@Gargron and it's a reality that Twitter, alongside all other centralized social networks + communication platforms, will have to come to terms with once the EU's DMA (Digital Markets Act) goes into effect.

Everything will become federated, no more fragmentation! A great course correction for the digital world.

@Gargron did you ever hear of fediblock?

@Gargron
You just have to find them. Currently, there is no directory service.

@Gargron yeah but even with federation there are different competing standards that are incompatible with each other because some people think it's a good idea to make a new standard no one uses instead of making the one that already exists and everyone uses better. bluesky *hust hust*

@Gargron ,

@Gargron just imagine the reality we'd be in if Mastodon actually listened to its users and added quote support and didn't dismiss issues ;⁾

@Gargron mastodon? I think you mean ActivityPub.

@Gargron The tendencies on twitter are more accurate because they are differentiated by location and not by servers 🙃#mastodon

@Gargron does #mastodon stick to the #ActivityPub specs or does it extend them?

@Gargron But that idea requires buy-in from other stakeholders. It’s like using AppleTV where many of the apps work together to allow you to combine the shows being watched into one combined dashboard. Except the biggest streaming player, Netflix doesn’t play nice and insists you use their app. I want to see Threads follow through with their promise to Federate, but I genuinely wonder whether they will now that Threads has boomed and busted.

@Gargron If you find them. 🙄

@Gargron well... I would love an easy an accessible way to find friends and contacts on mastodon. Having to share links with everyone it a bit of a hastle. If I could just find people based on email or phone number would make loads easier

@Gargron Just blogged about leaving "X" which is rapidly approaching the ocean floor as I type. https://sheerzed.me/2023/09/01/zed-leaves-x/

@Gargron To me people I know IRL and people I know on social media are just separate groups. I'm not joining Instagram to follow anyone there (all platforms have already died for them).
I mean, I'd love to see people from either group appearing in the other, but I don't know how long it'll take until that will happen.

@Gargron 对，万变不离其宗，至少一个账户，即可适应不同平台和需求。
但对于有隐藏自身身份的需求，尤其是极权国家中，仍应该“花开两朵，各表一枝”，以确保不因表达观点而遭受暴政与暴民的惩罚。

@Gargron
On both Twitter and Counter.Social I saw interesting posts from people, and felt a sense of engagement with and by other users. (Twitter has turned to utter garbage, and Counter.Social is intolerant/ban happy - banning anyone who wants to share ideas that are discomforting to the group)

Here, I feel like I'm in a void, like I've been placed in a quarantine and muted. This is such a lonely/empty/dead feeling space - maybe if you're a celebrity or something, it doesn't feel that way?

@Gargron the biggest problem has been discovery, but glad to see improvements to (for example) the Mastodon mobile apps have been addressing this. It's only possible to keep in touch with your friends across a federated platform if you can actually find them!

@Gargron I can’t even browse the Followers of interesting accounts if they’re on different servers! :(

@Gargron if Mastodon really solves the problem of losing friends due to fragmentation, then where are all the people i knew on Twitter?

@Gargron

> you can follow anyone regardless of which platform they’re on

Meanwhile I'm prohibited from following @Moon@shitposter.club

Note that I'm not arguing for following some nazi on Poa.st. The shitposter.club is a wholesome instance with a sensible moderation policy. But one of your censor minions put it on the list alongside freespeechextremist.net and there's no appeal process.

The heavy-handed, capricious, and unaccountable censorship is big problem at Mastodon.

@Gargron How does Mastodon balance the need for decentralization with the need for moderation?

@Gargron eh, I disagree. I think we will always devolve to this problem and that's okay. We have to be willing not to be centralized around a single platform or a single standard, and ready to move as soon as the time comes. I think the age of tech that "just works" has made us a little too comfortable with relying on inherently unreliable systems.

@Gargron

I believe that the ultimate wide spread adoption of Mastodon is important to democracy and the planet. I think it is so important that Mastodon must continue to rapidly evolved and create adoption and navigation that is more familiar and more easily understood by the bird site masses. It is not enough to just continue to explain that they are dumb and it is not that complicated. There may be some short term compromises, but worth it.

@Gargron A better point of reference to me personally is how 15 years ago, even though not all of my friends were on the same IM platforms I could just use a multiprotocol messenger like Trillian to keep tabs on all of them instead of having to install 30 different clients.

@Gargron But how the hell to find people on here? My profile hasn't budged n a year, but I've only recently come back. Mastodon is no solution for the loss of musical friends on Xitter (where I've closed my account). Too few come here and those who did gave up.

@Gargron I’m grateful for what you’ve built, but with all due respect, it is famously difficult to discover and follow people on Mastodon servers that are different from your own. Articles have been written about this in the news. It is a deterrent to new adopters. I recognize that this is intentional in some ways but the Fediverse is far more fragmented than most other social networks

@Gargron — I need the Mastodon Primer that might explain the entire Fediverse for a GenXer who wants to encourage the collapse of FB, X, Reddit etc. how does it all work? How can I set up a server to host some?

@Gargron so, why do you think it failed to actually solve that problem?

@Gargron I'm glad you said "solves for" and not "solves."

@Gargron I wish it Activity Pub or whatever actually worked that way. As it is my friends mostly refuse to try Mastodon and those that have have found it inscrutable and given up quickly.

The emphasis on privacy has come at the cost of discoverability and ease of use of regular/simple/low tech users.

@Gargron okay but the risk of unstable servers is on. You cannot say for sure that all servers will survive. When a server dies the users on that particular server have to migrate leaving behind all the posts they have posted. It is pretty dissatisfying.

@Gargron uhm... well... but it's not entirely like it solves everything. I still have
1x mastodon
1x bookwyrm
1x pixelfed

It solves to connect to all your friends on the fediverse, whatever they use but it still requires you to have lots and lots of accounts on the fediverse to make use of different things. So Friends and people have to follow at least all of my active accounts and I have to repost everything on all accounts. That's at least one downside.

@Gargron as long as ig is n9t threads or blueskye.

@Gargron "because you can follow anyone regardless of which platform they’re on. That’s our reality." if only that were reality (it's not)

@Gargron No it's not. You can't even follow all your friends on Mastodon. I tried for over a year, and this is the fifth account I made on the Fediverse. but again and again some vainglorious admin hit the "fediblock" button. Then I was told I'm not allowed to criticize admins and causing too much trouble with my complaints.

Goodbye Mastodon, hello Bluesky.

@Gargron the main pain in the neck of Mastodon is that you can join only one community and how it’s difficult to monitor local feeds from other communities. For example, I’d love to check popular content on three different communities, but I can’t.

@Gargron Am I being stupid? I've lost Twitter friends to Mastodon, Threads and Bluesky, so in what sense are they all in one place?