Alex HowardNov 17, 2022
Interesting piece by @mathewi about the culture clash between journalists accustomed to Twitter & existing Mastodon instances. He reports about 45 servers are blocking people on journa.host, which I was seriously considering joining or shifting towards: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalists-want-to-recreate-twitter-on-mastodon-mastodon-is-not-into-it.php What do you think? How should members of the media be approaching participating or reporting on the #fediverse?
Journalists want to re-create Twitter on Mastodon. Mastodon is not into it.

<p>Ever since Elon Musk completed his $45 billion takeover of Twitter last month, there has been a steady stream of users, including a number of journalists, signing up for Mastodon, an open-source alternative. No one controls Mastodon—or rather, everyone controls their own version of it. There are thousands of servers running the software, and each […]</p>

Columbia Journalism Review
Show threadcreatinglakeNov 17, 2022
@digiphile @mathewi agreed, it is a structural problem. Users should be able to determine who to block, not instance owners without user consent. We are collecting data from Mastodon users like you to identify, and ideally solve, the main pain points of using Mastodon and the Fediverse. We can image an way for journalists to access the fediverse on your terms, like a Substack for the Fediverse (with upgrades). https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nzivsBDx8L_am5F9rySr7d7dCbDTdMTcsBjhUYODYy4/edit
Mastodon User Experience Survey

In an effort to improve Mastodon and help independent decentralized social media compete with big tech companies we’d like to better understand what challenges you’ve had joining and using Mastodon. This survey is being conducted by the Mosaic Foundation, a non-profit with the mission to build digital infrastructure for a new era of democratic societies. Resulting datasets will be shared with the public, but no personal information will be shared.

Google Docs
Show threadNot SocialNov 18, 2022

@digiphile @mathewi @creatinglake

What incentive is there for an instance owner to keep incurring the cost of maintaining their instance if we take away their ability to curate the content on their instance?

Show threadcreatinglakeNov 18, 2022
@notsocial @digiphile @mathewi what about single user instances that each user pays for?
Show threadNot Social

@mathewi @digiphile @creatinglake I agree with this, the knowledge gap for an average user to spin up their personal mastodon instance is large. A paid click to launch service would be great, but probably not with mastodon software as the platform, given a lot of the behind of the scene features admins get, most users don’t care about.

Though the issue of moderation still remains, it just gets shifted to the host provider.

Nov 18, 2022 at 5:32pmWeb
Show threadNot SocialNov 18, 2022
@creatinglake @mathewi @digiphile I think you would still end up with personal views guiding what sort content host providers want stored on their servers. E.g. One host providers views of what hate speech encompasses would be different from others.
Show threadcreatinglakeNov 18, 2022
@notsocial @mathewi @digiphile agree with almost all of that. Why can't a single person do moderation for their single user instance in the Fediverse? I am prepared to do my own moderation.
Show threadNot SocialNov 18, 2022

@creatinglake @mathewi @digiphile True you might be, but the data your instance downloads resides on the host provider’s hard drives. That is where the issue lies.

A good example of such a conflict in moderation is hosting of truth social and gap instances, where very few host providers wanted their business.

Show threadNot SocialNov 18, 2022
@creatinglake @digiphile @mathewi So as a host provider, do you allow instances you host to be able to pull material from those sites and run the risk of being accused of having hateful material or possibly illegal content on your drives, or do you block them and play it safe. I.e. moderate for all instances on your servers.