mcneely @mcneely@librem.one

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Right now, instances feel like servers run by some guy in a basement. The fediverse expects us to all trust our maintainers almost blindly. I don't want a corporate overlord but I need *something* to base my trust on.

I chose my instance because it's well run. But it wasn't easy to find! I'm looking for a new level of 'the mastodon covenant', a higher bar so people feel some trust in the instance.

It's NOT a guarantee! (Twitter wasn't...;-) But it says "grown ups are here"

@scottjenson LIke this idea of a new tier of the "Mastodon Server Covenant."

Need to think of what commitments or achievements would be needed to get into that level.

Also would be good for those who signed the Mastodon Server Covenant to have a standard place in the About UI for that to be found. And to make that programmatically checkable for webservices like instances.social to surface.

as sad as i am about the rapid destruction of twitter, the (re)surge in blogs and newsletters has been lovely

back to the #indieweb!

Them: Faving posts on Mastodon is useless, only the OP sees it.

Me, when a post gets faved: awwww, little internet hug ✨

The goal of decentralization shouldn't be a uniform distribution of instance sizes. That's unnecessary and unrealistic.

Decentralization prevents any one entity from exerting too much power over the whole ecosystem, allows cultural differences between communities, and enables semi-independent technical experimentation by instances so that successful innovations can percolate. These are the things that made the web successful. Mastodon has all of these, and isn't in danger of losing them.

Defederation is establishing a boundary and asserting acceptable behaviour.

Mastodon has plenty of room for improvement, and I'm seeing lots of people posting about some of the problems... but it's odd to me that some people think those problems are permanent.

Especially with the new influx here, I expect we'll see new developments that solve many of the most obvious issues.

Nothing will ever be perfect, but the open nature of all this allows for rapid improvements & experiments.

😑
Another Black person played Mastodon "instance roulette" and lost.

We need a Mastodon instance Green Book pronto or this ain't gonna work.

This is starting to feel like the WW2 Dunkirk evacuation where the Black and Indian Commonwealth soldiers were abandoned on the beach...

https://twitter.com/wickdchiq/status/1594711597359980547

I’ve heard several explanations for this, ranging from efficiency concerns to privacy controls. I can understand the efficiency issues. But follows lists are the animating data that drive a social network: sharing that data (with adequate privacy controls) seems like a first-class feature.

This, from the Secretary of Defense, is excellent:

"The outcome of the war in Ukraine will help determine the course of global security in this young century. And those of us in North America don’t have the option of sitting this one out"

https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3224089/why-ukraine-matters-remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-at-the-h/

I don't know much about mastodon yet. So I don't know what is technically feasible.

Automatically allowing any new instance to begin unblocked seems like a problem, because the nanoinstances devoted to harassment can set up and then once blocked respawn with new names at will.

I could post some ill-informed suggestions of how to solve that, but I'll leave it to people who actually know things. What can we do?

While many people have commented on how much better it is here on Mastodon than it is on the birdsite, you should be aware that minorities (LGBTQ+, BIPOC, Jews) have been the targets of abuse here.

Also, trolls have started to set up instances to attack scientists, for example: https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom/109371920177171488.

Let's not kid ourselves; we are in a (relative) honeymoon period before the assholes show up. Yes, we have tools to deal with them (muting, blocking, even defederation), but we need to do more.

What's obvious to basically everyone in the industry but is probably surprising to everyone else is that twitter is a harder problem than getting a rocket to the moon. One of these problems only involves physics, the other involves humans.

Many commentators are tweeting & tooting that we need to expand the SCOTUS. That is not the answer to everything. Unless you just want a larger Court, not bound by ethics rules, engaging in the kind of behavior described in the NYT piece. What we need are guardrails - an understanding that the Court sits w/i our democracy. Our job us to strengthen it by creating the processes that promote impartiality & insulation from lobbying, not crossing our fingers & hoping for the best.

A gentle reminder to folks who are new to Mastodon. In solidarity with those in the disabled community who rely on screen readers, we ask that you:

* Add alt text/image descriptions when you post media
* Capitalize the first letter of every word in a hashtag #LikeThis

#StrongerTogether #Accessibility #Disability #Solidarity