“Nostr is a distributed social media protocol that has a chance of working.”…

“Nostr is a distributed social media protocol that has a chance of working.”

…that involves generating a public/private key pair and sharing the public key around, signing your messages, connecting to different relays…

People coming from Twitter are confused about *picking an instance* of Mastodon. I think the barriers to entry might be a little higher on this.

https://www.nostr.directory/

On Wandering.shop

FINALLY If you’re trying to use the Linode marketplace build for mastodon, you need to …

FINALLY

If you’re trying to use the #Linode marketplace build for #mastodon, you need to fix some permissions in one of the #docker containers.

Otherwise it’ll fail on uploading media, accepting follows, possibly more.

Run this:

docker exec –user root live_web_1 chown -R mastodon:mastodon /opt/mastodon/public/system

On Wandering.shop

As terrible as the old remote interaction workflow was, the new method of showing a …

As terrible as the old remote interaction workflow was, the new method of showing a URL and telling the user to copy and paste it is so much worse.

#mastodon #ux

On Wandering.shop

Follow, reply, boost, whatever. The pop-up to send you over to your own instance was a pain. But the pop-up telling you how to work around it is like putting up a sign telling people how to get to the back entrance instead of fixing the door.

It is so weird to see triple-digit boosts in the feed.

It is so weird to see triple-digit boosts in the feed.

The funny thing is all the viral posts about how Mastodon is designed to make it harder for things to go viral.

With comment threads longer than I’ve seen in ages.

(Harder, of course, doesn’t mean impossible!)

(And yeah, I’m guilty of boosting some of them too!)

Time for me to stop contributing to the problem of over-saturating the feed with meta-commentary.

(Oh no, I’m doing it right now!)

@Virelai I believe it searches posts that the instance you’re on knows about already, without …

@Virelai I believe it searches posts that the instance you’re on knows about already, without calling out to other instances. So it’ll show you hashtagged posts from:
– the local timeline
– remote users that local users are following.
– remote toots that have been boosted or searched by URL on this instance.

On Wandering.shop

@VirelaiI’ve found that searching on a small instance like booktoot.club turns up fewer results than searching wandering.shop or mastodon.social, but if I search for a hashtag on a bigger instance, then copy the URL of a toot over to the search box on the smaller instance, the smaller instance will find it the next time I search for that hashtag.

On Wandering.shop

Yes, I suppose data revealed through a system *working as intended* isn’t technically a “breach.”

Yes, I suppose data revealed through a system *working as intended* isn’t technically a “breach.”

Most social media these days is built around selling access to participants’ data, directly or indirectly (through ad placement). It doesn’t have to be, but that’s the business model that’s taken hold.

There are alternatives to the big data-mining social networks, but they have their own drawbacks. Blogs still exist, Mastodon is making great strides, you can self-host if you can afford it & have the know-how (or know someone who does)…

But your friends/family aren’t on [cool social network], they’re still on FB & Twitter, so you need to keep them around to talk to them.

And it takes time, effort & money to maintain your own site.

And a lot of networks aren’t as polished as the ones you’re already on…

Leaving FB/Twitter isn’t easy for everyone, or even rewarding for everyone.

We can make it easier, help people diversify, & grow those alternative networks, but let’s not blame those who accept the trade-off & stay on the major sites.

Still, user data is the product. Breaches need one kind of solution. Business practices need another.

The biggest roadblock to adoption and the key feature

I’m kind of reminded of XKCD’s initial response to Google+

Ultimately, though, I think the separate instances are going to be both the biggest roadblock to adoption and the key feature that distinguishes Mastodon from Twitter.

On Mastodon.Social

Wait, is there a taboo against naming that other microblogging site? that other microblogging site. Should I call it “You-know-where” or “That which must not be named?”

(I will admit I was amused to see someone refer to it as “The Bad Place” yesterday.)

Conversation On Mastodon

…and I just noticed the editing error in this toot. :facepalm:

On Mastodon.Social

I do wonder about permanence, though: How often do Mastodon instances shut down? How much notice?

Data Export seems to only cover follow/block/mute lists so far. I suppose I could hook up my atom feed to IFTTT or something.

Or I can just do what I do with “the bird site,” and if I really want to make sure I keep something I’ve written, copy it over to my blog.

On Mastodon.Social

Mastodon’s been trending again

So I noticed Mastodon’s been trending again & figured I’d take another look. I don’t need another time sink, but I figured it might be worth jumping in this time. Now to replicate just the good parts of that other network…

On Mastodon.Social

I should probably figure out what I want to talk about here before I try to figure out who to follow, huh? I mean, I’ll probably end up cross-posting photos & blogging (yes, I still blog), but other than that, do I want to talk about…tech? politics? comics? sci-fi/fantasy? I don’t think anyone I know IRL is here, so it’s a matter of topics for now.

Actually, what *is* the etiquette for cross-posting here?

So, the 5-7 interests meme (this feels like early 2000s LJ): #comics #scifi #space #computers #science #art #photography

Hmm, looks like I may want to check out wandering.shop for scifi/fantasy and photog.social for photography…

OK, so I’ve set up @kelsonv@photog.social for photography posting. I’ll probably keep this one for other stuff.