Community Mastodon | Help and general thread

[Nano]

Once the Mozilla server is up i will rejoin the fold.
I just deleted my Twitter.

 

[Anteater]

How does the "Home" timeline work? I have a vivaldi account since I use their browser so thought I may as well log into it, the Home timeline there is really populated with new posts from random people from different instances, but I don't have anyone followed (other than myself), they're also different posts than Federated, is it a server thing with their own algorithm or something?

 

[Panda Pedinte]

How does the "Home" timeline work? I have a vivaldi account since I use their browser so thought I may as well log into it, the Home timeline there is really populated with new posts from random people from different instances, but I don't have anyone followed (other than myself), they're also different posts than Federated, is it a server thing with their own algorithm or something?

Are you following a hashtag?

 

[lashman]

How does the "Home" timeline work? I have a vivaldi account since I use their browser so thought I may as well log into it, the Home timeline there is really populated with new posts from random people from different instances, but I don't have anyone followed (other than myself), they're also different posts than Federated, is it a server thing with their own algorithm or something?

if it's not the local or federated timeline then yeah, it might be something they made

 

[Anteater]

nvm I'm dumb I think I had a few tags followed, it might just be that they populated my timeline faster than my main account because things aren't buried by boosts from people I followed.

 

[lashman]

Jared Zimmerman ✨ (@jaredzimmerman@jaredzimmerman.com)

Attached: 1 image It's here...Graze for Mastodon...for Firefox! Use Mastodon 🐘 on desktop? I made a browser extension to make following people, favoriting, bookmarking & boosting toots on remote instances as easy as your home instance! (1-click) Install Graze For Mastodon...

social.jaredzimmerman.com

 

[Panda Pedinte]

Jared Zimmerman ✨ (@jaredzimmerman@jaredzimmerman.com)

Attached: 1 image It's here...Graze for Mastodon...for Firefox! Use Mastodon 🐘 on desktop? I made a browser extension to make following people, favoriting, bookmarking & boosting toots on remote instances as easy as your home instance! (1-click) Install Graze For Mastodon...

social.jaredzimmerman.com

That's really useful!

 

[lashman]

That's really useful!

yeah, it's awesome, it works EXACTLY like everyone was expecting mastodon to work!

 

[Parsnip]

yeah, it's awesome, it works EXACTLY like everyone was expecting mastodon to work!

It's not 100% there yet but his plans for 2023 seem to complete the feature set. One click reply to people on different instances in particular will be very useful.

 

[lashman]

It's not 100% there yet but his plans for 2023 seem to complete feature set. One click reply to people on different instances in particular will be very useful.

ohhhh, nice!

 

[lashman]

Twitter rival Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status

Open source microblogging site has seen surge of interest since Musk took over Twitter.

arstechnica.com

Twitter rival Mastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform’s non-profit status.

Mastodon, an open-source microblogging site founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko, has seen a surge in users since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October amid concerns over the billionaire’s running of the social media platform.

Rochko told the Financial Times he had received offers from more than five US-based investors to invest “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in backing the product, following its fast growth.

But he said the platform’s non-profit status was “untouchable,” adding that Mastodon’s independence and the choice of moderation styles across its servers were part of its attraction.

“Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter,” said Rochko. “The fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be shut down, go bankrupt and so on. It’s the difference in paradigms [between the platforms].”

This month, Twitter temporarily suspended the accounts of Mastodon and several journalists, after they shared content about the flight path of Musk’s private jet. Twitter also suggested it would ban links to rival social media platforms including Mastodon but later reversed course on the policy.

In a blog post in response, Rochko said this was a “stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say,” adding that monthly active users of Mastodon increased from 300,000 to 2.5 million between October and November.

Daily downloads of Mastodon rose from 6,000 on October 27, the day Musk acquired Twitter, to a peak of 243,000 on November 18, according to data from Sensor Tower. Usage of other smaller rival sites, such as Tumblr, has also rocketed.

Mastodon has similar features to Twitter but is made up of many decentralized, independently moderated servers. Users join one server but can connect with people on other servers throughout the so-called “federated” system.

Rochko is Mastodon’s sole shareholder and, according to its 2021 annual report, he paid himself €2,400 per month last year, a figure he said has since risen by €500.

Mastodon will continue to rely on donations to fund the platform. The site has more than 8,500 donors on the membership platform Patreon, through which it is raising over £25,000 a month. This compares with total earnings of just over €55,000 in the six months from June to December 2021.

According to data from Sensor Tower, the initial wave of new joiners slowed to 6,000 new daily downloads on December 9 but rebounded to 64,000 on December 18, when Musk restricted links to other social media sites on Twitter.

New users have encountered problems, with some servers struggling to cope with the increased level of activity and confusion over moderation policies on different servers.

Josh Cowls, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said Mastodon could evolve into a “satellite” platform to Twitter, “seeing greater use at times when Twitter is down, as well as in response to further Musk-related outrages.”

Rochko said his long-term ambition for Mastodon was to replace Twitter and other commercial social networks. “It’s a long road ahead but at the same time, it’s bigger than it ever has been.”

 

[Le Pertti]

Puh, I read it at first that the funding was to preserve non profit status, meaning it was rejected so it could become for profit. I read it as the opposite of what it actually was haha

 

[Nano]

Twitter rival Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status

Open source microblogging site has seen surge of interest since Musk took over Twitter.

arstechnica.com

 

[C-Dub]

The way the article is written and some of the quotes used really highlights how freaking terrible the tech media are at covering Mastodon.

There is almost a tone or sense of utter bafflement that they refused the investment.

Also, gotta laugh at the chuds who thought investing in a not-for-profit platform was a good idea.

 

[lashman]

Chris Trottier (@atomicpoet@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image Twitter outages are spiking. Which is entirely expected. Ever since Elon Musk fired everyone, we knew this would happen more often. Source: https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/ Also see chart.

mastodon.social

 

[lashman]

Public Roadmap

Learn what we are working on in Mastodon

joinmastodon.org

 

[Panda Pedinte]

Public Roadmap

Learn what we are working on in Mastodon

joinmastodon.org

They are working on a lot of improvements! Nice to see that even with the influx of new users they aren't just sitting there without doing nothing.

 

[Li Kao]

Sent my wishes. Mastodon.social then did its best to look like a dead horse.
I conclude that I broke the Internet. Sorry

 

[ZKenir]

So made an acc to see how things are, first impression is that Mastodon is barren as a wasteland.
Gematsu account posts no news, there are absolutely NO cosplayers.
Found the fedora and openSUSE official twitter account and they both had 1 post and it’s old compared to twitter stuff.

i’ll check it every now and then but it’s far from being as useful as twitter

 

[Anteater]

So made an acc to see how things are, first impression is that Mastodon is barren as a wasteland.
Gematsu account posts no news, there are absolutely NO cosplayers.
Found the fedora and openSUSE official twitter account and they both had 1 post and it’s old compared to twitter stuff.

i’ll check it every now and then but it’s far from being as useful as twitter

Yeah content creators are probably gonna continue staying on twitter because that's where they make their money, right now it's more like forums in terms of social interactions.

 

[lashman]

Gematsu account posts no news

Gaming News (@GamingNews@meta.masto.host)

41.9K Posts, 0 Following, 2.91K Followers · Hi, this is a bot posting gaming news from 30 different gaming outlet RSS feeds 👋 This account will exist until all the included sources create their official Fediverse accounts. If you're one of those outlets, please contact @lashman@mastodon.social...

meta.masto.host

 

[Parsnip]

A lot of people are going to keep using twitter until it actually implodes, that's just the way it is. Most people couldn't give less of a shit about Musk's one man show, and as long as the thing keeps working people are going to keep posting their content there because that's where their audience still is. Other than that, I guess I could see a possibility where the alt-right problem starts affecting unrelated people, that might prompt some creators to move.

 

[Le Pertti]

I guess it shows that values are the first to go when their influencer money are on the line.

Sure it’s easy for me to judge that since I wasn’t that active on twitter and find mastodon much better. But for example I’m not moving to peer tube over YouTube just because some day I do want that ad money.

 

[ZKenir]

It's not just "influencers", there is literally nothing on mastodon atm, there are no companies, no cosplayers, no artists, I'm not on twitter for following people with opinions, i'm on twitter as an aggregator of sort for stuff I follow (as a matter of fact I immedialy mute anyone who constantly tweets about anything that aren't those topics I listed)
Those few accounts that are there are "token" accounts.

The whole twitter drama is also only in the anglosphere and only if you dig for it, in my TL for example (which is 90% JP artists and cosplayers) there's never been absolutely anything about it except for one (1) person which used the whole thing as an excuse to post her linktree.

 

[Anteater]

by content creator i meant like everyone that create things, like artists, they stay there on twitter because they already built an entire following.

You also just need to look and follow the right people and right tags. There's a whole instance for artists for example:

Mastodon.ART

Mastodon.ART — Your friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO AI OR NFTs ALLOWED.

mastodon.art

If you want JP artist Mastodon they're mostly on Pawoo (Pixiv instance which got defederated by a lot of servers for good reasons).

But the userbase is still obviously low despite a ton of people making an account, because people from a ton of social circles have no reasons to move and leave their friends/acquaintances.

 

[lashman]

 

[ZKenir]

thanks for the replies but I don’t really wanna follow random artists i want the same I follow on twitter, until those people and companies i follow are on the platform mastodon is a nice platform (because of no weird suggestion system) but barren

like random artist#17474 isn’t Raita or ReDrop

 

[Anteater]

At least you gave it a chance

but yeah it's not so much a twitter "replacement" for now, but more of an alternative social media platform, and especially it has its own userbase, like I kept trying to get some artists I know (without forcing them) to spread out and not put all the eggs in one basket, but they just doesn't have the time nor want to take the effort to start somewhere new, there's just no incentives to, especially the way Mastodon is structured, it just does many things differently and less "commercialized" in a way.

 

[Parsnip]

What I find most surprising is that so few of the 'I guess I'm on mastodon now' people didn't set up any kind of crossposting. Though I don't actually know how easy that is, I assume there would be services and/or clients that just do that for you.

 

[lashman]

What I find most surprising is that so few of the 'I guess I'm on mastodon now' people didn't set up any kind of crossposting. Though I don't actually know how easy that is, I assume there would be services and/or clients that just do that for you.

it's EXTREMELY easy

Home

Moa Party

moa.party

 

[lashman]

Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image Hey everyone. Just wanted to eliminate the confusion and let you know that this is actually me. 😂 Hope you are having an awesome Thursday!

mastodon.social

 

[Le Pertti]

Might be one of the first famous people I’ve seen join mastodon

 

[lashman]

Might be one of the first famous people I’ve seen join mastodon

not really, there's already quite a few of those on there

 

[Le Pertti]

not really, there's already quite a few of those on there

Yeah I know but not MCU famous.

 

[lashman]

Yeah I know but not MCU famous.

well James Gunn joined last year, does that count?

 

[Le Pertti]

well James Gunn joined last year, does that count?

Not anymore.

haha but seriously, there are some famous people but this is the first famous active big movie start to be precise.

my point is that it is probably going to raise some eyebrows

 

[lashman]

haha but seriously, there are some famous people but this is the first famous active big movie start to be precise.

my point is that it is probably going to raise some eyebrows

hopefully

 

[Panda Pedinte]

I may have been missing something, is there any way to follow a whole other instance?

 

[lashman]

I may have been missing something, is there any way to follow a whole other instance?

follow how? like, what are you trying to achieve exactly?

 

[Panda Pedinte]

follow how? like, what are you trying to achieve exactly?

See watch is published in other stance without needing to follow accounts

 

[Le Pertti]

See watch is published in other stance without needing to follow accounts

I think one way would be to follow hashtags but don't think you can follow the whole of an instance

 

[lashman]

See watch is published in other stance without needing to follow accounts

ah, so the local timeline

hmmm, well not really, not officially

some of the apps DO let you follow other local timelines, though

i believe FediLab does

 

[Panda Pedinte]

I think one way would be to follow hashtags but don't think you can follow the whole of an instance

ah, so the local timeline

hmmm, well not really, not officially

some of the apps DO let you follow other local timelines, though

i believe FediLab does

Thank you folks

 

[lashman]

Thank you folks

no problem

 

[Nano]

also when you follow hashtags its taken from the Federated timeline and shows up in Home timeline.
and the federated timeline grows as you and other ppl on your server interact with other ppl/servers

 

[lashman]

Mastodon > Twitter

The human element is already better than it is on angry, broken Twitter.

popula.com

 

[Anteater]

Yeah I got some nice people there recommending me for follow every once in a while.

 

[lashman]

Yeah I got some nice people there recommending me for follow every once in a while.

awww, that's pretty cool! and yeah - no wonder they recommend you, your drawings are awesome!

 

[Nano]

snip

 

[Anteater]

Can someone explain to me like I'm 5 on how following hashtags work? I read that it helps populate your timeline if you follow people from another instance that follow the same hashtags, or something like that.