Gregory's ServerI don't think Mastodon or the fediverse has ever received this much attention before. It's a great opportunity for people to finally see that social media can be done differently, that it can be a protocol not under control of any single company.
 @Exxo @healyn Good morning, guys. Have you already watched the series "Parlament" which is currently available in the online media library of ARD? It's full of extremely funny jokes at the expense of Germans.   @Gargron Most of us are here because we've seen what happens when it is under control of a single company. Keep up the good work.  @Gargron Is that code for "I already need more CPU horsepower" 😂 but seriously yes this is great! @Gargron this feels familiar but also much less grimy than other legacy social media. @Gargron some blind people I know on Twitter are freaked out by the Accessibility team being let go. I can still see, but I am a braille user. Twitter is one of the only usable sites on the internet with a braille terminal. I mostly have to go back to practicing on books. Facebook is ok too. Mouseless nav, and good text descriptions matter. @robfielding @Gargron what has been your experience of Mastodon and fediverse apps in general? Accessible to braille terminals? I literally got here a few hours ago. I will have a real opinion using my braille terminal from my iPhone. But I am working on a 16-key keyboard that is based on computer-braille layout; and it can do EVERYTHING that a US qwerty keyboard can do. I can't figure out how to nav between Home/Notifications/LocalTimeline/Input yet. On Twitter, I managed to figure it out without Googling, because I found a place to pop up the shortcuts. Mouseless navigation is everything. A challenge: get through the weekend with no mouse at all. It's so so hard. And that's before you try to rely on braille output, and spoken Voiceover only. Some blind users just rely on audio output and qwerty most of the time. "Hey Elon, Accessibility isn't just for blind people. How can I blast through my Twitter feed while driving a Tesla; unless I can ask Siri to turn on VoiceOver mode so that I am hands-free with eyes on the road?" I think the whole problem with most Accessibility approaches is that... You have government people threatening you with fines if you don't follow the government guidelines. And you get people that need it, reminding people of such laws on Twitter; constantly. Instead, think about use cases such as devices without good screens. Up/Down/Left/Right/Select and voice into your headphones. Tweeting while walking. Use cases for everyone. I'm building a tiny keyboard with only 16 keys so that it fits onto the backside of an iPhone case (with thumbs on glass). I'm not even thinking about blind people. I'm deliberately ignoring them for now, because contracted (expert-level) braille is too hard for general use. @robfielding that sounds like an awesome project. Do you have info on that somewhere? this link to starshipchangeling for instance. it says "g" and "N" to go to Notifications tab. I don't use JAWS on here, because the keyboard is braille layout to make it small... but it's not specifically for blind people; so it looks like a totally normal keyboard, in no specific Accessibility mode turned on. it's in Braille to make this mechanical keyboard with chonky keys fit in my pocket. ie: I am betting that a lot of people would learn a chorded keyboard layout if the keyboard is on the back of an iPhone case; and braille is amazing for that task. but the keyboard appears US qwerty to the OS. When I first got it working, I tried to get through days of computer use with no actual qwerty keyboard or mouse. Too much stuff doesn't do good mouseless navigation though. It's step 1 to accessibility; before you even imagine that blind people exist. @Gargron Hopefully, you guys do updates to this site to make it a lot easier to use and understand. It has great potential, especially now since it’s getting a lot of attention. @Gargron I worry mastodon.lol being down for so long might be bad press for the platform. I wonder if others can pitch in to help get that up and running again. But yes, the publicity is good!  @Gargron how do you sell mastodon as the protocol? Should I convince friends by explanation of activity pub, or more the mastodon feature set? It's been hard convincing others it's not just another "platform". @seth @Gargron The current standard explanantion being used seems to be 'like email': you chose your mail address, with it your mail provider, but you also have the choice which software/client you use with it. And whatever your personal choices are, as long as you know the address of someone, you can reach them.  @seth @Gargron Maybe, the first movement began here in #India Scroll.in: Twitter has become toxic. Can Mastodon provide a saner, safer alternative?. @netshrink @sanjayuvacha i recall many of us moved here in 2019 precisely because Sanjay sir was blocked in Twitter or something @sanjayuvacha @Gargron Indeed! I would like to think that we were indeed at the (forced?) forefront of this exodus. But things have been rather quiet and hopefully in the new schema more and more people hop over. @Gargron no one should have that much control. Many are learning that now. Decentralization fixes that problem.  @Gargron It feels different this time. Like people are finally realizing that they can currently just be bought and sold. Like when Murdoch bought Myspace for half a billion dollars and then everyone just left. @Gargron I'm so confused but I'm committed to not being bought by annoying rich people lol @Gargron good work keeping the lights on this week, cannot have been easy with such a big spike @Gargron It also shows how important leadership is for social media companies. @Okanogen @Gargron you could always host your own. Check out Otherwise general instances should be welcoming to all. I haven’t had any issues here. @Gargron It'd be real fun seeing this suceed on "larger" scale. The headlines would be:" German guy did what US guy couldn't do." Create a social space on the web that wouldn't become toxic or corporate or just plain Advertising focused. Because a social space should not cause paranoia. Can 2020-2030 be the good era of Social interactions online? World is bad enough, I need a good place to be me. I can always Join Youtube If I need someone selling me something I don't really need. @Gargron and this cure my illness of wanting to be in control of every aspect of my life. Ik I'm a control freaks that needs my meds. @Gargron I have to thank Elon Musk for taking over Twitter and driving many of us out. I was getting very disillusioned about new communication technologies because of Facebook and then Twitter. I really admire you and other like-minded people for seeking and building an alternative more social media platform. Thank you (not in the way I thank Musk.) @Gargron I too believe in this platform. But please also listen to the suggestions made in github esp the server issues: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/9567#issuecomment-1301430293 Because of this, there are always comments about moving to Pleroma in the mastodon subreddit. Please understand that not everyone running an instance has the funds that you have. This is not taking away all the hard work that and other maintainers of Mastodon already do. @Gargron great opportunity to show than an open source project can be competitive compared with corporate. @Gargron Mastodon is definitely my favorite social media platform! I can freely express my thoughts without worrying about censorship, which can't be done on Weibo or Wechat. I have met a lot of like-minded friends here. @Gargron now we just have to get the servers working so that publication failures and being offline don’t collapse Mastodon. I spent most of the day attempting to get content into the systems making 5 or 6 attempts with each imported News link. @Gargron @SocraticEthics have you considered joining less crowded instances or spinning up your own node? @SocraticEthics  @morganomedia @Gargron the instance you signed up on has seen alot of volume. I started my own back in June and have zero latency issues. I host it from a bare metal setup in my garage. @morganomedia @Gargron I'd ride in the rain with the top down before I'd share a bus with the Nazis. Buggy or not, it's better than Twitter. @Gargron Very new here and really hoping folks here don't have any resentment for the onslaught of new and confused twit escapees. This is your home and me for one is very appreciative and trying to tread lightly! @Gargron I made a mistake and replied to correct and learned you could actually edit like it was the 21st century. Cool!
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This feels invigorating exploring a new platform with a different ethos “@Gargron I had no idea this was possible and now I can’t imagine it any other way. I think it’s paradigm shifting for a lot of people, @Gargron. @Gargron I love that it's something everyone can copy but nobody can buy. It was really only a matter of time before Twitter went that way though.  @Gargron And that there's a way to make websites and online identities that can survive a single hostile takeover type failure: routing around damage.  @Gargron exactly. If all what people want is another Twitter then they would definitely not be able to accommodate the differences of a single proprietary network v. a decentralised one.  @Gargron to be honest I think this is really a return to form for internet social media. I’m old enough to remember when the internet was truly a decentralised affair where you didn’t have just a handful of faceless corporations controlling 99% of the platforms or content you use or see. Mastodon kind of feels like if someone took Twitter and applied good old IRC’s design/decentralisation philosophy to it. @Gargron I think all that is happening now is very exciting and can define a new future for social media and online conversations and human rights. @tifotter @Gargron that’s the neat part, there isn’t any Most instances are run by volunteers and take (Patreon) donations to keep things running Yours has some more info here https://ioc.exchange/about/more#welcome-to-indicators-of-compromise-ioc And is administered by @seb @Gargron Most important, even more important than that, are rules prohibiting harassment and fake news which are applied by moderation in the event of a report, which is not the case elsewhere. Agree but also, frim one platform to another this can be confusing at the beginning. If we want more of the world use this, it needs to be easy to navigate to @richt @Gargron I Google it for you https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moderating/ but finally Mastodon is open source and every instance is responsible for moderation. There will be isolated hate or fake driven instances, like in every decentralized organization.
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It’s honestly wild to see the network expanding so much, so fast. This situation has been talked about in hypotheticals in years prior, usually in response to brief waves of migrations. But, this is probably the biggest one yet. Anyway, thank you for all the great work that you’ve been doing! Mastodon really helped rocket #ActivityPub and the wider #fediverse into the stratosphere. @Gargron is mastodon.social not accepting new accounts? @Gargron something that would be useful is a way to transfer twitter followers to this platform in an easier way. @Gargron The recent #TwitterMigration and the controversial decisions of #ElonMusk at #Twitter makes people more and more realise there is need to be a more open platform to reach for each other exploring new topics and threads. The #fediverse concept is a real gamechanger - I think so - to have smaller communities but interconnected with each other. @Gargron yep. It's fantastic. I spent a lot of time and money building something similar as I find Mastodon to be too complicated for someone like my 86 year old mother. My partially abandoned project: https://github.com/KotoLLC/peacenik With the influx of new users to Mastodon there will surely be usability improvements. It's an awesome moment for the project and for tech in general. @Gargron As someone who has watched the fediverse from afar for years but who has mostly ignored it, it definitely feels refreshing @gargron to further support the idea you should really shut down new registrations before crossing the 1 million accounts line. There are already a bunch of people and instances blocking mastodon.social for scrapping the idea of a decentralized network and the numbers support that to a degree. @Gargron Thank you for doing this. I hope the number of patreons increases in proportion. @Gargron Right. In that case, i'm actually glad Musk purchased that damn bird, cause otherwise i would've probably never experienced this nice place here. So, i should thank him, i guess.😅👌 @Gargron I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening on Twitter right now. How can faith in a platform crash so quickly? @Gargron i hope so. As a relatively new user, I've noticed the absence of typical Twitter gadgets here, of those that get you typing, flooding, quoting by compulsion. I've noticed the calm. I really hope people like me, going more frequently here, are not gonna bring blue bird frenzy. @Gargron agreed! I do wonder though how moderation is going to go once the orcs start flooding in in mass numbers. Which they eventually will. @Gargron thank you for taking care of this instance! Mastodon is already on Open Collective but if I can help with one for this particular instance, let me know. You will likely see a lot more pressure on it in the coming weeks. @Gargron that is true but there need to be more tools to make it more user friendly. the instances idea is great, but having to manage different instances is a pain. or at least we have not found out how 🙃 . you need to be able to link accounts not just move to another one. social media is one big platform, that is the attraction and its downfall. that said, some of the instances on mastodon are very well built, there is smth here for everyone. @Gargron Every Mastodon explanation is like "It's very simple, your account is part of a kerflunk, and each kerflunk can talk to each other as part of a bumblurt. At the moment everyone you flurgle can see your bloops but only people IN your kerflunk can quark your nerps. Kinda like email."  @Gargron@mastodon.social is Mastodon gGmbH also such a single company? @Gargron I think it helps that it’s way more useable now than it was last time it got good attention @Gargron I'm a gen z and I've never experienced a social media without an algorithm or a big company behind. This feels like the people is really making the content |
@Gargron not really comfortable when German guys get too ambitious, so maybe let's take it down a notch Eugen