Alan Johnson @acjay@qoto.org
Data, software & management. Husband of Jen. 👶*4. Former teacher. Jeopardy champ*1. Uplift good ideas, support folks, and speak up against harm.
Joined Oct 2022
Alan Johnson
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One complaint I have about my mastodon experience so far that *isn't* about instances, or cw's or finding people, or exclusion or inclusion:
None of these clients I've used so far have an easy way for me to click on a person and say "add to list X".
Is that just me being too dumb to see the obvious way to do it?
Alan Johnson
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Check out how land is used in the United States. Cows take up the most space!
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ @sociology
Alan Johnson
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Disturbed by reports of Black Mastodon users—Black women in particular—having negative experiences on this app, including being randomly banned for discussions of racism. Some of these users will not come back. All will share their experiences. The answer is not to condescendingly lecture them on “how the fediverse works,” as if their experiences are inevitable, nor to swear to do better next time. (There may not be one.) It’s to do better now lest the reputation of this app be cemented.
Alan Johnson
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There were two notable moderation incidents on mastodon.social and mastodon.online in the past 24 hours that I would like to address. In the first, a post was wrongfully removed due to a report claiming it contained a dogwhistle, and in the second, a person was wrongfully suspended due to a report claiming it's an impersonator. Both were undone and apologies issued.
Alan Johnson
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Veteran stopped Club Q shooter. Per NYT
It was Mr. Fierro’s first time at a drag show, and he was digging it. He had spent 15 years in the Army, and now relished his role as a civilian and a father, watching one of his daughter’s old high-school friends perform.
“These kids want to live that way, want to have a good time, have at it,” he said as he described the night. “I’m happy about it because that is what I fought for, so they can do whatever they hell they want.”
Alan Johnson
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😩 My follow up blog post about Solo hosting will not be ready until tomorrow.
However, as a consolation prize here is a partial list of 18 companies (hosting in 45 countries) that have the tech skills to host your Federated Instance upon your own domain:
https://darnell.day/stress-free-managed-hosting-options-fediverse
Note: Some companies are already full & no longer accept new clients. I will also update this list to include more companies in the future.
#Feditips cc: @feditips
I'm told we Definitely don't have to worry about Grayscale's bitcoin, because they're in a Trust and they are Regulated....and I feel like I've seen this movie before.
Use-it-or-lose-it flexible spending accounts are a horrible piece of policy. They should be banned rather than being blessed.
I listen to a lot of podcast audio. Every year it blows my mind that I listen to almost a month of audio. It has definitely been one of the defining features of my life for the past several years.
Alan Johnson
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🇳🇱
@acjay you mean to spin up your own instance... check out masto.host
Alan Johnson
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i’ve been trying to figure out a way to articulate something that i keep seeing on here (and other places to a limited extent, but mostly here) the idea that ppls perceptions of the internet changed bc of big walled platforms like facebook or twitter,
but im not sure if that’s ACTUALLY the case or if what those platforms actually did was make the aspects of the internet most ppl find confusing, like servers, more accessibility to ppl who now feel lost
How long until there are dead simple Mastodon-instance-as-a-service providers? Does this already exist?
How long until Google and Microsoft launch their own Fediverse instances and give people one-click opt-in to a Mastodon-like experience?
If ActivityPub is basically an email-like protocol, then hosting someone's Fediverse identity is pretty similar to giving them an email account, right?
Any reason to think this is a bad idea for them (other than the moderation problem)?
Is there a concept of communities, independent of instances?
Instances seem to coarse-grained.
Hash tags are kind of close, except there's no ability to moderate a hash tag.
@debirdify Also, it would be cool to be able to filter out people I already follow on Mastodon.
I just discovered that in the Notifications tab, I can turn off the "Play Sounds" and keep Favorites out of my notifications. Love this. I think the dopamine rush of new likes and counters is one of the harmful things from a lot of commercial social media.
@debirdify Is there a good way to auto-follow everyone found by Debirdify from a given Mastodon account? That would be super helpful. Not sure if Mastodon has a good way to import follower lists or an API that can be used to create new follows on an account (with the appropriate auth controls).
Although I decided not to actively participate on Twitter after the Elon purchase, I still spend a lot of time lurking Twitter, because it very efficiently serves up stuff I find interesting and informative.
But I've replicated a sizable portion of the people I followed there on here, I think that it's very likely that Mastodon can supplant that for me. Hopefully with improvements.
Alan Johnson
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A thread from a former Twitter designer and longtime Mastodon user that raises an important point: for most people, algorithms are good.
They make reading more enjoyable. They help users discover new and/or important content that would've been overlooked or never seen in a chronological timeline.
IMHO, there's a huge unmet need for not just one algorithm, but customizable algorithms with adjustable factors.
I remember discovering the song when it appeared in the show Legion, perfectly scoring one of the more visually stunning scenes in Season 1.
I remember thinking, this song is amazing and sounds like Radiohead, but surely such an amazing Radiohead song couldn't have escaped my notice. Wrong!
https://youtu.be/52T0M3stFUI (if you don't like scenes of destruction, don't watch)
Data, software & management. Husband of Jen. 👶*4. Former teacher. Jeopardy champ*1. Uplift good ideas, support folks, and speak up against harm.
Joined Oct 2022
