Mastodon: A New Hope for Social Networking

[aforkosh (Alan Forkosh)]

I finally signed up for Mastodon yesterday (@aforkosh@norcal.social). I initially used the two still active apps mentioned in the article to populate my following list. Still, I found it easy to search in Mastodon for the other folks I follow on Twitter and quickly add the ones I really want to follow.

The process took about 10 minutes.

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

@jzw

Something I’ve not fully understood yet, is how does the forwarding work if you change server? Do other instances still contact your original server which then points them to your new server?

I just moved ti a different server this morning (after discovering that the admin of my server has not responded to any communication for over a month) and followed the instructions here:

How To Use Mastodon and the Fediverse: Basic Tips | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial...

So, yes, your old server had a redirect in case your followers’ accounts have not yet seen the notification of the move of your account. You have to create separate CSV files of muted accounts, lists, accounts that you are following that you can then upload to the account on your new server. It was pretty easy for me.

[ace (Adam Engst)]

@glennf

If you don’t make fresh posts, your older ones are rarely discovered and replied to (is maybe what Doug means, but also worth pointing out separately). Twitter, sometimes people find a thread or post from years before.

Really? Huh, I guess I never thought of Twitter as being any sort of historical record other than what was linked externally.

[glennf (Glenn Fleishman)]

@ace

Really? Huh, I guess I never thought of Twitter as being any sort of historical record other than what was linked externally.

Your posts on Twitter are:

• Searchable from Twitter across your entire timeline
• Ingested by other companies and used in various kinds of database and searching products
• Available in Google searches (to some extent, not all tweets)

[blm]

@ace

Really? Huh, I guess I never thought of Twitter as being any sort of historical record other than what was linked externally.

I’ve gotten likes and replies to tweets I sent years ago. Not many, but then I don’t tweet much either.

[Shamino (David C.)]

If they are searchable, then that makes perfect sense.

My personal blog has several years-old articles that continue to get hits every week. I assume this is because search engines deliver it up to new readers all the time.

[Shamino (David C.)]

I just read these articles outlining the woes of selecting a bad server:

• Mastodon instance mstdn.plus with over 4K users suddenly broke
• Mastodon postmortem

h/t Michael Tsai blog

[ace (Adam Engst)]

@glennf alerted me to this excellent graphic explaining how things get into your timeline.

From:

HïMY SYeD🟩:mstdn: (@HiMYSYeD@mstdn.ca)

[cwilcox (Curtis Wilcox)]

Here’s the flowchart’s information in text (and list) form:

What makes up each timeline?

Where public Mastodon posts appear in each timeline on the instance you use.

• Home timeline
  • Published by an account I’m following
  • Boosted by someone I’m following
• Local timeline
  • Published by an account on my instance
• Federated timeline
  • Published by an account followed by anyone on my instance
  • Boosted by anyone on my instance
  • Searched for using its URL by anyone on my instance

When you publish a post, it will be in your instance’s Local timeline. Your post will be in the Federated timeline of any instanced used by someone who follows you or who boosts that post.

[Infostack]

To scale and be sustainable the fediverse needs a business model. Also I wonder about the storage inflation as more and more messages get pushed and stored on non-local servers? @Infostack@mastodon.social

[glennf (Glenn Fleishman)]

There needs to be a way for instances to set up payment (voluntary or membership) that isn’t PayPal or Patreon links. The folks at Mastodon are working to build a sustainable model for their development. I don’t know if a business model is needed as that implies a return on investment.