To repeat the thread from last year and the year before, let’s gather a few of our Mastodon Fediverse accounts.
I don’t know if the Fediverse needs much introduction, especially in these circles, but in case you don’t know what it is, it’s a open network of servers that implement various kind of social- and social-like networks. Most things are related to ActivityPub, that has been implemented by various Server implementations, such as Mastodon, Pleroma (Twitter-likes), PeerTube (YouTube-like), WriteFreely (federated blog), etc. The joke is that these platforms should ideally all interoperate, making it, among other things, easy for content to freely spread beyond one medium.
I’d suggest posting the links like this:
[@user@instance.website](https://instance.website/@user]
as to make it easy to copy the user handle, but as also not to confuse it with an email address.
I lurk, but I’m trying to post more stuff. @oats@mastodon.social
I’m a linux enthusiast, bassoonist, computer engineering student, and amateur programmer!
I have an account, @zge@icosahedron.website, but have de facto suspended it for ~2 months now. Not worth following, just wanted to start the thread.
I’m @icyphox@freeradical.zone! I recently transferred my account from mastodon.social over to freeradical.zone, since it aligns with my principles better (than just a generalist instance).
If anyone’s interested, you can trivially setup a Mastodon × Twitter bridge using https://moa.party. Works great.
Please think twice before doing this; I see a lot of people set this up only to ignore the fediverse side. It often gives the illusion of an active account without any actual discussion happening. I don’t know how this bridge works, but I’ve had to unfollow several people who use crossposters because they import things that just don’t make any sense outside of the context they were originally posted in on Twitter.
Indeed! I’m aware of this problem. moa.party doesn’t crosspost toot replies and tweet replies, thus maintaining coherency. Besides, I mostly always toot or retoot; Twitter is more read-only.
Thanks for mentioning moa.party, I just got it working!
I agree with technomancy though, cross-posting from Twitter to Mastodon is terrible, I’ve been unfollowing people who do that. I only enabled Mastodon -> Twitter.
My reply to technomancy.
Since last year I’ve moved off mastodon.social to a self-hosted Pleroma server (not a reflection on mastodon.social at all, just like to own my own identity). I’m now @wezm@decentralised.social
I just happened to look at your mastodon.social account. FYI, you can transfer your account from one instance to another, and you don’t lose followers – 800+ in your case. :)
As far as I know that only works Mastodon → Mastodon. Since I moved to Pleroma I need to give people a periodic reminder :-)
Any reason for choosing Pleroma over Mastodon? How do they compare?
Pleroma is a simpler and lighter choice, it’s a single piece of software written in Elixir with no dependencies, but this means it lacks the many features and maturity of Mastodon. This last one is definitely packed(!) with features, but for users like me that simply want to exchange messages, a feed and follow some users, Mastodon is bloated.
Pleroma seems to have lax system requirements, running on an old Raspberry Pi, while Mastodon needs a powerful machine with a few gigabytes of ram. From Lainblog [1]:
Mastodon’s interface is tightly integrated with the server, making changes and maintenance hard, while Pleroma acts more like an API server; you can change the frontend on Pleroma pretty easily.
[1]: “What Is Pleroma? Lainblog” https://blog.soykaf.com/post/what-is-pleroma/
Running your own server with Mastodon is frightfully complicated; meanwhile Pleroma can run on a Raspberry Pi, which is in fact where my single-user instance runs, under my desk: https://hi.technomancy.us/users/technomancy
The Pleroma codebase is a lot more accessible at 25kloc of Elixir; Mastodon’s codebase is over 6x the size. I was able to contribute patches to it in about a week’s worth of work without knowing Elixir beforehand: http://technomancy.us/191
I’m still playing with it and using it as a sandbox to try out Pleroma patches; my old Mastodon account is still my primary: https://icosahedron.website/@technomancy Once I’m a bit more comfortable with admining my own instance and maybe once Pleroma supports account migration, I’ll probably get my account moved over to my own machine.
Yes, but your old account is on Mastodon and it could move all your followers that use Mastodon to your new account.
The only per-requisite on the new account is this tiny fragment of JSON in your ActivityPub actor:
You can get your JSON with this command:
curl https://dec-H"Accept:application/json" https://decentralised.social/users/wezm | jqContrary to popular belief this would move followers that use at least Mastodon 2.7.0 that’s almost a year old (“Add handler for Move activity to migrate followers” in changelog).
As this change is tiny you could try patching Pleroma. You’ve got only one user so it won’t hurt if it always returns the same
alsoKnownAsarray.Interesting. I’ll have to look into this.
@nolan@toot.cafe
For everyone looking for more accounts to follow, there also is trunk.
People can ask to be listed under a specific topic to be more easily found by others with similar interests.
@jakob@mastodon.sdf.org
I’m quite a bit more active when school’s not in session, which will be the case in a matter of days.
I’m @cadey@mst3k.interlinked.me. I shitpost magick and other stuff.
I’m also on PeerTube as @withinflix@spacepub.space.
@danielhglus@mastodon.technology. Fairly active. Tech; some Rust.
@j@mathstodon.xyz
mathstodon.xyz, as a maths focused instance, supports inline LaTeX in toots.
Avoid mastodon.social. It is an unfairly “moderated” place, even facebook or twitter is a more open platform for discussions. Attempts for discussion outside the bubble can land you deleted quickly. Also the content is very boring, except for a few people. Most tech people I could find couldn’t stay professional, but constantly pushed their political agenda, which was the main reason I abandoned twitter earlier.
The fact that the main developer of mastodon, Gagron is pushing his political agenda in every way (into the defaults of matodon, and EULAs, CoCs) is also not helping.
I returned to twitter, and only follow a select few people with tech-only content now. Considering a simple single-user self hosted alternative, as mastodon itself is a problem generating this bad attitude. Or maybe social media itself is a dead-end?
It’s worth noting that Gargon’s “political agenda” is that white nationalists and neo-nazis aren’t tolerated. If you still think that’s too much agenda pushing, that’s fine, but it at least has to be said.
It’s easy to get pulled into the “censorship of political opinions is unconditionally wrong” mindset, but the world is often more nuanced; there’s a difference between censoring political opinions which you subjectively disagree with and censoring political opinions which are objectively and explicitly harmful. Again, you may think both forms of censorship are bad, and that’s okay, but we should at least acknowledge the difference.
The problem is that these categories are self-defined by him, not by courts and laws.
Now they label you a white supremacist for commenting on a vote where the two options are “I donate money to the antifa” / I’m a fascists”, and expressing that the world is a bit more nuanced, then you find your account deleted without any justification, or warning…
A few years later maybe you will be an enemy of their perceived freedom if you own az ICE car. It is not their job to do this, especially in the name of the free internet. They are the enemies of the free internet, from a different direction than the megacorps.
That is how the fediverse is supposed to be. Whoever owns the instance gets to set the rules I.E.: if I ever made an instance, I would probably not want NSFW content there. If you don’t like my rules, move to any other instance and still follow me and the other people on any other instance.
Yes, and that is why I say that instance is not a good place. Their advertised rules are not honored by the management.
There are lots of good reasons to avoid the flagship mastodon.social instance, but this isn’t one of them.
Having a flagship instance of a distributed social network server is self-defeating; the point of a distributed system is that no one node is special compared to any other. You’ll have a much better time if you find an instance that’s smaller and matches your own interests.
Your points are also valid, yet I think bad moderation is also a valid reason to avoid it. Similarly bad moderation exists on Hacker News, for example, but AFAIK on that site there is a way to appeal against the decisions, and you are warned first, yet no modlog exists.
Here on Lobsters there is a public moderation log, which is a must have in my opinion for a site where moderation is necessary. Transparency is important, and mastodon.social totally lacks it.
I do handwriting practice, posts about computers, and some other stuff on my personal instance: @bonzoesc@m.bonzoesc.net
@akkartik@mastodon.social
I mostly post updates about my Mu project. (Mastodon has become my primary platform since last year’s thread.)
@njha@fosstodon.org
Semi-active, I post a lot of tech/privacy stuff. Recently I’ve been getting into 3D Printing.
@apg@bsd.network
I’m on a Philadelphia-specific Mastodon instance: @skyfaller@jawns.club
I also use Pixelfed to post pictures sometimes: @skyfaller@pixelfed.social
Mine is @connor@toot.cafe. My stuff is mostly about privacy, linux, yro etc.
@pcy@icosahedron.website, demoscene and related stuff (which often ends up being reverse-engineering)
@emacsomancer@fsmi.social
I work professionally on linguistics, especially formal semantics. I’m interested in free software, including especially Emacs, (La)TeX, and Lisp-based things.
@gregf@bsd.network
@mdszy@mastodon.technology
it me!
i’m very, very active
my posting involves:
so yeah
i have follow by request on, so let me know if you’re from here if you ask for a follow
Crustaceans? Lobste.rs is already poorly named for a software community…
I tried to use it but kinda came back to Twitter because it was too boring. Also one reason was that I wanted to self-host, but it was too annoying for a single person (both Mastodon and Pleroma).
So now I have 2 inactive accounts
I run my own Pleroma instance, I mostly post sysadmin stuff and random stuff from life in Japan @brian@ap.tiuxo.com
@jao@mastodon.social
@slylax@nixnet.xyz
I usually post tech related stuff. Very occasionally I’ll post about politics, but always put those behind a content warning.
I’m @mort@fosstodon.com, I post about whatever crosses my mind regarding the world of programming and FOSS.
@taoeffect@mstdn.io
@offby1@wandering.shop if you like.
@djmoch@mastodon.danielmoch.com
I use it everyday :) @neauoire@merveilles.town
@scttnlsn@mastodon.social
I’m on @yumaikas@mastodon.social. I usually lurk, but I like to post about programming and/or tech history related things.
I’m samebchase@mastodon.social
I’m @cwill@freeradical.zone. I’m kinda with @wink, I just don’t find anyone on Mastodon that toots enough for it to be interesting.
@epilys@chaos.social
I post various (retro) computing+aesthetics stuff but also a lot about my project https://meli.delivery which might be not of interest to you.
@danieldk@mastodon.social
Not very active yet though ;).
@rahul@scholar.social. I tried multiple times to get some traction, but I am still more active twitter (Yeah I know, I am part of the problem) because there are so few active people tweeting about CS research and programming in mastodon, and I don’t know how to find more.
It’s not your fault: it’s network effects (others’ choices). Most people go with the surveillance platforms that everyone else is on. It’s worked that way for a while now.
@crc@elephant.bike
@badtuple@mastodon.social . Posts are a mix of personal stuff, database implementation, and my weird procgen explorations.
It’s replaced twitter for me, but I do think choosing mastodon.social was a mistake. Anyone have suggestions for an instance that is either really into programming, compsci or theoretical stuff, or just plain fun project based things? I like seeing what people are exploring/working on and it’s a hard thing to find it on mastodon.social.
@dethos@s.ovalerio.net
I mostly publish interesting tech related stuff I’ve read and some occasional “infosec” posts.
Great idea, I’ve started following accounts posted here and many look quite interesting.
I’m mostly posting about FLOSS and the Beast DAW that I’m developing: @timj@social.tchncs.de
I’m @julienxx@mastodon.sdf.org Posting about plain-text stuff and programming mostly. Left Twitter over a year ago and I really don’t regret it.