I migrated servers last week and boy did I develop some strong opinions about migration and the as-yet only semi-fulfilled promise of account portability.

If you're thinking about moving instances—or you'd like to know yet more about my dreams for better networks—here's a post you might want to read:

https://erinkissane.com/notes-from-a-mastodon-migration

@kissane Link to why you migrated? Would love to know.
@Littlebobbytables I wanted a slightly sturdier server-level blocklist and to not have my following choices restricted by the beef between Stux and the Art admin. (If I weren't writing about tech, I'd probably have stayed, I think Stux is largely a great moderator, just a couple things off.)
@kissane @Littlebobbytables I’m starting to think it would be good to have a sort of psychogeographical map of the fediverse. I had no idea there was beef between Stux and Art (both moderators and neighbourhoods I like). Is there anyone covering this sort of news, either via micro or normal blog do you know? Seems important as one’s understanding of fedi grows more sophisticated.
@kissane @Littlebobbytables Just finished reading your article and I see this is pretty much what you’re calling for.
@charlesroper There isn't anybody covering it in general. For that specific incident @ifixcoinops has a good perspective here -- i've attached an excerpt but the whole thing is worth reading!

@kissane the attached highights another affordance issue -- and violation of the principle of least surprise. When I discussed this in "Should the Fediverse welcome its new surveillance-capitalism overlords?" I said

"Details aside, one of the key takeaways here is the lack of maturity of the software: after six years why wasn't there an option of defederating in a way that allows connections to be reestablished when the situation changes and refederation is possible?"


@Littlebobbytables
Dan Fixes Coin-Ops (@[email protected])

Alright, so how come I'm [email protected] now when I was [email protected] yesterday, what's the story, what's everyone banging on about with the dot art and Welsh pixies and Meta meta and stuxes, alright here's the Short Version Stux = guy who runs mstdn.social and a bunch of other general-purpose fedi sites Welshpixie = lady who runs mastodon.art, an art focused mastodon website AJ = guy who runs retro.social, this website Meta = Facebook, hereafter referred to as Facebook because they don't get to change their name and wash away their past sins any more than my Lucky Goldstar dishwasher does Facebook: Mmmmmmay we pleasssse have a little CHAT with the big adminsssssss, we promissssse we'll be good this time <3 Fediverse in general: Haha get bent facebook, we weren't born yesterday Facebook: That wassss Facebook, we've reconssssidered, let'ssss be friendssss Me: Happily dunking on people who spell accessibility as a11y and completely oblivious to this whole conversation Welshpixie: Ey up, facebook are up to their old tricks again, remember not to fall for it guys Stux: Nasty Welsh Pixie, let's give them a chance, I will block your Whole Entire Domain mstdn.social website: A block you say, a defederation, now that's quite serious, that's for when you don't want anyone on your website to follow anyone on this other website, are you quite - Stux: yes I'm sure lol mstdn.social website: Very well, *chop* Everyone on mstdn.social who was following anyone on mastodon.art: suddenly, silently not following those people any more Everyone on mastodon.art who was following anyone on mstdn.social: also suddenly silently not following those people any more Everyone on both websites who was following anyone on the other website: WTF STUX Stux: oh uh yeah hm. Ahem. That may have been hasty. I wonder if I can undo some of the - mstdn.social website: nope Stux: I think I'll take a break from the computer for a bit Me: Drinking beer and playing Beat Saber with a couple of out-of-town mates and completely oblivious to this whole thing happening Me: goes to bed Fediverse: meta meta meta Me: good morning fediverse, what are the haps my frieWHAT THE HELL Me: WHERE'S MY GOOD MORNING ART Fediverse: meta meta meta Me: FACEBOOK? WHAT? Several People: Dan my server's gonna defed from yours in a week, can you move? Me: what no what's going on that's not enough time I've got things to do, tell you what though I'll have some time in the autumn and I like you too, can we catch back up then? Several People: we are chill and lovely and we understand Me: slowly pieces together what's going on while drinking a Winsford Mocha ---intermission because I have a fifty thousand character post limit now--- A Winsford Mocha is an analogue of this fancy "mocha" coffee stuff you tasted once in the far-off land of Chester, where they have coffee shops; you live in Winsford, which is a town best known for having Europe's last remaining salt mine, a literal man-made hole in the world, where there are no such frivolities, so you attempt your own. It's two spoons of instant coffee, two spoons of Cadbury's drinking chocolate, microwaved for a minute, stirred and microwaved for another minute, and drunk with thumb resting on the spoon because the contents tend to settle. ---intermission over--- Me: WTF STUX I HAVE NO IDEA WHO I WAS FOLLOWING FROM .ART APART FROM WELSHPIXIE, HOW AM I GOING TO RE-FOLLOW ALL MY ART PEOPLE Everyone on both affected sides of this whole shambles: YEAH SAME DAN I SEE YOU'RE LATE TO THE PARTY HERE Me: Sigh. I guess I'll move servers, AGAIN, and probably spend a month or two having random people look at my join date and tell me I'm using mastadon wrong, AGAIN, but this'll have to wait, I have Things To Do Mastodon: it's Mast-OH-don actually Me: I know The Fediverse: actually it's the F... ah, you know The Things I must Do: oh my god where do I even start, they are a nice even spread between equally important physical things and computer things and family things and some of them have Rather Tight Deadlines, I will spare you the details but this is why I said to several people lol see you in October Me: I am mad about this situation and I want to talk to someone IRL about it but how the hell do I even start to explain why this is even possible without that person resolving to never ever ever even glance at this whole fediverse thing Stux: *notices me, noticing him and his horrible mistakes* Stux: Say, that post of yours... not the one where you call me a wanker, it'd be a bit heavy-handed to delete that one, if I were to delete that one then you'd be able to say "Lol look at this fragile guy everyone" and you'd be right, but this one from yesterday: Me, from yesterday: "Extremely popular take that some here won't like but seriously need to sit with: spelling words like a11y or l10n or i18n or m17n is bloody incomprehensible and makes you look like an absolute w4r" Stux: yeah, that content violates the following community guidelines: "No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users." I am going to remove it. Me: oh no, not only is he not taking a break from the computer, he's back to pressing buttons and he's gone into petty "LOOK AT THE POWER I HAVE TO REMOVE YOUR VERY WORDS" mode, I have to move TODAY while I can still get an archive of my shite AJ: Hey you can put your shite here Me: Thank you AJ, I will put my shite right there. I will fill your website with my shite. Several long threads of mine which started on mastodon.social which is the website I was on before I was on mstdn.social which is the website I was on before I moved to retro.social today: lol what are you gonna do, make a blog? ---the story is done but so is the damage--- Everybody I was following on mastodon.art: I'm still not following them; there's no way to get that data back, shy of just kinda stumbling across folk and going "Oh I recognise them, *follow*" Everybody from mastodon.art who was following me, probably months from now: Hmm haven't seen that joystick pop up in my feed for a while, wonder if he died, *shrug* The Fediverse In General: LACKING in having tools to recover from the social damage that can be wrought with one reckless button press Facebook: hrmmmm yesssssssss, yum yum yum, *licks eyeballs* Me: sure hope next time this daft shite happens there's some kind of backup AJ: My server can do 50,000 characters Me: *makes USE of this, haha you all get TURBO DAN NOW*

Retro Social

@jdp23

Thank you very much - really useful. You're an encyclopaedia of fedi resources. :)

@charlesroper Glad it's useful! And yeah, I've somehow become the guy with all the links, kind of weird.
@jdp23 Do you store them in some sort of pkm or bookmarking service?
@charlesroper if only I were that organized! No, I tend to use bookmarks (either on the fediverse or in my browser) until I get to the point where I include them in an article (or at least a draft), after which I just update the article with new links as I find them. It's not particularly efficient but it's the process I've used for years and years.
Yeesh. Here's another example highlighting the problem of a lack of institutional memory is a problem. Of course you remember the high-profile incident several years ago where a harassment campaign drove a Black-led instance off the fedvierse ... oh wait you weren't here several years ago? Or you were here and just didn't happen to be following anybody involved in it? Well it was complicated and perspectives differ on just what happened, I know what I think but some people disagrees, so you might want to look at both sides of the story, fortunately I bookmarked a couple of good posts about it ... oh wait those posts are gone now. Hmm let me just search to find some other posts ... oh wait, they didn't have hashtags, never mind. Well there are plenty posts on FediBlock about it ... oh yeah hmm there's no good way to search fediblock for specific instances. Apparently it's been discussed in the admin chat but I'm not there.

And then it all gets seen through the fediverse's other filters. People who think of
@welshpixie as a tiny tyrant see this post as a confirmation. People who see the person they're talking about as a serial harasser see it as valuable safety-related information. People who see the person they're talking about as having been treated unfairly see it as more unfair treatment. People who have seen some of the posts about iceshrimp and firefish see it through that lens. People who have better things to do than follow fediverse minutiae have no clue what I'm talking about in this paragraph.

Anyhow, I don't have a great solution to any of this, but one thing's for sure: telling people that the fediverse is "just like email" doesn't prepare them for this.

@charlesroper @kissane
WelshPixie, Tiny Tyrant (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Here's the firefish.social admin/dev boosting Eris of Disqordia who is (both as a person and the instance) a bit infamous on fedi for anti-black harassment and just harassment in general So uh... :oof: (See next toot also)

Mastodon.ART