tom (available elsewhere)techbros: the beauty of FOSS is that people have complete control over everything! it's real freedom!
also techbros: hey if you block my followbot you don't know anything about federation and you're ruining everything for everyone actually
if you're engaging with people, federation comes naturally. that's more than enough.
David Libeau@tom Agreed
Spacedragon @wogan "organic" social networking, maybe.
I love the federated TL, it's a great tool to discover new people but populating it using followbots seems kinda counterintuitive to me. What if it's an instance that completely opposes your instance's code of conduct? what if it's an instance where everyone speaks some language you've never heard of before?
Federation should and will zone naturally if you just use it for a bit. It worked for me and lots of other instances before.
@wogan (and that's ignoring the fact that there's no consent involved, some admins might not want to federate with everyone and everything)
@tom I'm just thinking of all of this as IRC 2.0. Get a server list, poke your head in wherever it looks interesting, and if you meet new folks you like, cool :thumbsup:
It's why I'm running a single-user instance for myself, so I'm not subject to other people's decisions on what makes it into my federated timeline!
@wogan that's great! every configuration is great as long as it works for you! :)
I'm just a little tired of people getting mad at me and my friends for actively refusing followbots on our instances.
@tom That's the other side of decentralization :joy: You will have admin-level disagreements with no higher authority to report to.
But at least here, they can be blocked. On centralized networks, eventually some rules you disagree with make it into site policy. I figure getting tired and mad is a better than getting sidelined and censured by a majority.
Eric Blade@tom you can't, however, find people. and apparently if you don't follow me, you'll never see my messages to you. (at least, that's how it seems to work.. let me know if i'm wrong)
@tom and since messages with mentions don't appear in timelines, you can only really engage with people when they aren't mentioning someone. at least, that's how it's working on my local instance.
@me messages and private posts federate to everyone @/mentioned in them.
People also often boost people across instances which is another way to populate your federated tl.
@tom ok, that hasn't been happening the last 2 days, very frequently. However, without at-mentions showing up in Timelines, or showing up sporadically, a node can look really empty, even with a lot of people communicating on it.
Ex: The message you sent me appears on my node, only in my Home and Notifications. No one else on my instance can see it, unless they specifically search you -- and then they only see that one message, it's like you didn't exist prior to that msg.
(moved) boots🌸🌿@tom haha everyone wants to be followed by my followbot just opt out if you dont like it
mikael@tom the problem is: if people are not knowledgeable enough, their _experience_ may very well be total loss of control. better ux, better pedagogy and education is badly needed in the world of foss.
Jason Malan 🇿🇦@tom Please explain the second part of your Toot. I don't really understand the purpose of a followbot.
5kB1Bvi9gX33Ae@tom why do people run followbots?
@5kB1Bvi9gX33Ae because they want other instances to show up in their federated timelines
@tom makes sense, but unfortunate. thanks for explaining :blush:
@5kB1Bvi9gX33Ae no problem! It does make sense but I feel like it's better for the network to grow organically