An administrative announcement.
Motherfuckers.
https://mastodon.cloud/media/oxNPAqhKHeUAAvMv1X8
Q: What's a good article on the background of GNU Social and the technologies underlying Mastodon?
A: This: "What is GNU Social and is Mastodon Social a 'Twitter Clone'?"
https://robek.world/featured/what-is-gnu-social-and-is-mastodon-social-a-twitter-clone/
h/t @maiyannah who knows vastly more about this than I.
"Mastodon: Here to stay or DOA?"
Better than the title would suggest -- strengths/weaknesses analysis.
http://holtz.com/blog/blog/mastodon-here-to-stay-or-doa/4753/
@dredmorbius I think @shelholtz hits the nail on the head with this article, that just having an account at one #mastodon instance is never enough, it should be around your interest; likewise, #mastodon will likely to carve out a different revenue model than what we have seen with social media so far (er ... centralised social media). This is definitely a space to watch, rather than proclaim DOA.
@arinbasu @dredmorbius @shelholtz
2 thoughts:
1) Interest-based instances seem a natural way forward, a bit like subreddits without reddit. Users get a local timeline of shared interests plus ability to signal that interest across federation.
2) Fracturing may seem like a problem. I don't think so. People will always make boundaries. Houses have walls, properties have fences, etc. Free disassociation is as important as free association.
@MariusAgricola @dredmorbius @shelholtz
Excellent points; I think so too, as #gs and #mastodon instances very deftly meld the two concepts people network with interest network, through its localised instances and distributed nature of the fediverse. As @dredmorbius wrote recently, instances with different user count feel very different, yet the two can coexist.
@arinbasu @shelholtz I've currently got two profiles running, one on mastodon.cloud (this), and @dredmorbius (mammouth.cafe).
The first is a 40k user instance, the second ... has about 50 users. It's a /very/ different feel.