Feeds/timelines are first-class citizens in the AT protocol and are decoupled from account hosting.
On Mastodon, your timelines are computed by the same server that hosts your data. Consequently, signing up to a server to have an account on the fediverse is the same thing as joining a community. You follow the servers rules and share the same local timeline as everyone else on that server.
On Bluesky, feeds are arbitrary, fungible and provided by any server, and it can be computed/curated/moderated however they like. So communities are “built” around feeds rather than around account hosting providers.
The AT protocol also has “real” account portability (though I have not seen this demonstrated in practice atproto.com/guides/overview#account-portability). On Mastodon, account “portability” is a delicate dance that requires the cooperation of both the origin and destination server.
Mastodon has something that Bluesky currently doesn’t: real federation. The Bluesky server that everyone signs up to doesn’t federate with anyone else, since the whole protocol is still a work-in-progress.
Google and Bing’s crawlers can find and index Unlisted posts just as easily as any other.
Just because there are 3rd-party search engines that don’t respect people’s privacy, doesn’t mean that a 1st party search engine should follow their example.
You’re conflating tagging a post as public so that it is publicly accessible as being the same thing as consenting to being indexed in a search engine.
The lack of an ability to prevent someone from doing something to you, without compromises on your part, is not the same thing as being okay with it being done to you.
3rd party services can access the posts, because the authors marked them as publicly accessible.
Those same 3rd party services can also index the posts in a search engine, but this is only because there is no feasible technological barrier to prevent them from doing so. If such an imaginary technology did exist, it would have been deployed already.
In the mean time, we can only count on a social solution, which is to merely signal our objections to search engine indexing, in the hope that maybe a law could be drafted that uses that as precedent to make indexing without consent illegal.
Here’s a question for you. Do you think it’s okay for Google or whoever to install invisible cameras everywhere in public spaces, that were explicitly for the purpose of collecting data to develop a facial recognition model to search people without their consent? Public space is public space …
Spam has consistently been the death of the open internet, even the big tech silos struggle with spam (Instagram for example – despite having incredibly invasive techniques for identifying “genuine” users – is STILL inundated with spam commenters). I think instances on the fediverse should reconsider their open registration policy, either totally close registrations when you reach an agreed upon critical mass of users, or adopt some form of invitation or application system for new users. I believe Mastodon supports both in the software.
It often happens that a given lemmy link didn’t match with my own login from another instance. This causes troubles to comment and participate in the thread. This is what I have learned so far. Is there a better method of doing this? Browser extension suggestions are welcome....
Matrix tackled this UX issue in the bud relatively early with matrix.to. It still isn’t ideal, but much better than expecting users to install browser extensions or OS-specific hacks to properly handle ActivityPub links.
Recently I've dove a little deeper into the Fediverse. I began with Mastodon like many others and I'm ready to move on. Mastodon as a software in comparison to similar services in the Fediverse like Calckey/Firefish, Friendica, Misskey, etc. just isn't as good and the only thing it has going for it is an established user base...
I was going to join calckey.social/firefish.social but I’m a little hesitant now because mastodon.art defederated with it, and I follow multiple accounts from that instance. The drama that always surrounds defederation is a fundamental design flaw in the Fediverse
mastodon.art is unfortunately run by a harebrained power mod. Their predecessor was much much better and more thoughtful in their use of moderation powers.
"After my last long post, I got into some frustrating conversations, among them one in which an open-source guy repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being able to learn anything useful from people on other, less ideologically correct networks. Instead of telling him to go fuck himself, I went to talk to about fedi experiences with...
a twitter-like platform needs a big central algorithm that can associate posts with certain topics and interests to be able to serve up an interesting feed
I grew up on Tumblr and it thrived for the longest time with a chronological timeline.
most people are just kind of shouting into the void and that endless storm of posts has to be filtered and organized somehow
Yes, it was done through tagging. Notably, tags in Tumblr didn’t have to be inline.
Tagging died on Twitter because the inscrutable blackbox of the algorithm made people unsure if tags actually improved the visibility of their posts or not, there’s some folk-wisdom that suggests excessive tagging leads to deboosting of your profile, since it could have been considered spammy. Also, there’s only so many characters in a Twitter post and sometimes there’s just not enough left for relevant tags.
The entire point of Twitter is for celebrities, brands and governments to have a single place to be able to send out a public message and for that message to be seen by everyone
Nothing about Mastodon or the fediverse prevents this. In fact government institutions are already using the fediverse this way: social.network.europa.eu/social.overheid.nl/There’s some companies who run their own instances also, and no shortage of individuals running single-user instances as a subdomain of the same website they use for their professional brand.
Decentralized =/= Federated. In a federated model, data is still siloed in 24/7 servers that are controlled by people or institutions.
This isn’t just a Mastodon problem, all fediverse softwares struggle to keep an accurate tally of faves/likes/whatevers on posts from remote instances
It doesn’t look like this anymore on mastodon.social
Search isn’t free so it’s up to the admins to decide how good/powerful they want their search bar to be.
It shows all followees/followers of a user if said user is local, but if the user is remote, it will only show local followees/followers of that user because knowing what remote accounts follow what remote users also isn’t free.
Unremoval of Piracy Communities
Hello World!...
What does Bluesky have that Mastodon doesn't?
Is it just the momentum and word of mouth, or are there improved features as well?
Mastodon 4.2 released, with (opt-in) search, and UX improvements (blog.joinmastodon.org)
Lots of small improvements across the user experience, and opt-in search, make this an important release.
Removed Kbin.social communities
Hello everyone,...
The Good Space - Mastodon user shares their findings about use of the fediblock lists and finds huge flaws in using fediblock lists (thegoodspace.neocities.org)
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/5007912...
Proper method to share and access lemmy links that avoids login problems?
It often happens that a given lemmy link didn’t match with my own login from another instance. This causes troubles to comment and participate in the thread. This is what I have learned so far. Is there a better method of doing this? Browser extension suggestions are welcome....
Want to move on from Mastodon, but so confused on what platform to choose (kbin.social)
Recently I've dove a little deeper into the Fediverse. I began with Mastodon like many others and I'm ready to move on. Mastodon as a software in comparison to similar services in the Fediverse like Calckey/Firefish, Friendica, Misskey, etc. just isn't as good and the only thing it has going for it is an established user base...
Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t (erinkissane.com)
"After my last long post, I got into some frustrating conversations, among them one in which an open-source guy repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being able to learn anything useful from people on other, less ideologically correct networks. Instead of telling him to go fuck himself, I went to talk to about fedi experiences with...
Seeing how good Lemmy is makes me frustrated with Mastodon
My Problems with Mastodon...
Rethinking Window Management on GNOME – Space and Meaning (blogs.gnome.org)
A better list of Mastodon servers that have pre-emptively defederated from Threads.net (fedipact.veganism.social)