The best, most useful explanation of Mastodon I've ever seen. Signed up years ago and immediately stopped using it because no one I know was going to understand even as much as I did.
You forgot to mention that you can migrate between instances (servers). This is a really good feature if you're unsatisfied with your current instance.
You can't though. You can bring follows and such, but the posts are lost. This is what's making it very hard for me to choose an instance and join Mastodon.
@@DanCojocaru2000 The posts are not lost. Your old profile doesn't get deleted, it gets disabled, but readable, with a banner that says you're now tooting elsewhere. You can even retoot posts from your previous profile once moved, if they're relevant or current (I have done that --with confusing results, though!)
While I haven't been on Mastodon as much as Twitter since the start of this year (when I abandoned my Twitter account), it really pisses me off when people say "it's too hard to use" when they probably had to learn to use Twitter in the first place with its character limits, inability to edit posts, and more. Sure Mastodon may be SLIGHTLY harder than Twitter at its peak, but Mastodon and third-party apps can't be taken down by a billionaire; Twitter was and did the worst possible 🖕 to their third-party developers. Thanks for this video Nick! I hope people realize that Twitter is only going to fall further with the end of third-party clients and the developers moving to Mastodon.
I never used twitter so I can't compare the two but I find mastodon to be a very enjoyable experience. It is a little addictive as with most social media, but it clearly isn't designed to be. It requires a bit of work to find interesting content which I think is a good thing. It seems like mastodon has been the flagship for the fediverse and I hope that its success translates into success for other fediverse apps. Personally I'm a big fan of pixelfed.
Glad to hear someone who likes Pixelfed so much! Do you mainly use it for art or photography? (Photography IS art I'm just having a tough time conveying the right way to put it lol) I'm a 3D artist and I was hoping to use it in place of Insta when people ask. People seem to like that "just a page with pictures" format. :)
in the advanced view of the web client you can also create feeds which follow several hashtags so you can have several 'themed' feeds with related hashtags
It's actually a great platform, tbh. I picked a server randomly, so it wasn't really a hectic thing. I'll just do my things in Mastadon instead of Twitter which I was planning to do. On Android, I can edit the post on the official app itself. I think you need to reconsider that
Wow Nick, thanks for this concise guide to using Mastodon. I've been curious about it but haven't been able to wade through the somewhat complex user manual. I think I'm ready to jump on board now!
mastodon is not a social network. the fediverse is the social network. mastodon is just one of the many options for fediverse server software. without the fediverse, there is no mastodon, but the fediverse can exist without mastodon. other options include pleroma, misskey, akkoma, calckey, pixelfed, friendica, and more.
I appreciate the video, gave mastodon a try, and I think it works better than twitter in many ways. But the dealbreak for me here is not being able to quote posts. I can understand why the devs THINK it's a good idea, but I still don't agree as it really limits how you can interact with others in longer topics or when bringing up a specific comment about a single post instead of a general idea is important. It's the same attitude as halting all cars sales everywhere because road accidents happen. I will still use it, posting and trying to give points or topics I find interesting. But not being able to quote someone and actually make an intelligible conversation means I will keep using Twitter for now as well even with all the problems and drawbacks it has.
Hey Nick! Excellent Mastodon guide, very informative! I'm still laughing about the joke that the Yahoo email was not arriving to Gmail cause they where 2 different servers, good one! hahahaha
It would be great if you could configure which instances you want to see more often in the federated timeline, it'd remove the need to open new tabs for different instances, just check the federated timeline instead. As it stands, it's nearly unusable due to spam junk from bots and such.
I think this has gotten better, depending on which instance you join. "Defederation" is a bit scary since the Fediverse relies on federation, but admins can de-fed instances that are bot spam or harassment or those kinds of things. The interest-based server I joined hasn't seen a bunch of spam I noticed. The cool part is you can find an instance that works for you hopefully. :)
I feel my comment in the last Mastodon video about not being able to figure out the app might have partially contributed to creating this video and its a really well done video. Ready to give it another shot.
I normally stay away from the Federated time-line, as it goes by too fast... I stick to the Home and Local ones instead. As for mobile clients, I like Tusky for Android and Ice Cubes (which is new) for iOS.
The federated timeline is wonderful in small servers dedicated to a topic. It's like seeing everything followed by all users of that server. But in big servers it's just noise...
@@spl420 No. Not "every post". Only the ones that the server knows about. I.e. the posts from people followed by the users of your instance. If no one in your instance follows me, then my posts won't appear in your federated timeline. This timeline is very useful for small niche instances. It's like "people of your server follow..." combined with the local timeline. The local timeline only has the users of the instance, not posts from people they follow.
I think a big annoying thing right now is that you have to tag every post with the language that it's written in, otherwise the machine translation system cannot translate them in servers where this is an option. A lot of mobile apps don't allow you to set it, as well. But there is a default posting language in the settings somewhere so set that to the actual language that you post in.
If you had talked about other technologies in the ActivityPub sphere you would know that quote posting does indeed exists. I cool software that would be cool to showcase is Soapbox.
One thing I just discovered (I own a Slimbook for 2 years and never knew): They have a sadly unpopular youtube channel where they show how to open their laptops and replace parts. In these times of crazy resistance against the right to repair, it's a big plus. Well, it's mostly Spanish though ^^ But it deserves to be pushed up, it doesn't even pop up in the first page for me when searching Slimbook on youtube.
I'd just like to say that the federated timeline does not, to my understanding, work exactly as you say. Rather, only toots from other instances (servers) that other people on your own instance follow, are shown in federated timeline. So if a person on another instance is followed by none on your instance, they won't show up in your federated timeline.
Yes! This is the most inaccurate part of the video. What you see on the federated timeline depends greatly on which server you are on. You’ll see English posts only if you’re on a server that mainly speaks English.
Does Nick have a single shirt in his closest that actually buttons up all the way? The man as perfected the art of "I am French, and here is my [hairy] chest!" (this is all a joke fyi!)
I've been using Linux mint for a couple of months, have you been thinking about making a video about graphic cards updates or configuration on Linux, to make it more easy for beginners?
Heck, even on something like EndeavourOS, which is a very close to stock Arch distro, it is as simple as booting the live CD with the Nvidia drivers option, installing the system, and then using nvidia-inst. I had more problems on Fedora with Nvidia than Arch or even Ubuntu or Linux Mint with Nvidia.
@@cameronbosch1213 Fedora is so problematic with Nvidia, which is unfortunate because I really like that distro. Linux Mint works quite well with Nvidia, if you follow the install of the proprietary drivers (I believe I got the guide straight from the Linux Mint site). I didn't have much problems with Arch (Manjaro) and Nvidia, and the community was quite helpful the one time I did. You could also go get PopOS and have the driver built into the distro. I've been running PopOS for about 6 months now and haven't had so much as a hiccup. AMD just works, I haven't heard about Intel ARC.
@@ancestralpolitics7433 I agree 100%. I use Arch for that reason. I had an issue with Nvidia's newest GPUs refusing to boot and the people at the EndeavourOS were able to help me get a newer ISO and help me temporarily disable the dGPU to boot off of the AMD iGPU to get the computer to boot so I could install the Nvidia drivers. (If I didn't have an iGPU, I wouldn't have been able to install Linux at all!)
Good explainer! I'll just post something about it that I don't see prefaced and mentioned enough, for Twitter users, as complementation to the tutorial. Mastodon is NOT a replacement for Twitter, it in fact was created as an alternative and in opposition to Twitter, for people who wanted to do microblogging in a better environment. So, do not expect for Mastodon to replace all Twitter functions or change itself to become like Twitter, because that is not the main objective, and it never was. This is fundamentally what is behind most of Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube and other Fediverse platforms, and why they differ to centralized mainstream platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, RUclips, Instagram, etc). It's more complex and confusing, yes, but it all has to do with things like you having better control on who sees your content and who doesn't, you being able to control better the content you see, keeping clusters of people at manageable enough sizes for human moderation to actually happen, and blocking all parties involved from harvesting mass data to sell for advertisement agencies plus several other types of exploitation. Now, you have to understand that this is part of why Mastodon will never replace Twitter, and why if you are looking for an environment that works exactly like Twitter did for the past number of years, Mastodon just might not do it for you. You might be better off staying on Twitter, or migrating to another centralized social network. For instance, a whole ton of celebrities, politicians, public figures, businesses, services and even individuals are majorly or only on Twitter because they can make money on it. Put on a bot announcing ads and promotions, replace the PR team, use it as a medium for corporate communications... this is what Mastodon does not want to be. And this is likely not changing seeing the reactions of people involved to buyout offers, so that entire category of users and businesses who use Twitter in that specific way are unlikely to migrate, or migrate, become frustrated with it, and then abandon it later on. Unfortunately, lots of people don't understand that a whole lot of what Twitter is today is thanks to that type of stuff, they often don't even see how much they participate in the entire thing. Mastodon was created in opposition to that type of structure. In fact, several Mastodon instances are very much against spam, ads, and just selling stuff in general. Several instance moderators are explicitly against political stuff, hate speech, posts that are overly aggressive or directed attacks against other users, etc. This isn't because they are power tripping, hard liners, yadda yadda - it's because, again, Mastodon was created to be an alternative to Twitter, not replace it. The platform and idea is older than most people think (I think the first Mastodon release was in 2016), and it was generally created in opposition to the strategy social networks have of collecting personal data for targeted advertisement that happened behind the scenes. The same idea is valid for the entire Fediverse - it was created in opposition to several of the centralized social networks' mode of operation, particularly on the exploitation of private and personal user data for profit. This is part of the reason why it's open source and more complex to use. It's not because it's new, not because it's less mature in comparison to Twitter, it has to do with it's core structure and idea. It's closer to what online communities used to be in the past, in the lines of discussion forums and whatnot, than it is to current social networks. Now, you can of course like this or not. But having this in mind gives you a better idea on what to expect. Unless Mastodon falls prey to big corporation offerings and sells out to any sort of business that ends up with your regular late stage capitalism structure of profit above everything and interests of investors above that of users, there will be lots of types of regular Twitter users that will be unwelcome and unfit for the platform, which will make for a very different user experience for some. I personally used Mastodon and alternatives inside the Fediverse for a while years back, before the Musk Twitter shitstorm, before Facebook became the default villain in terms of social networks... so, perhaps what I'm saying doesn't count as much these days anymore, I really don't know for sure. I just kinda stopped using because I decided that the platforms, the entire social network structure just does not work for me. I'm more of an RSS and RUclips kinda guy. xD I just wish RUclips commenting system was better than this decades old basic garbage we have to deal with... but that's a separate discussion.
Nice video, it might help me get more into the use of mastodon. I wasn't aware of the possibility to follow things from other type of platform and have them in the timeline. Guess I did not take enough time to get into things deep enough
First and foremost: Thank you for making this video and making it easier and less scary for beginners to use. What I missed in this video however was emphasis on how your data gets handled by Mastodon, because from that almost all differences and improvements over something like Twitter derive. You briefly compared it to Email, but that does not do it justice. For one, "third-party" Mastodon clients are not "allowed" because there is no one who could forbid that. You simply *have* the freedom to use any software you want, that follows the open ActivityPub protocol to connect/federate with existing Mastodon instances. This is a direct result from the protocol not being proprietary and being decentralized. Then there are some privacy aspects: Do NOT use an online service for migrating your Twitter account to Mastodon like you suggested. Unless the code runs completely locally in the browser (and even then it is highly questionable), there is no way to know what shady things the service might do with the access to your Twitter and Mastodon accounts. Also, I wish you would have mentioned where and how your data gets stored: It is stored in plain text and controlled by the administrator of your home instance and if you shared it publicly also gets copied/federated to other instances, so once it's out there, there is no way to delete it, unlike Twitter, where you can be sure that at least the platform itself wont distribute it anymore (and if they followed the law, you could also be sure that they deleted your data, but well, we all know how that went *cough* PRISM). This also means that you need to trust your instance's administrator at least as much as you trusted Twitter, because they can see all your data in plain text, even if shared privately, because it is not end to end encrypted - how could it without you verifying the other parties public key. Another consequence of this is that it becomes much harder to enforce any of your GDPR rights, because effectively now your home instance administration takes the place of Twitter Inc., a massive corporation that has systems and procedures in place (although Twitter was not that good on that front either) to first secure your data (InfoSec-wise) and also handle it according to the GDPR. I highly doubt, that every little hobby administrator of a Mastodon instance can offer that and crucially, they might not even be required to do so, because the GDPR has some prerequisites of user size for the platform to take effect on that platform. What I do not know is how well Mastodon (the software ecosystem) handles migration of your data from your account on one instance to another, because that is a pretty important use-case and point to make when advertising that there is no single entity like Twitter Inc. making the rules. That only holds true if it is easy to change home instances as soon as you do not like the direction where yours is going.
I migrated servers and it's pretty straightforward. You just make another account, and configure the old account as an alias. Then you can move the followers, and export and import the rest of the data (who you follow, bookmarks, blocks, etc)
Thanks for the video! I got off of all social media, except Reddit, over the last few years. Was going to try Mastodon but it seemed too confusing. After your explanation I think I may give it a try.
If you ever decide to make a video on additional features, it would be nice to present people to lists and the "columnar" display which results in a similar experience to TweetDeck, and is the way I much prefer and use both Twitter and Mastodon.
The mastodon web interface really need a better hashtag search interface. How do I find the top 50 like minded accounts that post on a given subject? This should be a top priority for the project.
2:01 Last I heard, the term 'toots' came as a trade. The mastodon folks would change the button to say 'toot', and harry brewis in turn would support their patreon for the rest of his life. that story doesn't necessarily confirm harry *created* the term; it might have been a mastodon in-joke which inspired harry to broker the deal. however, you should totally blame him anyway.
Hello, based on what I understood in this vid is that if the server you joined blocks other servers then in a way you are blocked from seeing content on those other servers, is that accurate? And if so is there a way to join multiple servers with one account or would it require creating a new account on maybe a server that allows talking to even more servers including that one?
@@tschorsch just some, it’d be impossible to block it on all of them, not to mention just not a good idea in general if we wanna keep the decentralised nature of the platform. Saying that I echo your sentiments
Mastodon is better than any centralized service for sure, but it's still very flawed. In fact, the very idea of federation is flawed. The problem is, your identitiy is tied to a single server, and if that server ever blocks you or goes offline, you'll have no way to prove you are the same person (different address, differet person). This is were Nostr comes in. It's decentralized just like Mastodon, but it's not federated, instead, you can post on different 'relays' (their word for servers), and your address is a cryptographic key pair stored on your computer. That way, no matter which relay you post to, you can always prove you are the same person. It is also a very extensible protocol and allows fo things like encrypted DMs, public chats, or a twitter like experience. Nick if you're reading this, please give Nostr a try. It's still very unknown and definitely needs some coverage on RUclips
@@happygofishing No it is not. Email is federated and has the same problems as mastodon. Nostr is not federated, it uses cryptographic keys for verification, not addresses tied to a specific server.
Users who need that level of provable identity (institutions like companies/govt services and very famous people) can already have it on the fediverse if they want to, they just piggy back off DNS and spin up their own servers with their own domain name with connections secured using SSL cryptography.
@@wysteria7917 and so if your own server getting down including backups, for any reason, you still facing the same problem. Besides the fact that most of the people won't make their own servers and this "flaw", is a feature that's needed to secure some centralization, to enforce the censorship or anything else, with keeping people in fear of losing their account
@@avastorneretal Not really. Just having a domain name proves that you are you. So if your account goes down and you make another one, people can still know you're you because of your domain.
@@TheLinuxEXP I love your videos as always, but that was the only minor nit I had with this one. A simple qualifier like "on the iOS app" (or a quick glance at the app on another mobile platform) would mitigate folks drawing an incorrect conclusion (which I'm confident was not your intent). Thanks for another great video!
The hardest thing for me to understand is that I can interact with other instances posts, I just need to try to interact copy the link will appear in the pop-up paste into my instance and then when load in my instance UI I can interact with give a like and comment. This is a bad UX it should be simpler, but once I learned I enjoyed way more because I wasn't locked in my instance anymore.
@@TheLinuxEXP I don't know, what I learned through a friend is to copy and paste a link so I can give like across different instances. If there's another way I don't know.
Why don't you have a coin-flip animation on the Twitter circle that flips 5 times then becomes the mastodon logo then repeats till the outro ends? Or a coin animation that spins from mastodon to twitter (heads to tails) every 2 seconds.
I wonder if you would get a notification if anyone you follow from specific server suddenly are blocked on the server you are on. It does also seem like it would be really annoying to host ones own and then get everyone else to accept yours so people can actually follow you.
If you have an account on each, and you follow each other, then automatically all new posts can be seen by *all* the users of both. And old posts too, if you paste the link in the search bar.
I see the appeal of it, but I don't see a personal use for it. It's between a discord server and twitter. But for a tight knit group, it feels more natural to be in a instant text social app.
This was a useful overview! Mastodon seems to solve a lot of issues that are baked into today's social media. For one, having multiple, individually moderated instances allows for more humans to moderate each other, rather than bots monitoring an impossibly large community. Also the decentralized nature kind of ensures that design decisions won't be profit driven. That's only in danger if any one Mastodon instance becomes TOO big or influential. Also not sure if the content warning showcase was just an example or not but... my condolences for your loss :(
Question: the implication of the phrase "other instances your instance talks to" is that not all talk to all the others... how can I see those connections? How do I know what I'm missing?
Hello. Could you recommend me a browser for windows 7 that will get updated on years to come? It's a tough situation since most mainstream ones are ending support this year... Also, I'd prefer one that wasn't based on blink but rather firefox. I've heard of waterfox, librewolf, icecat, etc. Which one will get support for longer??
Mastodon does not provide the same service as Twitter! No trending for instance. No real search capabilities (only people and hash tags). Being decentralised may be great and all, but it is a pain in the behind too.
There IS trending hashtags. It *can* search in your own posts and the ones you favorited/boosted/bookmarked. It's designed like that on purpose. Also people use hashtags in the fediverse much more than in twitter for this very reason.
I always find it funny people who aren't even running an instance complaining about the fediverse being complicated. Btw, I found that you don't really even need to have an app. I'm using soapbox-fe, and it's really mobile friendly, and by accepting notifications and keeping a tab open in your closed browser, you still get notifications which will open that tab when you tap on it. Granted I'm running a custom instance with everything set up just the way I like it, but I've found it preferable to any app out there.
Love it when the Académie Française tries to tell us how to speak French, twenty years too late and with boomer arguments from people who never used internet themselves.
I wish Mastodon had more users and a DM feature, that's the only 2 things holding it back. Last time I used it the only accounts on there were mirrors of linux/crypto twitter accounts.
uhm, DMs as in direct messages, are supported? they're not end to end encrypted though. agreed with the other point, it's a bit of a hassle to find new people. especially if you join the wrong server first. also no search of posts is a bummer.
It does on the web client. It's possible that some alternative clients offer this as well. You can send a DM in the app manually though, by changing a post to only be visible to the people mentioned in the post before publishing it. Edited: Also note that DMs are not encrypted on Mastodon, so server administrators could see them if they wanted to.
There's plenty of accounts in the fediverse. You probably tried to search accounts in one server which won't show those accounts that your server don't know about. To have it know about other accounts, you have to paste the full handle or the link to the account in the search bar. For that reason I browse other instances when I want to find new people. Then, when I see an account or a post I like, I copy and paste the link into the search bar of my server, so I can follow, boost, favorite, reply, whatever.
Mastodon does not need "long term general adoption", it is part of the Fediverse, which means it can communicate with other servers/instances from different applications, and there are several others out there (Misskey, Diaspora etc.) You actually just have to join either of these services to be able to communicate with Mastodon users.
The fediverse is growing in batches. It's not a business so it doesn't need to *grow and compete* to survive, it does just fine on its own and from time to time there's waves of people migrating. It has been happening for a few years now.
Thanks for the video! I really appreciate the education. Before I go on, I'm only sharing my first impression and I'm open to being corrected if I have the wrong impression. I'm just disappointed at how terrible an idea Mastadon sounds like. I could be wrong since I'm just basing it on this video, but it seems there's no meaningful difference between this and other social media platforms. You're still handing complete control of your access to the social network to nameless, faceless server admins. I wouldn't be surprised if unfair censorship and shadow bans aren't already proliferating. Just join another server? Right, what good will that do when there's a cabal of admins and server groups that will ban you altogether. And then they'll go after anyone who tries to connect with you from other servers. Even the federated version implements admin control across servers. Central authority will always be abused. Who's naïve enough to think that software developers and admins aren't just as biased as everyone else? Unless demonstrated otherwise, it's prudent to just assume that the censorious silicon valley authoritarian ideology (all premised on safety and compassion) is baked into that community. Whoever architected this made sure to bake in a method of centralized control, with the illusion of decentralization. If you care about free speech and decentralization, this seems like a failure right out of the gate.
Great video. Sadly, Mastodon is about to go back to reality. People only went to this tool as a tantrum for Musk being Musk but after they realized Mastodon isn't the tool to just login and start posting their crap like on Twitter... they went back to the same twitter
@@TheLinuxEXP i actually play in beta Baldurs gate 3. And honestly this game reanimated my old love. Great video. I think promoting computing freedom to others its big value today.
I hope that lot of people (and youtuber) would see this, it's hurt to ear thing like "mastondon is bad, only people on your instance can see you and you can see only people on the same instance as you" especially when it's some youtuber...
i will never use mastodon. the idea was cool at the start, everyone having their own instances with their own rules (or joining an instance with rules that they like), but when GAB joined the fediverse, they completely did a 180 on their principles to specifically block out GAB from the rest of the fediverse, and any other instance that would not bow down to the woke instances that demanded everyone else to defederate with GAB and any other instance they disliked. In my opinion, it just turned centralised authority into mob authority. The original idea was everyone governs themselves as they see fit, or they join a server with rules that match their senstivities. Then because everyone is different, you could still follow anyone from any instance if you wished, and post on any other instance from which ever your instance operates from. Really cool idea until they fucked it up. If mastodon had stayed true to their founding ideas, i would take it a lot more seriuosly, but in my opinon its not worth ivesting time in if its just going to be ruled by a mob of woke leftist that will block you out of the rest of the fediverse just because you wont block instances they dont like from being able to access your instance and vice versa. I will admit i have not looked into the issue as of late, so perhaps this practice has died down now, but the fact that the mastadon team has built the tools to make their product capable of this sort of behavior completely kills it for me. It's such a shame because at the time I really welcomed a truely free speech alternative to social media, and I had thought what mastodon was doing, was the solution, but I was wrong :/ 14:25 i noticed all the censoring when i first explored it, did not realise people where doing this to them selves. a good improvment would be the ability to turn off all content warnings by default for those of us who are not thin skinned.
That is literally not how the fediverse or federation works, instances block other instances on an individual basis, there is no "centralised authority". You've been eating up FUD from grifters who want to shill their own proprietary social media "alternatives".
You can make it so that content warning are always open by default. As for blocking domains: if people don't want to speak or see your content then you can't force them to, and many people want to not see nazis or other types of deranged idiots. And they must of course have the right to turn those others away. If you want your own server you can start it, easily.
Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: www.linode.com/linuxexperiment
All the pedos moved to mastodon
is it possible to cash out those 100$?
@@GardenData61371 🤣
@@AradijePresveti XD
The best, most useful explanation of Mastodon I've ever seen. Signed up years ago and immediately stopped using it because no one I know was going to understand even as much as I did.
You forgot to mention that you can migrate between instances (servers). This is a really good feature if you're unsatisfied with your current instance.
You can't though. You can bring follows and such, but the posts are lost. This is what's making it very hard for me to choose an instance and join Mastodon.
@@DanCojocaru2000 The posts are not lost. Your old profile doesn't get deleted, it gets disabled, but readable, with a banner that says you're now tooting elsewhere. You can even retoot posts from your previous profile once moved, if they're relevant or current (I have done that --with confusing results, though!)
@Gabriel They stay there. Until the old instance shuts down, at least. Still inconvenient.
It would be really nice a similar video on matrix!
Really good video btw 👍
While I haven't been on Mastodon as much as Twitter since the start of this year (when I abandoned my Twitter account), it really pisses me off when people say "it's too hard to use" when they probably had to learn to use Twitter in the first place with its character limits, inability to edit posts, and more. Sure Mastodon may be SLIGHTLY harder than Twitter at its peak, but Mastodon and third-party apps can't be taken down by a billionaire; Twitter was and did the worst possible 🖕 to their third-party developers.
Thanks for this video Nick! I hope people realize that Twitter is only going to fall further with the end of third-party clients and the developers moving to Mastodon.
I've recently joined Mastodon after watching this, so I just want to say thank you for this helpful video!
Glad it helped! Welcome :)
I never used twitter so I can't compare the two but I find mastodon to be a very enjoyable experience. It is a little addictive as with most social media, but it clearly isn't designed to be. It requires a bit of work to find interesting content which I think is a good thing.
It seems like mastodon has been the flagship for the fediverse and I hope that its success translates into success for other fediverse apps. Personally I'm a big fan of pixelfed.
Glad to hear someone who likes Pixelfed so much! Do you mainly use it for art or photography? (Photography IS art I'm just having a tough time conveying the right way to put it lol) I'm a 3D artist and I was hoping to use it in place of Insta when people ask. People seem to like that "just a page with pictures" format. :)
I love that you can follow just Hashtags. I follow a a bunch of Hashtags related to embedded development, iot, etc.
in the advanced view of the web client you can also create feeds which follow several hashtags so you can have several 'themed' feeds with related hashtags
It's actually a great platform, tbh. I picked a server randomly, so it wasn't really a hectic thing. I'll just do my things in Mastadon instead of Twitter which I was planning to do.
On Android, I can edit the post on the official app itself. I think you need to reconsider that
I can’t on iOS
@@TheLinuxEXP okay, it makes sense now, because the UI itself is slightly different on what you showed in the video
@@TheLinuxEXP just have two phones, easy :) btw I love your the linux and open source news podcast
My favourite Mastodon app is still Tusky. They're well designed, and are many years in this game.
Wow Nick, thanks for this concise guide to using Mastodon. I've been curious about it but haven't been able to wade through the somewhat complex user manual. I think I'm ready to jump on board now!
Thanks for this. Needed a Twitter replacement
mastodon is not a social network. the fediverse is the social network. mastodon is just one of the many options for fediverse server software.
without the fediverse, there is no mastodon, but the fediverse can exist without mastodon.
other options include pleroma, misskey, akkoma, calckey, pixelfed, friendica, and more.
Without the fediverse, Mastodon works alone, as a social network ;) The fediverse is a network of social networks
I appreciate the video, gave mastodon a try, and I think it works better than twitter in many ways. But the dealbreak for me here is not being able to quote posts. I can understand why the devs THINK it's a good idea, but I still don't agree as it really limits how you can interact with others in longer topics or when bringing up a specific comment about a single post instead of a general idea is important. It's the same attitude as halting all cars sales everywhere because road accidents happen.
I will still use it, posting and trying to give points or topics I find interesting. But not being able to quote someone and actually make an intelligible conversation means I will keep using Twitter for now as well even with all the problems and drawbacks it has.
You can quote by screenshotting though, if you really need that
Quote tooting is something that will be added in the future
rofl about the hiding the detail you run Arch 🤣 I like using Mastodon it's a great project imo. Thank you for the guide Nick!
Hey Nick! Excellent Mastodon guide, very informative! I'm still laughing about the joke that the Yahoo email was not arriving to Gmail cause they where 2 different servers, good one! hahahaha
Ha! It was because of your boost of that Dungeons post that I'm now obsessed with it. Great video btw!
It would be great if you could configure which instances you want to see more often in the federated timeline, it'd remove the need to open new tabs for different instances, just check the federated timeline instead. As it stands, it's nearly unusable due to spam junk from bots and such.
I think this has gotten better, depending on which instance you join. "Defederation" is a bit scary since the Fediverse relies on federation, but admins can de-fed instances that are bot spam or harassment or those kinds of things. The interest-based server I joined hasn't seen a bunch of spam I noticed. The cool part is you can find an instance that works for you hopefully. :)
I feel my comment in the last Mastodon video about not being able to figure out the app might have partially contributed to creating this video and its a really well done video. Ready to give it another shot.
Thanks, that was very helpful 🙏
I absolutely love this website.
I normally stay away from the Federated time-line, as it goes by too fast... I stick to the Home and Local ones instead.
As for mobile clients, I like Tusky for Android and Ice Cubes (which is new) for iOS.
The federated timeline is wonderful in small servers dedicated to a topic. It's like seeing everything followed by all users of that server. But in big servers it's just noise...
@@DiThi federated timeline is timeline with every post on every server. What you talking about is local timeline.
@@spl420 No. Not "every post". Only the ones that the server knows about. I.e. the posts from people followed by the users of your instance. If no one in your instance follows me, then my posts won't appear in your federated timeline. This timeline is very useful for small niche instances. It's like "people of your server follow..." combined with the local timeline.
The local timeline only has the users of the instance, not posts from people they follow.
Thank you for doing everything we'll never have time for
I think a big annoying thing right now is that you have to tag every post with the language that it's written in, otherwise the machine translation system cannot translate them in servers where this is an option. A lot of mobile apps don't allow you to set it, as well. But there is a default posting language in the settings somewhere so set that to the actual language that you post in.
I've never tagged the language of my posts and it works just fine.
@@himabimdimwim What languages do you post in? What works fine? Because for me machine translation does not work if the language tag is incorrect.
If you had talked about other technologies in the ActivityPub sphere you would know that quote posting does indeed exists. I cool software that would be cool to showcase is Soapbox.
One thing I just discovered (I own a Slimbook for 2 years and never knew): They have a sadly unpopular youtube channel where they show how to open their laptops and replace parts. In these times of crazy resistance against the right to repair, it's a big plus.
Well, it's mostly Spanish though ^^ But it deserves to be pushed up, it doesn't even pop up in the first page for me when searching Slimbook on youtube.
Thank you.
I'd just like to say that the federated timeline does not, to my understanding, work exactly as you say. Rather, only toots from other instances (servers) that other people on your own instance follow, are shown in federated timeline. So if a person on another instance is followed by none on your instance, they won't show up in your federated timeline.
This! The federated timeline is *great* in small servers, because they're only from people that people in your server follow.
Yes! This is the most inaccurate part of the video. What you see on the federated timeline depends greatly on which server you are on. You’ll see English posts only if you’re on a server that mainly speaks English.
Extremely helpful video! Thank you very much
Great video in-deph and concise guide of Mastodon. As the Black Ranger would say. MASTODON!
Wow, that was exactly what I was looking for just yesterday. Thanks!
woohoo I really needed this video!
Does Nick have a single shirt in his closest that actually buttons up all the way? The man as perfected the art of "I am French, and here is my [hairy] chest!" (this is all a joke fyi!)
Thanks for making this! Helped a bunch
I've been using Linux mint for a couple of months, have you been thinking about making a video about graphic cards updates or configuration on Linux, to make it more easy for beginners?
I must say, I don’t feel that it’s needed: either you’re using nvidia and it’s a one click install, or it’s anything else and you have nothing to do!
Heck, even on something like EndeavourOS, which is a very close to stock Arch distro, it is as simple as booting the live CD with the Nvidia drivers option, installing the system, and then using nvidia-inst. I had more problems on Fedora with Nvidia than Arch or even Ubuntu or Linux Mint with Nvidia.
@@cameronbosch1213 Fedora is so problematic with Nvidia, which is unfortunate because I really like that distro. Linux Mint works quite well with Nvidia, if you follow the install of the proprietary drivers (I believe I got the guide straight from the Linux Mint site). I didn't have much problems with Arch (Manjaro) and Nvidia, and the community was quite helpful the one time I did. You could also go get PopOS and have the driver built into the distro. I've been running PopOS for about 6 months now and haven't had so much as a hiccup. AMD just works, I haven't heard about Intel ARC.
@@ancestralpolitics7433 I agree 100%. I use Arch for that reason. I had an issue with Nvidia's newest GPUs refusing to boot and the people at the EndeavourOS were able to help me get a newer ISO and help me temporarily disable the dGPU to boot off of the AMD iGPU to get the computer to boot so I could install the Nvidia drivers. (If I didn't have an iGPU, I wouldn't have been able to install Linux at all!)
movetodon? I mean, sure... But please don't come all at once, my hometown needs time to prepare if we want to handle almost 250k people
Good explainer!
I'll just post something about it that I don't see prefaced and mentioned enough, for Twitter users, as complementation to the tutorial.
Mastodon is NOT a replacement for Twitter, it in fact was created as an alternative and in opposition to Twitter, for people who wanted to do microblogging in a better environment. So, do not expect for Mastodon to replace all Twitter functions or change itself to become like Twitter, because that is not the main objective, and it never was.
This is fundamentally what is behind most of Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube and other Fediverse platforms, and why they differ to centralized mainstream platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, RUclips, Instagram, etc).
It's more complex and confusing, yes, but it all has to do with things like you having better control on who sees your content and who doesn't, you being able to control better the content you see, keeping clusters of people at manageable enough sizes for human moderation to actually happen, and blocking all parties involved from harvesting mass data to sell for advertisement agencies plus several other types of exploitation.
Now, you have to understand that this is part of why Mastodon will never replace Twitter, and why if you are looking for an environment that works exactly like Twitter did for the past number of years, Mastodon just might not do it for you. You might be better off staying on Twitter, or migrating to another centralized social network.
For instance, a whole ton of celebrities, politicians, public figures, businesses, services and even individuals are majorly or only on Twitter because they can make money on it. Put on a bot announcing ads and promotions, replace the PR team, use it as a medium for corporate communications... this is what Mastodon does not want to be.
And this is likely not changing seeing the reactions of people involved to buyout offers, so that entire category of users and businesses who use Twitter in that specific way are unlikely to migrate, or migrate, become frustrated with it, and then abandon it later on.
Unfortunately, lots of people don't understand that a whole lot of what Twitter is today is thanks to that type of stuff, they often don't even see how much they participate in the entire thing. Mastodon was created in opposition to that type of structure.
In fact, several Mastodon instances are very much against spam, ads, and just selling stuff in general. Several instance moderators are explicitly against political stuff, hate speech, posts that are overly aggressive or directed attacks against other users, etc.
This isn't because they are power tripping, hard liners, yadda yadda - it's because, again, Mastodon was created to be an alternative to Twitter, not replace it. The platform and idea is older than most people think (I think the first Mastodon release was in 2016), and it was generally created in opposition to the strategy social networks have of collecting personal data for targeted advertisement that happened behind the scenes.
The same idea is valid for the entire Fediverse - it was created in opposition to several of the centralized social networks' mode of operation, particularly on the exploitation of private and personal user data for profit.
This is part of the reason why it's open source and more complex to use. It's not because it's new, not because it's less mature in comparison to Twitter, it has to do with it's core structure and idea.
It's closer to what online communities used to be in the past, in the lines of discussion forums and whatnot, than it is to current social networks.
Now, you can of course like this or not. But having this in mind gives you a better idea on what to expect. Unless Mastodon falls prey to big corporation offerings and sells out to any sort of business that ends up with your regular late stage capitalism structure of profit above everything and interests of investors above that of users, there will be lots of types of regular Twitter users that will be unwelcome and unfit for the platform, which will make for a very different user experience for some.
I personally used Mastodon and alternatives inside the Fediverse for a while years back, before the Musk Twitter shitstorm, before Facebook became the default villain in terms of social networks... so, perhaps what I'm saying doesn't count as much these days anymore, I really don't know for sure. I just kinda stopped using because I decided that the platforms, the entire social network structure just does not work for me. I'm more of an RSS and RUclips kinda guy. xD I just wish RUclips commenting system was better than this decades old basic garbage we have to deal with... but that's a separate discussion.
NOSTR is the new Mastodon, because it solves the censorship problem
Anyone else find that bit at 3:38 funny?
Anyways I'm on my way to sign the beep up
Nice video, it might help me get more into the use of mastodon. I wasn't aware of the possibility to follow things from other type of platform and have them in the timeline.
Guess I did not take enough time to get into things deep enough
Thanks for doing this video! Shared!
Thank you so much for this!
The spoiler thing! finally I can follow communities without getting anime spoilers
First and foremost: Thank you for making this video and making it easier and less scary for beginners to use.
What I missed in this video however was emphasis on how your data gets handled by Mastodon, because from that almost all differences and improvements over something like Twitter derive. You briefly compared it to Email, but that does not do it justice. For one, "third-party" Mastodon clients are not "allowed" because there is no one who could forbid that. You simply *have* the freedom to use any software you want, that follows the open ActivityPub protocol to connect/federate with existing Mastodon instances. This is a direct result from the protocol not being proprietary and being decentralized.
Then there are some privacy aspects: Do NOT use an online service for migrating your Twitter account to Mastodon like you suggested. Unless the code runs completely locally in the browser (and even then it is highly questionable), there is no way to know what shady things the service might do with the access to your Twitter and Mastodon accounts. Also, I wish you would have mentioned where and how your data gets stored: It is stored in plain text and controlled by the administrator of your home instance and if you shared it publicly also gets copied/federated to other instances, so once it's out there, there is no way to delete it, unlike Twitter, where you can be sure that at least the platform itself wont distribute it anymore (and if they followed the law, you could also be sure that they deleted your data, but well, we all know how that went *cough* PRISM). This also means that you need to trust your instance's administrator at least as much as you trusted Twitter, because they can see all your data in plain text, even if shared privately, because it is not end to end encrypted - how could it without you verifying the other parties public key. Another consequence of this is that it becomes much harder to enforce any of your GDPR rights, because effectively now your home instance administration takes the place of Twitter Inc., a massive corporation that has systems and procedures in place (although Twitter was not that good on that front either) to first secure your data (InfoSec-wise) and also handle it according to the GDPR. I highly doubt, that every little hobby administrator of a Mastodon instance can offer that and crucially, they might not even be required to do so, because the GDPR has some prerequisites of user size for the platform to take effect on that platform.
What I do not know is how well Mastodon (the software ecosystem) handles migration of your data from your account on one instance to another, because that is a pretty important use-case and point to make when advertising that there is no single entity like Twitter Inc. making the rules. That only holds true if it is easy to change home instances as soon as you do not like the direction where yours is going.
I migrated servers and it's pretty straightforward. You just make another account, and configure the old account as an alias. Then you can move the followers, and export and import the rest of the data (who you follow, bookmarks, blocks, etc)
Wow, how did you get that libadwaita version of Epiphany? It looks great
Thanks for the video! I got off of all social media, except Reddit, over the last few years. Was going to try Mastodon but it seemed too confusing. After your explanation I think I may give it a try.
If you ever decide to make a video on additional features, it would be nice to present people to lists and the "columnar" display which results in a similar experience to TweetDeck, and is the way I much prefer and use both Twitter and Mastodon.
I will just add that user can migrate their account to a other instance if they want or if their instance will close.
The mastodon web interface really need a better hashtag search interface.
How do I find the top 50 like minded accounts that post on a given subject?
This should be a top priority for the project.
Thank goodness subtooting exists!
2:01
Last I heard, the term 'toots' came as a trade. The mastodon folks would change the button to say 'toot', and harry brewis in turn would support their patreon for the rest of his life.
that story doesn't necessarily confirm harry *created* the term; it might have been a mastodon in-joke which inspired harry to broker the deal. however, you should totally blame him anyway.
Thank you for the very informative video. Question: how do you delete boosted posts in the profile area?
Nice ! Je vais pouvoir "gazouiller".
Hello, based on what I understood in this vid is that if the server you joined blocks other servers then in a way you are blocked from seeing content on those other servers, is that accurate? And if so is there a way to join multiple servers with one account or would it require creating a new account on maybe a server that allows talking to even more servers including that one?
They blocked Gab, and as far as I know you would need multiple accounts...
@@Omnar_Goldmane_RGLH Every server or just some? I would want something as vile as Gab blocked on any server I connected to.
@@tschorsch masterdon is infested by people that hate everything that free software stands for
@@tschorsch just some, it’d be impossible to block it on all of them, not to mention just not a good idea in general if we wanna keep the decentralised nature of the platform. Saying that I echo your sentiments
@@tschorsch wow, nice totalitarian instinct going right there. ALL decision of banning instances should be only in the hands of users.
Mastodon is better than any centralized service for sure, but it's still very flawed. In fact, the very idea of federation is flawed. The problem is, your identitiy is tied to a single server, and if that server ever blocks you or goes offline, you'll have no way to prove you are the same person (different address, differet person). This is were Nostr comes in. It's decentralized just like Mastodon, but it's not federated, instead, you can post on different 'relays' (their word for servers), and your address is a cryptographic key pair stored on your computer. That way, no matter which relay you post to, you can always prove you are the same person. It is also a very extensible protocol and allows fo things like encrypted DMs, public chats, or a twitter like experience. Nick if you're reading this, please give Nostr a try. It's still very unknown and definitely needs some coverage on RUclips
that is literally what email is.
@@happygofishing No it is not. Email is federated and has the same problems as mastodon. Nostr is not federated, it uses cryptographic keys for verification, not addresses tied to a specific server.
Users who need that level of provable identity (institutions like companies/govt services and very famous people) can already have it on the fediverse if they want to, they just piggy back off DNS and spin up their own servers with their own domain name with connections secured using SSL cryptography.
@@wysteria7917 and so if your own server getting down including backups, for any reason, you still facing the same problem.
Besides the fact that most of the people won't make their own servers and this "flaw", is a feature that's needed to secure some centralization, to enforce the censorship or anything else, with keeping people in fear of losing their account
@@avastorneretal Not really. Just having a domain name proves that you are you. So if your account goes down and you make another one, people can still know you're you because of your domain.
I hope you'll make a video like this for peertube
Nick, come back to Twitter, we miss you. 😊
No, the official app does allow you to edit posts? (At least, on Android...)
Not on iOS
@@TheLinuxEXP Understandable. From what I know, the iOS version is fairly early into its development lifecycle, compared to the Android one.
@@TheLinuxEXP I love your videos as always, but that was the only minor nit I had with this one. A simple qualifier like "on the iOS app" (or a quick glance at the app on another mobile platform) would mitigate folks drawing an incorrect conclusion (which I'm confident was not your intent).
Thanks for another great video!
Masterbadon is litterally the garbage dump for the cesspool of the internet. I don't see how it can be fixed.
3:28
What is the provider down right?
Plus Linode hosts your mastodon instances too :p
The hardest thing for me to understand is that I can interact with other instances posts, I just need to try to interact copy the link will appear in the pop-up paste into my instance and then when load in my instance UI I can interact with give a like and comment. This is a bad UX it should be simpler, but once I learned I enjoyed way more because I wasn't locked in my instance anymore.
Ehhh no you can just like them or boost them from your normal client without any copy paste?
@@TheLinuxEXP I don't know, what I learned through a friend is to copy and paste a link so I can give like across different instances. If there's another way I don't know.
Why don't you have a coin-flip animation on the Twitter circle that flips 5 times then becomes the mastodon logo then repeats till the outro ends?
Or a coin animation that spins from mastodon to twitter (heads to tails) every 2 seconds.
I wonder if you would get a notification if anyone you follow from specific server suddenly are blocked on the server you are on.
It does also seem like it would be really annoying to host ones own and then get everyone else to accept yours so people can actually follow you.
Mastadon as a platform and system is BETTER than Twitter.
Agreed
Have you have heard of Nostr? It's even better than both Mastodon and Twitter.
@@Cookiekeks The very last thing in the world I want is a social media that uses a blockchain and can never be deleted. YUCK!
@@milohoffman274 It does not use a blockchain at all. Why do you think it does?
What I noticed is when you add Hashtags on a pixelfed (progessive weg app) post, you can't always see the post in mastodon (tusky client).
If you have an account on each, and you follow each other, then automatically all new posts can be seen by *all* the users of both. And old posts too, if you paste the link in the search bar.
The green check mark next to the domain doesn't actually mean, that you are verified, but that the domain is really yours.
As an f-droid user I really like fedilab
Same
Dont forget MOSHIDON for android! An amazing open source app that is a branch of Megaladon.
Is the "server" an actual server? like if it breaks is the data lost?
I see the appeal of it, but I don't see a personal use for it. It's between a discord server and twitter. But for a tight knit group, it feels more natural to be in a instant text social app.
This was a useful overview! Mastodon seems to solve a lot of issues that are baked into today's social media.
For one, having multiple, individually moderated instances allows for more humans to moderate each other, rather than bots monitoring an impossibly large community.
Also the decentralized nature kind of ensures that design decisions won't be profit driven. That's only in danger if any one Mastodon instance becomes TOO big or influential.
Also not sure if the content warning showcase was just an example or not but... my condolences for your loss :(
Excuse me, what are those two items on the top of the shelf? My interest has been piqued, board games? Books? Graphic novels?
Question: the implication of the phrase "other instances your instance talks to" is that not all talk to all the others... how can I see those connections? How do I know what I'm missing?
Basically, most instances talking to every other instance. They can choose to ban some instance, but they usually don't.
NOSTR > Mastodon
Hello. Could you recommend me a browser for windows 7 that will get updated on years to come? It's a tough situation since most mainstream ones are ending support this year... Also, I'd prefer one that wasn't based on blink but rather firefox.
I've heard of waterfox, librewolf, icecat, etc. Which one will get support for longer??
Mastodon does not provide the same service as Twitter! No trending for instance. No real search capabilities (only people and hash tags). Being decentralised may be great and all, but it is a pain in the behind too.
There IS trending hashtags. It *can* search in your own posts and the ones you favorited/boosted/bookmarked. It's designed like that on purpose. Also people use hashtags in the fediverse much more than in twitter for this very reason.
I always find it funny people who aren't even running an instance complaining about the fediverse being complicated.
Btw, I found that you don't really even need to have an app. I'm using soapbox-fe, and it's really mobile friendly, and by accepting notifications and keeping a tab open in your closed browser, you still get notifications which will open that tab when you tap on it. Granted I'm running a custom instance with everything set up just the way I like it, but I've found it preferable to any app out there.
nice
Damn old TLE was humerus 😭
😎
Maybe Odysee can be next to discuss!
I joined Mastodon but I see none of the screens you depict, so I am still in the dark. You need a more nuts & bolts explanation.
never heard someone pronounce it meh-gallah-don. usually its said megla-don
Love it when the Académie Française tries to tell us how to speak French, twenty years too late and with boomer arguments from people who never used internet themselves.
It is disappointing that the sponsored segment didn't contain anything about hosting your own Mastodon server
I wish Mastodon had more users and a DM feature, that's the only 2 things holding it back. Last time I used it the only accounts on there were mirrors of linux/crypto twitter accounts.
uhm, DMs as in direct messages, are supported? they're not end to end encrypted though. agreed with the other point, it's a bit of a hassle to find new people. especially if you join the wrong server first. also no search of posts is a bummer.
It does on the web client. It's possible that some alternative clients offer this as well. You can send a DM in the app manually though, by changing a post to only be visible to the people mentioned in the post before publishing it.
Edited: Also note that DMs are not encrypted on Mastodon, so server administrators could see them if they wanted to.
There are literally millions of users on Mastodon, thousands of servers/instances, and direct messages is already there and has been for a long time
There's plenty of accounts in the fediverse. You probably tried to search accounts in one server which won't show those accounts that your server don't know about. To have it know about other accounts, you have to paste the full handle or the link to the account in the search bar. For that reason I browse other instances when I want to find new people. Then, when I see an account or a post I like, I copy and paste the link into the search bar of my server, so I can follow, boost, favorite, reply, whatever.
TOOTS FOREVER!
why am I watching a video about an alternate to twitter?
I'll be honest here: I love the idea of Mastodon, but if this kind of video is neccessary - long term general adoption will be very, very, very tough.
Mastodon does not need "long term general adoption", it is part of the Fediverse, which means it can communicate with other servers/instances from different applications, and there are several others out there (Misskey, Diaspora etc.) You actually just have to join either of these services to be able to communicate with Mastodon users.
The fediverse is growing in batches. It's not a business so it doesn't need to *grow and compete* to survive, it does just fine on its own and from time to time there's waves of people migrating. It has been happening for a few years now.
Tusky~
Thanks for the video! I really appreciate the education. Before I go on, I'm only sharing my first impression and I'm open to being corrected if I have the wrong impression. I'm just disappointed at how terrible an idea Mastadon sounds like. I could be wrong since I'm just basing it on this video, but it seems there's no meaningful difference between this and other social media platforms. You're still handing complete control of your access to the social network to nameless, faceless server admins. I wouldn't be surprised if unfair censorship and shadow bans aren't already proliferating.
Just join another server? Right, what good will that do when there's a cabal of admins and server groups that will ban you altogether. And then they'll go after anyone who tries to connect with you from other servers. Even the federated version implements admin control across servers. Central authority will always be abused. Who's naïve enough to think that software developers and admins aren't just as biased as everyone else? Unless demonstrated otherwise, it's prudent to just assume that the censorious silicon valley authoritarian ideology (all premised on safety and compassion) is baked into that community.
Whoever architected this made sure to bake in a method of centralized control, with the illusion of decentralization. If you care about free speech and decentralization, this seems like a failure right out of the gate.
Second, because Nick pinned a comment.
Great video. Sadly, Mastodon is about to go back to reality. People only went to this tool as a tantrum for Musk being Musk but after they realized Mastodon isn't the tool to just login and start posting their crap like on Twitter... they went back to the same twitter
The search on mastodon is suck
Nick, you play dungeons and dragons?
I used to
@@TheLinuxEXP i actually play in beta Baldurs gate 3. And honestly this game reanimated my old love.
Great video. I think promoting computing freedom to others its big value today.
3:45
Please, don't tell me that your mom try to use nick-at-yahoo instead of nick-at-gmail because she use yahoo. :')
I hope that lot of people (and youtuber) would see this, it's hurt to ear thing like "mastondon is bad, only people on your instance can see you and you can see only people on the same instance as you" especially when it's some youtuber...
What's wrong with Arch Linux??
i will never use mastodon. the idea was cool at the start, everyone having their own instances with their own rules (or joining an instance with rules that they like), but when GAB joined the fediverse, they completely did a 180 on their principles to specifically block out GAB from the rest of the fediverse, and any other instance that would not bow down to the woke instances that demanded everyone else to defederate with GAB and any other instance they disliked. In my opinion, it just turned centralised authority into mob authority. The original idea was everyone governs themselves as they see fit, or they join a server with rules that match their senstivities. Then because everyone is different, you could still follow anyone from any instance if you wished, and post on any other instance from which ever your instance operates from. Really cool idea until they fucked it up.
If mastodon had stayed true to their founding ideas, i would take it a lot more seriuosly, but in my opinon its not worth ivesting time in if its just going to be ruled by a mob of woke leftist that will block you out of the rest of the fediverse just because you wont block instances they dont like from being able to access your instance and vice versa.
I will admit i have not looked into the issue as of late, so perhaps this practice has died down now, but the fact that the mastadon team has built the tools to make their product capable of this sort of behavior completely kills it for me. It's such a shame because at the time I really welcomed a truely free speech alternative to social media, and I had thought what mastodon was doing, was the solution, but I was wrong :/
14:25 i noticed all the censoring when i first explored it, did not realise people where doing this to them selves. a good improvment would be the ability to turn off all content warnings by default for those of us who are not thin skinned.
Well to be fair, GAB had to be isolated. People there were an insane raving mob of nazis.
It's their freedom to block whoever they want on their own servers. If you don't like it, just host your own
True
That is literally not how the fediverse or federation works, instances block other instances on an individual basis, there is no "centralised authority".
You've been eating up FUD from grifters who want to shill their own proprietary social media "alternatives".
You can make it so that content warning are always open by default.
As for blocking domains: if people don't want to speak or see your content then you can't force them to, and many people want to not see nazis or other types of deranged idiots. And they must of course have the right to turn those others away. If you want your own server you can start it, easily.