seperis | social media

Post: mastodon: a very vague overview

I do not in any way want to discourage people using it; in fact, the opposite. I think it's great fun and is definitely fulfilling a need for me.

It does not, however, replace anything we're using now (though it's not a terrible alternative to twitter even though it's not that either, at all). Like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook (I assume), LinkedIn, LJ/DW, Reddit etc it doesn't replace or replicate so much as create a different beast entirely. There are similarities to other sites but it's really its own thing. For me, it works gangbusters in that really weird area of Category of Thing I Am Super Into but avoids Only About This Thing I Am Super Into All the Time Forever At a Very Very High Professional Level That Is Terrifying and WTF.

If you're interested but intimidated, my best advice is to join a Very Large Generalish Site, which may seem counter-intuitive but you can be sure you won't be personally noticed immediately while you flail about wondering what the hell is going on (I joined the open source software server and posted and I had three people like "Hiya Person!" and me going "I don't even know HOW TO REPLY OH GOD WHAT" which was fine and funny but that may not be your thing).

Now.

As I am getting my degree so I can go into open source software, I'm very into exploring mastodon and other Federated software options, so I am thinking of opening one specifically for me to learn the backend, watch the API calls (web service) and explore how the database works. I'm currently researching how much it will cost me monthly and getting advice on setup and how much work I'll need to do and if I have time for that matter. But the concept of the Federation is most likely the future of the internet in some way so this is probably something I need to really catch up on.

If I do, I will need guinea pigs for that to be users, and who better than my friends? So I may post here and a few other places to get volunteers to make accounts. If you're interested vaguely in joining a server but would like one where you know for a fact your admin knows less than you do, or vibe on the idea of a server that will literally be my lab to post random macros for me to see how the server processes and stores data, or want to learn how to administer one in a controlled environment, or learn with me the backend, I'd love to hear from you while I research and decide what to do. Yes, this will include me randomly turning different things on and off to see what happens, but everyone will be warned ahead of time Experiment #15 What Does This Do? is in progress. It'll be fun!

I figure if we flail, we flail together, I always say.

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

This week of yet again playing Social Media Roulette has apparently done something to me. Cross-posted from cohost (actually, I now have two new identities!), because I think I just broke.

The dangers of going back to college later in life and applying to it the focus, obsession, and enthusiasm of a fangirl whose practiced all three of those things for decades (and we're very, very good at it) does have it's disadvantages: you spend an awful amount of time reading code for fun because you're used to doing that kind of thing.

I am seriously enjoying mastodon, and reading the API and Github documentation has told me a lot (including how much I don't know), but it overlapped heavily with a feature that most social media sites don't have but you can do with mastodon because it works in instances; you can transfer your account to a different server.

Of the top of my head, I can't remember the scope of transfer, but you do get to stay effectively 'you' after the transition instead of the usual method: when we join a new social media site, our online identity is brand new and we effectively experience--within the scope of that site--digital amnesia of our entire (outside that scope) online life.

Sure, we have the photo albums and diaries--link back to our old identities--but within the scope of Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, Mastodon (the whole), we start over every time. We're not even permitted a passport; we're always and forever only citizens of that country with no reference to any other citizenship we have, have had, or will have before.

There is, actually, one social media exception to that: Dreamwidth. Off the top of my head, it's the only one that didn't require me to ignore all history that was not created within it; you could fully import your account from LJ into DW. For that matter, it let you keep doing it regularly so your entries and replies were kept synched.

Anyway, back to Mastodon: it does allow the transfer of your account--that being, your Mastodon identity--if you want to join a different server. Which in my social media history is rather new and kind of exciting; I'm allowed to keep my own identity between servers! I get to exist as me and keep my history!

I am allowed to keep my history. I am permitted to keep my identity. The words I wrote, the conversations I had, the friends I made: I must be allowed, permitted, to keep those things, because obviously, I have no right to them. Because quite literally they aren't mine to keep. I've been graciously allowed to download my data from a site, but no other site will let me use it there; the only identity I'm permitted is the one that the site will give me.

I've been doing Social Media Roulette for twenty years, and it has annoyed me every time that I have to recreate myself from scratch at every new site. It's been that way from the beginning, so I suppose it didn't occur to me for a long time to ask why. Now of course, I know why--from the point of view of those who own or run a site.

I am not a site admin, however; I am me. And right now, I have no idea why on earth up until now, I was okay with not actually owning myself and only existing as borrowed, vaguely maybe-related identities within the scope of multiple sites that I will inevitably lose.

I called a vote among the roughly twenty-three different iterations of Seperis, and for your consideration, we submit the following: if the future of social media is not be owned by a single corporation or entity and so cannot be taken away, then maybe we, the users, could own ourselves, both within the scope of the site and outside it. I have the right to my history no matter the platform, the right to my friends, the right to my identity, and not only can I take it with me when I leave, I can bring it with me when I join.

Or...we just keep doing what we're doing. Because that's worked out super well for us.

So sayeth Seperis of Livejournal, on this day in the year of our Lord 2022, born on November 1, 2001, twenty-one years ago, and didn't know she would not be the only, just the first.

Crosspost: https://cohost.org/seperis/post/272559-i-think-i-m-hurting

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Adding for Mastodon.
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note for those reading my mastodon post

mastodon - a very vague overview

i think I'm hurting my brain