In which I offer an overview of where Mastodon stands now in 2023/08; what’s good/bad, keeping an eye on the alternatives, etc. Not terribly technical (social-media technology is boring, it’s the “social” parts that are interesting).
@timbray Nice summary! I like the dinosaur/mammals analogy. Seems apt.
Your diagnosis of the identity/post permanence thing is spot-on. We are all tied to instances today, which in most cases is Somebody Else’s Computer. It’s not easy to pick up your stuff and move it to another instance.
IMO identity and content portability is a bigger problem than people realize; it’s only a matter of time before a big instance collapses or defederates suddenly or whatever in a way that leaves users stranded. Using URIs instead of URLs (like bsky) might help. Using DNS entries in a domain (e.g. MX for mail) might help. Maybe identity vendors (a la Kerberos) or cryptographic keys may help. I dunno, but I think it’s a vital piece to the puzzle.
@timbray Good article! Thank you for taking the time to write it all down. And I agree with you about the ephemeral aspect of posts. Stuff you want to keep around should go on a blog or other site you control.
The big thing I hope will be addressed at some point is making it easier to follow people on other instances when you go to the post on their instance. The current dance of switching to your instance and searching for them is awkward- and challenging for newcomers.
@timbray "Comments on this fragment are closed." Don't know if I've seen that on ongoing before.
Like a lot of folks, I'm on all three (not 'threads' shudder). There are a few people I like alot still hanging in there on Xitter. There are quite a few folks I follow cross posting on all three. But for whatever reason, it largely seems like the folks I am most interested in tend to favour the Blue, no idea why.
Crowds vote with their feet, and are hard to argue with....
@timbray reflects my thoughts exactly. For the apps, I really wish we could somehow have a protocol handler for fediverse addresses to make following easier.
@timbray I was expecting to find in your overview the fact that many interactions/responses are hinted at, but unavailable to people who are added to ongoing conversations.
I don’t know how to describe it. It’s related to the fact that some make their posts available only to thair followers. But when these add new people in response, said people only see a fraction of the thread. It amounts to much noise and frustration.
There isn’t any way I know of to avoid this. "Mute thread" hardly scales.
@timbray I can’t fathom how Bluesky’s at:// protocol would figure out post/content migration other than with some redirection. Which, like for ActivityPub software operators would rely on Bluesky continuing to exist and being well-behaved.
@timbray I quite agree.
Although, I think I would prefer to move my posts. That's what I did with my various blogs.
I don't see why my new instance couldn't "cheat" and just copy over my content and boost/fav stats.
I could even see it pointing to the old replies.
And, ideally, the old server would 301 requests for old statuses to the new one.
@Edent@timbray importing a lot of content at once to an instance might be a moderation challenge, what if some of your old content was against the TOS of the new instance (but not the old one), it might also be a way to DOS an instance, if you have massive amounts (legitimately or not) to move.
I understand if they think the use case is not worth the trouble, you can go back and boost your old content from your old account using the new one, if you feel it’s important enough for that.
@Edent@timbray
Creating a client-side tool that copies your posts between instances should be doable (caveat: I’m not a developer) based on the mastodon API.
However, if moving / copying posts also is meant to include the responses to those and keep the context one has replied to, such an action would have to replicate throughout the fediverse and could potentially collide with federation. Not an easy to solve problem and maybe not worth solving.
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