@atomicpoet
So, this is probably like setting up a joint mail address on an e-mail server that forwards mails (posts) to the specified people of the group, correct?
What I would need, however, is to thickly "categorize" contacts into group, so as to be more targeted.
E.g. not all people who enjoy #UKpol are interested in #History, etc.
@HistoPol@coloco Well, the other difference is that @fediversenews is moderated. I can remove posts from a group, and also ban malicious actors from participating to the group.
@atomicpoet
Moderation...someI have been arguing for due to the arrival of the #Metas and #Birdsite users with very different cultures.
But is it something that I can do proactively with my threads?
Probably not, I guess, for as much as I try working in tandem with myself, I am not a group, correct?
It's so easy that you probably don't even notice you're doing it already now.
You follow the group exactly like you follow a Mastodon user.
At least in the cases of Guppe, Lemmy, /kbin and Friendica groups/forums, you post to them by mentioning them like you'd mention a Mastodon user. Interaction with groups/forums on Hubzilla and (streams) is somewhat different; I've yet to find out how well it works.
@jupiter_rowland @fediversenews Hi all, in light of what happened earlier this week, we do have to keep in mind that groups (like guppe groups) are the perfect tool for a spammer to increase his/her reach with very little effort.
Perhaps, before implementing groups, we should first look at automated spam-detection / removal systems. If this isn't done, we risk that the groups will be become vehicles for spammers, which will probably completely kill of the service.
#Mastodon feels like it has to implement them. The #Fediverse doesn't have to implement them because they are already implemented.
@Fediverse News is on #Friendica which is not a modified Mastodon instance, but a project of its very own. When Mastodon was launched in 2016, Friendica had already been around for 6 years with a full-blown group/forum functionality.
Groups/forums in the Fediverse are actually older than the Fediverse itself.
It will depend on the platform. For example, #Friendica (and to an extent #Hubzilla and #Streams), the owner of the group (and anyone else given moderation access) can block accounts. There is also chirp.social which can also block accounts.
Then there is #GNUsocial, which is a rebranded #StatusNet itself a rebranded #Laconica (the first #Fediverse software, c. 2008) have built-in groups feature; which IIRC, can also block users if needed.
Personally, services like Guppe really need to add moderation features, otherwise, what you just described will more likely happen.
@youronlyone@jupiter_rowland@fediversenews Hi all!
Well, in the end, where and how this gets implemented, who has to do the work, and if you put the workload at the side of human moderators or some automated tools, that is all secondary.
The only point I wanted to make is that the fediverse has grown quite fast in the last year, which starts to make it an interested target for spammers; and that unfiltered "multiplication engines" are the perfect tool for that.
Why not implement the spam detection engine for activitypub as an independent software-module that can be placed in front of any fediverse server, no matter what software the instance is running?
This does probably require a standardized API between the fediverse instance software and the spam-detection module so that these two can work together.
@kristoff@youronlyone@jupiter_rowland@fediversenews Because trying to automate identifying and stopping “bad stuff” at scale is impossible. Millions of dollars spent by the social media companies on automated systems and underpaid sweat shop workers with PTSD in developing countries has failed over and over again. False positives, false negatives. Trolls, Nazis and scammers still there.
People complain about Mastodon’s moderation model, largely because it’s people and people disagree and make mistakes all the time. But it mostly works. Small communities can keep control of the behaviour of their own members. And if they don’t, they get ostracised.
@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g@fediversenews It depends. On Friendica (and probably Hubzilla) groups look and behave just like Facebook groups. There’s a separate “Forums” section where groups live. Each one has posts that then have a dangling thread of replies. Replies go to on the end of the thread (and to anyone mentioned in the reply). When you look at them from Mastodon, they look like this fediversenews group and…
@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g@fediversenews behave just like a bot that reflects every post that mentions it. Follow the bot and you receive all the group posts. As Mastodon is supposed to get built in group support soon, I hope this can be split out and presented better than the current jumble.
In fact there’s another type of group that it is just a bot - the p4g group mentioned in this thread.
@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g@fediversenews a.gup.pe just creates a new bot every time someone mentions it for the first time. You can then follow the bot and it will boost any mentions of itself just like a Friendica group. However I don’t think it supports moderation and the UX is pants. All I know about p4g is that it’s “a group about p4g”. Finding groups is a hit or miss affair - you have to guess the name.
@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g@fediversenews The current group UX on Mastodon is also a bit odd. For example, even if I remove the fediversenews “user” and don’t mention it in a reply, the reply will still be part of the group, boosted to all followers etc as normal. Not what a Mastodon user would expect.
@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g Yup. Your post was boosted by fediversenews.
Interestingly it hasn’t been boosted (yet?) by p4g, but all of my earlier replies certainly were.
@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g I’m using @IceCubesApp
The Mastodon web interface is usually very out of date when displaying replies/boosts/likes and often just doesn’t show the information (even number of boosts or likes). Other clients can display this and make sure it’s more up to date.
@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g@IceCubesApp My instance is on 4.1.2 and usually kept pretty up to date (they were running early builds of v4 in order to get post editing and hashtag following before most other people had that).
I personally don’t like the Mastodon web UI. elk or phanpy are probably better if you want a desktop web UI. I mostly use mobile.
Incidentally, this is what the thread looks like on Friendica (actually on the instance hosting this group). You can see it’s boosted (reshared) the posts and that we’re both using Mastodon.
And speaking of propagation lag, I'm still not seeing the edits I made to my post back over on its version on Fediverse News even though its timestamp over there is now >7 minutes old
BUT if I ask to edit my post OVER THERE, the post shows up all ready done
BUT if I exit OUT of editing, the edit I made now >nine minutes ago is still not there
@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g Like I said, I’m not a fan of the default Mastodon web UI. It tends to show very out of date information. I think it’s to reduce load on the server, but it causes the reply guy problem and other issues.
I find @IceCubesApp always shows the latest information (including all replies) about a post when I interact with it. Much better.
@FinchHaven@MetalSamurai@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g the feed should be the feed same on mobile and desktop, as well as between different mobile and desktop apps.
Balkanisation is a strange idea to me when it comes to the Fediverse with so many actually different non-Mastodon apps talking to each other, all receiving the same feed from the individual services attached. Some enrichment with one thing, others enriched with something else. That is federation
@webhat@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here.
If I view my Mastodon home timeline using the web UI or any of the half dozen mobile apps I have, I see the same posts in the same order, but the Mastodon app/web will have less information and more of it will be out of date (likes, replies, boosts etc).
@webhat@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g If I switch to my CalcKey account (and if I had the same follow list, which I don’t), I’d also see the same posts in the same order, but I’d also now see all the markdown formatted text and emoji reactions which were invisible to me before.
@webhat@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g If I then switch to my Friendica account suddenly the same posts are presented very differently. It’s a Facebook style initial post and descending tree of replies.
@webhat@FinchHaven@HistoPol@coloco@atomicpoet@p4g I think being able to choose the view I prefer is one of the most powerful things about the Fediverse and ActivityPub. I can choose the way I like to interact, and everybody else can choose their own preferred way, but we can still all talk together.
When I go over to the tab running @fediversenews (who I already Follow) I see that post in their Posts and Replies but as yet it hasn't shown up on my instance Home feed
[refreshes Home feed]
Nope
Even though I Follow Fediverse News that post hasn't made it through to my Home feed
Although to be quite fair, I've noticed propagation lag across different instances to be quite lengthy at times...
@mathias@coloco@atomicpoet@FinchHaven@HistoPol My reading of the document at the head of this thread is that this is how groups are all supposed to work. Each thread in the group has an initial post (the example is a “Page” type), and then all the replies are Note types that are attached to it, or to previous replies.
@coloco@atomicpoet@HistoPol@MetalSamurai, @FinchHaven, this happens because the post to which you're replying is part of a conversation in the Fediverse News Forum. Even though your post/reply is marked as "unlisted", the conversation as a whole is not, the Fediverse News user will reshare it as that is one of its functions as a forum.
@Kevin Davidson This has nothing to do with Mastodon and everything with Friendica.
On Friendica (and Hubzilla and (streams)), if you comment on a post (remember the start-post-and-comments structure), you don't have to mention the author of the post. They and everyone else who has the post itself in their timeline/stream will see your comment and everyone else's comments even without a single mention. You only need mentions if you comment on another comment, and even these may actually only be cosmetical.
The reason why I keep adding mentions to my comments manually (with a little help from auto-complete) is to make sure that all users on ActivityPub projects involved in the thread receive them.
@jupiter_rowland I know, I use Friendica as well. Just pointing out that it looks strange to Mastodon users.
I see Groups is listed on the Mastodon roadmap as MAS-15 and “in progress”. Maybe the new native groups support will help and it will be displayed in a way that makes it clearer.
@FinchHaven@jupiter_rowland@fediversenews@FinchHaven But more than half of those Mastodon users appeared in the last 6 months and was pretty small for a long time before that. Friendica may be lesser known and quieter, but it’s the place to be if you prefer a Facebook style interface, or need to keep in touch with people on diaspora* (an even more insular community).
@Kevin Davidson @FinchHaven Also, Mastodon isn't so big because 10 million people willingly chose Mastodon instead of any of the other Fediverse projects.
Mastodon is so big because 10 million Twitter users were RAILROADED HARD from Twitter to one specific Mastodon instance. They were never offered a choice. They weren't even told that there's more to the Fediverse than Mastodon. And many many Mastodon users, especially on the big, general-purpose instances, still don't know that. I still keep coming across people who have joined in November, and who are completely surprised to learn that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon half a year later.
Mastodon isn't bigger because it's better. Mastodon is bigger because 99.99% of all newcomers to the Fediverse over the last 15 months believed there's nothing else. Again, many still believe that.
@jupiter_rowland I accept that I may not be typical, but before I came across from Twitter last November, I thought I’d end up on diaspora* or Friendica, as those were the two I’d heard of. I just didn’t know anybody there. I hadn’t heard about Mastodon, but that’s where everyone started going, and I wasn’t too worried about where I went first as I was already aware that (in principal) I could move with my followers somewhere else.
@jupiter_rowland In fact mastodon.social (like a lot of instances) was closed to new users, so I spent some time looking around for others. I didn’t fit neatly into many of the specialised instances, so picked a general one. I didn’t realise until after I’d joined mas.to that I already knew the admin from elsewhere.
@jupiter_rowland But it was having an initial handful of familiar faces that brought me across, and the availability of a wider selection of mobile apps that meant I was reasonably happy with Mastodon as my choice.
@MetalSamurai@jupiter_rowland Yeah I was about to say, no one was being railroaded into mastodon.social during November, they were closed to new users unless you had someone who could send you an invite.
So it became a bit of a bluesky situation where people were asking for invites to .social or .art because they didn't understand servers and wanted to be where everyone else was.
@BenjaminNelan@jupiter_rowland It seems obvious to me now that of course mastodon.social is the one run by Mastodon GmbH, but at the time (last November) it didn’t seem any more special to me. Just one of the many that joinmastodon suggested.
I’m not comfortable with the current decision to make that the default for anyone using the app to sign up (and also the https://spreadmastodon.org site). https://joinmastodon.org/ still offers you a choice.
@MetalSamurai@jupiter_rowland Definitely agree, I don't think making an instance the default especially as one as large as mastodon.social is a good idea - but I can also sympathise with the reasoning behind doing so.
@MetalSamurai@jupiter_rowland Also think November really cemented the need for more 'general' instances. A huge roadblock for many people who were trying to join was this concern over 'siloing' themselves into a single interest.
Arguably too much attention put into instances having some kind of targeted focus. Sort of muddies the waters - the local feed should never really be the most important thing in a federated system.
@BenjaminNelan@jupiter_rowland I’m not sure about that. For people that have a definite community, knowing that there are instances specifically for you is going to be very important.
I just cross over too many, and hardly any that actually have specialised instances.
My local timeline is absolutely worthless. I gave up on it very soon after joining. I’m a bit jealous of ones that are actually interesting and on topic. At least I can view them with Icecubes
@MetalSamurai@jupiter_rowland From a moderation perspective it makes sense but from an interests perspective I feel like Mastodon would be better served by having those interests organised in some kind of cross-instance group/page functionality, similar to groups on Calckey.
It would mean that if you don't manage to get into the 'premier' instance for your interest you can still benefit from the 'local timeline' of sorts.
@BenjaminNelan@jupiter_rowland Groups are coming to Mastodon. I have no idea what they will look like, but yes, that should be better than the local timeline or the mess of hashtags which don’t federate the way people expect.
Of course CalcKey and hometown (a Mastodon fork) both have local-only posting for more of a community feel.
@wndlb Being on the 'default' instance, I've mainly had to focus on my home feed for this. I subscribe to hashtags, add filters.
I do wish there was a way to add some weight to posts from certain people/lists. Or I guess reduce weight? Make them float to the top of my feed?
But I should say, in many ways I do enjoy some of the randomness. I feel like I'm following more people here that I wouldn't have discovered on twitter because they would've never been shown to me.
I was surprised to learn how easy it is to make a new group with https://a.gup.pe/ - just search for the group you want and it is is auto-created for you if not already made.
Add comment