One thing Mastodon (or a fork) could do to win some users over from Bluesky, is support taking your account private. It's wild that X and Threads are the only big post-Twitter microblogging platforms that allow this.
@misc I don't know very much at all, but that sounds extremely dicey to implement in ActivityPub since other forks and systems could just ignore the changed flag.
Maybe I'm wrong, but since doing a wholesale "going private" move is so frequently used when shit gets super hostile, it seems like it would be important to bulletproof in ways that…may not be available? Idk.
Well I did the first step which was disassembling the existing couch, unfortunately turns out assembly requires two people and wife is still at work, so back on the floor I go
@misc does it still have leaves? By the size of that trunk it likely has an extensive root system that will hardly be bothered by fighting for moisture with fungi
@Kevin Lots of leaves! Did a quick google and saw it suggested that mushrooms indicate root rot - they don't kill the tree but suggest that it may be terminally ill.
Do you (or anyone following the hashtag) happen to know if #cambridgema has an office that will come out and diagnose a tree like this?
@misc Honestly I think we need to talk less about Mastodon. Frankly, I think Mastodon and many of the decisions made by Gargon have been bad for the Fedi at large. I'm glad to see some of the other software gaining mindshare.
In the end, Fediverse will be here for the long term, and I think it's going to be small communities connected to it that bring people here.
We understand "clients" as a concept but what would a browser for the social web look like? Something that would let you dip into a convo on Mastodon, or Bluesky, or whatever, and help you track the throughlines
@misc I think a fedibrowser could have built in functionality similar to Graze, which allows you to easily interact with any other Mastodon server as if it were your own. https://faqabout.me/iam/graze
Taking that a little further, I could sign in to my primary fediverse accounts and choose one whenever I'm looking at a pixelfed post, or a peertube post, or a mastodon post, on any server. It could even work when I leave a comment on blogs, as long as they are connected to ActivityPub.
It seems like one way to avoid scraper protection would be to not automate the browsing part, but rather have distributed volunteers with browser extensions to download the target data as they access it.
(Trying to think of ways to get Instagram story data in a more useful form)
Like, the social media team for my org chapter has a weekly schedule of shifts, and it’s hard to track and coordinate on what we’ve seen and shared. I just want all that stuff chronological.
For a long time I was critical of any would be post-Twitter than didn't federate from the start, because that seemed like the obvious essential way to bootstrap a critical mass.
But now, I'm starting to feel like there is gonna be some strength in the fact that Mastodon + the broader microblogging fediverse, Bluesky, and Threads are going to come together after developing separately.
@misc Admittedly this topic gets negative, and I'm not feeling like going there right now. I've ranted about this a few times in the past, and I'm sure I'll do it again.
In a world where everything is kinda federated but it's through a patchwork suffused with blocks, bridges, and feature mismatches - does the inscrutability of all that become the new opaque algorithm?
I'd like to find a way to automate it so that people on a social media team can fave tweets and those automatically get compiled into a google sheet. I see github has some Selenium X scrapers that could be useful, but none of them seem to have an option to load someone's faves. I guess I could try to figure them out and retrofit this myself.
@jonny I have never used any of this stuff before, and apparently IFTTT can do it, but I might try this just to learn. (Part of me kinda just wants to learn how to scrape X out of spite.)
@misc drink some kefir or take some probiotics. It can really help if it’s GAD. Helps the gut brain nervous system and body and immune system regulation.
@misc all of that is to say that it will take far less time than you think.
If, for example, you are thinking about mobile development, you should easily be able to make “functional” apps in less than new year. How much less depends on how much time you have to devote to practice.
There is a bit of a gap between it technically does what I want, and it looks, feels, and behaves the way I want while doing that.
@misc admittedly, that last bit involves a lot of yelling at your computer. THings like "what the !#$&*| Do you want from me?!" as a result of framework features that were released half-baked, or with crap / no documentation, or seem to have a glaringly obvious missing feature that really, really should have been included.
Getting by without an optimal task management system: mildly stressful all the time
Finding an optimal task management system: intensely stressful until you succeed
@misc In my experience:
—"Optimal" is a moving target for personal task management systems. Mine have changed over the years, responding to semi-regular reviews of how my current system is working for me.
—Cultivating acceptance of a good-enough or better-than-good-enough system minimizes overall stress.
Everyone we’re aiming for with this already has an X account, so you don’t have to do anything but grab the tweet data from a simulated web browser. Seems like this would be hard for Musk to block, and it would be a nice side benefit to make him spend resources to try.