Doc Edward Morbius ❌​Apr 6, 2017
An administrative announcement.
Motherfuckers.
https://mastodon.cloud/media/oxNPAqhKHeUAAvMv1X8
Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ❌​Apr 9, 2017

Q: What's this "Federation thing?"

A: A bunch of communities, on different servers, sharing /some/ but not necessarily /all/ of their traffic. Or, in some cases, none. It depends.

The User Guide has a good section:
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/master/docs/Using-Mastodon/User-guide.md#decentralization-and-federation

Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ❌​Apr 9, 2017

Q: It sounds as if that's complicated. Do you have a picture you can share?

A: @vhf made one: https://techn.ical.ist/users/vhf/updates/102

It misses a few edge cases, but mostly, that's how the spice flows. Er, toots.

Show threadDan YorkApr 9, 2017
@dredmorbius @vhf Interesting. I did not understand that if someone is not followed by *anyone* on an instance, then *none* of their tweets appear in the federated timeline. So the "federated timeline" is only those users who have some connection to your instance. This means that the larger instances (ex. mastodon.social, mastodon.cloud) will have a bigger and richer federated timeline by virtue of having more people who will follow others on other instances.
Show thread@[email protected] Apr 9, 2017
@danyork @dredmorbius @vhf This is a very good point: and would seem an issue to find ways to remedy...ideally the federated timeline should be as close to showing the entire network as possible, no?
Show threadDan York
@tchambers @dredmorbius @vhf As@[email protected] has pointed out, a fully-federated timeline would be overwhelming and would "pollute" instances focused on building smaller communities. The Mastodon implementation is an interesting balance. Effectively you have everyone who is a "friend of a friend". So it is more than just local, but not *everyone*.
Apr 10, 2017 at 12:35amAmaroq
Show thread@[email protected] Apr 10, 2017
@danyork @dredmorbius @vhf Hmmmm. Agree that this is by design, and can see how it functions in this space. But it does seem of value for people to be able to view a Federation-wide view of things too SOMEHOW. In essence when they wish to, to be able to view what is "trending" across the entire network, or to do searches across the entire network of posts and people as FB and Twitter allow.
Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ❌​Apr 10, 2017

@tchambers @danyork @vhf My read is that "trending across the network" has a /different meaning/ within Mastodon / GNU Social / oStatus. The inter-node filtration is part of the trending signal. The structure is far more neural in the sense that a node may choose to amplify /or suppress/ a signal. Both those functions are critical in forming meaning.

The more I think of this, the less I like the followbots.

Show threadDan YorkApr 10, 2017
@tchambers @dredmorbius @vhf That was my initial thought... that there ought to be some way to "see it all" or to "search it all". But that could rapidly become a firehose... and to manage that you really need an algorithm. And right now Mastodon is keeping the chronological feed as Twitter used to do, before it became too big and we needed the algorithm to help. I think there is value in smaller communities.