Mastodawn

In a perfect demonstration of the professionalism with which mas.to is administered, @trumpet has (shadow)banned this account there.

Very mature ecosystem you've got here, Mastodon.

In a perfect demonstration of the professionalism with which mas.to is administered, @trumpet has (shadow)banned this account there.

Very mature ecosystem you've got here, Mastodon.

Solar Denver Apr 11, 2025

The sun will rise in #Denver #Colorado tomorrow. And it will set. And rise and set the day after, and the day after that, for more days than you or I will have the chance to watch. But this account will not be noting them all.

Let's all hope—and work—for a brighter future.

🌅

Rob Shearer Apr 10, 2025

As I end-of-life my Mastodon sunrise/sunset bot, it seems an appropriate time to vent my complaints about Mastodon as a platform. https://v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-interview

Mastodon Exit Interview

I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media.

Rob’s Posts

https://mas.to/@trumpet/114230976837760130

Currently grabbing screenshots of a moderator who I expect to get an earful from their colleagues...

Very glad *this* account is not on the instance hosting all the bots.

[email protected] (@[email protected])

Attached: 2 images @[email protected] I think it was the bit where you said “Trumpet… has stated their intention to ban all of my bots.”, and then “Trumpet will soon ban all the… bots.” I’m not rescinding a damned thing mate, and I will be considering my position on your accounts tomorrow.

mas.to

In short, @trumpet will soon ban all the https://v.cx/2024/02/solar-bot Mastodon bots, and I must accept that my model of micro-posting is incompatible with Mastodon culture. Analogous bots will continue to operate on BlueSky, which does not suppress content for the crime of being targeted to tiny populations.

Social Media Bots for Solar Info

I’ve always been more interested in the technology side of social media than the “social” side. Twitter, in particular, was originally mainly a broadcasting technology: it was very cheap for anyone to broadcast a message for wide distribution, and other people chose which broadcasts to listen to (via who they followed). This made Twitter not just a way for small friend groups to update each other, but also a medium for any number of broadcasts. You could (and in some cases still can) subscribe to Twitter alerts for emergencies in your area, news events, transport problems, etc.

Rob’s Posts

I find the Mastodon obsession with curation of both instance and hashtag timelines a symptom of a broken Mastodon culture: if *you* don't want to see certain content, then that content should be less available to *anyone*. Combine this with Mastodon's failure to offer any way to filter timelines based on the copious metadata available (every account is tagged as a bot, and every post is tagged with the specific bot posting to them all) and "that content shouldn't exist" becomes endemic.