Kai 'wusel' Siering @wusel@uu.org

@jasonp As for "seeing a decent slice of what's on Mastodon as a whole", your're mostly right. That's currently an issue where the idea – everyone is self-hosting – doesn't meet the technology – federaded timeline of one's server consist of stuff the user's subscribe to on other servers –; hopefully this will change over time ...

@jasonp https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=mastodon.social lists 35 out of ... 10,000+ instances. Read some of the "reasons" given there and make your own mind if that's an issue.

My issue with mastodon.social is simply it's size — a) it's not the way this federation is supposed to go, a significant portion of the user base on a few servers, b) the performance doesn't feel good (i. e. clicking on it's local timeline I get 404s), mostlikely a sizing issue.

@jasonp That said, I still haven't found a way to draw myself a "Map of the Fediverse".

Hence, best guess would be to check where those you follow reside, check their instances T&C and make your choice ...

@jasonp AFAICS, the "fediverse connectivity" is the same on every instance (well, unless there unilateral blocking going on). If you depend on a large local or federated timeline on your instance (server), lookout for large(er) instances — but beware, depending on their funding and backing, they might run into similar issues as your current instance.

As for moderation, an instance in the EU should give you much free speech unless it's hate speech …

@dlf Weißer Rauch ...

@jesse Either subscribe to everyone on these servers – or hop to their local timelines in a browser and copy-and-waste the URLs into your home instance to boost.

Actually, I'd like to feed their local TL (is there an RSS feed?) into my instance to enhance the federated view.

But that would open up the option to build a search engine as well, so maybe that's not a popular solution ...

Did mastodon.social just went down? Clicking on the local timeline, e. g. https://mastodon.social/@tom_burzynski/109374302801918846 (and others), just gives the well-known anim-gif of an excited elephant ...

@tomalak @jwildeboer Ah, well, I think they can prevent me from uploading a current blockbuster or my video with a TopTen hit as background music.

More different to me would be the differentiation between lawful use of copyrighted content and it's unlawful use. Another reason I usually self-host my stuff ... 'cept for Insta :-(

@jesse @waltman ... without having to hop to their timelines? Yes, same here. Isn't that where relays can help?

@mejs GDPR question will be: what happens to them after you deleted your Twitter account? Will it become "anon749329050 retweeted", which imho should be OK?

@tomalak @jwildeboer Na, wouldn't happen. Just like uploadfilters will not become a necessity – as promised by Germany's CDU – within Germany.

(Spoiler: they became a necessity by law in Germany, as otherwise you'd need very advanced off-this-world magic to prevent copyright issues. Who would have guessed?)

@jwildeboer @tomalak I don't know it there really is an issue with "Federation" per se. I think it still works beautifully with email, with blogs unfortunately the linkage broke and RSS became unpopular, so these days one posts to … a third service to get attention for one's articles and musings.

Maybe just add an auto-select of an open instance based on location and popularity to join the Fediverse more easily? (Totally ignores instance's rule and theming, yepp ...)

@tomalak @jwildeboer EU has similar shit these days (DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/790), but AFAICS you don't have to filter uploads against copyright misuse unless you hit 1,000,000 users ...

@jwildeboer @tomalak But the users looking for alternatives are looking _now_. Some saw the Fediverse, some tried, and some wrote about their finding that, oops, that Elephant thingy isn't the new Birdsite.

And there's Post (™, I think) already waiting to become THE (new) place where you just follow people and update the feed with a swipe. Download, signup, feddich.

@tomalak @jwildeboer And as @tomalak pointed out, defederating e. g. mastodon.social – 240k active users – would cause some interference already. Will there be a point at which admins (have to) decide to refrain from defederation instances that got "too big too fail"? (4/4)

@tomalak @jwildeboer As has been pointed out, the timeline of every instances differs. Without following people, your instance's timeline would stay boring. Without already knowing a bunch of people, that's not really to change on a small instance, as you likely never find out who to follow …

Yes, one can move aways from an instance that got itself an 'dictator' as an admin. How often is one supposed to endure this? (3/4)