Tag Archive for ‘Fediverse’

Alex Gleason:

When starting a brand-new server, the best approach is to follow _one person._One active user on a different server who you want to see; that’s all it takes. […]

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can follow two or three people!

The way your network grows is through follows and reposts. Your Fediverse feed is the collection of all users people on your server follow, and all the content they’ve reposted.

This is efficient. It contains only the posts you and your users want to see. It’s cost-effective, user-friendly, but it takes time. Like planting a seed, you have to give it the right environment and wait.

This is how I built out my follows after setting up a Mastodon instance in summer 2021. It takes patience, but it’s worth it.

I would also recommend routinely checking your server’s Profile Directory page and Explore tab — I do this about once each month. Unfollow some people that are no longer posting or that aren’t quite as interesting as you initially expected and follow some new people.

Over time you’ll craft an excellent home timeline and you’ll have more opportunities to discover even more new users through your new follows’ boosts.

➝ Source: soapbox.pub

A brand new Mastodon app developed by Bei Li. There’s a lot of missing features at the moment — most notably push notifications, an in-app browser, and character counter in the compose screen — but everything that is there seems to works better than any other Mastodon app on iOS. And it also happens to have one of my favorite recent app icons.

➝ Source: apps.apple.com

I can’t imagine ever following anyone on an instance like this, but I’m glad it exists. Other countries should follow suit.

➝ Source: pcmag.com

Eugen Rochko:

We’ve added one of the most requested functions among our competitors, the ability to edit posts. Since older Mastodon versions would not understand the edits, the function is disabled in the web app until more Mastodon servers upgrade to 3.5, but all parts are already included in the release. The original and previous versions of the posts are saved and remain accessible through a history view. And people who have previously shared the post get notified about any edits, so they can un-share if there’s foul play.

I’m skeptical. I don’t know if this will actually be a net positive change long term. But it seems to be a logical approach, so I’ll reserve judgement until it’s actually enabled on most instances for a while.

Another addition is the Explore page, which will list trending links, hashtags, and recommended users. It doesn’t seem to be very useful on small instances — the tab listing recommended users is the only one that isn’t empty at the moment. But it looks like it will be a great tool for discoverability on larger instances.

➝ Source: blog.joinmastodon.org

There’s about a quarter-of-a-million monthly active users on Mastodon, based on the instances known to Mastodon.social. It’s no Twitter or Facebook, but that’s a pretty sizable number considering the lack of major investors or marketing.

➝ Source: blog.joinmastodon.org

Scott Banwart:

I have become disillusioned with the state of social media. At one time it was a fun way to connect with people I would otherwise not a have a chance to meet and talk about topics of mutual interest. Now it is largely a breeding ground for tribalism, intolerance, and general meanness. This is making me question why I would want to continue participating in this ecosystem.

I think most of us have reconsidered our relationship with social media. Scott’s a bit more negative than I am on Mastodon, but that could be because he’s been actively using it for a while longer than I have.

I’ve really been digging Mastodon and think that setting up my own instance was a very wise decision. I get to fully control what does and doesn’t touch my instance and am able to provide a place for friends and family to join the Fediverse.

Mastodon feels like the early days of Twitter to me — it feels new, fresh, and exciting. There’s no algorithmic timeline, boneheaded features designed to increase engagement, or “influencers” that are willing to say literally anything to get attention. It’s nice.

➝ Source: scottbanwart.com

From the website:

This service allows you to connect a Mastodon account and a Twitter account and enable cross-posting between them. You can choose some options, such as if you want to post boosts, unlisted toots or replies.

I recently convinced my wife to give Mastodon a try and helped her setup this service to automatically crosspost everything she publishes on Mastodon to her Twitter account. It works like a charm.

Now she can publish to Mastodon without leaving everyone on Twitter out of the loop. But if you’d prefer to publish to Twitter and crosspost to a Mastodon account, it can be configured to do that too.

I suppose this is a roundabout way of nudging all of the fine folks that created a Mastodon account, but abandoned it to head back to Twitter, to setup crossposting and keep one foot on each side of the fence. I think it’s pretty forward thinking to at least maintain a presence outside of the current big social networks.

➝ Source: crossposter.masto.donte.com.br

Imagine if you needed a Gmail account to send a message to a Gmail email address. Or you needed a Yahoo account to send a message to a Yahoo email address. That would seem completely absurd. But that’s exactly how Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other social networks work.

By contrast, the fediverse uses ActivityPub to communicate across instances. If you have an account on Mastodon.social, you can still interact with someone on Indieweb.social because they utilize the same protocol. And everything just works — you can follow, reply, comment, and interact with other users across instances in every way you’d expect to.

In terms of the software itself, there’s Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and more. And it’s all free and open source. So not only can you sign up to join an instance that someone else maintains, you can also setup and maintain your own server.

Fediverse.Party offers a pretty good overview of the most popular software in the fediverse. And there’s plenty of information about user statistics, links to tutorials, lists of instances to join, and more. I’ve been toying around with Pixelfed recently and have been very impressed. I think this technology is going places.

➝ Source: fediverse.party