This is a large part of why I just don't use Mastodon anymore. I have never seen a group of people so incredibly hostile to developers while simultaneously (and with seemingly no self awareness) questioning why people don't want to use their platform more. - ThreadSky

samw.dev • 18 days ago

This is a large part of why I just don't use Mastodon anymore. I have never seen a group of people so incredibly hostile to developers while simultaneously (and with seemingly no self awareness) questioning why people don't want to use their platform more.

Reposted from Eric

a thread of completely unrelated links 1/n

github.com/ronilaukkari...

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samw.dev•18 days ago

Because Mastodon was created by a German everyone has a stick up their ass about GDPR and believes they're a fucking lawyer when the GDPR is a flawed law with some big issues, a lot of which are extremely obvious if you've ever spent any time trying to build tools for Mastodon.

samw.dev•18 days ago

And it makes no sense why this incredibly tiny minority of users harass and bully developers who build shit like this, because Mastodon as a platform is built around taking your data and sending it to a bunch of other servers where you cannot control where those servers send it next!!!

heluecht.pirati.ca•12 days ago

I have a few things to add here. First a question: When you say "Mastodon", do you mean just the software, or the whole Fediverse, which consists of so much more than just that one piece of software (in fact, Mastodon is only used on about half of all servers in the Fediverse). (1/5)

heluecht.pirati.ca•12 days ago

Regarding the GDPR, it is a European regulation, not just a German one. And your origin doesn't matter, it's your user base, so if your service is aimed at the 450 million people who live in the European Union, you need to take a look at the GDPR. (2/5)

heluecht.pirati.ca•12 days ago

The GDPR itself does a good job of protecting users from companies that want to use your data for purposes you never agreed to. Also, a company will have to pay really big fines if they lose data and don't take appropriate countermeasures or try to hide it. (3/5)

heluecht.pirati.ca•12 days ago

I don't usually receive unsolicited calls from companies I have no relationship with. And if I do receive such a call, I can file a complaint and the fines are high. The same goes for unsolicited letters. I really appreciate living in a country where GDPR applies. (4/5)

samw.dev•12 days ago

Ya that's the part I think does not apply to public social media. On public social media, your data is public. In order to make public social media function well, your data has to be usable by lots of third parties that you do not consent to. That is literally how Mastodon works.

samw.dev•12 days ago

Sever count does not matter, user count is what matters. Mastodon has the vast, vast majority of the user base on the fedi. Because of this, other fediverse software has to restrict their implementations of ActivityPub to fall within Mastodon's weird subset that it refuses to evolve.

samw.dev•12 days ago

The fediverse is dominantly Mastodon, then Lemmy, then some of the Mastodon alternatives. But nothing comes anywhere close to the user count of Mastodon. It effectively *is* the fedi other than when Threads starts finally working.

heluecht.pirati.ca•12 days ago

Since I'm the developer of one of the systems in the Fediverse, I'm very sensitive to whether someone means the software "Mastodon" or the Fediverse instead. And as for Mastodon's limitations: Our software creates "Article" posts where appropriate, even though Mastodon doesn't display them. (1/2)

samw.dev•18 days ago

Your data on the fedi gets passed through so many intermediaries that there is objectively no difference on a technical level between regular Mastodon federation and the "scraping" these devs do. It's the same thing!!!!

samw.dev•18 days ago

Following on Mastodon is not opt in. You opt out of people following you. You don't have to give consent each time someone follows you. It's dumb as shit to require people to opt in for this shit when the default federation mechanism is opt out (blocking)!!!!

shriram.bsky.social•17 days ago

There's also this weird thing called "Follow Requests", and your only options are yes or no, without an indication of whether the requester is notified if you say no, and no way to say "ignore", which is what one would very much like (if they suspect the requester to be malicious).

heluecht.pirati.ca•12 days ago

Well, that depends on your Fediverse software if you can ignore follow requests or not:

deadsuperhero.com•12 days ago

Mastodon also has this weird phenomenon that, despite being the biggest project in the space with the most resources, kind of half-assed a lot of necessary provisions and protections until a much later stage. Since it was the bigger project and earliest ActivityPub platform, people built to it.

deadsuperhero.com•12 days ago

What sucks is that basic "quality of life" features like full-text search did not exist until enough people demanded it, and developers found an opt-in way to people to indicate being willing to be found through it.

This happened over and over. People brought pitchforks to independent efforts.

deadsuperhero.com•12 days ago

I actually think the domain area problem has less to do with Mastodons origin, and more to do with the user culture that it ended up embracing. For all of the advancement Mastodon gave the Fediverse, the hostility-driven puritan culture of some of its userbase is beyond terrible.

deadsuperhero.com•12 days ago

I think one pertinent aspect of this is a coalition of super-duper privacy people, vulnerable communities fleeing Tumblr / Twitter / wherever, and an old vanguard of open source devs who were very specific about what "acceptable" participation in the network looked like.

deadsuperhero.com•12 days ago

There are a lot of people in this overlap that are generally very reactive, who don't bother to do a lick of research, and are more than willing to just amplify loud, angry callouts, and absolutely don't mind driving people off for past transgressions.

It's toxic, and legitimately awful.

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