 I've been enjoying @judell's series on Mastodon + Steampipe. This article explores how to find history for teams or groups. And I think could be a critical features for organizations! https://www.infoworld.com/article/3691029/mastodon-timelines-for-teams.html Bots are running amok on social media! And more of them are coming! Even more problematic, most people using social media can't tell the difference between genuine humans and bots. What could ever go wrong?
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ReplyGPT, would you write a post about artificial intelligence that seems innocent at first but gets progressively more terrifying? @atomicpoet honestly I think it's a big mistake for Mastodon to allow account creation via the API. Yes, you can always use proxies, but the API makes it so much easier and at a larger scale  Myself and @accesstoken created technology to detect bots on social-media networks about a decade ago. The Onion's take on TikTok's eventual ban is on the nose! Poor Tatiana. I shed a tear for her 😢 https://www.theonion.com/panicking-tiktok-influencers-frantically-gathering-as-m-1850233839 @atomicpoet they will have to show their butts and bad jokes somewhere else, what a tragedy A TikTok ban is more likely than not. While the USA demands that TikTok divest itself from Chinese ownership, the company itself says that even with a sale, that would not change its data flows or access. I really hope there's a Fediverse alternative to TikTok soon! It doesn't have to provide anything similar to TikTok's algorithms, but I think short form video is a legitimate use case for ActivityPub.
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@atomicpoet I don't want a fediverse TikTok because short form videos are brain rotting. It's okay for memes and stuff like that, but it's become a terrible and unfortunately popular way of consuming online content. I keep looking at my mother and my sisters scrolling on their phones all day, wasting every second with dopamine rushes of useless content. @atomicpoet I'm concerned about the viability of storing so much data, videos take up a ton of storage, and peertube isn't exactly thriving right now. Instagram Co-Founder Kevin Systrom bemoans Instagram’s current existence, says that it’s lost its soul, and says his biggest regret is how commercial it’s become. I’m sure he’s crying into his stack of billions of dollars. That said, there is a social network that has Instagram’s old soul: @pixelfed. In fact, @pixelfed is more Instagram than Instagram ever was.
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 @pixelfed @atomicpoet why I will use and always use not just @pixelfed but my mastodon.art account.
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 @atomicpoet Gettr: Hold my beer!  @atomicpoet I'm quadruple vaccinated and also have a working vasectomy. What are the odds they'd buy my sperm as long as I lied about it? Someone send me a link on how to do it. Remember 2021? Clubhouse was all the rage — and Big Social was in a race to copy it. Well, Meta is now removing its Clubhouse-like features. They’re not the only Big Social company doing this. Reddit is removing their Clubhouse-like features too. Interest in Clubhouse itself is plummeting. Who knows how long it will survive? https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Facebook-Shuts-Down-Audio-Rooms-in-Groups/645163/
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 @atomicpoet I kind of miss Clubhouse. Had at lot of good chats there, it was mostly work related rooms, like unconferences. Former Meta employee Brit Levy compared her experience working there to being “hoarded like Pokémon.” Almost immediately after she was hired, she was given no work — and she had to fight for the right to be given something to do. Knowing people who work at Meta, I can confirm this happens. It’s almost as though Meta hired brilliant people just so other companies wouldn’t hire them.
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 @atomicpoet Oh, man. The fabled get-paid-to-just-do-nothing jobs. They only give those to people who don't want them I guess. Think of all the books I could have read, the games I could have played, the slack I could have slacked. Though they were mostly just made up by Eggers in The Every [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Every ]. If 50,000 people are no longer being paid to sit on their hands now ,then I guess hurray? This is why Meta should never be trusted. Not only have European regulators found their tracking to be downright illegal, but they also blatantly lie about it too. Further, if it's not already obvious to you, Meta sends its tracking data to the NSA. If Meta does any of these shenanigans when they join the Fediverse, then they absolutely should be Fediblocked. https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/16/meta-tracking-gdpr-data-transfer-breach/
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 Meta is hurting. And this latest round of layoffs is going to hurt them even more -- especially since they're happening piecemeal. One reason I'm so skeptical about Meta's foray into the Fediverse is simply because I don't think anyone there wants to build something awesome for Meta. If they suspect they're on the chopping block, why would anyone there be excited about that project? https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/16/23642978/facebook-meta-layoffs-bad   @atomicpoet Didn't Meta do this to themselves? Any business where their customers feel used and abused can't be long for the world. At this point, Meta is polishing the proverbial turd. Twitter just made bookmarks public. Which makes me wonder: what's the point of likes -- especially now that both likes and bookmarks are public? Thankfully, Mastodon bookmarks are *still* private. https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1636440696176427032
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@atomicpoet what we actually need are fewer metrics in our life, not more. @atomicpoet I asked the same thing about retweets when Twitter started putting both retweets and likes in my home feed. The whole points of likes to begin with was to be able to favorite something without spamming it to all of your followers, if you actually wanted to share something with your followers you retweeted it. Likes are for the poster, retweets for your followers, and bookmarks for you. This is just stupid and should be private. It's funny how, in a space of a year, we've gone from, "The Fediverse will fail because no one uses it" to "The Fediverse will fail because everyone will soon use it." Some people just prefer doom and gloom, I guess.
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@atomicpoet the corollary to political reporting in which, no matter what happens, it’s always good news for Republicans  @atomicpoet That’s exactly it. It’s easier to wail and moan then to actually support something. Tired of headlines like this, so I'm answering the question myself. Will the Fediverse survive if Meta joins it? Yes! Absolutely -- and no other answer is worth considering. But let's consider the alternative anyway: if the Fediverse can't survive one big company joining the fray, it doesn't deserve to survive at all. Thankfully, that's not the case. Hundreds of developers feel very passionately about the Fediverse's continued existence. It won't just survive, but thrive too. @atomicpoet Exactly! This was what the Fediverse was built to survive after all. This is the first major test. If it doesn't, then it's back to the drawing boards. @atomicpoet I have strong Microsoft flashbacks on this one: adopt a standard and start messing with it by doing things slightly different. And saying: for the full experience, stick to our Tools, our platform, our service. You might have to accept ads or pay for it, though. Fair enough 😆 But I think @torvalds is clearly wrong about one thing: few people are going to be disappointed to follow him.
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 @atomicpoet Not familiar with akkoma -- is it federated in such a way that Mastodon servers can hook up to it?  @atomicpoet your post links to his account on mastodon.social when I think the post is @torvalds (Such issues are easy and perhaps a problem if bad actors create copycat ids on various servers - or if people make them abandon vs migrate accounts?) I’m sure there are also folks who share a name or preferred username and may end up conflicting - as I get multiple emails most days for other Shannon’s who have made an error sharing their email address with others)  A movie about Blackberry is coming out! And it stars Glenn Howerton and Jay Baruchel. It looks far more entertaining than it has any right to be. @atomicpoet this looks awesome. I loved my one. One thing that doesn’t look right in our True Story™️, unless the trailer audio is remixed: the ‘berry’ part of the name came from a comment that the keys looked like strawberry seeds. This does not align with what we see in the trailer :P  @atomicpoet Damn I loved my Blackberry's (I had three). It was very hard to give my last one up when the writing was on the wall.
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 @atomicpoet @torvalds I don't think kernel.org running Akkoma is a statement of anything more than "Akkoma is a solid piece of software that does the job in this usecase" @atomicpoet I'm happy that he's not using Mastodon so that he doesn't contribute to a monoculture (unlike me and you), but what do politics have to do with choosing Akkoma? The article you linked says the Pleroma developers were divided by some design choices regarding free speech of which I still don't understand, but how is choosing Akkoma or Pleroma for your own server political at all? I don't think Pleroma has some AI that restricts free speech or something. First time using @IceCubesApp on an actual Mac. It’s got a great UI! Just look at this! It’s beautiful! @atomicpoet @IceCubesApp It is indeed! I’ve had some weird crashes with the desktop version. On my phone, the app has been my daily driver for weeks, and it’s working great. @atomicpoet @IceCubesApp Please cap lines of text around 120 chars max. Anything after that slows people down and reading becomes straining. Someone asked, “Why should anyone want to make a living from the Fediverse?” Because certain people have the skills to keep it running, and others are willing to pay to keep it running. So why not give the people with skills the means to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves—while they keep the Fediverse running?
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 @atomicpoet I've moved "house" several times. It was ridiculous. Now I just pay @mastohost to maintain my masto home. 🏠🐘 In the meantime, maybe instances can have an extra 'pot' for donations meant for beyond your instance. Money intended for your admin to donate, to support the things/people that support their work. My laptop got stolen today. I’ve been tracking the thief for hours. Police say it’s a lost cause—so I wiped the data remotely. And I’ve already replaced it. That’s $2,000 down the drain 🤬
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@atomicpoet 🍎 New Mastodon client for iOS released! 🍎 @mannyapp is described as “powerful, fast, and extremely cute”. In fact, it claims to be the “cutest” Mastodon client. That is arguable, but not quantifiable—so I’ll allow it. The mascot is certainly cute, though😻 I might give it a review later tonight. If you want to try it, download it here: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/manny-for-mastodon/id1668409667
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 @atomicpoet @mannyapp @fediversenews call me crazy, but I am physically unable to stop my eye from twitching at the choice to run 5 alignment margins. |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet @judell @fediversenews This is really good and so well written. They write in a manner that makes it easier for me to understand the actual technology. That’s both a good and bad thing. I can see all kinds of uses for variations of this being implemented. Especially on the big instances.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews I'm not sure where this kind of shared history might lead, it was an unexpected discovery, and that is exactly what I am loving about the fediverse. Things are wide open in many dimensions, behaviors and patterns are emerging, I haven't felt this way since the dawn of blogging, it's invigorating.