that
platform. Few want to spend time in a 4chan dystopia.

~~~
dkhenry
I think of it less as a slippery slope and more of a base state. All systems
will regress to the base state and this one is designed with a base state of
segregated walled off partitions, not because people are evil or want it to be
that way, but because that will be the easiest thing to do.

edit: Also this isn't some theoretical, unproven thing that will happen to far
future generations. At this point its almost a surety that it will happen in
less then ten years.

------
rabidsnail
I'm probably going to turn this into a blog post but this is the outline of my
take on what federation is good for:

* different people have different needs from social networks

* starting new social networks is hard becasue getting a critical mass of users is hard

* people would have social networks that are better tailored to their needs if there was a larger diversity of social networks

* centralized platforms target the average of everyone which doesn't serve anyone very well

* there are two ways to get critical mass: piggy-backing off an existing network or trying to bootstrap one from friends/family/interest groups

* piggy-backing is awkward because the upstart network and the established network both want to kill each other in the long run, but think they can get value out of each other in the short run

* federation can provide the benefits of piggy-backing without being adversarial

* if it's the case that each person has a social network that's right for them that isn't right for that many people, then federation can be a stable equilibrium

------
rocky1138
I run a GNU Social (Mastodon compatible) instance for Kitchener Waterloo
hackers at [https://kwat.chat](https://kwat.chat) . I know many of the people
personally and consider them truly bright. You're more than welcome to join!
(or follow from your instance)

~~~
unknown2374
Hey fellow KWian! Looks like the site is extremely slow, I'm hoping that's a
temporary issue as a result of posting about it on HN, but you might want to
get that looked into if the issue persists.

~~~
rocky1138
You're right, it is slow! I have to find out why. Do you know much about GNU
Social? Is there a caching feature? Am I missing an obvious optimization
switch in the config?

------
Karrot_Kream
I wish there were fewer references to Mastodon and more to GNU Social (since
Mastodon is a particular implementation) but the more people in the ecosystem
the better!

~~~
cemerick
OK, I'll bite.

IMO, GNU Social / the broader "fediverse" is mostly uninteresting to me as a
user, for a bunch of reasons:

* The user experience simply is more pleasant (a tight tweetdeck-esque UI vs. GNU Social's Twitter 2009 skin?)

* only mastodon supports important features like CW and message privacy flags

* GNU social instances, in general, are not pleasant places. For whatever reasons, the worst fediverse instances (i.e. those that feature child porn, hate speech, etc etc) are generally GNU Social. This will (and maybe already has, to some degree) changed, but it matters _a lot_ that the vast majority of mastodon instances and mastodon users are basically decent people that are very conscious of the climate around them.

It's great that Mastodon can federate with GNU Social instances (I know and
follow some people that are on GNU Social instances), but they are different
things with important distinctions.

P.S. it's funny that GNU enthusiasts are doing the "you should call it
GNU/Mastodon", etc., or otherwise conflating the two as demonstrating here.
Federation just happens over a set of related protocols; Mastodon shares no
code lineage with any GNU Social implementation AFAIK. An analogue would be if
we were supposed to mention NCSA in a post about nginx. But GNU folk are gonna
GNU, I guess? ;-P

~~~
Torgo
>only mastodon supports important features like CW and message privacy flags

CW was a bolt-on feature that was developed without any consideration for
other fediverse servers and how they communicate using shared protocols,
privacy isn't really private when you cross servers unless you trust both
admins, there are tools for this

> GNU social instances, in general, are not pleasant places. [...] it matters
> a lot that the vast majority of mastodon instances and mastodon users are
> basically decent people

The Quitter servers have reasonable rules on this, and I dispute that Mastodon
users are basically decent people. They are just people, like everyone else.
The tight, polite and respectful Mastodon culture died when the network grew
20x. Now I see plenty of jerks, admins are sharing blocklists based on zero
information and hiding the fact from their users, if you speak a non-english
language you can be as offensive as you want to be, and there is a massive
Japanese Mastodon server that is flooding the network with child porn.

>it's funny that GNU enthusiasts are doing the "you should call it
GNU/Mastodon"

Literally no one is seriously doing this.

~~~
KirinDave
> CW was a bolt-on feature that was developed without any consideration for
> other fediverse servers and how they communicate using shared protocols

Because how many years did they have to develop it and elected not to? Forking
happens to meet demand.

> Now I see plenty of jerks, admins are sharing blocklists based on zero
> information and hiding the fact from their users,

Which instance. Name names.

> if you speak a non-english language you can be as offensive as you want to
> be

We'll block them pretty soon. Already userscripts to GT toots inline are
circulating. Don't worry.

> and there is a massive Japanese Mastodon server that is flooding the network
> with child porn.

It is a tesatment to the Mastodon network that this was resolved in under 12
hours. Twitter has let CP accounts live for far longer.

~~~
Torgo
Frame your needs however you want, if you sign up for a federated network you
assume some responsibility to do things with consideration for
interoperability and standards.

~~~
KirinDave
Does not the network have are responsibility to evolve to meet the needs of
its users?

I had read recently Mastodon quickly had more users on the federated network
than the active population of every other individual codebase.

------
mxuribe
I wonder if integrating any of the gnu social twitter bridges or plugins would
get the best of both worlds? Does anyone have experience implementing
something like this:
[https://wiki.loadaverage.org/gnusocial/plugins/twitterbridge](https://wiki.loadaverage.org/gnusocial/plugins/twitterbridge)
?

~~~
kstrauser
This isn't at all the same, but I think it's in general category of
"transition easers": [https://mastodon-bridge.herokuapp.com](https://mastodon-
bridge.herokuapp.com) Basically, it shows you which of your Twitter friends
have signed up for Mastodon and registered themselves.

It does nothing to share content between the two worlds, but that's probably
for the best.

~~~
mxuribe
Yep, I knew about that; but appreciate it. Right now, discovery is not my
priority...its more about me being lazy to post my stuff to multiple UIs. Its
2017, my lazy self simply wants to post to my gnu social, and have computers
under my control auto-post to maybe 1 or 2 other destination silos ( _cough_
[https://indieweb.org/POSSE](https://indieweb.org/POSSE) _cough_ )

Again, thx anyway! ;-)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
How about dropping Twitter for Mastodon entirely? What are you really leaving
behind, anyway?

~~~
CivilianZero
All the time spent building your network and all the people who would not be
moving with you. So...the network and the social part of a social network.

I have an account on both, at the moment (three separate Mastodon instances,
actually).

~~~
scandox
Is it necessary to have different accounts to communicate across instances?
Surely not?

~~~
swampangel
It's not necessary, one account lets you reply/boost/communicate with anyone.

But if you find an instance catering to a community/topic you like, you may
want to create an account there to fully participate in that instance's local
timeline.

------
Grue3
I takes a lot of effort to create a social network that's even harder to
navigate than Twitter, but, by god, they did it. As a logged out user, it's
literally impossible to follow any conversations that happen on there.

------
fake-name
I was very confused about how a heavy-metal band was having an "exclusive
week".

Apparently mastodon is also a twitter-like thing.

