Stop joining mastodon.social post Signed-off-by: Anirudh Oppiliappan <x@icyphox.sh>
Anirudh Oppiliappan x@icyphox.sh
Tue, 05 May 2020 13:03:09 +0530
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| | | | :-- | --: | +| [Stop joining mastodon.social](/blog/mastodon-social) | 2020-05-05 | | [OpenBSD on the HP Envy 13](/blog/openbsd-hp-envy) | 2020-04-17 | | [The Zen of KISS Linux](/blog/kiss-zen) | 2020-04-03 | | [Introducing mael](/blog/mael) | 2020-03-29 |
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</image> <language>en-us</language> <copyright>Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0</copyright> - <item><title>OpenBSD on the HP Envy 13</title><description><![CDATA[<p>My existing KISS install broke because I thought it would be a great + <item><title>Stop joining mastodon.social</title><description><![CDATA[<p>No, really. Do you actually understand why the Mastodon network exists, +and what it stands for, or are you just LARPing? If you’re going to just +cross-post from Twitter, why are you even on Mastodon?</p> + +<p>Okay, so Mastodon is a “federated network”. What does that mean? You +have a bunch of instances, each having their own userbase, and each +instance <em>federates</em> with other instances, forming a distributed +network. Got that? Cool. Now let’s get to the problem with +mastodon.social.</p> + +<p>mastodon.social is the instance run by the lead developer. Why does +everybody flock to it? I’m really not sure, but if I were to hazard +a guess, I’d say it’s because people don’t really understand federation. +“Oh, big instance? I should probably join that.” Herd mentality? +I dunno.</p> + +<p>And what happens when every damn user joins just one instance? It becomes +more Twitter, that’s what. The federation is gone. Nearly all activity +is generated from just one instance. Here are some numbers:</p> + +<ul> +<li>Total number of users on Mastodon: ~2.2 million.</li> +<li>Number of users on mastodon.social: 529923</li> +</ul> + +<p>Surprisingly, there’s an instance even bigger than +mastodon.social—pawoo.net. I have no idea why it’s so big and it’s +primarily Japanese. Its user count is over 620k. So mastodon.social and +pawoo.net put together form over 1 million users, that’s <em>more than</em> 50% +of the entire Mastodon populace. That’s nuts.<sup class="footnote-ref" id="fnref-federation-fallacy"><a href="#fn-federation-fallacy">1</a></sup></p> + +<p>And you’re only enabling this centralization by joining mastodon.social! Really, what +even <em>is there</em> on mastodon.social? Have you even seen its local +timeline? Probably not. Join an instance with more flavor. Are you into, +say, the BSDs? Join bsd.network. Free software? fosstodon.org. Or host +your own for yourself and your friends. </p> + +<p>If you really do care about decentralization and freedom, and aren’t +just memeing to look cool on Twitter, then move your account to another +instance.<sup class="footnote-ref" id="fnref-move-account"><a href="#fn-move-account">2</a></sup></p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<hr /> +<ol> +<li id="fn-federation-fallacy"> +<p><a href="https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html">https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html</a> <a href="#fnref-federation-fallacy" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></p> +</li> + +<li id="fn-move-account"> +<p>Go to <code>/settings/migration</code> from your instance’s web +page. <a href="#fnref-move-account" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a></p> +</li> +</ol> +</div> +]]></description><link>https://icyphox.sh/blog/mastodon-social</link><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://icyphox.sh/blog/mastodon-social</guid></item><item><title>OpenBSD on the HP Envy 13</title><description><![CDATA[<p>My existing KISS install broke because I thought it would be a great idea to have <a href="https://github.com/alpinelinux/apk-tools">apk-tools</a> alongside the <code>kiss</code> package manager. It’s safe to say, that did not end well—especially when I installed, and then removed a package. With