Mastodawn

mcc Dec 5, 2018

Okay so tumblr is banning rotating cubes saying it's porn and facebook banned saying "i'm gay" saying it's sexual solicitation and Twitter always seemed like it could disappear at any moment

I feel like we need to be getting ready for Mass Migration to Mastodon, which means we need to fix anything that keeps Mastodon from being usable, and there is in fact something that keeps Mastodon from being usable, there's one specific thing, it's this:

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/177

Support account migration · Issue #177 · tootsuite/mastodon

A lot of people seem to be jumping on https://mastodon.social right now, even though the end goal is to have users separated out across multiple federated instances. However, if people start puttin...

mcc Dec 5, 2018

The lack of an account migration idiom on Mastodon really is fatal, it is sincerely a thing that keeps me from recommending Mastodon to people. The http://witches.town evaporation to me was kind of like a disproof of the fediverse and I feel like maybe the fediverse dev community should have treated it as such. There needs to be a way to recover your account, "toots", and follower network if one instance goes away.

If an instance goes away, or you decide you like another instance's UX/features more— well, you can repost stuff, you can shrug off content that's lost, you can let your friends know, ~oh, did you hear? I'm on fuckspace.industries now~. You can do these things *IF* Mastodon is a fun little side thing where we do our low-pressure social networking. This is not feasible or adequate if Mastodon is actually meant to be a *replacement* for Twitter.

mcc Dec 5, 2018

A few people have let me know instances now have features for backing-up and importing old toots and follows— okay, if that's automatable, that's a fix for half the problem, cool! But there needs to be some idiom for pushing to your ex-followers "@mcc is now @[email protected]", and have instances know they need to either correct the follow or present a "refollow?" popup.

(And unfortunately, there probably needs to be a way of taking that back, because this is a security attack surface the size of Alaska.)

David Chartier Dec 5, 2018

@mcc I wish it was just completely automated. Yes, there's a way to export a few things (including who WE follow) and move to another instance.

But I wish there was some kind of authorization handshake + handoff where it just automatically updates all our followers.

Just like if we ever change our username on an instance, they still follow us. I don't want followers to have to manually do anything.

https://v2.jacky.wtf/Dec 5, 2018

@mcc so that bit re: highlighting old accounts is functional in Mastodon (peep https://mastodon.xyz/@jackyalcine).

the reverse is kinda tricky b/c you can't ensure all of those following accounts are still around. I had a little chat with @thegibson about this just now https://hackers.town/@thegibson/101190431070128309

jackyalciné (@[email protected])

1.26K Toots, 101 Following, 206 Followers · Software engineer by trade (and hobby); recreational cook, blogger and poet. Activist. I like tracking my life. Subscribe at https://jacky.wtf/subscribe/

Sophie Jane Dec 5, 2018

@mcc Someone wrote a tool that will DM people on your exported follower list to tell them you’ve moved but it’s considered a bit obnoxious because it can flood your notifications if a lot of people are migrating at the same time.

Kevin Marks Dec 5, 2018

@mcc see https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/8465 and the notes on setting up mutual rel=me first here https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/177#issuecomment-291688638

(the rel-me support is in now, which makes this clearer)

Support 301 redirection for account migration · Issue #8465 · tootsuite/mastodon

Mastodon now has UX for account migration - hooray! However, it doesn't actually redirect the account and followers . I can still post in the old instance, and my followers still see it, they s...

jim!Dec 5, 2018

@mcc if part of the problem here is "oops my instance suffered catastrophic existence failure", then I don't think account migration is enough? it's not like you can migrate from an instance that doesn't exist anymore.

maybe a solution that involves linking accounts on multiple instances to a single identity? all your posts go to all linked accounts, people can follow any one of them, all your connections aggregate back to one "main" identity? something like that

mcc Dec 5, 2018

@jbradfield So imagine there's some way of registering a public key that you later cash in on to say "that site? that was me. this is me now". Or a centralized site that tracks "A moved to B". There's no really *good* options but there's 100% options.

eena meena me Dec 5, 2018

@mcc why is fuckspace.industries not a thing yet?

mcc Dec 5, 2018

@meena apparently i am not as widely hated as rudy giuliani. do i need to work on that

eena meena me Dec 5, 2018

@mcc a life's measure can be friends and enemies, indeed.
but you decide which ones you want have more of

lavender Dec 5, 2018

@mcc there is an automated way to send a DM to all of your followers letting them know to follow your new account, and there's a way to mark accounts as redirecting to a new one. it's still not a complete solution but we're a lot closer to there than we were last time you checked, i think

mcc Dec 5, 2018

@lavender that's pretty cool, it would be nice if the instances could automatically interpret the DM and do [[something]] with it.

lavender Dec 5, 2018

@mcc there's not really anything stopping instances from doing that, but i wouldn't actually want to be automatically signed up to follow someone without manual intervention

mcc Dec 5, 2018

@lavender sure, but it doesn't seem hard to make that a feature you can turn on and off?

♦ benjamin Dec 5, 2018

@mcc here's an open issue about it. https://github.com/swicg/general/issues/1

imo portability of identity would be one of the *most* killer features

Follower Migration · Issue #1 · swicg/general

How can a user switch from being [email protected] to [email protected] without losing their followers? Related problem is how can they avoid breaking all the incoming links. If their followers...

Charlotte 猫 Awoo Fide Dec 6, 2018

@mcc security 'attack surface the size of Alaska' applies to just about everything in mastodon

JamesGecko Dec 26, 2018

@mcc This is being actively worked on, but they're trying to figure out how to keep it from being used as a mechanism for DOS attacks. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/9629

Add handler for Move activity by Gargron · Pull Request #9629 · tootsuite/mastodon

See: #177, #6955, #8003 Traffic My guesses about the traffic patterns of this feature: Given N as the number of followers on the original account, and M (M <= N) as the number of separate server...

Jonathan Dec 5, 2018

@mcc hell yeah. It seems like a difficult but doable thing too, I really hope it gets done.

Lainy Dec 5, 2018

@mcc why not? export your followers, refollow, continue. It's not convenient, but what do you use twitter for that needs this level of permanence?

Kevin Marks Dec 5, 2018

@lain @mcc supporting 301 redirection has worked for sites, blogs and feeds, and could work for mastodon. Yes, the key signing business makes it more of a faff, but supporting 301 is a solid basis and the web, feeds and Websub all support it already. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/8465

Support 301 redirection for account migration · Issue #8465 · tootsuite/mastodon

Mastodon now has UX for account migration - hooray! However, it doesn't actually redirect the account and followers . I can still post in the old instance, and my followers still see it, they s...