Mastodawn

Gabriel Sigmund Nov 19, 2022

HEY HEY FRENZ on mastodon.social! You may want to MOVE to a new instance, very soon.

Why?

Mastodon is a bunch of islands that can talk to each other. The smaller and more spread out we are, the easier things are to moderate. Horizontal scaling FTW!

All of you who fled that one site 🐤 ended up at mastodon.social for likely a few reasons. It was obvious, it was big, and it's where you saw a bunch of folks going.

But it has a long history of being poorly moderated, which means a LOT of instances are silencing or blocking it. Which means you're on the big island that SEEMS like it's "where everyone is", but in fact, it's a giant island unto itself (momentarily trending toward turning into a post-bird-site echo chamber), and huge swaths of the Fediverse don't talk to it, or even see it.

If you want the quality of interaction (and moderation!) Mastodon is known for, move thy funky buns to a smaller instance of cool folks you enjoy.

#feditips #fediverse

tlsmith63 Nov 18, 2022

@hollie I am on toot.community myself. I knew that mastodon.social was probably going to be overwhelmed!

laceknitted Nov 18, 2022

@hollie oh, good to know! Yikes! I only just joined. Have any tips for finding a better instance?

The Fortuna Guy Nov 20, 2022

@laceknitted @hollie
Check this out.
https://instances.social/

Mastodon instances

Esme Nov 18, 2022

@hollie Hey is it OK if I boost this for my own m.s friends?

Hollie Nov 18, 2022

@madewokherd Absolutely! :)

Esme Nov 18, 2022

@hollie Thanks.

José de la Parra Nov 18, 2022

@hollie I just was wondering about that. I think everybody is thinking how to stop the poison that's coming with the waves of people coming from that other site. I think keeping tidy islands is a good option, I hope we could find a good solution with the scaling process.

Christian Wilkie Nov 18, 2022

@hollie But there's no way to migrate your old posts to the new instance, is there.

Simon Nov 19, 2022

@cwwilkie @hollie Followers and follows yes.

The posts die with the old instance unfortunately

t o d d w a r n e r Nov 19, 2022

@cwwilkie @hollie Look at it as a cleansing. This is all ephemeral anyway.

Comfortably Numb Nov 18, 2022

@hollie I started on mastodon.social, because I had no idea what I was doing. But moving to a smaller instance what the best thing I did after joining the fediverse.

Hollie Nov 18, 2022

@ygalanter Me too! I started there as well, and it just felt....kinda wrong? It felt like a Twitter version of the Wild Wild West, which wasn't my jam.

I found out that a friend had been on Mastodon for a while, and I asked her if I could get some info. She immediately said, "Well first off, get away from mastodon.social!" Lol. And I did, and it was so much better.

Yudron Wangmo 🪷 📿 🏔Nov 19, 2022

@ygalanter @hollie why?

Shawn G Nov 19, 2022

@ygalanter @hollie if you're open to sharing, how did you go about exploring/deciding the right place for you?

Kristin Kelly Nov 18, 2022

@hollie Is there any way to find out more about the community you joined? Like how you knew about the community that it was poorly moderated. I didn’t know anything when picking, and picked based on the rules, which seemed good. It is a German and English platform, likely out of Germany. Just trying to figure things out. Thanks.

Hollie Nov 18, 2022

@kristinkelly Great question! It can be rough at the start, for sure!

When I was new, I had a friend who had been on Mastodon for a long time, and I asked her how she navigated, and she explained why I ought to leave mastodon.social. When I moved, it was like the world opened up! I was able to see so much more of the Fediverse, and began making more friends.

When I look at new instances, I'm looking to see:

- What are their guidelines?

- Do they have moderation objectives in place, and do they seem to have a plan for dealing with folks who go against the guidelines?

- Is it one person running a large instance alone, or is it a team that helps each other?

- Also, feel free to ask! You can say, "I'm thinking of joining this instance, have folks heard anything about this place?"

- If you know of an instance you do like and trust, many times those instances will have lists in their About section on which servers they avoid. Those lists can be illuminating!

Kristin Kelly Nov 19, 2022

@hollie thank you!

bureauxx Nov 18, 2022

@hollie where can i see which federation is blocking mastodon.social ? (and why . . reason given)

Gordian 🎙️Nov 18, 2022

"Horizontal scaling FTW!" @hollie

Fisher Nov 18, 2022

@hollie the solution is to make a moderated main channel. Not to attempt to push people into balkanization when they don't understand why they're doing it, how this website works, or what an "instance" is....

Wonky Nov 18, 2022

Thank you!

https://autonomy.ninja still has open registrations!

Autonomy Ninja

Autonomy is a Mastodon community that is open to anyone who is interested in technology & social-justice. Hosted in Toronto. Let's build a better world.

Mastodon hosted on autonomy.ninja

RatMajesty Nov 18, 2022

@hollie thank you for the tip, is there a way to move to a new one or should I just make a new account?

Hollie Nov 19, 2022

@ratmajesty I don’t like all the ads on this page but it has the right directions!

https://screenrant.com/mastodon-change-servers-migrate-account-how/

DianneVotes💙Nov 19, 2022

@hollie @ratmajesty Ads? I thought they don't have ads.

Daidouji Nov 19, 2022

@hollie thank you so much for the site! It solved the question I had! :D @ratmajesty Hollie was referring to the website with the steps. It's colluded with ads! But a good ad-blocker will do the trick :D

Joe Nov 19, 2022

@hollie I'm all for spreading people out, and I'm on a regional instance myself. But if I found myself on an instance that blocks mastodon.social I would move, because it would cut me off from people I follow. Blocking the largest instance just balkanizes us. It would be better to figure out how to help mastodon.social improve.

haven4books Nov 19, 2022

@not2b @hollie My understanding is that many have tried to help improve it, but the admin has blocked many efforts.

Joe Nov 19, 2022

@haven4books Can you be more specific? What kinds of efforts have been blocked? Not saying you are wrong, I genuinely don't know.

haven4books Nov 19, 2022

@not2b I don't have expertise in this area. These were warnings I received by long timers when I first joined 6 months ago. I'm sorry I can't provide more history than that. I didn't understand yet then that I would need to bookmark info like that to find it again.

Fisher Nov 19, 2022

@haven4books @not2b if there's anything I've learned in my 4 days in the fetiverse, it's that "long time users," no matter how good their hearts might be, are terrible judges of what "improvements" will be good and accessible for noobs and normies, which ultimately is the most important path to actually turning this into a genuinely relevant, accessible, usable platform for more than just a few 100k.

I'm not shocked admin has blocked their suggestions.

Hollie Nov 19, 2022

@haven4books @not2b It's been run by one person. Regardless of what anyone thinks of that one person (and there is much negative feedback about his moderation from people I trust) it's irrational to suggest that one person can run something that large. This person is also pretty busy with other things.

Also, "balkanizing" is exactly the idea. Smaller, connected communities is the whole point. Easier to moderate, easier for people to find safe places to land, easier to weed out bad actors, who become very visible in that environment.

Joe Nov 19, 2022

@hollie @haven4books The one person you are referring to, Eugen Rochko, is the primary developer of the Mastodon code, and there is a moderation team. If you don't trust the primary developer of Mastodon, perhaps this isn't the platform for you? Whatever instance you use, you're running his code.

okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin Nov 21, 2022

@hollie @haven4books @not2b
Then you should do that and not worry about what others do. If balkanized decentralization is your goal, why do you care how many follow that idea? Just do you.

DianneVotes💙Nov 19, 2022

@hollie Where can we get a comprehensive list of instances? And what they focus on?

ʚ jb ɞ Nov 19, 2022

@sloopyy instances.social was helpful for me

Alexis Nov 19, 2022

@hollie can we talk to ppl on other servers than our own?

This feels like Club Penguin with it’s separate servers for different countries. 😆

The Bird Nov 19, 2022

@alexisceule @hollie Yes. You're talking to several folks in this thread from different servers than yours. :)

Alexis Nov 19, 2022

@Aaidanbird @hollie thank you!

Elle Nov 19, 2022

Hollie Nov 19, 2022

@elle Here are some directions:

https://mstdn.social/@feditips/107939441820299376

Fedi.Tips (@[email protected])

UPDATE: If you want to transfer your account to another server, here's how to do it: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server This guide is a bit longer than other guides as it includes moving your followers, follows and blocks/mutes/bookmarks. (By the way, sorry for people seeing notification of this post edit. I had to edit as the original contents were somewhat out of date. As this post now links to my website instead, you won't get any future update notices for this post.)

Mastodon 🐘

🏴‍☠️ Melissa Deathridge 🏳️‍⚧️Nov 19, 2022

@hollie trying to migrate from mine but Mastodon won't let me. It won't accept my password or send me the email to change it. Gonna try again tomorrow.

Audr3y Nov 19, 2022

@MelissaDeathridge @hollie are you trying to log in to the right server? I actually got caught out by this before I realized 😅

🏴‍☠️ Melissa Deathridge 🏳️‍⚧️Nov 19, 2022

@Audr3y @hollie that was it! 😂 Thank you ❤️

we hunted the mastodon Nov 19, 2022

@hollie
hmm. how can I find out which instances are blocking which other instances?

and can I move followers/following to a new instance automatically? I tried one method I thought was supposed to do that and it, er, didn't,

Thanks to anyone who can answer this!

Dee In Calgary Nov 19, 2022

@DavidFutrelle @hollie I don't know that there is a comprehensive database of this.

One of the reasons I have stayed with the instance I am on is that our admin lists the instances that are blocked from ours, along with the reason why on the about page. It is under the heading "Moderated Servers". They are all reasons that I support, and I appreciate the transparency.

I think many do the same, so you can probably get a bit of an idea by checking out the about pages for different instances.

Mr.Generation Nov 19, 2022

@dee_in_calgary @DavidFutrelle @hollie A side note to the list of moderated servers:

It's only displayed unless admins set this display to inactive (which is technically possible).

Seth Nov 19, 2022

@hollie I just mentioned this, so sorry for anyone seeing it multiple times, but if you want to check out an instance, go to its address and add /public/local to the url, and you'll see what people there are posting, example: https://journa.host/public/local

Journa.host

The server for working journalists and news outlets on Mastodon. Home to active & retired journalists, media scholars, and a variety of news and journalism adjacent professionals. #Newstodon

Mastodon hosted on journa.host

Hollie Nov 19, 2022

@seth Thank you! Super useful!

Dúghlas Mullin Nov 19, 2022

@hollie it's for this reason i choose a location based instance. i wanted to connect with people from Atlantic Canada, and not get lost in the migration. until this one showed up, i had went and signed up for a couple different instances, first was a bigger one, then one smaller, then oceanplayground.social. and have considered the idea of setting up my own instance. just not sure if i want the work that comes with moderation and owning my own instance.

hot dog world champion eater Nov 19, 2022

@hollie but what about all my hot dogs 🌭🌭🌭? will i loose them if i sail away??

Evan Light Nov 19, 2022

@hollie Shout out to all of my friends and acquaintances joining the #fediverse, the toot replied to above is an essential #feditip!

And replying and self-boosting is effectively a QT.

Hollie Nov 19, 2022

@elight I'm actually about to delete and re-post as I have just learned that "frenz" is not the cutesy way of saying "friends" that I thought it was....

Evan Light Nov 19, 2022

@hollie huh! TIL too! Thanks for the heads up on both counts!

Evan Light Nov 19, 2022

@hollie https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frenz ?

Urban Dictionary: frenz

AOL Speak for "friends." rack this word up with all the other positively awful words commonly spotted on AOL homepages such as wordlolz/word.

Urban Dictionary

Hollie Nov 19, 2022

@elight Yeah I had no idea! I'm going to leave the post up because it's got so many useful comments with info and I'm still getting messages from folks saying, "Thank you I had no idea I could move to a new instance," and so far no one has actually taken that meaning from it?

But holy cats, I will definitely NOT be using that again, lol! Here I'm just typing along thinking "awww what a cute way to say 'friends'," uhhhh. Oops. Ah well. I am human! And I like to learn. So it's all good.

Evan Light Nov 19, 2022

Adversarial Geography Nov 19, 2022

Oh no I feel like I'm missing something here. Is retro-internet slang that bad? Whenever anyone uses "frenz" I just assume they spent a lot of time on forums and message boards in the late 90s.

Yeris Trotski Nov 19, 2022

and if capable create your own server

dd-b Nov 19, 2022

@hollie Using the server search tools I found when I went to "Mastodon" (Yeah, I know, distributed, not one thing), I didn't find anything that looked interesting. I got an invite from a friend for this one. I'm just starting to experiment, and one of the things I haven't got a clue about yet is when and how it *matters* what instance I'm on. Is there a more detailed intro somewhere?