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    461 points GavinAnderegg | 13 comments | | HN request time: 1.247s | source | bottom
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    PaulHoule ◴[] No.42151244[source]
    My take is that Bluesky is a nicer place than Mastodon.

    Personally I think politics are terrible on microblogging platforms for the reason that you can't say very much in 140 characters or even 1400 characters.

    A common kind of profile on that kind of platform is: "There are good people and bad people and I'm one of the good people"

    It is very easy to other people and share memes that build group cohesion while driving other people away. Really making progress requires in politics a lot of "I agree with you about 90% but there is 10% that I don't" or "Well, I negotiated something in the backroom that you'd really hate but headed off a situation you would have thought was catastrophic but you won't appreciate that I did it so you and I are both better off if I don't tell you" and other sorts of nuance, you don't want to see how the sausage is made, etc.

    To stand Mastodon (where you would have thought fascists were taking over the world a year ago if you believed what you read) I have to have about 20 or so block rules.

    I see some people with the same kind of profiles on Bluesky but see a lot less othering in my feed because the "Discover" feed on Bluesky filters out a lot of angry content. My rough estimate is that it removes about 75% of the divisive political junk. That

    (1) Immediately improves my feed, but also

    (2) Reduces the amount of re-posted angry political content (it's like adding some boron to the coolant in a nuclear reactor) and

    (3) Since angry political memes don't work anymore people find a different game to play

    My guess is the X-odus folks are less agreeable than average for the same reason why people who "left California" to go to Colorado or someplace else are less agreeable. Those who go are less agreeable than those who stay. On the other hand, a certain amount of suppression of negativity could stop it from spreading and might not even be noticed as "censorship".

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    ASalazarMX ◴[] No.42151611[source]
    The most crucial decision when joining Mastodon is choosing the most friendly instance. I have a strong interest in interacting with cybersecurity professionals, so infosec.exchange was perfect for me, either browsing subscribed or local posts. Browsing all is something I do only when I'm bored, because many posts are not what I'd like to see. You can always migrate your account if you want.

    https://instances.social/

    That being said, BlueSky is simpler and easier because there's no real federation yet, and even if they have a "Discovery" algorithm, you get many options to control what you want to see. It's feels great, like Twitter before their 2012(ish?) IPO.

    replies(4): >>42151706 #>>42152061 #>>42152582 #>>42165945 #
    1. JoshTriplett ◴[] No.42152582[source]
    > The most crucial decision when joining Mastodon is choosing the most friendly instance.

    Consider using a self-hosting service, like https://togethr.party/ , to have your own instance on your own domain. Much like email, you should never be beholden to another party for your identity; your hosting service should be an invisible detail that can change without anyone interacting with you needing to notice.

    I've watched several instances shut down over the years, and have never once regretted the decision to have an instance on my own domain. My social network handle is now the same as my email address, with an extra @ in front.

    replies(3): >>42153179 #>>42154223 #>>42155803 #
    2. danpalmer ◴[] No.42153179[source]
    I regretted my decision to self host. It’s expensive (for what it is), there are federation issues with some instances, some admins don’t like smaller unknown instances, it requires a fair bit of active management to keep an instance healthy, and you can’t migrate post history.
    replies(3): >>42153243 #>>42153562 #>>42156177 #
    3. JoshTriplett ◴[] No.42153243[source]
    A good self-hosting service should provide full access to extract all your data, such that you can import it into a different service later.

    I'm paying ~$7/month to own my own fediverse identity, which seems cheap to me.

    You're right about federation issues, though that's more a limitation of the fediverse protocols and fediverse software that really needs fixing. Fediverse instances don't automatically fetch and show all replies to posts you see, even if it knows they exist, unless your server is already fetching other things from the server hosting those posts. So it's a little harder to see other people's replies, which contributes to the problem of 20 people replying with the same answers because they can't see that other people have already replied.

    Large instances work around that because everyone's already talking to at least one account on that server.

    I hope those limitations get fixed someday, but for now they're fundamental to the fediverse.

    replies(3): >>42153571 #>>42153788 #>>42154429 #
    4. nulbyte ◴[] No.42153562[source]
    > It’s expensive (for what it is)...

    I host my instance on an always free VM, don't put much work toward maintenence, and haven't had a problem with federation. Post migration is not really a thing from a shared instance, I don't think, so yeah, that sucks.

    Honestly, the most expensive part for me is the domain, because I shelled out for a spiffy premium domain. But I'm weird.

    5. vidarh ◴[] No.42153571{3}[source]
    You can extract your data, but you can't import your posts on another Mastodon instance. It's fixable, but thorny.

    Personally, I think Bluesky is a mix of NIH with a dash of wanting to be a central point of control, that is doomed in the long run - anything that works well for Bluesky can be copied, but the real benefit for the Fediverse in the long run is that Mastodon is just one of many services, or types of services. Every new service gets to hook into an existing network instead of starting from scratch.

    6. kelnos ◴[] No.42153788{3}[source]
    > I'm paying ~$7/month to own my own fediverse identity, which seems cheap to me.

    I very much agree with you in owning your identity on this sort of thing, but I wouldn't pay $7/mo in order to participate in any social network.

    I have my own email domain, and I can host it myself, or have someone else host it for me, on shared infrastructure. Fastmail charges me ~$4/mo, and that's for email, something anyone on the internet requires in order to interact with online services. I think $4/mo for a communications necessity is reasonable, and there are cheaper (even free) providers if I wanted to go that route. $7/mo for a social network is nuts.

    I'm not sure how services like togethr.party work, but is it safe to assume that they have to spin up a completely new copy of the server software for each domain? That seems like a big problem, and is probably why this is so expensive.

    I recently set up my own Matrix instance (using Synapse) and found it to be pretty wasteful, resource-wise. This is a solved problem with email servers, where one server can host as many domains as you have storage and processing power for; not sure why the chat/social platforms haven't caught up architecture-wise.

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    7. EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK ◴[] No.42154223[source]
    >> My social network handle is now the same as my email address

    Spammers sure love you :)

    >> to have your own instance on your own domain

    Domain is likely linked to your identity. What might look like an innocent *eet today, might end you on a wrong list down the road.

    replies(1): >>42156697 #
    8. danpalmer ◴[] No.42154429{3}[source]
    > though that's more a limitation of the fediverse protocols and fediverse software that really needs fixing

    I don't believe ATProto has the same issues, and I believe it would take quite a rearchitecture of ActivityPub to solve.

    > such that you can import it into a different service later

    This is the key issue. There is no way to import posts in Mastodon without manually fudging the database (which I also had to do when running my own instance). As another commenter mentioned, it's a tricky issue, in large part because it's not part of the federation protocol.

    Bluesky solves this by separating the storage from the other parts of the distributed system, such that you don't need to move your storage to change your identity, hosting, moderation, etc. Keeping them independent is a smart move.

    9. AndyMcConachie ◴[] No.42155803[source]
    Fediverse instance software is immature. I self host lots of stuff but I've tried 3 times to self host a fediverse instance and stopped all three times. I get things running, but the amount of care and feeding software like Mastodon requires is unacceptable for someone like me who doesn't have time to babysit server software.
    10. rglullis ◴[] No.42155966{4}[source]
    FWIW, $7/month is a figure for running a whole server just for your domain. Mastodon absolutely sucks for single-user instances. I offer Takahe hosting for $39/year if you want to use your own domain, or Mastodon + Matrix + Funkwhale + Lemmy for $29/year if you just want an account on the communick servers.
    11. circuit10 ◴[] No.42156177[source]
    Oracle Cloud Free Tier ARM instances are really good, I don’t host Mastodon on mine but I assume you can, of course you still have to pay for a domain name but you can get a cheap one
    12. fragmede ◴[] No.42156697[source]
    The user who's username is a first and last name probably worries less about people finding out their identity than someone who's username is EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK. But someone who's technically savvy and privacy conscious could buy a new domain name with crypto, one not linked to their identity, if that's a concern.
    replies(1): >>42162770 #
    13. EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK ◴[] No.42162770{3}[source]
    That's true, I paid crypto for my namecheap domain, still easy to track it to my real identity.