@feditips You should mention that different instances have different post length limits, and that while the default maximum post lenth is 500 characters, there are many instances that allow a higher limit - the one I use has an 11,000 character limit, for example.
(It would also be great if there were a listing of instances that allow more than 500 character posts, showing what the maximum post length is on each!)
@feditips you should correct without losing their followers. They may move to an instance where it’s defederated from an instance they had followers on their previous account without issue. Also, they should be aware migration isn’t always the smoothest and isn’t guaranteed
@feditips ideally it should only be an option to freely choose whenever you want. Or is the idea I might have in mind just to create an instance of mastodon just for myself? I always think about a local profile hub that is able to connect to whatever is wanted.
@feditips choosing a server should just be an option I can set and change whenever I would like. I'm thinking about a local hub that will sync to the chosen server. Probably it's best, just to run its own mastodon instance anyways.
Maybe you would prefer a distributed social network like @manyver_se ? The personal data on a distributed network is stored on your own device, and the servers just help accounts find each other.
@feditips@manyver_se I thought mastodon is already a distributed social network? (Social network vs social media? ) whatever, thanks for mentioning it. I will check it out.
Mastodon is a federated social network, so that there are thousands of servers which talk to each other. Users' account data is stored on the server where they signed up for an account.
Manyverse is a distributed social network, so the user's data is stored on their phone or laptop. They can connect to a server to discover other people, but they don't have to use that server and their data isn't stored there.
@feditips@manyver_se there seem to be many similarities. If I set up my own mastodon instance where only my once account is set up, it kind of feels like the described distributed network. What are the disadvantages between federated and distributed? Could there be some kind of hybrid system?
If you set up your own Masto server on a physical machine at home, and no one else was on that server, and everyone else on Masto did the same, then in practical terms it would be similar (though the technology running it would still work very differently).
@feditips
That's a nice write-up, as always. Thanks for everything you do here.
You've used the phrase "character limit" without explaining it. It might be worth adding a few words to say that a higher character limit means you can write longer messages.
You might want to consider saying that using a very small server will mean that many messages in a thread won't be visible to you. I'm in the process of migrating from a couple of small instances to a couple of largish instances for just this reason. I would guess an instance doesn't need to be so large if it serves a specific interest and you match that interest, but I've not used so many instances that I can say that for sure.
Thanks for reading and taking time to give feedback! 👍
I've edited the part about character limits to make it clearer.
About server size, it gets complicated (due to what exactly counts as a small server, whether the server has relays, how connected the server is etc) and I'm trying to keep things simple, but I'm mainly just trying to discourage people from going for the biggest server (at the moment mastodon.social)..
Add comment