Hey #lawfedi friends, every day a new person in #law or #legal adjacent fields joints the #fediverse and isn't aware of Lawstodon - the legal community directory for #Mastodon (and eventually the fediverse more broadly).
Feel free to add yourself, claim your profile, etc. I have been using it when I send recommendations for folks looking for practitioners in specific practice areas and it works a treat!
For me it was me looking up alternative social media platforms on Google, as I never had any liking towards the mainstream social media platforms in any way.
Then I chance upon this "Mastodon" and am intrigued by it.
I sign up for it....
I have been here 2 years and counting! :blobcatgiggle:
Happy birthday to the accidental typo, John Mastodon! Started when a writer misread the Mastodon account that was banned from Twitter as "John Mastodon" instead of "Join Mastodon", John Mastodon may not be real but thanks for the memes and everything else. Let's celebrate John Mastodon's birthday by tooting about what you love most about the #fediverse. #JohnMastodon#Mastodon
what I'd love to see is #funkwhale also support basic posts ala #mastodon. I bet we could get a pretty cool pod going at ccmusic.social if this was the case. #ccmusic
@TodayInTwitter I agree with @gruber opinion that Mastodon, and by extension the rest of the fediverse, is reverting back to being a niche tech nerds platform and not vectoring towards more mainstream acceptance. The Twitter slack seems to be being absorbed by Threads and BlueSky. That doesn't mean that the fediverse never will be but that initial surge of mainstream people has definitely dropped off. Many of the ones I follow here are posting infrequently but are posting on BlueSky (one I can check) and from what I hear threads. #mastodon#fediverse#BlueSky#threads
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
With yesterday's announcement that Meta is starting to test Threads and ActivityPub integration, I see the #Fediverse is at an all time high again of whining and crying and being butthurt over it all.
I get stating your opinion about not wanting them here or whatever, but come on people, don't sound like a little 2 year old who lost their pacifier. It gets old, quick.
Just mute/block and move on and be done with it all. It's really that damn simple.
So I know my #vinyl lovers are strong here. So I need to know. What’s the best & fastest way of moving a large amount of vinyl. All high quality. A large amount still sealed. #Rock, #hiphop, 50s and 60s lounge, and what looks like a pretty legendary #Beatles collection. It’s basically a school/rent money party, and the right price is invited. Maybe our first #mastodon#musicparty?
#DnD
I am making an #Underworld setting in #5E. And need a healing mechanic for the Immortals. Something they can use in a hunger system. And am looking for some #Mastodon feedback.
Current process is "2d4 + Con mod". Players can use it with an action. And gain a hunger. They have 3 hungers (lvl 1-4) before they lose control. And have other Immortal abilities that use hunger.
Hi! Are you a #lawyer or other #legal professional? Cool, but also, condolences.
We here at https://esq.social want to help. We're a purpose-built #Mastodon instance to provide a home base on the #fediverse for all you looney tunes.
Join us, won't you? We're nice and we've been around for a year -- which is like a decade in fediverse time.
We also have a #Slack-like platform called #Element with about 30 folks popping in and out. I’ll put that link in the next toot.
@nw@mike that’s a great question. I would also like to know if you can read #flipboard magazines and comments on Flipboard directly here on #mastodon. I know you can post directly from Flipboard to the #fediverse. Engagement would be much better if we can interact directly from both platforms. :flipboard: #Community#activitypub
You mentioned a lot of things that I generally really enjoy about #kbin as well.
⭐ The admin @ernest is an incredibly hardworking, kind, supportive, and an all-around good person. This is my tip top most favorite thing because good leadership and communication is essential to a good and thriving community. Ernest is a star!
Same, he also gets bonus points for listening to, and implementing suggestions. Some of them have come quite quickly as well. These factors when combined have made me feel like I'm really a part of the community.
⭐ I enjoy making scripts/styles for kbin. kbin is the reason I began learning JS, HTML, and CSS. I am so happy I started learning, and it's all thanks to kbin.
Cheers to that, I actually use one of yours -- specifically the one that changes the layout of profile pages.
⭐ No malicious, tricky, over-calculated algorithm. It's very straight-forward and honest here. I love seeing a mix of upvoted/downvoted comments in comment sections too, rather than just top upvoted, because it makes me feel more apart of the conversation with everyone. Your contributions and thoughts won't get drowned out by upvoted witty remarks, that is truly unique to kbin (and maybe elsewhere on the fediverse?).
Agreed -- I think Mastodon also functions similarly. It makes #discoverability a bit challenging at times, but I'm open to experimenting with it.
⭐ kbin gives me the urge to contribute, interact, and create because our contributions have actual impact. Can't say the same for other sites. Everywhere else is lurk only.
Hard agree -- though it wears on me at times when I'm unable to get some engagement going after keeping at it for so long. I've changed my mindset about it a little while ago, so it's not too bad.
⭐ Tightknit but welcoming. kbin is small enough that I run into familiar people all the time, and I recognize usernames everywhere.
Agreed, and to add onto this -- profile pictures are pretty easily recognizable as well.
⭐ Authenticity. kbin is authentic and real. It's not pushing a product, not manipulating what you see, not building an ad profile. It is what a forum should be.
Yeah, adding on one of your points again -- it's very reminiscent of what #forums used to feel like. However, at the same time, it feels like something more due to the addition of #microblogging. #Microblogs may not be super popular on /kbin, but I think they're a stellar addition to the forum experience. I've had some nice back-and-forths with #Mastodon users from the comfort of /kbin's UI. I think there's more potential in what you can do with them, too.
BlueSkys official #ATProtocol account just highlighted a community developer project to bridge it with #ActivityPub
#BlueSky early on decided not to go with the open #W3C standard in favor of implementating features like account migration. Planning to start federating next year, they've made some decisions I'm skeptical about.
Is this the future of social media? It certainly is better than Silicon Valley/commercial-surveillance disinformation platforms by orders of magnitude, yes...
...but personally, I have a different view.
I recommend reading the "Public Service Internet" manifesto. It was a privilege to read it. This is one of my greater research interests as well.
Tl;dr: an internet infrastructure of the people, by the people, and for the people — including democratic governance, user representation (suffrage), and citizen co-ownership of resources. NOT government-owned.
Of course there are some bits I disagree with too.
One could argue Mastodon/Fediverse is like that... but not truly (I like the place though). Here's why →
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
A case for preemptively defederating with Threads (kbin.social)
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
✨ What is your favorite thing about kbin? ✨ (kbin.social)
Here are mine! A handful of things come to mind right away, but there are plenty more:...