Mastodon - "Decentralized" Twitter Knockoff & Rat King Breeding Ground

[myst]

No idea what prompted all of this. Maybe a white person who wasn't 100% ashamed of their own existence in a sad, attention-seeking way posted something. Who knows.

Wishful thinking. A person was banned for saying "fuck white people." There was drama. And then

Because of course he did

What whitey-hating bubble are you talking about?

Edit: More----------------------------------------------

It still might be. The only problem is that with decentralization sometimes there become autistic mini-echochamber fringe groups. They block out all instances that trigger their feefees but maybe that's a good thing because then they won't go around harassing all the normies or the opposite opinion fringies.

I guess but it doesn't seem good enough. Facebook is better at walling off dramawhores. They clog up news article comments but normies posting about dinner won't see a thing.

This space just sucks. Scuttlebutt doesn't allow deletes. Blockchains like urbit and minds are confusing. Hubzilla and and diaspora are interface clusterfucks. GNUSocial sucked so much ass that Mastodon replaced it in a minute.

Every criticism of Mastodon is true but it's the only alternative FOSS social network with more users than a ResetERA discord. At least it doesn't milk its users for cash.

 

[CIA Nigger]

Every criticism of Mastodon is true but it's the only alternative FOSS social network with more users than a ResetERA discord.

There's Pleroma and it's not written in Ruby. It's gained popularity as a mastodon alternative and it can federate with Mastodon instances as it uses the same protocol. It's essentially GNUSocial's "successor" in a way.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Wishful thinking. A person was banned for saying "fuck white people." There was drama. And then

View attachment 533922

Because of course he did

View attachment 533925

What whitey-hating bubble are you talking about?

Edit: More----------------------------------------------



I guess but it doesn't seem good enough. Facebook is better at walling off dramawhores. They clog up news article comments but normies posting about dinner won't see a thing.

This space just sucks. Scuttlebutt doesn't allow deletes. Blockchains like urbit and minds are confusing. Hubzilla and and diaspora are interface clusterfucks. GNUSocial sucked so much ass that Mastodon replaced it in a minute.

Every criticism of Mastodon is true but it's the only alternative FOSS social network with more users than a ResetERA discord. At least it doesn't tard cum its users for cash.

View attachment 535327

What's absolutely hilarious about some of these SJW types is that they romanticize "decentralization." In reality, their communities are heavily moderated. If they were truly "decentralized" they would end up being more like 4chan, which they loathe. They couldn't exist in a decentralized environment for five minutes without suffering an aneurysm.

 

[Deluxe]

A scam cryptocurrency ICO called Trillion has "forked" a japanese fediverse software called Misskey, removed all mention of Misskey and rebranded it as a new social network that somehow combines crypto with social media. Trillion also hosts a crypto exchange (probably another open source project) and a news site (filled with generic crypto news). The Misskey instance seems misconfigured because it doesn't federate with the rest of the network (probably intentional).

An idiot from a Mastodon instance saw this and declared a holy jihad against Trillion. A few people signed up to shitpost and were immediately deleted and banned by the admin. Others politely informed the admins that they were violating misskey's software license and were also banned. Account creation was shut down, and the site seems to be non functional.

Their features page is the usual buzzword laden crypto scam word salad.

Spoiler

Get the most out of your time


Trillion is a social network with thousands of unique communities where millions of people connect.

You’re free to join any community you like and everyone is welcome!



Live Long and Prosper

Future Features
Overview:

• Encrypted messaging
• Micro-transactions based on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
• Monetize your activities and endorsements
• Join forces in ventures with friends – and other key people
• Create and engage in new opportunities, trading, P2P lending/borrowing, and crowdfunding
• #BeTheBank (main feature, see below)
• Trillion cryptocurrency
• Decentralized card (linked to account)
• Digital wallet
• Exchange
• Ecommerce
• Marketplace
• Merchant payment solution
• Mobile app (Android and IOS)
• Escrow services
• Reputation management
• Real asset tokenization
• User donation button
• Free voice/video chat

#BeTheBank: Become a full service bank in minutes:
— Issue credit cards, cryptocoins, digital wallets, e-cash and more.

“I believe cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is the first example, I believe they’re going to change the world.” – Richard Brown, IBM

“The whole concept with crypto is to be your own bank.” – Peter Saddington, crypto luminary.

Trillion Pre-ICO and ICO
Trillion is launching its visionary platform and next generation cryptocurrency through a Pre-Initial Coin Offering (Pre-ICO) and thereafter through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) scheduled for launch in November 2018.

Coins: Starting Balance
Each unique user will receive a starting balance to be distributed following the launch of Trillion’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO), see above.

Feel free to contact for details on Trillion’s Pre-ICO and ICO.

Email contact: hello@tri.cash

Social Network Features
Overview:

• Globally interconnected community
• Thousands of unique, interconnected communities to choose from
• Ethical design choices to combat misuse of social media
• You’re a person, not a product
• Free from government interference
• Free from corporate intermediaries
• Trillion works for you, and not the other way around
• Decentralized like email
• Federation/Whole Known Network
• Social network based on open-source software and open web protocols
• 5000 characters (share your ideas, unabridged)
• Feed is chronological, and non-algorithmic
• Customizable
• Widgets
• RSS
• Robust anti-abuse tools
• Granular post privacy
• Embed media in your posts
• Built on open web standards
• Spoiler warnings
• You decide what’s relevant
• Custom emoji
• Magnifying glass over images
• Delete & redraft

They have quite a long and extensive CoC though so they can't all be that bad.

Spoiler

Code of Conduct
The following guidelines are not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the administration of tri.cash; they can provide insights into Trillion’s content moderation policies:

1. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline:
a. Excessive advertising
b. Uncurated news bots posting from third-party news sources
c. Untagged nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content, including artistic depictions
d. Untagged gore and extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions

2. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline, and may result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:
a. Racism or advocation of racism
b. Sexism or advocation of sexism
c. Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, or advocation thereof
d. Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism

3. The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service:
a. Sexual depictions of children
b. Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism
c. Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism

4. Any conduct intended to stalk or harass other users, or to impede other users from utilizing the service, or to degrade the performance of the service, or to harass other users, or to incite other users to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed, and subject to punishment up to and including revocation of access to the service. This includes, but is not limited to, the following behaviors:
a. Continuing to engage in conversation with a user that has specifically has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed.
b. Aggregating, posting, and/or disseminating a person’s demographic, personal, or private data without express permission (informally called doxing or dropping dox) may be considered harassment.
c. Inciting users to engage another user in continued interaction or discussion after a user has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist (informally called brigading or dogpiling) may be considered harassment.

These provisions notwithstanding, the administration of the service reserves the right to revoke any user’s access permissions, at any time, for any reason, except as limited by law.

The administration of the service reserves the right to revise the Code of Conduct policy from time to time without notice.

This does mirror the events of Hiveway, when John Mcaffe promoted a cryptocurrency themed reskinned mastodon instance that claimed to be on the blockchain, and the site was raided and mocked until it disappeared.

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/8680

Mastodon user submits a feature request for 'chain blocking'. Laurelai arrives on the scene to make the entire thread about himself.

 

[myst]

There's Pleroma and it's not written in Ruby. It's gained popularity as a mastodon alternative and it can federate with Mastodon instances as it uses the same protocol. It's essentially GNUSocial's "successor" in a way.

Pleroma is the tits and most of the devs are cool. It'll someday be at Mastodon's polish but not yet.

Laurelai arrives on the scene to make the entire thread about himself.

Laurelai's been more confident since Gargron stanned for her. Bonus Kiwifarms reference
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/100713737041313651
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/100713011463845253

 

[knightlautrec]

Pleroma is the tits and most of the devs are cool. It'll someday be at Mastodon's polish but not yet.



Laurelai's been more confident since Gargron stanned for her. Bonus Kiwifarms reference
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/100713737041313651
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/100713011463845253

View attachment 541018

View attachment 541019

Far left: 'BELIEVE WOMAN. THEY DON'T LIE ABOUT RAPE'

Gargon, a absolute moron: But that bad gossip website said it so it must not be true despite people on my side saying it is and documentation of it!

 

[Deluxe]

 

[Sissy Galvez]

Ya know, Laurelai’s rape accusations came out well before Kiwi Farms existed and well before his thread. Not sure what they have to do with the farms other than we’ve collected them all in one place. The original reddit, somethingawful, etc threads on Laurelai raping women are still out there as are the tweets.

You can’t discredit his victims just because of Kiwi Farms. That’s what Laurelai the rapist attempts to do.

 

[CIA Nigger]

Kotaku, a "gaming" website did a fluff piece on Mastodon.
https://archive.fo/BwZMC

Twitter's Emerging Competitor Doesn't Want To Be Twitter

Gita Jackson

Twitter is a hellhole. Mastodon isn’t trying to replace the trashcan fire that is Twitter, but it is offering its users something different.

Mastodon, a social network released in October 2016, could be described as a Twitter competitor, but the more you dig into it, the less true that feels. On the surface, it’s pretty Twitter-like. Mastodon’s website design looks a lot like the Twitter client Tweetdeck. Posts can only be a certain number of characters, you can use hashtags and even boost other people’s posts. There are some marginal surface differences—instead of tweets, posts are called toots—but when you first look at the site, the experience looks more or less the same.

Untangling the knot of what Mastodon actually is, however, begins when you’re trying to set up an account. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon isn’t a single network, but hundreds of them. They’re called “instances,” and they’re all run independently by different users. You can still talk to users who are in different instances, but whatever instance you personally join will have its own set of social norms and rules, sort of like early 2000s internet forums. There are instances for queer people, for furries, for filmmakers, for people interested in Magic: The Gathering. On one instance, you can’t make any posts with the letter “e.” This inspired another instance, on which you can only use the letter “e.”

According to people who talked to Kotaku about what it’s like to run instances on Mastodon, the site’s decentralized network is part of its appeal. Also, more than one of these instance administrators said that their interest in a decentralized internet began long before Mastodon.

“I’ve always felt strongly about the centralisation about the Internet,” Sascha, who runs deadinsi.de, a general purpose anti-fascist and LGBT instance, said over email. “There used to be a time where pretty much everything on the internet was a federated or at least interoperable protocol: Email, IRC, NNTP. This changed as the internet became more popular and commercialised. Federated solutions serve their users, centralised solutions serve their operators.”

“In short,” they went on, “Mastodon is human, Twitter is just another faceless corporation looking out for itself.”

The desire for a small, less corporate social network is strong among several instance admins. Many of them said they don’t even want Mastodon to become more user-friendly or for it to grow too quickly. Because of the way that it’s organized and its relatively small global user base, which grew to just over a million users as of last December, Mastodon can be a place where human interaction can actually happen in a more close-knit environment than Twitter.

“Interaction is certainly the point of social media for me; when I post I don’t want to feel like I’m shouting into the void,” said David, who runs tech.lgbt, a space for queer people in tech, via email. They went on to say that in general, their posts on Mastodon tend to get more engagement than on other social networks.

M.K., who runs guillotines.masto.host, which they described as “an intentionally small instance which is trying to ride the line between creating a safe space and allowing shitposts,” described interacting with people on Mastodon as very different than their experience on Twitter.

“I have a reasonably large account on Twitter (about 4,500), and some of my mutuals have VERY large accounts, so I get a fair amount of engagement on Twitter,” said M.K. over email. “One thing that’s been hard to deal with as my platform has grown has been the background radiation of constant hostility. Strangers giving unsolicited advice. Casual abuse. A couple of really graphic death threats.”

According to M.K., Twitter hadn’t done much to curb that hostility. “I got one death threat that was graphically sexual and I got a Twitter timeout for telling him off,” they said. “My most recent one included a photo of a corpse. That one’s still up, last I heard.”

M.K. is still on Twitter, but for them, using the service requires a particular approach: “My strategy on Twitter is to be fairly standoffish and to call out people who cross my boundaries, clearly and harshly, while trying to stay within Twitter’s capriciously enforced rules.”

By contrast, says M.K., “on Mastodon, I can enforce my boundaries, so that’s not needed. I can deplatform fascists. Not just defend myself, but 100 other people who aren’t a bigot’s punching bag.” As the head of an instance, M.K. can create and enforce their own rules, which includes booting bigots from their community. “That’s not just the right thing to do, but it feels good to take their power. It’s easy to be gracious when you have power. I’m more deliberative. I get to channel feeling protective of people into actually protecting them, and that does feel good. That IS better than Twitter.”

Mastodon allows instance admins to protect the communities they’ve built, and for some, that ethos is at odds with the influx of people who are looking for Twitter alternatives. Almost every instance admin who spoke to Kotaku said that they hope their instance doesn’t grow too quickly. One said if Mastodon ever got too mainstream, they’d leave it. When Wil Wheaton tried to join an instance, the people already on it weren’t very happy with having a celebrity, especially this particular one, on their server. Wheaton ended up leaving his account of his own accord after being told by an admin that it was going to be suspended.

“I think a big part of what makes it what it is are the people. There’s somewhat of a gateway into using Mastodon which means the people on it tend to be more alike,” Shaun, who runs the tiny instance ilovela.in, said over email. “If the normal people started to flood into it I think it would lose a lot of its charm, it should always stay a little niche.”

For the Mastodon users who don’t want the site to grow too fast, the obtuseness of the website is a feature, not a bug. These users don’t think Mastodon should be a Twitter competitor, but something completely different: a different kind of internet, one that’s owned by its users, and not a corporation.

In my own experience on the platform, Mastodon does feel like it allows people to be more authentic. I see less of the performativeness that is characteristic of Twitter. I joined Mastodon shortly after it was released in 2016, and as someone who has broken ten thousand followers on Twitter, it was refreshing to find myself in a smaller setting, with fewer people vying for my attention.

Sometimes, on Mastodon, people I don’t know will respond to random queries that I throw out into the ether. Being able to have actual conversations with those people, who are for the most part acting in good faith, feels more like the marketplace of ideas that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claims his website would be, at its inception. There is drama on Mastodon, and there are arguments, but for the most part, they’re contained to communities rather than whipping through the entire site like a wildfire. I’m less active there, but I like that too. Mastodon doesn’t make demands of my time. After I took a months-long break, my friends on the platform greeted me back with enthusiasm.

“I don’t think every instance needs to be a safe space. Mine is,” M. K. said. “I have a couple of people who have one account on my instance and one on another and use my instance as a place where they can be authentic and soft. I’m happy with that. That was my goal for my users.”

Although Mastodon’s newfound mainstream attraction is bittersweet for the users who don’t want the site to grow too fast, it does also spur some hope from fans of its design that a better, decentralized internet is possible.

“I’m going to have to balance Mastodon just as I would any other service that takes up my time, attention, and emotional investment,” David said. “But right now it’s becoming more interesting now that there is an influx of new users, and I welcome anything that gets more people involved in decentralized web services.”

The tl;dr? Mastodon's userbase attracts the same type of people as Pillowfort or REEEEEEEEEEEEsetera: Oversensitive snowflakes who think ban happy Twitter isn't doing enough to protect them from comments like "kill yourself my man". Plus, it gives narcissists the power to ban people who they don't like on the internet, as this snippet shows.

M.K. is still on Twitter, but for them, using the service requires a particular approach: “My strategy on Twitter is to be fairly standoffish and to call out people who cross my boundaries, clearly and harshly, while trying to stay within Twitter’s capriciously enforced rules.”

By contrast, says M.K., “on Mastodon, I can enforce my boundaries, so that’s not needed. I can deplatform fascists. Not just defend myself, but 100 other people who aren’t a bigot’s punching bag.” As the head of an instance, M.K. can create and enforce their own rules, which includes booting bigots from their community. “That’s not just the right thing to do, but it feels good to take their power. It’s easy to be gracious when you have power. I’m more deliberative. I get to channel feeling protective of people into actually protecting them, and that does feel good. That IS better than Twitter.”

 

[beardedgoat]

Gita asked for interview subjects days ago.

Follow up thread here:https://mastodon.social/@xoxogossipgita/100726036563442912

“I don’t think every instance needs to be a safe space. Mine is,” M. K. said.

By contrast, says M.K., “on Mastodon, I can enforce my boundaries, so that’s not needed.

She's wrong. Twitter has better blocking and muting abilities than Mastodon. The reason the Fediverse is quieter is because there's no algorithm pushing charged tweets to the top of the feed and boosts can be turned off. After posting "Fascists suck" or it might get a few boosts but then it disappears within a week. There's not much reward to do it so people don't.

Of course a Communist wouldn't understand human nature.

 

[CIA Nigger]

So this is more of an post than anything but if you wanted to know why Pawoo.net (Pixiv's instance) is blocked by so many other instances, it comes down to this year old issue posted to the github page that's been a thorn in the side of server admins:
https://archive.fo/VOIDd

Mastodon doesn't just hotlink images; it will actually grab images from attachments and dump them onto your server in order to prevent bandwidth hogging of someone's shitty VPS. This means your server/instance can now be a liability especially if your instance is hosted in a country with no safe harbor laws or if said laws get eroded over time. This means that attachments or images that break laws or even site rules can end up on your instances server.

 

[Don't Call Anybody]

So this is more of an post than anything but if you wanted to know why Pawoo.net (Pixiv's instance) is blocked by so many other instances, it comes down to this year old issue posted to the github page that's been a thorn in the side of server admins:
https://archive.fo/VOIDd
View attachment 542520
Mastodon doesn't just hotlink images; it will actually grab images from attachments and dump them onto your server in order to prevent bandwidth hogging of someone's shitty VPS. This means your server/instance can now be a liability especially if your instance is hosted in a country with no safe harbor laws or if said laws get eroded over time. This means that attachments or images that break laws or even site rules can end up on your instances server.

Instance admins will say it's because Pawoo.net allows images that may be illegal in the country in which the instance is hosted, but it's really to prevent and contain weeaboo infestations from spreading outside quad.moe and niu.moe.

 

[Deluxe]

bofa.lol, the instance of leftist shit posters from twitter where most of the anti-wil wheaton posts were coming from shut down last week. A user on the site was accused of sexual harassment and the admin defended the user, causing half the userbase to quit in disgust.

it seems explicitly political instances on the fediverse have a short shelf life.

 

[Rich Capitalist]

Temperament matters a lot when you're running a server for other people who are grounded. If your audience is sensitive genderqueer communists the REEEEEEing is a matter of time

Good riddance to witches.town and bofa. There's new homes for the NPCs but a few blocks will cut out most of them

 

[Deluxe]

10/14/2018:

bofa.lol, the instance of leftist shit posters from twitter where most of the anti-wil wheaton posts were coming from shut down last week. A user on the site was accused of sexual harassment and the admin defended the user, causing half the userbase to quit in disgust.

it seems explicitly political instances on the fediverse have a short shelf life.

read this backwards from bottom up

Update 12/6/2018:

 

[Kuuki]

What's absolutely hilarious about some of these SJW types is that they romanticize "decentralization." In reality, their communities are heavily moderated. If they were truly "decentralized" they would end up being more like 4chan, which they loathe. They couldn't exist in a decentralized environment for five minutes without suffering an aneurysm.

Many are like that, especially the instances using the superior pleroma, since anybody can host their own instance. The kinds of mastadon instances being posted in this thread just block federation with them out of butthurt.

 

[Phosphophyllite]

http://archive.vn/LRxv5
https://witches.live/@anna/101350382819915695

there's been a new-ish instance called witches.live that popped up and it's an absolute cesspit (the admin "anna" is also prime lolcow material )

 

[CIA Nigger]

http://archive.vn/LRxv5
https://witches.live/@anna/101350382819915695

there's been a new-ish instance called witches.live that popped up and it's an absolute cesspit (the admin "anna" is also prime lolcow material )

The rules are amazing, if you replaced "witches" with "gamers" it'd sound like something from Parkourdude91.
https://archive.fo/XZuYq

 

[scathefire]

>abusers are not welcome here

Yes, as if abusers have actual self-awareness and would willingly identify themselves as abusers.

>“Yeah I hit my wife now and then but that’s just me getting mad sometimes, that doesn’t make me an abuser”

 

[Phosphophyllite]

Witches.live's admin also defends the DPRK regime unironically (as well as block evades by using an account hosted on the domain jorts.horse)
https://witches.live/@anna/101090113645715476
http://archive.fo/FaRSK