[HN Gopher] Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon ___________________________________________________________________ Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon Author : srvmshr Score : 221 points Date : 2022-10-30 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitodon.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitodon.com) | encryptluks2 wrote: | Surely there has to be another way to do this besides logging in | with Twitter. Heck, they could just have you post a verification | tween on your Twitter account. | bpodgursky wrote: | You can't view an account's followers/following without being | logged in. And if you try to back a service using a single bot | account, you're going to get instantly banned b/c of suspicious | traffic. | sigmar wrote: | Keybase somehow manages to do verification through a twitter | post, surely there could be a similar method for Mastodon? | bpodgursky wrote: | You can see a person's latest tweets without a login. Just | play around in incognito and you can see: | https://twitter.com/elonmusk | [deleted] | [deleted] | spaceywilly wrote: | Maybe they can create a specific pattern people can enter in | their Twitter bio, then build a crawler | throwaway221017 wrote: | augustuspolius wrote: | This maybe a noob question - does Mastodon allow replies? The few | profiles referenced in this thread that I visited look like | announcement boards, with no way to comment or start a | discussion. | | I am interested in electronic music and followed several links | from fedi.directory. E.g. https://mastodon.art/@merle, | https://mastodon.cc/@Sevish, https://sonomu.club/@luka. Is that | normal that there are no discussions? Also one of the links led | to https://v.basspistol.org/a/setto/video-channels, which looks | completely different, like a personal page from the 90s, not a | Twitter-like app. | | I thought Mastodon was a Twitter replacement, but was surprised | by how uninviting and empty the entire recommended directory for | electronic music is. | jeroenhd wrote: | It certainly does. From your example accounts: | https://mastodon.art/@merle/105821287332308089 | | I think there are just fewer people active on these platforms, | which isn't great for interaction. | | As for v.basspistol.org, that's not a Mastodon instance but a | Peertube (derived) instance. Both are part of the so-called | Fediverse, but Mastodon (and similar) intent to replace/extend | Twitter/Facebook whereas Peertube intends to replace/extend | Youtube. | | Edit: perhaps worth mentioning is that both types of social | media share a protocol called ActivityPub. This is how several | social media systems (Twitter replacements, Reddit | replacements, Youtube replacements, etc.) can all communicate | with each other. NextCloud, for instance, also has an | ActivityPub system integrated, which means your toots and the | shared files/comments may end up in the same system, all with | some manner of interoperability. | augustuspolius wrote: | Interesting. Wonder if it could be clearer if they were still | showing a comment field or a reply button to non-logged in | users. Just to surface the feature. | | Thanks for the info on Peertube, I heard the name before but | didn't realize it's a federated app. | | Reply to the edit: thanks for the pointer! Reading about | ActivityPub made me feel pretty excited both about the | technology and about Mastodon. | letier wrote: | I never cared much about twitter. But I'd be very happy to get a | couple of good tech profiles on Mastodon recommended. :) | commoner wrote: | FediFollows (@FediFollows@mastodon.online) recommends | interesting accounts to follow on Mastodon. Many of these | accounts are tech and FOSS-related. | | https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows | | They've also listed all of their recommendations in a | directory: | | https://fedi.directory | letier wrote: | Thanks that seems like a great starting point! | masukomi wrote: | ugh. this has a killer flaw | | > Looking for Mastodon users progress, scanned 867 of 867 users | you follow on Twitter. Discovered 0 Twitter users on Mastodon who | have previously linked their Twitter and Mastodon accounts by | logging into Twitodon. | | WHO HAVE PREVIOUSLY LINKED ACCOUNTS... BY LOGGING IN TO TWITODON | | the odds of that having happened for any notable subset are so | low as to make this useless. | Brakenshire wrote: | It would be much more useful to search using the "people you | follow" filter. | styfle wrote: | Instead of creating a new service, it would be better if this | read from https://keybase.io since those mappings already | exist. | [deleted] | wrycoder wrote: | You would want to think very carefully about giving Twitodon | these rights to your Twitter account: | | _Things this App can view... | | People who follow you and people who you follow. | | All the Tweets you can view, including Tweets from protected | accounts. | | Any account you can view, including protected accounts._ | pigeons wrote: | Often mastodon servers either intentionally or naturally have a | "theme", which is really helpful for discovering interesting | content and users. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | I was skeptical on Mastodon. But I'm actually realling enjoying | it. It's having a surge in popularity the last few days. When I | checked it out a couple years ago it didn't click with me. But | now I'm liking it, and I think there's potential there. | | It won't "replace" Twitter. But a good crowd of people has | collected around there, and there's quite a bit of enjoyable | content coming through. | augustuspolius wrote: | Is there a non-niche general Mastodon instance that's really | popular? That would be the easiest way for me personally to | embrace it. I checked a few instances and it's all very niche | and very empty. | | (To clarify, I don't mind niche instances, just at this stage | there isn't enough discussion or interesting profiles to | follow.) | cmrdporcupine wrote: | mastodon.social is by far the largest, but the recommendation | is generally to find the one that has interests & people on | it you find interesting to start. you'll get content from | people on mastodon.social anyways. | augustuspolius wrote: | This looks great, definitely more active and offers a good | variety of topics/profiles. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | I went with indieweb.social. I think some people from | hackernews might find a vibe they like generally there. | bkuehl wrote: | You can be a part of a large or small instance and your | consumption/conversation is not limited to users on that | instance. You can follow people from other instances as well | as scroll through a timeline that is posts/toots from across | the fediverse (not just your local instance) | augustuspolius wrote: | Got it. Does it make any difference where I register first? | E.g. if that instance disappears overnight, will I be able | to recover my account or not? I understand that I can | access posts from all instances in the instance I use, but | not sure how account handling/ownership works. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | There are migration tools to move your followers and your | followings between nodes. But no way to move your posts. | And so, yes, your identity partially/kind-of doesn't | move. But mostly sort of does? | | At first this bugged me, but then it was pointed out that | if you could just move your posts you could also | potentially violate the moderation rules of the host you | were moving to. So it makes some sense. | augustuspolius wrote: | Thanks. I am more worried about the identity than the | posts. If my identity belongs to the host, then in that | sense this is no better than a centralized Twitter. Just | theoretically speaking (I have not been banned from | anything ever), if a mastodon.art user is banned from | mastodon.art - everyone who followed them will have to | find them on another instance and subscribe again? If | exporting data is a process that depends on the host | instance, when they ban you - that's it, your identity is | not recoverable. | bkuehl wrote: | To start, you should choose an instance that had been | around for a while and isn't too small. Instances do | shutdown occasionally but the admin(s) will give you | plenty of time to migrate to a new instance. Mastodon has | built-in tools to migrate your whole account (and | content) to another instance if needed. I'm currently | having to do that because a large well-established | instance (mastodon.technology) is shutting down the end | of the year. | michaelwww wrote: | I find this whole situation to be incredibly depressing, | especially with Musk tweeting out a fact free insinuation about | Paul Pelosi (since deleted without apology.) The proverbial shit | is going to hit the fan on Twitter on election night Nov 8 in | America and I don't think Musk is prepared to handle it. I'd love | to live in a country where we could have nice things, but | apparently America is not it. | rybosome wrote: | The shit hitting the fan on election night will not be limited | to Twitter. Expect chaos in meatspace, exacerbated in part by | Twitter. | Zigurd wrote: | It also isn't as if Elon was just thumbing his nose at | naysayers. A day earlier he pledged to advertisers Twitter | would not become a "free for all hellscape." | | Now that's the new tagline. | michaelwww wrote: | It will be easy to switch to another platform and there will | be tools to help as this post indicates. 4chan users are | having fun saying the N word on Twitter and Le Bron James is | complaining about it. And this is only day 2. I certainly | think people should be able to exercise free speech, but that | doesn't mean I have to listen to it. I can go somewhere else | if Twitter gets too depressing. | leereeves wrote: | > I certainly think people should be able to exercise free | speech, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. | | Would that be different on Mastodon? I've never used it, | but as a decentralized service, I assume it won't have a | central authority banning users? | cmrdporcupine wrote: | The difference is that each node has its own set of | moderators. | | So jerks will get moderated there. And when they do that, | they'll probably jump servers. And so get cordoned off | into wherever federated node that they isolate themselves | into. | | Note that each server decides which other servers it will | federate and share content with. | | So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get cut | from most of the rest of the federation. | | It's certainly vulnerable to abuse. But it also leaves | more room for community response. | | And it also doesn't have a recommendation "algorithm". | You see the content you explicitly subscribe to. In | chronological order. So dark patterns that arise out of | feeding people rage tweets and engagement hacking and | amplifying "controversial" crap for engagement... doesn't | happen. So the platform isn't going to give an outsized | "recommended" audience for crap just because it has high | "likes" -- that's not how the platform works. | Dracophoenix wrote: | > So eventually nodes that collect jerks will just get | cut from most of the rest of the federation. | | Why do you assume the "jerks" wouldn't decide to federate | among themselves. What's stopping them from creating a | Splinternet (Splinterdon?) where they're free to say what | they want? | | > So the platform isn't going to give an outsized | "recommended" audience for crap just because it has high | "likes" -- that's not how the platform works. | | You can't get rid of recommendations. Someone can easily | build an easy to use page-ranked search engine for | Mastodon servers, even if unofficial, and the engagement | race will reinvent itself. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Nothing would stop them. That's already happened -- | that's effectively what Truth Social is, for example. | | And it wouldn't matter. Because the majority would be | elsewhere. Or not. The point is that there's no | centralized authority making this decision. And if I | didn't like how the node I was on handled the moderation, | and who it chose to federate with, I'd be free to move my | account elsewhere. | | I personally would just choose to hang out on whatever | Mastodon node that had cut itself off the the Musk/Trump- | ish node. | leereeves wrote: | That seems likely to result in a split. Not a few | isolated servers with jerks, but one big federation with | free speech types like Elon Musk, and a different | federation with heavy moderation. | | But returning to a chronological feed would be nice. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | It's already heavily federated so it wouldn't be a binary | split like you describe. | | Like, it wouldn't be "one federation with Musk types" vs | "another with heavy moderation" but actually already a | whole bunch of nodes with different types of moderation | choosing to isolate away the Musk node. Or not. It would | be up to each node. | | Note that "Gab" and "Truth Social" are both built on | Mastodon. But they're isolated from the rest of the | federated nodes. | leereeves wrote: | How does "it would be up to each node" work? | | Suppose there are three servers (A, B, C), and A is | federated with both, but B isn't federated with C, and | there's conversation between people on A and B. | | Do people on C only see the A side of the conversation? | cmrdporcupine wrote: | I am not fully clear on how _threads_ are handled, but, | yes, in principle visibility of users and posts is based | on who they choose to federate with. So C would not see | any content that originated out of B. Which AFAIK | includes replies, etc. | | I'm a Mastodon newb and not an expert, I'm sure someone | else more informed could give a better explanation of the | subtleties. | Cyberdog wrote: | This more or less has already happened, though there are | more than two "groups" depending on how you define such | things. Broadly speaking, there are free speech instances | which allow edgelord teens to come in and N-word their | hearts out (as well as do more mundane things like | question the mainstream narrative on elections, the | pandemic, and, yes, this Pelosi story) so long as they | don't do anything actually illegal, and there are more | regulated instances where "hate speech" is explicitly | forbidden. As the instances in the latter group don't | like the practices of the former group, the former | insulates from the latter by defederating those | instances, meaning that insances in both the former and | the latter can generally only federate with each other. | (Then there are the pro-MAP/CP/lolicon instances, which | are generally defederated by both of the previous groups | and also can largely only federate with each other.) | | Whether you think this is a good thing is up to you, but | it does seem that both groups of people on either side of | the Great Divide get what they want from the system, so I | don't really see the harm in it. | fazfq wrote: | >The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan on Twitter on | election night Nov 8 in America and I don't think Musk is | prepared to handle it. | | What exactly is he supposed to do? I don't see how Nov 8 is | megacorp's business. | wrycoder wrote: | How about closing Twitter for three days, starting two days | before the election. Twiliday for the staff! | mjmsmith wrote: | I'd be reassured just knowing that he won't use his megacorp | megaphone to amplify obvious misinformation about the results | of the election, but given the last 24 hours, even that | appears to be too much to hope for. | fazfq wrote: | Well you can just not follow him - I don't. | michaelwww wrote: | > What exactly is he supposed to do? | | When Twitter is flooded with threats of violence and calls to | form mobs will he just do nothing? Is that what you are | suggesting? He can take the site dark if he wants and he may | have to. | RobotToaster wrote: | Isn't it the job of the police/FBI to do something in that | situation? Why are we expecting corporations to be a | private police force, judge, jury, and executioner? | dd36 wrote: | Not policing content would destroy Twitter. | michaelwww wrote: | If you owned Twitter and the site was suddenly flooded | with calls to attack election officials and raid election | offices what would you do? You'd probably meet with your | lawyers and find out what kind of liability you had, then | you'd field calls from advertisers saying they are all | leaving unless you stop it. You'd also field calls from | all your friends telling you that you need to stop it. | Then you'd go for a walk and contemplate how you feel | about people using your site to facilitate armed | rebellion. Then you'd figure out how much money you were | willing to lose over doing it your way. The most sensible | thing to do at the point is pull the plug for a few weeks | for "technical issues related to the purchase' and go | home and get a good nights sleep. | etchalon wrote: | Because they could. | | When you see someone getting robbed on the street, you | can chose to do nothing. | | But a lot of people would think you're morally deficient | for doing nothing. | | And a lot of people would do something in that situation. | [deleted] | mephos wrote: | Interesting tool. This reminds me of the initial steps in the | vampire attack idea. | | https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2022/04/16/vampi... | jonny_eh wrote: | > Enter your Mastodon host's web address: | | What? | GeckoEidechse wrote: | On the topic of Twiter, Mastodon, and the Fediverse, why do | federated FOSS alternatives to popular platforms not offer a | read-only version of said platform as one of its instances to | augment its lack of content? | | In the example of Twitter, Nitter already exists as an | alternative front-end. Now what if there's a Mastodon instance | that uses Nitter to wrap official Twitter content and serve it as | if it where the twitter.com mastodon instance? Again it would | need to be a read-only version as Twitter is not Mastodon but it | would help fill the content gap for sure. | | Now Mastodon might not have a content issue but PeerTube for | example very well has and in that case masquerading YouTube as a | PeerTube instance would become very interesting. | jeroenhd wrote: | There is a lot of Twitter content out there. Too much for a | single instance to proxy. I believe there are projects to | mirror specific Twitter accounts to a (personal) Mastodon | server so you can switch apps without needing two apps. I'm not | sure what the implication would be for privacy/data usage | regulations if you open those messages to the public, though; | blindly reposting everything may actually violate data privacy | laws (yes, even if that information is publicly available). | | Engagement with the audience also is a significant factor for | making social media enjoyable. A read-only mirror of Twitter | would be very boring, because you can respond/tag/whatever you | want for all eternity, but the Twitter authors would never | notice. | | Such a system would work for people primarily using Mastodon | that cross-post to Twitter; you could add Twitter replies to | the Mastodon replies and get a mixed content stream (that | Twitter users might miss half of when discussions respond to | as-of-yet unproxied messages). | srvmshr wrote: | A nifty tool that I came across to find Twitter peers registered | with Mastodon federated servers. Requires authentication though | Timja wrote: | Twitter is the only platform I know where you can search for | people who share your interests and then connect with them. The | whole #buildinpublic community is just insanely great. Everybody | is building something. Everybody is having similar issues to talk | about. You can make so many great connections and help each other | out. | | But I feel that with Twitter becoming a private company owned by | a single controversial person, Twitter lost a lot of its appeal. | | It could be very unfortunate (if Twitter just goes down the drain | without a replacement) or it could be the start of something new, | if a new way to interact comes up. | | If the community moves to another form of communication, I hope | it will be something decentralized that can not be taken away | from us again. | | That is the reason why I am not enthusiastic about Mastodon. | Mastodon is not decentralized. Unless you run your own instance, | you do not own your social graph. | depingus wrote: | I don't twitter or mastodon. But isn't "people who share your | interests and then connect with them" exactly what the | different mastodon instances are for? You're kinda supposed to | find a server that aligns with your interest. | futuretaint wrote: | twitter has a social dynamic where opposing interests feed | off of each other so you need in-group + out-group. there are | psychosocial elements which mastodon does not have as it's | more reddit like IMHO. edit: for clarity | prmoustache wrote: | I don't know I started reusing twitter 2 months ago after years | of not really using it. | | My main gripe is it looks like it locked me up in a bubble full | of accounts with similar interests and ideas. I don't really | feel challenged and I am almost totally excluded from other | subjects that could theorically interest me. | viraptor wrote: | > That is the reason why I am not enthusiastic about Mastodon. | Mastodon is not decentralized. Unless you run your own | instance, you do not own your social graph. | | That's needed for practical reasons though. Actually | decentralised alternatives like for example Scuttlebutt have | this common issue: "This "inital syncing" process can take up | to an hour and use a fair amount of data." | (https://scuttlebutt.nz/get-started/) You don't get popularity | with non-tech people that way. | | With mastodon, the profiles can be migrated. So effectively you | can start with some main hub, move to a more interesting | instance if you want to in the future, and move to your own | instance if that is what you want. | saurik wrote: | It isn't like it was a non-profit before run by a board trying | to make Twitter awesome for users or some form of cooperative | that was owned democratically by its community... it was a | "public" company that, by construction, could only blindly | optimize for profit of its shareholders--and, even worse: | almost always relatively short-term profits, which is why you | see a lot of these companies right now trying to squeeze a few | extra dollars out of everyone instead of just holding out for a | year on cash reserves, as otherwise people will (rightfully) | sell their stock and wait to re-purchase it if things ever look | up again--at the almost explicit expense of its users (who | frankly should have bailed as soon as the company went public, | as that's the moment you knew the company no longer was even | allowed to care about their interests). | twblalock wrote: | Wait and see what happens. | | The fundamental incentives for Twitter as a business have not | changed. It is a free service that needs to convert user | engagement into advertising dollars. Unless Twitter moves to a | paid model, that will always be true no matter who owns it. And | if Twitter fails, any potential replacement will need to deal | with the same incentives and solve the same problems Twitter | did. | Timja wrote: | A replacement could be just a protocol. | | If you signed your message with "This is a reply to msg | 33398198 by Timja. Signed: twblalock", then nobody could take | this converstion away from us again. I could copy it and put | it on any server. Owned by myself or run by some service | provider. And it would always be clear to everybody that this | conversation really took place between the two of us. | twblalock wrote: | Yeah but who would use a system like that outside of a | small hardcore contingent of techies? | Timja wrote: | The interface could be just like Twitter or Hacker News. | | In fact, users could use any service they like. | | It would not matter what client you use to reply to me. | Your reply would appear on Hacker News, because HN would | follow the protocol and accept properly signed comments | relayed to it. | dd36 wrote: | It already exists: newsgroups. | augustuspolius wrote: | The messages would still need to be stored somewhere, | right? Is SMTP a decentralized protocol in this sense? | You can send a message from any client... however most | people still use centralized solutions, not their own | mail servers. | | In your example HN would still need to retrieve and store | billions of messages, handle user authentication, | discovery, aggregation, additional data handling (e.g. | you want to attach a video, or go live). They will need | to monetize _something_. So we are back to square one, | just with a much more inconvenient client setup process | (like we do right now setting up pop3/smtp/imap). | anigbrowl wrote: | When are Mastodon stans going to figure out that the reason | people like Twitter is that it's (nominally) flat and you can | interact with anyone unless they've blocked you for some reason? | It's easy to build silos, which is what most instances are. | Mastodon just reinvented single sign-on. | | It's not a terrible thing to build, but whenever you make a | product that's just imitating someone else (Twitter has 'tweets' | but Mastodon has 'toots' because the logo is an elephant!) then | it needs to be way better, not just a slight improvement. Longer | messages are a good thing on Mastodon, though Facebook already | does that. But what else does it offer that offsets the confusion | of finding target instances, or conversely not being easily | findable by people you don't want to converse with? | | 99.9% of users do not care about federation as a principle, it's | just another level of technical gabble that they don't wish to be | distracted by. Virtually every decentralized service struggles | with this issue. Decentralization is primarily of interest to | nerds, and for online services that requires you to be a bit of a | computer _and_ a bit of a politics nerd, shrinking your already | small target pool. | | Twitter's original win was that it was staggeringly simple, just | asking new users to post about 'what they're doing right now' and | offering simple controls to reply, repeat, or express approval. | They realized that people felt more connected to a scrolling | ticker of headline-style status updates than a newspaper. | jdeibele wrote: | I actively dislike the federation that Mastodon is using. If | they would let me use somebody@gnail.com or | somebody@hotmail.com, fine. Or somebody@mastodon.master-name- | server. Instead, you have somebody@mastodon.technology. | | Guess what? mastodon.technology is closing down. Any | connections using that address are going to be lost. | | It's really too bad that the idea of where you connect became | conflated with what your name is. | | PS: thanks to the person who was running mastodon.technology | and found that it was too much to do with what else was going | on in their life. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | > (Twitter has 'tweets' but Mastodon has 'toots' because the | logo is an elephant!) | | It's a mastodon, not an elephant!! | anigbrowl wrote: | Oh noes I invalidated my whole argument ToT | twblalock wrote: | Doesn't this prove the value to users of a centralized platform | over a federated platform? | | The centralized platform made it very easy to find people. Now | people who are moving to a federated platform miss the value of | centralization, so they are writing a tool that will leverage | that value and import it into the federated platform. | | Maybe if Mastodon was a centralized Twitter-style platform it | would be more usable, and more popular. | anotherrandom wrote: | Honestly the fact that more tools are needed to make Mastodon | usable shows that federation technology is "not there yet." I | hope we are able to improve stuff to the point where it is | usable. | | Something I'm keeping an eye on is the @ protocol that is being | designed specifically for the creation of federated social | media applications -- it allows for portable identity and your | social graph is portable, these things are not tethered to an | instance of something. Hopefully that will be an upgrade so | there will be less "jury-rigging" like this required to make | federated applications usable | prmoustache wrote: | If anything, they just shows they were late to the party. | notatoad wrote: | even if this were true, which i'm not sure it is, it isn't a | reason to make the whole platform centralized. | | you could argue that there's benefit to centralized friend- | finder tools, but there's no reason that has to be tied to a | centralized platform. a decentralized and open-access platform | allows for choice and competition amongst friend-finder tools | kemenaran wrote: | To find someone on Mastodon, I would either enter their | nickname in the search bar (no need for the domain, it will | search on all instances) - or simply click on their profile on | a post I like. Just like a centralized network. This tool just | exists to do this automatically and in bulk. | | It seems to me that finding someone on a federation is as easy | as on centralized systems. Do you have a use case in mind where | centralization makes it easier to find someone? | masukomi wrote: | it will not search "all instances". | | It will search a subset of instances. | | How do we know this to be true? | | a) there is no central listing of all mastodon instances, or | even all public ones. | | b) it would take FREAKING AGES TO COME BACK because there are | so damn many, you can only make so many parallel requests at | a time, and you have to process the results from all of them. | numpad0 wrote: | [fill in here with an insightful texts on distinction between | identity and content distribution being centralized] - I don't | want to sort out which one of | {prefix}username{suffix}{duplicate identifier}.{domain}.tld is | the person I had been talking with just 5 minutes ago, nor he | would appreciate such a situation, but I do not care who serves | the content for me so long it's valid within contexts i.e. if | it comes from amazonaws.com or onmicrosoft.com. | | Imagine you could find me as @numpad0 anywhere, and you can | validate shadydomain.shadywebsite.tld/uuid.htm with my pubkey | to hold me accountable for weird things I'd say, and that | /uuid.htm URL may be ephemeral, or could be more permanent for | more respectable posts at non-shady venues, and either ways I | wouldn't have to be perfect wrt handling of privkey, yet | somehow usernames matches someone anywhere would be verifyably | that someone. That would be ideal. | | But I believe social media operators recognize the exploitable | value in conflating both; this has to be why no one use cross- | OAuth between social medias and web apps anymore, and rather | focuses on own ID systems and federated signups. Consistent set | of identities is a value, media is a means to monopolize on it. | echelon wrote: | > Doesn't this prove the value to users of a centralized | platform over a federated platform? | | Not at all. These types of centralized platforms won because | they raised capital to grow fast and meet market needs before | anything else. Email is still king, but if it were to be | designed today, it would have been designed as some proprietary | centralized system. | | Distributed systems are hard. | | In any case, I don't think federation goes far enough to save | us from the problems we're seeing. I want a peer-to-peer social | feed / social news app that doesn't depend on federation or | servers at all. | | Takedowns (DeCSS), takeovers (Twitter, FreeNode), shutdowns | (Google+, Orkut, Digg, mastodon.technology), censorship | (everywhere; should be an individual choice), maintainer- | imposed spying (Apple CSAM), and maintainer-imposed changes or | limits (Digg, modern Reddit, Twitter API) seem an order of | magnitude harder to pull off if we have full control at the | protocol and node level. | | Federation would be nice for anonymity and aggregation of | interest graph metadata, but at the core we should just have a | swarm of content to sample and consume. It's fine if the | content is naturally ephemeral as a consequence. We can use a | constellation of opt-in 3rd party distributed (federated) | services to provide durability, ranking, recommendation, | filtering, etc. where desired. | | Bittorrent, but for Twitter/Reddit/HN. | [deleted] | johnchristopher wrote: | Or an opt-in for submitting a piece of private information like | a phone, an email, a public key, etc. so you can prove who you | are to your friends. | | Who am I kidding, these people are looking for an audience, not | their friends. | tootie wrote: | I've said before the answer is just Better Twitter. One with | clear moderation rules that aren't reactionary or flexible | based on popularity. Non-profit Twitter would be ideal. Keep ad | revenue just ahead of operating costs. Publish all the | financials. Open source the code. | detaro wrote: | Not really, no. Imagine the reversed situation: Everyone is on | Mastodon, and now this cool new thing called "Twitter" comes | along and some people are switching to it. "find everyones | Twitter account and follow it" would still be a useful thing to | have, over manually checking for every single person you follow | if they have an account, if they maybe have an account with a | different username, ... and following those you find. | Abimelex wrote: | For only username based have a look at Fedifinder: | https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ | contravariant wrote: | In that scenario is Mastodon not centralized? | detaro wrote: | No, that scenario is assuming a federated Mastodon (and | other Fediverse software) as today. | georgyo wrote: | No, it's still federated. But my account of alice@foo.com | follows bob@bar.com | | Bob registers his new Twitter handle so I, Alice, can find | it on the central service of Twitter. | | A mapping of users to users can be across any service, | including centralized to centralized (ie Twitter to | Facebook) or decentalized to decentralized (IE Diaspora to | Mastadon). It is just saying this string registered | somewhere else as that string. | colesantiago wrote: | But we all know this hypothetical isn't the case. | Centralisation is more convenient in almost ALL cases, even | in email (nobody except people on HN host their own email) | shafyy wrote: | Decentralization doesn't mean hosting your own instance. | It's about open protocols. There are hundreds or thousands | of email providers that you can use and still send an email | to a Gmail user without hosting your own instance. | colesantiago wrote: | Yet gmail is the biggest and email isn't a social | network, choice is the problem. | | People cannot find their friends on Mastodon because: | | + They can't search all instances across Mastodon. | | + There is almost little to no one on Mastodon to talk | to. | | So they just go back to a centralised service like | Twitter and they definitely not use email as a social | network. | nerdponx wrote: | It proves the value of centralized search and discovery, | but it says nothing about centralized hosting in | moderation. There is probably quite a bit of value in a | system where decentralized instances can volunteer to | submit their own discovery database to a central search | platform, and where individual users could opt in to being | part of that database. | nopenopenopeno wrote: | This is commonplace for decentralized protocols. Torrents | are probably the most obvious example. | etchalon wrote: | Email remains decentralized. | colesantiago wrote: | Doesn't matter when we are talking about Mastodon. | | People don't use email as social network or instant form | of social communication. | p1necone wrote: | Email is decentralized. It's mature enough that there's a | bunch of trusted providers out there and you can use it | without caring about the technical details, it's basically | a perfect example of a successful mature decentralized | service. | colesantiago wrote: | many people don't care that it is decentralised, hence | gmail, an open protocol is irrelevant. In mastodon's case | decentralisation is a hindrance since they want | centralisation back. | | email isn't a social network and lots people outside of | HN don't self host them as such. | kortilla wrote: | I think you're quite confused about email users. Very few | of the companies I worked for outside of startups used | google for email hosting. | | Business email is very dependent on the fact that it's an | open protocol. | p1necone wrote: | Likewise, gmail would be totally useless if it was | _actually_ centralized and you couldn 't email non gmail | users. | wrycoder wrote: | But they can't necessarily email you, given Google's | procedures regarding "spam", i.e. anything from a small | email server. | doctor_eval wrote: | This is true. My last company used fastmail, but one guy | insisted on using Gmail. Sometimes fastmail didn't arrive | at Gmail. We (tech team) said, this is a problem with | gmail. C-suite said this is a problem with fastmail. | | And so the word comes down, we have to move to Gmail. | It's believable decision making, but that's how it works. | anigbrowl wrote: | Companies like hosting their own email. Users don't | because because they don't have an IT department whose | job it is to filter spam etc. | Zak wrote: | People do, however use multiple email providers, sometimes | small ones like the small business they work for or their | local/regional ISP. If federated social sharing becomes | popular, the story will likely be similar: a few big | providers have most of the users, but a limited ability to | dictate how the system works. | ttepasse wrote: | That hypothetical was the case: back in 2007/2008 people of | the blogosphere slowly stopped blogging and started | tweeting. And if you had a good but suddenly more empty | feedreader you'd then had to follow the great migration and | re-find those people on Twitter. | colesantiago wrote: | this means that centralisation works better? | Kye wrote: | It did for a time, but people realized the major flaw | starting in the 2010s when Twitter started becoming the | mess it is today: once you're in, you're in, no matter | how bad the platform gets. You could take your OPML and | leave if you didn't like your feed reader. There's no | equivalent way to migrate your follows on Twitter. There | _was_ until they turned off RSS feeds. Now you 'd need a | feed reader that specifically handles the moving target | of Twitter's API or web interface, and that always costs | extra. | barbazoo wrote: | Once imported, what would be the benefit of the centralized | system? This just sounds like overcoming the barrier that the | centralized system put up. | themodelplumber wrote: | Or maybe if a distributed platform embraces some additional | centralization (it already does some), it becomes more like the | decentralized platform everybody wants, and keeps the best | aspects of the federated approach for those who mainly want | those... | | It's not so important to force any dichotomous perspectives on | the whole here, as the situation has a lot of nuance to it in | the details. | [deleted] | martythemaniak wrote: | You know, I think Reddit is actually the best positioned Twitter | alternative. You can use your real name, or anonymous account. | You go there to follow particular subreddits, but there no reason | why I shouldn't also be able to follow people and see their non- | topic (ie, not part of any subreddit) microblogs interweaved with | posts from subreddits. They deal with spam and trolls reasonably | well. | | They have all the pieces, they just have to put them together | tastefully. | augustuspolius wrote: | Feels like Reddit is closer to Mastodon than to Twitter. Each | Mastodon server is like a subreddit with its own rules, | moderation, user base, etc. | Cyberdog wrote: | Obligatory reminder that Mastodon is a user interface for a | defederated network commonly called the Fediverse, and that | referring to the Fediverse as "Mastodon" is like referring to the | web as Chrome. | | Spitting into the wind at this point, I know, but it still | bothers me. | linuxhansl wrote: | Heresy: Why do we need a replacement for Twitter? | | There was a world and a life before Twitter, and there is one | without Twitter as well. | | I deleted my Twitter account about a year ago and have not missed | anything. People and topics I am interested in I can updated on | by many different means. | howinteresting wrote: | Networking. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | I don't think Mastodon is meant to be a replacement for | Twitter, or will ever be that. It would be a mistake to treat | it that way. | | It's more like this place than Twitter, in a way. | | Or, it's kind of similar to how Usenet was in the early 90s. | | It's a simple linear feed of who've subscribed to, or what the | people you've subscribed to have "boosted". So you find the | interest groups you're into and join a node that matches that, | then find the people you like on various nodes, and follow | them. There's no recommendations really. There's hashtags, but | few ways to "discover" them and they don't seem to get heavily | used right now. | | It's maybe like Twitter when it first launched. Certainly not | what it became (which I never personally participated in). | | It certainly doesn't have the level of "action" or "engagement" | you'd find on Twitter. And that's probably a good thing. | yosito wrote: | Someone should build an app like this that is integrated with all | the social networks. Give it a sexy UI, and a catchy feature or | two to keep people checking in. Eventually, it could serve as a | federated contacts hub that links people between networks. A | vital piece of infrastructure to support mandated | interoperability. | klyrs wrote: | We had Trillian back in the day, but then the messaging | services locked down their protocols. I don't expect such an | app would survive the cat&mouse with major players for long. | jeroenhd wrote: | I'm not sure about your standard social media, but for direct | messaging, several Matrix-based companies have popped up that | allow for service interoperability. | | The European Union is also working on breaking open the | messenger space, forcing tech companies to either leave the | EU or work on an interoperable standard. I believe an IEEE | working group is already developing a protocol to serve this | purpose, even with encryption available if I recall | correctly. | cpeterso wrote: | Unfortunately, I'm sure this is probably against the ToS of | every social media service, even those that might still provide | a client API. :( Otherwise someone would have done this. OTOH, | I think there are services that companies use to manage and | post to all their social media accounts. | EamonnMR wrote: | Gonna repost my standard question on Mastodon articles: cool, how | do I get into it? | NelsonMinar wrote: | Another new tool in this vein is Fedifinder. It works by scanning | Twitter bios of accounts you follow for strings that look like | Mastodon addresses: https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ | | 5 years ago there was a neat tool called Mastodon Bridge that did | what Twitodon says it does but much better, I think because it | didn't require everyone opt in. It stopped working because of | some change Twitter made to their API terms of use. | https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon-bridge | | There's also Moa Party, but it's so complicated I have never used | it. https://moa.party/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-30 23:00 UTC)