Liberonscien @Liberonscien@qoto.org

Today's "fuck you" feature is the autoplay feature on youtube that automatically plays a video (that youtube chooses for you) at the end of the video you just watched. It gives you about 1.5 seconds to jump up, find your mouse, and click the "no-I-don't-want-to-watch-your-spoon-fed-video" button and if you aren't as fast as lightning it leaves the page and starts playing youtube's selected video and then you have to try to navigate back to where you were just to read more about the video you just watched.

Tubi is even worse. They throw up a huge popup window BEFORE the movie even finishes and if you don't jump up and click a tiny little target on the screen it CUTS OFF THE END OF THE MOVIE!!!

So, absent an adequate feedback mechanism at those websites...

"Fuck You" youtube and tubi.

Unfortunately I have to stop actively working on #Metatext for a while due to health issues. I really wish I could implement Mastodon 4 features and squash every bug, but it's not possible for me to do so right now.

I know the app has become important to a lot people, so I'm open to a new maintainer who can carry on its values of privacy and accessibility taking it over if there's interest and a fit. Email info@metabolist.org if you (or your organization) are interested

Oof, this hit me in the chest when I saw it, so am passing it on.

It is EXTREMELY URGENT that government agencies, emergency groups, and others who have over time become dependent on #Twitter to disseminate important announcements to the public, now move quickly to prepare alternative methods (which they really should have already).

It is clear that Musk's behavior is decimating Twitter as a reliable platform for reaching the public without interference, and since Musk now says he will let all hate speech and disinformation that is "not illegal or spam" be propagated on Twitter, even from previously suspended accounts, Twitter will now rapidly become of zero value as a source of trustworthy information on any topics.

DO NOT DELAY!

Has anyone written about #Mastodon access in countries which sometimes block access to social media (e.g. Egypt, Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, etc)?

It seems to me there's power in the distributed network - making it all but impossible for a government to IP block the entire #Fediverse.

That's an enormous advantage.

#DevOps

@UnFitz

2011: Didn't jog.

2012: Didn't jog.

2013: Didn't jog.

2014: Didn't jog.

2015: Didn't jog.

2016: Didn't jog.

2017: Didn't jog.

2018: Didn't jog.

2019: Didn't jog.

2020: Didn't jog.

2021: Didn't jog.

2022: Still haven't jogged.

This is a running joke.

The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement.

For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously).

"Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature.

There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content.

It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off.

Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users.

#twitter #mastodon #twittermigration

Those of you who are interested in #pkm (personal knowledge management) check out @pkm.social. It’s a space for all things #notetaking #zettlekasten #pkmsoftware with discussions on techniques and technology related to managing the huge amount of information in our lives. If you are a user of #obsidian, a free #pkm software with a wonderful community and plugins for every need, then I suggest you subscribe to or follow @eleanorkonik. She is a brilliant resource for all things #obsidian. I enjoy learning from the younger people who are #digitalnatives of which I am not. Their ideas are fresh and interesting, and their brains are so malleable and squishy. Actually, I don’t know about the last part as I’ve only held brains that were preserved.

Mastodon has a verification mechanism, though it looks different from Twitter's. We do not ask for your documents. Instead, if you have a website that you are known by, you can verify that you are the owner of that website.

Link to your Mastodon profile from the website, either through a visible link, or through a <link> tag in the head of the document, with a rel=me attribute, and link back to that page from your Mastodon profile. It should then get a green checkmark, like @Mastodon.

An appeal for help:

Trunk is an opt-in directory of people on Mastodon and the Fediverse looking for followers, organised into a large range of topics:

https://communitywiki.org/trunk

Anyone can ask to be added, and the admins of Trunk check the account (to screen out spam etc) and add them.

However, due to the need to check the contents of accounts, this Trunk only includes people who post mainly in English. It means they have to turn away a lot of non-English accounts.

The Trunk admins want to fix this situation.

Do you use a language other than English? Do you want to help make a version of Trunk in your own language?

The English Trunk admins can help you with the technical side, but they need people who speak other languages to moderate Trunks in those other languages.

➡️ Can you help? If so, get in touch with @kensanata who leads the Trunk project.

(There is a Spanish Trunk at https://trunkesp.chilemasto.casa but so far no other languages.)

#AskMastodon #AskFedi #AskFediverse

@evelyn @meave I can kind of deal with the former, I can respect that. "We don't believe in censoring anything, but please be nice to everyone outside, they didn't ask for this and you'll just get us federated, making things worse for everyone.". The latter is of course, as absurd as you expect from some of these people.

Back in 2019, I wrote a case-study on ad- and tracker-blocking as part of EFF's series on adversarial interoperability (AKA "competitive compatibility" or comcom). My point was that the ad-tech industry says that it tracks you as part of a bargain: you trade away your privacy and get media in exchange, but that this was a bizarre kind of take-it-or-leave-it form of bargaining.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

1/

My tldr; for new Mastodon users:

Toots = Tweets
Boosts = Retweets
Stars = Hearts

Home feed is who you follow (think Twitter).

Local feed is everyone on your instance (i.e. server)

Federated is posts from people on *other* instances followed by at least one person on *your* instance.

You don't have to use Local or Federated, but they can be helpful for finding people to follow.

You can follow/interact with anyone on any instance by using their full handle:

@username@instancename

Mastodon has Direct Messages (DMs), there are two ways to make them happen:

-Create a normal message, set its privacy to "Direct" and then @ mention whomever you want to receive the message. If you mention more than one person it becomes a group chat. This works on all apps and versions of Mastodon.

OR

-If you're logged in through the website, or if you're using a third party app, you can click on the "..." menu on a post or a person's profile and select Direct Message. This then automatically creates a direct message just like the one in the previous method. You can also look at your previous DMs by clicking on the envelope or the "Direct Message" link in the menu.

The official apps don't currently have any specific DM features, but you can use the first method in them and it works fine.

The end result of both methods is exactly the same.

#MastoTips #FediTips #Mastodon #Fediverse #DirectMessages #DMs

Sooo... wow... okay a lot of people shared the previous post! Welcome again to all the new members!

It might be good if I clarified how Mastodon works, as some people think they need to sign up on multiple servers etc.

Short version: You do not need to sign up on multiple servers! Don't have FOMO! One server works fine!

Longer version:

Mastodon is a federated network, which means it's made of lots of independent servers that talk to each other.

And... everyone uses federated networks all the time! You probably use them so much you never even think about it 😮

Telephones use a federated network, so does email.

You only need one phone to call anyone anywhere. It doesn't matter if they're on another phone company or in another country, because all phone companies are federated together into a single network.

That's how Mastodon works. You get an account, and you follow people you're interested in, and they appear in your timeline. It doesn't matter if they're on another server.

Ok, so how does this long-form posting work? X qoto.org is 65536 max, but the mastodon IOS client is 512, but I was replying to someone and it was 256?

If I make a mega-post - can others see it? Just the beginning? Not at all? maybe it chops it up?

Just curious. I'll work it out eventually myself...

For new people wondering why Mastodon is on thousands of servers instead of one:

-It helps protect us all against Elon Musk scenarios. It's very difficult for anyone to buy a network made of thousands of independently owned servers. (It's the same reason why no one owns the world's email network, because there are so many independent providers out there.)

-If your server misbehaves (or sells out to a malevolent billionaire), you can move your account to a different server, or even to a brand new server. Decentralisation means you're never trapped on a site you hate.

-Mastodon is an open platform where anyone can start their own server, and they don't need tech knowledge if they use a service like https://masto.host or https://federation.spacebear.ee

...and there are lots more good reasons too, to do with servers using alternative Fediverse software etc, but I'll save that for a future post 😁

#MastoTips #Mastodon #FediTips #Fediverse