TheaNov 6, 2022

I keep seeing people say Mastodon is nothing like Twitter. And they’re right.

Mastodon is an echo of the old internet, it’s decentralised, chaotic. What you get depends on your sysadmin. You can’t search, everything has to be shared to you by a human. Networks split apart and rejoin. What you see is your unique connection to it.

Is this good? Maybe. But for me that’s the internet I grew up with. No algorithms, no targeted adverts, just human interaction, and it was glorious.

Show threadBusesarecoolactually🚌🚍Nov 6, 2022
@sitharus you really can’t search? I assumed I wasn’t getting results because the servers are all bogged down with new members.
Show threadThea
@busesarecoolactually you can search for hashtags and people, not on arbitrary content. It’s a deliberate choice to stop topic brigading. Also you can only search what your instance has seen, not the whole fediverse.
Nov 6, 2022 at 5:43amWeb
Show threadMark HarrisNov 6, 2022
@sitharus @busesarecoolactually There's no full-text search, and that's a lot like AltaVista used to be - subject based and looking for information, not looking for something you can use against someone.
Show threadGirtBySeaNov 6, 2022

@nzlemming @sitharus @busesarecoolactually

As I remember Altavista wasn"t just a subject directory, it had genuine crawling & indexing of web pages.
Looksmart, which local smartie Evan Thornley made a motzah on, was a directory search engine. https://www.afr.com/technology/we-ve-been-duped-by-big-tech-says-the-aussie-who-tried-to-buy-google-20191211-p53j3v

But as local smarties go, none could match the chutzpah of Sean Howard,
---(who cooked up OzeMail w Malcolm Turnbull money,, plus what he got from flogging his computer magazine to Kerry packer) - - -who just pinched someone's incredibly useful software (trumpet winsock) to put on his mag cover disk, prefilling the isp field w OzeMail as default. It's a classic court case, http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UTasLawRw/1996/13.pdf

We've been duped by Big Tech says the Aussie who tried to buy Google

Dotcom tycoon Evan Thornley, the tech pioneer and founder of LookSmart, outlines his vision for a kinder, gentler internet of the future.

Australian Financial Review
Show threadGirtBySeaNov 6, 2022
@sitharus @busesarecoolactually
What's topic brigading? Sacrificing utility of global search, being able to find who's saying what about what you're interested in, without writer having to declare what is findable by tagging, is a hugely backward step, IMHO
Someone will no doubt make a widget to do the job.
Early days for interface I hope, different skins will turn up. They'd be smart to make one that looks like Twitter, with most of screen devoted to messages.
Dock will autohide I hope, it takes up so much real estate.
Show threadLinus NärklingNov 6, 2022
@sitharus Does that mean the amount of results I get when searching hashtags depends on the size of my instance?
Show threadTheaNov 6, 2022
@vapid it does, you can't search everything in the fediverse because it's not a unified network. Larger instances will (in theory) have more diverse connections and therefore more results in search.
Show threadSwitchNov 7, 2022
@sitharus @vapid many larger instances will also have less strict rules about oppressive content. I prefer fewer connections with better people.