From 2022-09: Forbes co-sponsored a session for decentralized socnets ... included some early #Twitter builders
Article's writer clearly didn't have good sources for some things, though. For example, there were "more than 40" #Mastodon instances. I'm positive there were more than 4000 at the time.
While I was on Twitter, every time there was something that was newsworthy, VC bros would wax poetic on the 🐦about their expertise on epidemiology, vaccines, the efficacy of cow paste as medicine, the "science" behind not masking, international relations (Iran, Russia, missile strikes), how to get a cargo ship unstuck from a canal, the Constitution.
They must having a field day today about SVB and it's failure based on their "expertise" in banking...LOLLLLL...
"Without notice, the Mastodon instance bitcoinhackers.org has shut down for good."
This is just untrue. I can't prove it by linking to the posts now because the instance is gone but NVK announced that he was shuttering the instance months ago. People tried to get him to hand the instance over and have someone else operate it but he wouldn't do that because the DMs on #mastodon are unencrypted and he didn't feel comfortable letting someone else have that data.
@mcnees, you made my day with the Polykarp Kusch story... I really do love #Mastodon, which allows us to have such great feeds without any algorithm that hides amazing #toot
@bobjonkman @bobjonkman One positive is that some #Twitter clients are now advertising #Mastodon clients. I wish they'd also look at making clients for #GNUsocial, #Misskey, #PixelFed and so on, as not everyone supports the Mastodon API.
You didn’t notice a block of #mastodon instances go dark yesterday with the outage of a major European backbone host provider (OVH) because the #fediverse is so distributed and decentralized. But if you’ve got a flight in the USA today then you know exactly what happens when a centralized software service goes down. #FAA
#Medium link; don't be surprised if it does weird things before showing you the article.
"Mastodon brought a protocol to a product fight"
> Yes, yes, the network is under immense strain as people flee the Elon strain infecting Twitter. But come on, there are folks who really believe this is going to replace, or even stand alongside Twitter, as a massively scaled social network? I call bullshit. While it’s impressive that millions of users have apparently given Mastodon a try, the product is far too slapdash and clunky to keep folks engaged. A lump of coal.
No, it isn't meant to be a #Twitter replacement. Keep your Twitter account until you no longer want it--or the company closes and the site shuts down--you can use Mastodon alongside Twitter.
And the #Fediverse networks are much more than just #Mastodon. Don't think you have experienced the network and all it has to offer if all you've done is briefly tried to use Mastodon, because you haven't experienced it.
> I’ve somehow avoided signing up for the service up until now. Largely because signing up was and is so comically obtuse — pick your server everyone, hope you choose wisely!
Have you not used e-mail? It works the same way. You pick a server, such as Gmail or Outlook dot com, and sign up. Please tell me you realize that the people you communicate with are not all on the same e-mail service that you use.
> But, but, it’s not a product, it’s a protocol. Yeah, that’s a nice thing to say. And to believe in. But I truly believe the ship has sadly sailed for such idealism in this space. Jack Dorsey can talk about how this should have been what Twitter was from the get go until he’s bluesky in the face. It’s just not going to happen. And he’s more to blame for that than most everyone else. As is he for the Elon element of this current equation. But that’s a different story.
Okay, so how about this story: Twitter has only been profitable two or three years of its entire history. Since it started, it has existed by burning through investors' funds. Eventually, with or without Elon Musk's ownership, that runs out. Without such funding, their corporate-centralized ( #corpocentric ) model cannot exist very long. And same for their centralized competitors, such as Post.news, Gab, Parler, and so on. What is left is either #federated or #peer-to-peer approaches, where no single entity is responsible for funding and managing the entire network. So whether it is the #Fediverse ( with #ActivityPub and #OStatus and their successors ) & the Federation ( with #Diaspora ) or #Bluesky, or #Twister, or #NOSTR, the eventual future of #socnets is #decentralized, if not entirely peer-to-peer unless a national government takes over Facebook and Twitter in order to provide effectively unlimited resources. It is the protocol that makes it possible for thousands or millions of instances to displace and replace one big centralized instance.
Tim Bray discusses the ethics of moving to #Mastodon (and probably the #Fediverse in general), considering the views of groups such as #BlackTwitter whose norms and needs differ from those of most Mastodon users.
He concludes (correctly, I might add) that it is ethical to leave #Twitter and move to Mastodon and the Fediverse.
Also, #Vivaldi now has its own #Mastodon instance. I think #Brave Browser had an unofficial instance at one time, and #Mozilla intends to open theirs early in 2023.
I'm still not "there" yet, but I am doing some #PHP stuff. Maybe I'll be able to help make !GNUsocial and #Friendica competitive candidates for $ORGANIZATION deploying their own #Fediverse presence.
Keep in mind you can edit your photos on #Mastodon and drag the "circle" over the area you want most visible, so it won't crop a face like this. #Mastotip#Mastotips#Feditip#Feditips
Anyone familiar with the way Mastodon handles verifying URLs? At the Washington Post we're working on adding verified rel="me" and Mastodon links in our author profiles, but we're seeing mixed results on verification actually going through. It seems non-deterministic(?)
#Mastodon has a function to #follow one or more hashtags, or only certain combinations of hashtags in a separate pinned list.
This feature might be a good option for this.
How? 👉 Just click on any #hashtag or search for one and select "pin" in the bar at the top. Afterwards, the criteria can be further adjusted in the header of the respective list.