seperis | mastodon - a very vague overview

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mastodon - a very vague overview

I wrote this up on twitter a few days ago: much better for long form. I'm going to edit with some updated information but feel free to ask me anything or correct me so I can clarify/fix.

Six days on #mastodon and I'm not sure what to think of it now. I like it, but some caveats. I've also been reading the API and github documentation and source which has influenced me. If you haven't joined yet or have but are still screwing around wondering what the heck:

1.) Do not think of mastodon as social media; if you're familiar with mailing lists, mentally recalibrate to this: a fancy live-action mailing list using a messageboard structure with some vague IRC features.

2.) There is no concept of 'private' as understood in social media.
a.) The owner of your server can see everything you post no matter what.
b.) Possibly the owner of any server who has someone following you who is reading your posts. I still reading API calls so hold that one.
c.) There are four settings for posts: Global, Unlisted, Followers Only, and Direct Message. Let me break down what that means but look at Followers-Only there. That means WHO FOLLOWS YOU. Not WHO YOU FOLLOW.
You cannot only post to those that YOU follow.
- Global - everyone who exists on a Mastodon server can can potentially see it and boost/reply/etc .
- Unlisted - same as above, but your post will not appear a public feed line your local server or federated.
- Followers Only - This is NOT 'who you follow' aka your friendlist/circle/etc.This is WHO FOLLOWS YOU. There is only one way to specifically select like that.
- DM/Mentioned people only - This will ONLY go to people you # in the post but you only have 500 characters and names count

Refresh our definitions here: FANCY MAILING LIST. But with loose affiliations to other mailing lists. Okay now we'll talk about follows and posts, the local timeline feed and the Federated timeline feed.

3.) Feeds, Timelines, and All The Things
a.) Home - that is your personal feed, equivalent to your friendslist on LJ/DW, your roll on tumblr, and home on twitter.
b.) Local - this is the posts of everyone on your server.
c.) Federated - next tweet because this one takes time.

Federated is: all the public posts of everyone on your own server's friendslists in a single feed, including yours It is not ALL THE SERVERS or ALL THE USERS. It is individuals from multiple servers who are being followed by someone on your server. It can also be servers that are on a relay if your server subscribes to that.

That means that everyone on your server can also see every public posts of every single person you are following on the Federated feed and you can see the posts of theirs.

4.) The community you choose actually is really goddamn important depending on what you want.
a.) If your server is tiny, the Local feed is going to be tiny and the Federated feed will follow.
b.) What you see on the Federated feed is very dependent on what everyone on your server is interested in. In other words, if you pick a FurrysUnite or WeOnlyLikeBach servers, your Federated feed may not be heavy on variety.

5.) Lets talk about Mastodon As Fancy Mailing Lists: each server is its own country run by its own admin with its own rules, regulations, and quirks.
a.) Admins can backend block entire servers. You can't see the people on it, follow them, see their posts, and same for them.
b. ) There are levels of blocking below Disappearing an Entire Server, sure. But you seriously seriously need to research your community first to find out what those are and ideally, a list of blocked/block-lite servers and why they're blocked.
c.) Just like with mailing lists, you are subject to an Owner who is making the rules, blocking the sites, and all the things we took as life lived back in mailing list days, but now with the fun of many of these and implicit crossposting, and hey, that.

4.) Your posts are at least implicitly subject to the rules of any server that has someone following you. So yes, your post may be fine for WeAreCoders and DestielIsOurLife, but maybe not so much on CrazyAdminServer where you have a follower and yeah, you're blocked from that server

Mastodon isn't like any social networking site out there, but it's not the Old West of Collective Internet Memory, either. Decentralization does not mean you personally will have any more control than you do right now on twitter or tumblr or lj or dw or anywhere else. You don't.

Decentralization means control is now in the hands of not one corporation or person, but many of them. Primarily whoever owns your server and who they delegate to run it, and secondarily to the admins and staff of other servers.

So I can't say this enough: if you join, recalibrate your brain to "mailing list but fancy, modern, and interconnected with other mailing lists". A mailing list run on someone's home server or space they personally pay for on a web server.

The first rule: Sysadmin is God.

Note: I'm on the Fosstodon.org server: https://fosstodon.org/@seperis

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Just followed you! I'm

brainwane@social.coop.

I saw that at least one fairly well-populated instance has defederated from Fosstodon; I have heard rumors that others have too, and am trying to poke at them to find out more.

SEND ME THE GOOD GOSSIP!

Thank you for the explanation. I made an account when mastodon first became a thing but you know, never mind.:( For me it would be pointless.

I'll update with better detail and corrections, but the big things I wanted to get to people was the privacy thing, the friendlist thing, and sysadmin thing, because it's just not what people think of when they think of social media.

Thank you for the explanation!

I'm glad it helped! I'll update with some corrections and expansions soon, but I really wanted anyone looking at it to at least know what it very much is not. For what it is, it's great.

Socially it sounds a bit like Reddit, except there the subreddit mod(s) are God.

Reddit is a single site with many communities you can join; you can join more than one with yoru reddit account. And Reddit is owned by it's owners

Mastodon is only software, no one owns it. Each mastodon server is its own community, and while they're loosely affiliated--federated--they're also discrete. You don't have so much a Mastodon account as an account made in your server that is made in a Mastodon-format you can transfer to a different Mastodon server but doesn't exist outside a mastodon server. You cannot join two Mastodon servers with the same account. Sysdadmins are owner, administrator, and mod (or appoint people to help with those).

It is very, very decentralized, and the culture between servers varies dramatically.

So thinking about it: the posting format is Twitter, the general overall structure is mailing list in messageboard/twitter form, and it feels like living in a split timeline between 2000 and now.

I am using the reddit sub comparison now in the essay now; 'subreddits with only loose affiliations to each other (aka the software), literally no oversight of any kind, and personal fiefs in every way of the mod/sysyadmin/owner' works really well. Just the subs aren't subject based, but people-type based, if that makes sense.

Huh interesting. I just joined mastodon.social because all the fandom ones I heard of weren't accepting new people, and I just wanted something big and stable to try it out, that could cope with influx, and I figured the ones who started it would stick around.

And it was a bonus that it's located in Germany, so I get some more local stuff on the federated feed to see which kerfuffles are trending in Germany, which I tend to miss entirely with my fairly US-centric fandom social media feeds...

Oh, that is cool! That's one of the positives of Mastodon from waht I can tell; depending on the server, it does have the potential to expand your scope a lot.

Well, the main feed of everything is obviously very busy with a large instance, but in the app it also seems to highlight popular things? I'm not entirely sure how it works yet, but in that tab I see things from German accounts that presumably have a large following? Like one was from a comedian for example. Interestingly the German government, both federal and local, seems to use Mastodon quite a bit, like there are several instances run by them for agencies. Apparently it works for their data protection requirements in a way that signing up for US twitter could not.

I just joined mastodon.social because all the fandom ones I heard of weren't accepting new people, and I just wanted something big and stable to try it out, that could cope with influx, and I figured the ones who started it would stick around

That was me, lol, except I only joined at all because Neil Gaiman put an apparently infinite invite link on his twitter. I don't really have the spoons or the interest to pick up a whole new social network Thing right now, so it was the path of least resistance all the way.

if you're familiar with mailing lists, mentally recalibrate to this: a fancy live-action mailing list using a messageboard structure with some vague IRC features.

Oh, that's really helpful! I find the interface....non-intuitive, to say the least.

I'm kind of really put off by the attitude some of the older users seem to have that people coming over from Twitter were all hatched yesterday and want nothing but $PROFIT. They're getting flooded and I can definitely see why they're sad/anxious, but it's not that welcoming. Then again, I don't think they want to be welcoming, unlike Dreamwidth, where denise will pop up on the news posts to talk to newbies all the time. Probably I just need to find a smaller server but a lot of them aren't doing invites right now....

It's always like that when something takes off. *g* I kind of find it funny to watch; I will not say that is my major reason for hanging around but it is a nice perk.

Yeah, I just saw that "Home Invasion: The Eternal September Comes To Mastodon: The Hooligans Have Arrived!!" essay linked one too many times, with instructions to find a quiet place and read it thoroughly and meditate upon the author's wisdom or whatever, and I was just like ....no.

Hoo boy, and don't challenge them on their insistence for using content warnings on everything. The Filters available are more flexible than I've seen elsewhere, so people should just use that customizable algorithm then get rid of content warnings. But, yeah, that definitely isn't compatible with the technological telepathy that I keep warning everyone will arrive someday. We have some psychosocial evolution ahead of us soon.

The Filters available are more flexible than I've seen elsewhere, so people should just use that customizable algorithm then get rid of content warnings

That is seriously what I was thinking! Like, I can only control what I see (if that), not what other people post! I'm not thrilled with some of the stories about people getting scolded for posting about politics or "angrily" without content warnings. On Twitter I learned to make lists for political accounts rather than firehose it and mute words and just block certain accounts on site and it took a while, but now it's a generally good experience. Or I asked someone to tag her show spoilers and she'd done too many to want to tag them all so she just suggested I mute her until the show was over, and we could DM instead, and that was fine.

tl;dr I don't like the "freeze peach, Wild Wild West, Fais ce que voudras" approach but this way doesn't seem to work either.

Thanks very much for posting this! I'm not bothering with Mastodon at the moment, but might in some indefinite future.

It's a lot of fun for what it is., especially if you pick a community where you have closely aligned interests. Fosstodon.org is open source programming and that's why I went back to get a degree, so just reading my timeline I'm picking up a ton of terminology and concepts that actually literally are helping me shape where I'm going.

...as I honestly don't know; I probably need to at least start with a specialization and expand but I literally love everything I'm studying, even stuff I didn't think I did or would. I checked, and it would take two and a half degrees time to take every single class, so (though granted, I can live without iOS anything). Plus, the classroom format + extra projects on subject is ideal for my learning style; it gets me over the humps where my brain nopes.

I do think picking the community is crazy important, not just on the 'do I really want a sysadmin at friend of a friend space from me' level, but on the 'there is a whole timeline that will be just these people; that should excite me a lot' level.

Yeah, I do not get the impression it's going to replace here, or that it's a place I want to have a quiet discussion about, say, something one of my children is doing that I'm disgruntled about. But it does seem like maybe a place to meet people? So that is fun. And also to do things like post scenery pictures, which I used to do on Twitter back when I was doing that.

YES. That's what it's for. In parts of fandom--mostly because we're all foafoaf from each other--we tend to mix everything together more. This is much more public/professional/hobby-centric mix, less personal. I am considering--when fandom.ink opens up again as I can't get in without an invite--a second account specifically for fandom. I've just never really bothered to or wanted to separate my life that much--there's a reason I don't use Facebook.

Honestly my biggest interest in Mastodon right now is to open an instance of my own so I can see all the backend and how it works. I don't want to like--use it for its intended purpose? Just play with the tools and API and see how the Federated concept works from the inside. At which time yep, I am totally going to recruit people I know from fandom to shitpost or do cat macros or post their fic at different wordcounts so I can watch the API calls and see how the database stores everything and the practical control of privacy and public settings. I figure from that I can write up a better guide at least on how its interacting with us and maybe give people who are interested access to learn how to use Mastodon from the backend in controlled conditions so all of us can enjoy our learning curve in safety.

Honestly that may end up being either my Christmas or summer project.

Yeah, at this point I keep my work life and my social life pretty far apart online -- work life goes on LinkedIn so I have SOME kind of visible online social media presence (keeps people from poking around wondering why they can't find me anywhere), and social life does not go anywhere with my entire name attached, because the last time I did that, it was a mess.

Literally the only reason I'm on linkedin is that I work for teh state and they offered us the linkedin classes for free (?) through our state email if we joined. That was fun but then I went back to college so now I just go to randomly friend or approve a link to my coworkers. Some are here on the H1-B I think? So I try to make sure I have them since if they get laid off or riffed or something, it looks better if they have a large network and hopefully expands their opportunities to find another employer. A lot of my contractor coworkers got very screwed the last time something like that happened and I had no idea this might help; now I do.

I'm looking at this as a place to maybe have interesting conversations with people I don't know yet, which, much as I <3 DW and have no plans to leave, isn't so much a thing around here in recent years.

That is what it is perfect for. It really does fill the combination of professional/personal interest light social niche that I didn't realize I really really wanted until I joined. It's not All About The Thing, but more All About the People Who Do This Thing, which is actually a very important distinction. It's a really nice vibe.

I do that kind of thing on LinkedIn and I also use it to make general announcements about union stuff -- nothing private, because a lot of agency leadership is also connected with me there, but things like "hey we will be having the taco truck for lunch on Wednesday and there will be a presentation about the new contract, c'mon down and say howdy" or whatever. I do not care if leadership knows we are getting tacos. Honestly I hope they envy us our tacos (meals from leadership have been crappy and far between since the start of the pandemic whereas the union has upped its picnic game bigtime).

I'm having fun exploring! And it's nice to be able to dip in and out of conversations, especially when I'm on the road for work and spending nights sitting alone in hotel rooms.

Thank you for this very informative post!

It definitely makes me think mastodon is not for me, but I very much appreciate the explanation of it anyway!!

Pretty much it works if you have that particular itch that needs the scratch. To me, it feels slightly too specialized. I think something like this could deifnitely work--the Federated thing--but this form, I'm not sure of.

But that is the part I shall be exploring soon.

Thank you so much for this! I have followed you--I'm

gemknitter@wandering.shop, just so you know. I can deal with a modern odd fancy mailing list since I now know that's what it is. I just need people in my life. And I need to be here on DW more too.

Added!

(Here via

kore, hi!)

Thank you for this writeup! I think it's just solidified my decision not to join, but it's nice to have concrete reasons for that rather than a vague 'hm, that sounds like a bother'.

Yeah, it fulfills a purpose, but you really have to have a need for that to really get into it. For me, my server is very open source programming and IT heavy, so right now, I'm getting a lot out of it since I'm working on a degree for that, but even following my fandom friends, I feel isolated from my people (dear God I really did write that). That's fine for now since everything is in transition but I think I want to get a fandom.ink account soon and move over there and create a second account for fosstodon.org. I am fine with fandom seeing my whole life but not so much fosstodon.org. Very differnet tech people than fannish tech people is what I'm saying.

Great post.

Thank you! As soon as i have time, I'm going to make some updates and corrections as well as add some links to relevant parts of the documentation and API for context. I am still interpreting some of the commands, but honestly, I think a lot of my questions will be most easily answered if I just set up an instance myself and get some friends to play in it so I can watch API calls and the database.

It's interesting seeing how the "federated" aspect of the design shows through a lot of this, as a foundational piece (which is probably why it works instead of being one of the attempts to be like some other social networking site only federated, which are inevitably doomed to failure).

There is no concept of "private" as we have on places like DW, because that idea of privacy depends on a trusted intermediary to carry the messages and identify recipients. Decentralized trust like that is a hard problem. (One could probably layer some sort of public-key-encryption-based thing on top of the existing system to get pieces of it, but it's still awkward.)

The post settings sound like they are not so much privacy settings as visibility settings, somewhat akin to making files "hidden". It's more about convenience and avoiding clutter than about anything like privacy or security.

The "federated" feed sounds like it's sort of an everything feed -- but specifically it's everything the server you're reading on is aware of, which cannot be "the whole universe". It's only aware of things that get posted on it or that get pulled to it because of people's subscriptions.

The sorts of communication that a system supports -- what it allows, and what it makes easy or hard -- have a lot of effect on what sort of community and culture gets built on it. This sounds like a really fascinating experiment to see what community-shapes grow on this one.

Everything you wrote here.

The API options alone explained a lot about what the philosophy and purpose of at least this iteration of the Federation in social media. Especially the posting options: you're dead on in the 'visibility' rather than actual 'privacy'. The methods used to block/silence/mute/etc also follow the same pattern. And even that much can be optional; if you're a sysadmin, you can change the code so those options on posts don't even exist. It's interesting.

The only thing that bothers me is something that would only bother me when we're in open source; there isn't a lot of transparency for the user except at the admin's discretion, and to me, not enough public information on a server, and for that matter, not much more even if you're a member.

Example: I cannot anywhere in the API find a public option to see the list of servers my server has blocked/silenced/muted. I can access some server info but not that. Now I could obviously be missing a call for that or I'm looking in the wrong place, but. Yeah. That's part of the reason I want to test drive one and find out because like when you're reading the code for any project, what they chose to be accessible to users and what they didn't--and what a sysadmin can turn on and off--will tell me a lot about what is actually the goal and ideal they're working toward.

Another example: whether a user should know they're blocked on a server from replying to someone or just let them think they did when it didn't work and if they notice, let them assume weird code thing or something. Legit debate on 'is this a problem or not' on I think Github. I was riveted by that particular thread. And not very reassured by the fact that thread even existed, because I just don't think 'gaslighting' is usually the best solution to pretty much anything.

I saw your thread on Twitter initially, and I'm very grateful; this clarified a lot of points I was fuzzy on. Thanks for sharing!

I love this stuff!
Two small notes: federated feels a little bit like a combination of the network page on Dreamwidth, and the “member posts” page on a dw comm.
The idea of self hosting for mastodon is intriguing (still not private for reasons you addressed, but sysadmin is you) especially with this article from raspberry pi, but there’s also the flip side that local will now be sad. It’s a bit like: sysadmin is god, so either they’re your friend = A+ or you have the ability to move to a difference instance where you like the dysadmin better (but the hassle of moving, pros and cons), or make your own instance. (I do wonder how sysadmins see self-hosting since I know some block instances that don’t have moderation - do they take it as this person is themselves = no moderation? Is best practice to put up a personal guidelines/something like a blanket statement/policy?) All the interesting questions.
I’m in an instance that honestly seems to have the vibe of a dw general fannish comm so local feels very much like that. I can imagine that lager instances can be very overwhelming.

Edit: read some of the other comments, and so leaving this invite to fandom.ink here: (it caps at 25 since I don’t want to beleaguer sysadmin) https://fandom.ink/invite/eikDGhnY
At least a few of the apps I’ve tried support account switching, so I’m guessing a lot of people have multiple accounts. (Ha, like I have multiple twitter accounts, I suppose, though that’s apples and oranges.)

Edited (Added fandom.ink invite) 2022-11-13 15:10 (UTC)

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mastodon - a very vague overview

Fosstodon & defederation

Re: Fosstodon & defederation

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Thank you!

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