Some 18,000 people signed up for Mastodon accounts between October 20 and 27, says Eugen Rochko, the platform’s CEO. As of October 28, it had 381,113 active users. Mastodon’s Twitter handle is also being used a lot across Twitter by people announcing new Mastodon accounts, Rochko says.
SO... y'all tech media folks finally willing and able to acknowledge Mastodon's existence now?
It may be that the more concrete boundaries that having multiple instances provide can dampen down the cascades caused by the small world network effect. It is an interesting model to coexist between the silos with global scope and the personal domains beloved by the indieweb. In indieweb we have been saying ‘build things that you want for yourself’, but building things that you want for your friends or organisation is a useful step between generations.
I'd say not just interesting, but also crucial. Where T and FB operate at generic level (despite FB pages as subgroups), the statistical, and IndieWeb on the personal (my site, my self-built tool), M works at group level or just above (bigger instances). That middle ground between singular and the statistical is where complexity resides and where it needs to be addressed and embraced. The network metaphor favors that intermediate level.
https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/
Mastodon.technology is shutting down by 2022-12-01 due to personal and admin tax related reasons. Sounds like it's being done in an ethical and reasonably kind way.
StarPterano I very vaguely remember happening upon StarPterano in my very first moments on Mastodon, so finding it still published on the App Store – buried as it was – brought me a particular sort of joy. If I’m not mistaken, it holds a special personal accolade as the only iOS app which has caused me to involuntarily shriek. This might sound like an insult, but it is actually the peak of my praise. I believe my knowledge of iOS development safely allows me to suppose that StarPterano was built with complete disregard for any established UI element libraries. That is, the familiar toggles and buttons developers rely on to standardize the iOS experience were cast aside entirely in favor of handbuilt, translucent buttons of a sort of neon quality which call menus and text entry fields no less alien to the platform. The most astonishing bit, though, is that it works. On my 12 Pro Max, it’s exceptionally smooth, in fact. I would imagine those real iOS developers among you should find StarPterano’s GitHub Repository particularly interesting, considering. In the interest of preservation, I have forked it as well, and fully intend to dive in to its code, one of these days. The audio player embedded above cites a three-second .mp3 file in the repository which perhaps once accounted for the “Sounds” toggle still found in the Settings menu of StarPterano’s current build. I couldn’t get the app to reproduce it, which is actually what set me on the hunt that led to the repo.
I shall always love you, StarPterano. NEVER DIE.
https://thenewstack.io/why-developers-should-experiment-with-the-fediverse/
One of its main features is “local only posting,” which gives users the option of not federating their posts.
One of the main features of Darius Kazemi's Hometown, a fork of Mastodon from 2019, is that it allows "local only posting". This gives the users an option to post their content only with a small, limited group of people instead of spreading it widely outside of their social group. In addition to helping to tummel a smaller conversation this also prevents those who are more likely to suffer from context collapse of the groups social norms from engaging and potentially souring the conversation.
This feature could also be well leveraged for small private classroom conversations between teachers and students without leaking their personal/private data or conversations that ought to be small as they learn.
Could also be fun to limit the level of federation to the level of an academic department, academic discipline, or even a university. How might one define a group or groups of publics within Mastodon so that one could choose a level at which to share their content?
https://xabid.com/how-to-connect-wordpress-to-fediverse/
Nothing new for me, and potentially missing some parts.
https://community.reclaimhosting.com/t/mastodon-on-reclaim-cloud/3225
For those interested in doing it for edtech/classroom settings, it might be worth looking at the Hometown fork of Mastodon: https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/Local-only-posting
The link is to a special feature that most Mastodon instances don't have: local only posting which would allow students a level of privacy and separation from the rest of the federated timeline if they choose.
https://toot.wales/@chrisaldrich
https://dolphin.town/about
A univocalic Mastodon instance in which posts consist only of the letter "e", which to some extent sounds like the sound which a dolphin makes.
Measuring the health of an online community by librarian:libertarian ratio
—серафими многоꙮчитїи @derwinmcgeary@octodon.social
https://seedy.xyz/posts/0005-open-letter/
Not sure why they'd do this instead of grabbing a group of people, forking the code (or writing their own) to do what they want it to and federating from there...
I've always hoped that some of the Mastodon instances would build outside of the status update sort of content.
utilities
aplicaciones para mastodon en otras plataformas
How to Mastodon
liga en español https://politicaconciencia.astrosmxsftp.org/red-social/como-usarla/
Mastodon deliberately does not support arbitrary search. If someone wants their message to be discovered, they can use a hashtag, which can be browsed. What does arbitrary search accomplish? People and brands search for their own name to self-insert into conversations they were not invited to. What you can do, however, is search messages you posted, received or favourited. That way you can find that one message on the tip of your tongue.
Another feature that has been requested almost since the start, and which I keep rejecting is quoting messages.
Each individual message can either be: Fully public, appearing to your followers, the public timelines, anyone looking at your profile Unlisted, appearing to your followers and anyone looking at your profile, but skipping the public timelines Private, appearing only to your followers and people mentioned in it And direct, appearing only to people mentioned in it
I am giving this one a go as it seems to be the most widely used.
It is widely used, and I had it for a while myself. I will note that the developer said he was going to deprecate it in favor of some work he'd been doing with another Mastodon/WordPress developer though.
Is stability a problem in the Fediverse?
Stability is typically an issue based on who is running the instance and what sort of server they're doing it on. Is it fast or slow? Does it have 3 people or 300,000? Naturally the larger the instance, the more resources it requires. Some instances have popped up and shut themselves down because the maintainer was doing it as a hobby and just got tired of it. Often there isn't much information about who is running the server and how long it may or may not be around or how well it's maintained.
What was that about crowdfunding instances? How much of an instance’s conversation was visible to the outside? How much of this is Google-spidered? What are those anti-abuse tools? Why can’t governments “completely block” Mastodon (as a whole, or just instances?)? Can one join more than a single instance?
Managing an instance can come with a lot of work and maintenance, so some instances are crowdfunded to help defray the costs of full time management of a particular instance.
Anti-abuse tools give users the ability to better block people as well as instances have the ability to block incoming messages from entire instances. Thus an instance that serves as a haven for Nazis could be completely blocked by one or more other instances which prevent their users from seeing any content from all users on an instance that is a "bad actor."
Governments could block instances based on their IP addresses, but would have to do some work to block all instances (primarily by knowing where they all are).
One can join as many instances as they'd like, but it would likely become confusing after a while. Ideally one should be able to join just one instance and be able to follow or be followed by anyone from any other instance. Some communities have particular sets of rules they expect their users to abide by. Some may be centered on particular topics of discussion as well. Some instances are individually run and have only one user.
No other options presented themselves on the page
This website has some reasonable set up for helping one determine an appropriate instance: https://instances.social/
other routes in.
http://www.unmung.com/mastoview will show content from random instances to give one an idea about the content within a particular instance before joining.
Most instances will have some general information about themselves. Usually the more thought out they are, the more likely they will be around for a while. Here's an example of the instance maintained by the creator of the original platform, which is also one of the largest and most popular instances out there: https://mastodon.social/about/more
Any pointers or experiences to share?
There are a couple of WordPress plugins for Mastodon that allow you to syndicate your content from your own website into your instance. You might find that somewhat useful.
The IndieWeb wiki has some generally useful information as well as some criticisms and related articles which might be helpful: https://indieweb.org/Mastodon
Mastodon runs on the Activity Pub specification for sending messages back and forth. As a result some people are looking into having their personal websites support these protocols so that people on Mastodon (or other parts of the Fediverse) can subscribe to one's primary website. If you can do this then you don't necessarily need "yet another social platform" for interacting with those online. The two biggest of these efforts within the WordPress community are Fed Bridgy and the Activity Pub plugin
I have my own Mastodon instance, mastodon.laurakalbag.com where it’s just me (and Oskar). This is referred to as an “instance-of-one.” It’s hosted on my own domain, so I own and control everything I post on there, but because I have the Mastodon installed on there, I can see what other people post on their Mastodon instances, and reply to them with mentions, or favourite and boost (like retweet) their toots, even though they are on different instances. It’s like having my own Twitter which can talk to other Twitters, where I make the rules.
I like the idea of an 'Instance of one'
I have used the user-supported Mastodon.Social site for the past few years, but would really like to explore with the OpenETC this year what it might take to host our own instance of Mastodon within the OpenETC specifically for educators within BC to have their own Mastodon account.
I found Laura Kalbag's discussion of instances useful
Monitoring Mastodon instances
Hiveway, a rip off of Mastodon?
At the moment, several projects in the space are working to adopt new supplementary protocols, with the intent of building better bridges between one another. The proposed development might end up looking like this:<img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia-inner" src="https://via.hypothes.is/im_/https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*3pEK-Fwq7bNOVcnXfVdNuQ.png">Diaspora at this time has no plans for new protocols, having just significantly upgraded its own. postActiv intends to adopt support for Diaspora federation in a future release. Mastodon just released support for ActivityPub, and Pleroma , Socialhome and GNU Social are thinking of adopting it. Nextcloud is also notably getting into the federation space, and Hubzilla and Friendica will likely both support the ActivityPub protocol as extensions.
Where we discover that Friendica (and Hubzilla) are clearly the best options for navigating The Free Network.
It's a shame that the connectivity to Twitter and other non-free networks and services is not better highlighted. It's clearly by being compatible with the non-free networks that the Free Network will win in the end -- by allowing people to escape en masse.
seeps inthrough thecracks
I don't know whether it is the dark that seeps through or the light. Or both.
a fear more friend thanfoe in the knowledgeit seems to knowof me.
This is glorious line, shining with truth and aid. thanks.
It's small wonder
a small wander, too, a random walk in the fields and woods, the landscape and the inscape.
Can Mastodon keep its anti-harassment, pro-furry, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-Nazi focus as it grows? What to do about content that’s acceptable by some instances but illegal elsewhere? Is the influx of new people who don’t understand the network’s culture the start of an “Eternal April”, like Usenet’s Eternal September?
What is interesting is that the sense of early 90s cyberoptimism has started to reappear. It is possible to do things again, to change things, to build things that will make a difference. Suddenly, it is possible to discuss what things are and what they should be. What is an interface, what does it mean in its current form, how should we change it? What can and ought we do to establish sustainable social norms? How do we go about surfing together on the information superhighway without colliding with each other?
Interesting things are happening over at Mastodon. If you have had your ears tuned to the hacker grapevines, you will most likely have heard that Mastodon is an open source federated social network that works very much like Twitter but is, in fact, not Twitter, and thus poses a challenge to the venerable bird site.
Mastodon.py Documentation
Python/API documentation for the Mastodon social networking platform.
Mastodon::REST
API documentation for the Mastodon social networking platform.
issue tracker
Report issues for the Matodor [sic] iOS app for the Mastodon social network.