 What makes the Fediverse different from the walled gardens of Big Social? @ross from @eff wrote this explainer with neat screenshots! He shows how you can subscribe to a Blender's PeerTube account from your Mastodon account -- then see Blender's Peertube update in your Mastodon home feed. In short, non-Mastodon sites like PeerTube and Pixelfed federate with your Mastodon account! Someone asked, "Can @calckey do an advanced interface (a.k.a., multi-column mode)?" Yes, it can! To enable this, go to More > Layout. Then select "Deck". Here's a screenshot of what that looks like! Problem with the web is that there’s an “Internet priesthood” that wants to keep you from understanding it. Google is the worst offender of this. They want you to regard the web as difficult and incomprehensible. And that they, holders of the holy texts, are the only ones with enough mystical knowledge to understand the opaque rituals and incantations of the true Internet (hallowed be its name).
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 @atomicpoet — that’s right. The programming priesthood. In the beginning we thought personal computers would be the end of that, but given enough time it has reasserted itself. They know what’s best for us. Just coincidence that it’s what licks them in control again.   "Chris, you're too optimistic about the Fediverse," some people tell me. No, no, no! I was too optimistic about Twitter and Web 2.0. I put so much of my life into that -- and I watched it crash and burn. Now with the Fediverse, I'm being practical and relentless. I have clear goals in mind, and how to get from Point "A" to Point "B". Specifically, one thing that attracts me to the Fediverse is that it attacks Twitter existentially. This isn't a matter of Twitter copying Clubhouse, and putting it into their platform. Twitter can't do that with the Fediverse's main feature (de-centralized federation) because that would destroy their reason to exist. And to be sure, Twitter's reason to exist is to centralize and privatize the public square. Twitter can neither duplicate nor join the Fediverse. It's also worth mentioning that another Twitter Co-Founder, @ev, is also present on the Fediverse. A few days, he indicated to me that he's been here for awhile -- and has multiple accounts 👀 Look! I'm testing Pixelfed for Android—and I'm giving you preview! Will also be testing Pixelfed for iOS 😉 Here's the login screen. This is exciting stuff! Looks like Meta is about to contract Majorel to do moderation for Facebook. Majorel already does moderation for TikTok. Apparently, working conditions at Majorel are appalling! https://www.wired.com/story/metas-new-moderation-contractor-may-be-worse-than-its-last-one/ People often ask me, "What is the Fediverse's advantage over Big Social?" I believe it is moderation. It is easier for one person to moderate an instance of 100 people than it is for 50,000 people to moderate a social network of 2 billion people. As well, since my instances are hobbyist projects, I am bound to be more selective about who is allowed to join my instance. Unlike Meta, I don't tolerate jackasses! This is the year that the Fediverse overtakes the Metaverse. That's right. According to GlobalData, 2023 is going to be a "Metaverse winter" and a "Fediverse spring".
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  @atomicpoet You realize the inevitable next step is some venture capitalist deciding that there's money to be made aggregating all the disparate platforms into larger and larger agglomerations. Which will defeat the whole reason the Fediverse was created in the first place... NEW BLOG POST: Why Internet decentralization? Progressives should *want* Internet decentralization. That should be considered a core political cause. The best way to destroy monopolies is to destroy the power structure that allows them to exist.  ABSOLUTELY! 💯 I could not agree more. #Fascism isn't just alt-right morons. It's when the #billionaires USE the alt-right morons that you get fascism.  @atomicpoet I remember the early days of the net - pre MySpace and Geocities and the search engines (Altavista even). Want to have a presence on the internet? Pay for, or host it yourself. Want people to find you? Get linked from someone/somewhere else or post to alt.news.websites. Group of related/similar/affiliated sites? Create a webring. I wonder if (I hope) we are about to see a radical take-back of people's internet presence. Single user/family fediverse instances. That'd be nice. 1/2 🚨BIG NEWS🚨 Buffer just added Mastodon as one of its supported social networks! Amongst social media professionals this is HUGE! See screenshots!
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 @atomicpoet they also had it easy as unlike most social media services, mastodon has a post scheduling API. LMAO. There's no journalist takeover of Mastodon. Most journalists are still sucking on the teat of Twitter—squeezing as much "engagement" out of it as possible. Yes, even though Elon Musk hates them, they won't wean themselves off Twitter. Interesting that @cwebber, co-author of ActivityPub, recommends Misskey for small instances. Yes. #Mastodon is on the heavy side. #Pleroma and #Akkoma are lighter weight much more suited for single user instances. I am sure there will be further development and forks of projects that support #ActivityPub A partial list of Fediverse software in alphabetical order: akkoma @atomicpoet Neat comment from @Gargron just now: "Mastodon was built on the API-first principle." This is important because a whole lot of 3rd party app developers were promised "openness" by Twitter -- and those promises were broken. 3rd party development is where so much innovation happens!  Well, note also the issue of "perverse incentives". Companies like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo etc are all threatened by the possibility of a 3rd party app interfering with their revenue flows. Having an API creates the illusion of openness, but constantly changing it makes competition ineffective. This is a non-issue for open-source distributed media like Mastodon (or any Fediverse software). It's a free market, not a closed shop. @atomicpoet @Gargron I remember when twitter shut off the firehose. It was as if thousands of mashups cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Last night, I got really frustrated about Mastodon's lack of comment control. To me, this feature is an absolute must -- and is critical to community safety. So what did I do? I looked for it on other Fediverse platforms! Then I found that it existed on Streams (see screenshot). When I mentioned that this existed, devs from Epicyon and Pinetta told me that this is a feature they're developing too. Moral: if something doesn't exist on Mastodon, the Fediverse might still have it! Some folks might ask, "Why not wait till Mastodon adds that feature?" Because I don't want to wait. I want it now. I've already added this as a Feature request in Mastodon's Github months ago: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/21444 The great thing about the Fediverse is that I don't have to wait on Mastodon to give me what I need. That's because alternatives to Mastodon exist on the Fediverse.  @atomicpoet I suppose it doesn't work well with other platforms though. I would expect it to just silently drop incoming comments and it would be massively frustrating. Am I wrong?
But yes, ability to close/restrict comments is something badly needed. Some people like open comments to followers only. Don't want your Mastodon account to be indexed by search engines? Here's how to opt out! Go to Settings > Preferences > Other. Then check the box for "Opt-out of search engine indexing". Finally, click "Save changes". See screenshot.
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Just checked settings. Would this very with the server your own? Elon Musk is trying to walk back the banning of @.joinmastodon and likewise links to Mastodon instances. He called it a "mistake". In his words, "Yeah f***ing post Mastodon all goddamn day long, I don’t care." I think he cares 🤣 What Elon Musk *actually* regrets is that the Mastodon ban helped grow the Fediverse. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-taking-down-071215977.html BIG NEWS: Pawoo.net, the world's 2nd biggest Mastodon instance, has just been acquired. The entity acquiring them is the Mask Group, an entity that also runs mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They are also active in the so-called "Web 3.0" space. If you haven't heard of pawoo.net, it's because many instances have de-federated from it. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-070000858.html
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 What I want is a Fediverse box. A device that either connects to my router, or integrates with my router. It hosts all my instances. It automatically updates as needed. It keeps my personal data safe. I wish this existed. @atomicpoet@mastodon.social oh well 👀 9 million Mastodon accounts is extremely likely this month. According to my math, an average of 1,115 new accounts per hour over the next 10 days would be needed to reach this milestone. During the last hour, 1,780 new Mastodon accounts were made. It was just a couple of weeks ago that the 8 millionth Masodon account was made. And already, we have 8,713,949 accounts. This is incredibly fast growth. |
Gregory's Server
I actually wrote something similar a week ago, but it's nice to see someone providing screenshots.
Because seeing is believing!
https://mastodon.social/@atomicpoet/109754536165847463