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https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-four-more-on-posts-and-following/

In this Post
Toggle
What Kind of Guide is This?
Why am I Writing This?
How am I Writing This Guide?
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?
Coming Up
What Kind of Guide is This?

This is a guide for using the microblogging service Mastodon. While much of the infromation here can be applied to anyone, this guide is specifically designed for users of screen readers, software that provides spoken interpretations of content displayed on computer screens. It is not intended to replace the documentation for any specific screen reader, nor is it intended to replace any of the official Mastodon documentation. In fact, I’ll be linking to several of the documentation pages for Mastodon throughout these posts.
Why am I Writing This?

When Twitter hit critical mass as a microblogging service, it did so with the help of its then feature-rich API, meaning that you didn’t actually need to be logged on to the Twitter website to be using the service. Instead, you could use programs called clients to access the service, and you would have full access to the service, until the recent changes in Twitter’s API happened over the summer of 2018. During that time, I started looking into alternative microblogging services, because I discovered that is my preferred form of self-expression. I found Mastodon.
When I first encountered mastodon, I expected to need an API and a client to be able to use the service. I have been using a screen reader for over three decades at the time of this writing, and I’ve become used to needing an alternative way to access services like email and social networks. For example, this post is being published on a WordPress blog, but the writing and editing is being done through Google docs which, with the help of an add-on, will upload the doc to WordPress as a draft, and I’ll publish it later. (Just as an aside: The default WordPress is very accessible with screen readers. I just happen to really enjoy using Google Docs.) While I found a few such clients that I will discuss in a later chapter, what I found out is that I didn’t actually need a third-party program to use and enjoy Mastodon. This is because, unlike many services that incorporate accessibility as an afterthought following the building of the service, Mastodon appears to have been designed to be accessible from the beginning. If this is true, you may be thinking, then why is this guide necessary? Wouldn’t the original documentation be enough to get someone started?
Technically, yes. It was certainly enough to get me started, and I’ve seen plenty of screen reader users participating in the Mastodon community to their satisfaction. I’ve also seen people expressing frustration with the service. The most common complaint I hear is that the keyboard shortcuts offered by the Mastodon software don’t work. This series of posts will work to answer that, as well as any other problems a screen reader user may experience while using the service.
How am I Writing This Guide?

You may have noticed that this post had “Chapter One” in its title. This guide is going to be written as a series of posts that I was originally going to call parts and then decided to call chapters. There are two reasons for this.
First, I like to give a lot of detail to things when I write about them. If you’re the kind of person that needs lots of detail to grasp a new concept, this is going to work out splendidly for you. Unfortunately, this also means that the resulting post, were everything to be published in one, would be way longer than anyone on the Internet typically wants to read in one sitting. People click on a page to get their question answered, then they move on.
The second reason for publishing in multiple posts is so that, if you are the kind of person who likes to find an answer to their question and move on, you will be able to do that, and you wouldn’t even need to read an entire post. Each chapter is titled so that you know what’s in the chapter, like “Introduction”. If you’re at a point where you don’t need an introduction to this guide or Mastodon, you may wish to skip the first couple chapters, and start where your confusion started. Once you get there, you can jump to the section that best answers your question, using the “In this post” section below the post title and above the first section of the post, or jumping by heading until you get where you need to go.
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?

You don’t need anything special to sign up for and use Mastodon. However, here is a list of what you should have before you begin. Most of these you will already have, but it’s worth reviewing the list anyway.
A valid email address and password you can remember.
Confidence in your ability to use your screen reader fo choice, particularly with web browsing.
A browser other than Internet Explorer.
You’ll need to except the idea that while it has many features of Twitter, Mastodon is not necessarily designed to replace Twitter. There are some tools that will make your your life on Mastodon after or alongside Twitter easer, but mastodon is not Twitter.
An idea of what kind of online community you’d like to belong to. We’ll discuss this more in Chapter Two, but Mastodon has many communities (instances) one can join based on their interests.
You’ll need to except the idea that Mastodon is not a traditional program. It’s a web app, meaning that how you interact with it is different from what you may be used to. This will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter Three.
The willingness to work toward understanding new concepts.
The willingness to ask for help. You’re joining a community, and everyone there was new at some point. Users are generally friendly. Just remember to treat others how you would be treated.

Coming Up

In Chapter two , we’ll be taking a closer look at what Mastodon is, as well as how to choose and join an instance. the meantime, review the list of things you’ll need before you start, and get those things together so the next chapter will be a smooth experience for you.
https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-using-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-one-introduction/
#A11y #alternativeDocumentation #Mastodon #screenReaders

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#mastodon #a11y #iOS #Safari #boost #toot #jaws #nvda #timelines #voiceover #screenReaders #Chromevox #ScreenReaderUsers #directMessage #favoritemetion #NonvisualDesktopAccess #reply @Changeling Mx

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Changeling

4 years ago

Changeling
4 years ago

In this Post

Toggle

What is This?
The Road so Far…
What is Covered in This chapter?
Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)
More on Posts
Following other Users
Coming Up

What is This?

This is the fourth in a series that explains how to use Mastodon if you are a screen reader user. It is an alternative form of documentation to the existing Mastodon documentation. It is not intended to replace the documentation for Mastodon or your screen reader. The content in this chapter is fairly advanced, so you should go back and read the first three chapters before reading this one.

The Road so Far…

Chapter one gave an introduction to the series and explained the structure of the series.
Chapter Two explained what Mastodon was, what an instance was, and how to join an instance.
Chapter Three guided you through the process of creating your profile, and concluded with your first post, “Hello world.”

What is Covered in This chapter?

This chapter gives details about working with all of the elements in the post box. Each element will have an explanation of what it does, as well as steps for using it with your screen reader.

Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)

Toot
Emoji.
Media.
Alt text.
Pole.
Status privacy.
Content warning.
Follow.
Remote follow.

Following other Users

Now that you understand how to get your content out to the Fedeverse, it’s time to find other people to follow. This means that their content displays in your timeline, and you can interact with it. We’ll be talking about timelines and interacting in Chapter Five, but here are the things you can do:

Reply to a toot.
Boost a toot.
Favorite a toot.
View a user’s profile.

There are things you can do to interact with users, too, but we’ll save that for the next chapter.

How to Follow

There are many ways to follow a user, but most of them rely on your ability to interact with timelines. Since we haven’t discussed how to do that just yet, we’ll be using the searchbox on the home page of your instance that appears after you log in. Once Chapter Five comes out, you should consider reading Chapters Three, Four, and Five together to get a better understanding of how all of these things work together.

Using the Searchbox

There are two ways to move focus to the searchbox. The first one is to use your screen reader’s jump command to get to the searchbox, and then turn off jump commands to let you type in it. The second is to turn jump commands off, then press S to bring focus to the searchbox. Once you’re there type in your terms, then Tab to “Search” and press Enter.

Search results

Results are grouped by people, toots, and hashtags, and each section is indicated using a level five heading. Once you get to the desired section, use standard navigation to see what your search turned up.

Following SomeOne Using the Searchbox

Here are the steps for following people using the searchbox.

Navigate to the searchbox.
Type your search terms, and activate the search button.
Navigate to the “People” section.
Next to the person’s display name and username, find and click the “Follow” button.

Following Me Using the Searchbox

Navigate to the searchbox.
Type ChangelingRandy into the box, and activate the “search” button.
Navigate to the “People” section.
Click the “Follow” button next to my display name and username. The display name is Changeling Mx, and the full username is ChangelingRandy@mastodon.social.

Remote Following

Remote following is following Mastodon user that is not on your instance. The only thing that is different is the following process. Otherwise, your interactions are exactly the same. The exception is if your instance’s admin decides to block that person’s instance, or vice versa.

Remote following works like this. I live in one house, my Mastodon instance. Ashley lives in another house, her Mastodon instance. We aren’t part of the same house, but we are part of the same community. We can interact with each other from our own houses. The exception to this is if one of the landlords decides that people from the other house aren’t their kind of people and banishes them.

How to Remote Follow

Let’s assume you’ve done the search and found someone on another instance. Now:

Click the “Follow” button. Depending on the version of Mastodon your instance runs, you may need to do nothing else.
If this is not the case, you will be taken to another page where you can remote follow.
On that page find the edit box that asks your username and instance that you want to follow from. Write it like ChangelingRandy@mastodon.social.
Tab to and activate the “Follow” button.

Coming Up

In Chapter five, we’ll be talking about how to use timelines and interact with posts. In the meantime, go follow some people so your timelines have content.

#Ashely #Mastodon #MastodonForScreenReaderUsers #ScreenReaderUsers #screenReaders #toot #toots

https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-three-completing-your-profile-and-posting-your-first-toot/

In this Post
Toggle
What Kind of Guide is This?
Why am I Writing This?
How am I Writing This Guide?
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?
Coming Up
What Kind of Guide is This?

This is a guide for using the microblogging service Mastodon. While much of the infromation here can be applied to anyone, this guide is specifically designed for users of screen readers, software that provides spoken interpretations of content displayed on computer screens. It is not intended to replace the documentation for any specific screen reader, nor is it intended to replace any of the official Mastodon documentation. In fact, I’ll be linking to several of the documentation pages for Mastodon throughout these posts.
Why am I Writing This?

When Twitter hit critical mass as a microblogging service, it did so with the help of its then feature-rich API, meaning that you didn’t actually need to be logged on to the Twitter website to be using the service. Instead, you could use programs called clients to access the service, and you would have full access to the service, until the recent changes in Twitter’s API happened over the summer of 2018. During that time, I started looking into alternative microblogging services, because I discovered that is my preferred form of self-expression. I found Mastodon.
When I first encountered mastodon, I expected to need an API and a client to be able to use the service. I have been using a screen reader for over three decades at the time of this writing, and I’ve become used to needing an alternative way to access services like email and social networks. For example, this post is being published on a WordPress blog, but the writing and editing is being done through Google docs which, with the help of an add-on, will upload the doc to WordPress as a draft, and I’ll publish it later. (Just as an aside: The default WordPress is very accessible with screen readers. I just happen to really enjoy using Google Docs.) While I found a few such clients that I will discuss in a later chapter, what I found out is that I didn’t actually need a third-party program to use and enjoy Mastodon. This is because, unlike many services that incorporate accessibility as an afterthought following the building of the service, Mastodon appears to have been designed to be accessible from the beginning. If this is true, you may be thinking, then why is this guide necessary? Wouldn’t the original documentation be enough to get someone started?
Technically, yes. It was certainly enough to get me started, and I’ve seen plenty of screen reader users participating in the Mastodon community to their satisfaction. I’ve also seen people expressing frustration with the service. The most common complaint I hear is that the keyboard shortcuts offered by the Mastodon software don’t work. This series of posts will work to answer that, as well as any other problems a screen reader user may experience while using the service.
How am I Writing This Guide?

You may have noticed that this post had “Chapter One” in its title. This guide is going to be written as a series of posts that I was originally going to call parts and then decided to call chapters. There are two reasons for this.
First, I like to give a lot of detail to things when I write about them. If you’re the kind of person that needs lots of detail to grasp a new concept, this is going to work out splendidly for you. Unfortunately, this also means that the resulting post, were everything to be published in one, would be way longer than anyone on the Internet typically wants to read in one sitting. People click on a page to get their question answered, then they move on.
The second reason for publishing in multiple posts is so that, if you are the kind of person who likes to find an answer to their question and move on, you will be able to do that, and you wouldn’t even need to read an entire post. Each chapter is titled so that you know what’s in the chapter, like “Introduction”. If you’re at a point where you don’t need an introduction to this guide or Mastodon, you may wish to skip the first couple chapters, and start where your confusion started. Once you get there, you can jump to the section that best answers your question, using the “In this post” section below the post title and above the first section of the post, or jumping by heading until you get where you need to go.
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?

You don’t need anything special to sign up for and use Mastodon. However, here is a list of what you should have before you begin. Most of these you will already have, but it’s worth reviewing the list anyway.
A valid email address and password you can remember.
Confidence in your ability to use your screen reader fo choice, particularly with web browsing.
A browser other than Internet Explorer.
You’ll need to except the idea that while it has many features of Twitter, Mastodon is not necessarily designed to replace Twitter. There are some tools that will make your your life on Mastodon after or alongside Twitter easer, but mastodon is not Twitter.
An idea of what kind of online community you’d like to belong to. We’ll discuss this more in Chapter Two, but Mastodon has many communities (instances) one can join based on their interests.
You’ll need to except the idea that Mastodon is not a traditional program. It’s a web app, meaning that how you interact with it is different from what you may be used to. This will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter Three.
The willingness to work toward understanding new concepts.
The willingness to ask for help. You’re joining a community, and everyone there was new at some point. Users are generally friendly. Just remember to treat others how you would be treated.

Coming Up

In Chapter two , we’ll be taking a closer look at what Mastodon is, as well as how to choose and join an instance. the meantime, review the list of things you’ll need before you start, and get those things together so the next chapter will be a smooth experience for you.
https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-using-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-one-introduction/
#A11y #alternativeDocumentation #Mastodon #screenReaders

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Share a URL to any service. AddToAny helps you share to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, SMS, email and nearly any social media or cloud service.
^{www.addtoany.com}

#mastodon #toot #toots #screenReaders #ScreenReaderUsers #Ashely #MastodonForScreenReaderUsers

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View in context

Changeling

4 years ago

Changeling
4 years ago

In this Post

Toggle

What is This?
The Road So Far…
What is in This Chapter?
- Before We Begin…
  - Full Disclosure
Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)
Completing Your Profile
Profile Elements
Posting Your First Toot
Coming Up

What is This?

This is the third in a series of posts that describes how to use Mastodon if you are a screen reader user. It is an alternative form of documentation, but is not intended to replace the originaldocumentation for Mastodon or your screen reader. If you have just found this post, I strongly suggest you go back and read the first two chapters, links to which are in the next section.

The Road So Far…

Chapter One gave an introduction to the series, explained my reasons for writing it, and suggested things a person might need before joining an instance.
Chapter Two took a closer look at what Mastodon actually is, gave details about how to join instances, and briefly described the signup process.

If you haven’t done these things, now is your chance to go back and read these chapters. Otherwise, move on to the next section.

What is in This Chapter?

This chapter walks you through the process of completing your profile, as well as sending your first post, know as a Toot.

Before We Begin…

Before we begin, I want to talk about keyboard shortcuts. Rather than list all of the keyboard shortcuts for Mastodon, I ‘ve decided to bring them up when they occur in context. For example, when we are talking about sending a new post, those keyboard shortcuts will be listed in the directions. You can find a complete, out of context list here, or under the “Getting Started” section of your home page for your instance.

Similarly, I’m not going to list key commands for every screen reader. This guide assumes that you are mostly familiar with your own screen reader, or that you at least know how to access the documentation. The exception to this is when I need to make an example, or point out a situation where I know a specific screen reader behaves differently than expected.

Full Disclosure

I have not personally tested every screen reader. I know people with other screen readers are quite successful at using this platform, but I’m not aware of every single quirk there is. If you find that something doesn’t behave as described, feel free to leave it in the comments section, or use the contact form on the Contact page to get in touch. I’m even willing to work with you to try and work through any issues you may experience, as I know this is a lot of information.

For the record, I use Chrome with Chromevox on ChromeOS. Your experience may vary depending on browser, screen reader, and instance.

If you plan to primarily use a mobile device, chapter Six (to be published) will talk more about apps for this platform. You will need to consult the app’s documentation to bridge the gap.

Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)

Profile
Header
Avatar
Animated Avatar
bio
metadata
bot account
profile directory
verified content
Toot

Completing Your Profile

Now that you’ve signed up for an instance, it’s time to create your profile. This is what other users will see when they come to your page on the instance. It does not offer as many options as a standard Facebook profile, but it’s also got more customization and flexibility than other microblogging services typically offer.

To edit your profile, do the following:

Log in to your instance.
If your screen reader puts your focus on the “Compose new Toot” box, move away from it, and then go to the top of the page.
Find the link that says “Edit profile”, and click it.
Use standard navigation to move through and fill out the web form. If you move through the page using the arrows rather than the tab key, you’ll find helpful hints for each piece of content you can include. They will also be described here.
When finished, click the button that says “Save Changes”.

Profile Elements

All of your profile elements are optional. Some of these you’ve most likely seen before, and some of these will be new. I’ll go through them now.

Display Name

This is where you put your name, or what you like to be called. You can include emojis. It’s worth noting that, unlike Facebook, Mastodon does not require you to use your real name.

Header

A Header is an image that goes at the top of your profile. you can use it to express an interest, hobby, belief system, etc. Note that whatever picture you use will be resized to 1500x500px, and is limited to a size of 2MB.

Avatar

An avatar is a picture, separate from your header, that represents you, the user. The maximum file size is 2MB, and the picture will be resized to 400x400px.

Be Picky About Your Pictures

When choosing both your header and avatar, remember to make sure both pictures keep to the code of conduct for your instance. For more information about instances and codes of conduct, see Chapter Two

Animated Avatar

An animated avatar is an avatar that moves, like the pictures in Harry Potter. Mastodon lets you use these, but keep in mind that many users find animated avatars distracting, and these kinds of avatars can be dangerous for people who are prone to seizures. It seems best to avoid these to me, but that’s just my own experience.

Bio

Your bio is your biography. Not the kind that starts something like, “I was born on a dark and stormy night in the heat of summer,” but a snapshot of the things you’re interested in. If you put a hashtag (#) on these, you can add yourself to the profile directory, which lets others find you by interest. If you don’t want that, don’t hashtag, and uncheck the box to include your profile in the directory. You can also lock your account, so that people have to send you requests to follow you.

Bot Account

A bot account is an automated account. If you’re reading this, you’re not one of them.

Metadata

Metadata is the section of your profile whete you put things that didn’t make it into your bio, but you want people to know about. You can put up to four items here. Each item gets a label, and a place for the content. This is a good spot for links to other profiles.

Verified Content

verified content is a way to verify to users that you own the content your linking to in your metadata. It uses rel=”me” links to do this. Rel=”me” is far beyond the scope of this discussion, but you can check out my H-Card in the sidebar of this page to see them in action.

Suggestions

Here are some suggestions for completing your profile. The best thing to do is to try each thing on to see if it fits you. You can edit your profile as often as you like.

Be authentic. Mastodon is a big world. You’ll find someone who shares your interests.
Remember that the bio is only a snapshot. It’s okay if not every detail is there. That’s what posting is for.
Consider including your pronouns somewhere in your profile. Mastodon has become very popular for GLBTQIA folks, and the result ispeople may be uncomfortable making assumptions based on your name, physical appearance, etc. To make sure everyone has a comfortable experience, provide your pronouns so people will know how to refer to you. It can either go directly in your bio, or be part of the metadata.

Now that your profile is complete and you’ve saved the changes, find the link at the top of the page that says, “Mastodon”. Click it to return to the main page. You’re ready to send your first post.

Posting Your First Toot

A Toot is what Mastodon calls users’ statuses. In this section, we’ll be posting a toot that says, “Hello World.” From the main page of your Mastodon instance, press Alt+N to compose a new toot. Alternatively, use your screen reader’s jump command for edit boxes to get to the compose box. Once you do, use the command that lets your screen reader know you want to enter text.

Elements of the Compose Box

You can use Tab and Shift+Tab to navigate the compose box. We’ll be discussing what each element does in more detail in the next chapter, but here’s what you can expect to find.

Multi-line edit box.
Insert Emoji dropdown.
Add Media button.
Add a Pole button.
Adjust Status Privacy dropdown.
“Text is not Hidden” dropdown. This is where you can set a content warning.
Toot button.

Compose Your “Hello World” Toot: Method One

Navigate to the compose box with Alt+N, or with the jump command for edit boxes specific to your screen reader.
Make sure your screen reader is set to enter text into the box. Common names for this are Forms mode (JAWS), Focus Mode (NVDA), etc.
Type “hello World.” into the box without the quotes.
Tab until you hear “Toot”, and activate that button.

Composing Your “Hello World” Toot: method Two

Navigate to the compose box with Alt+N, or with the jump command for edit boxes specific to your screen reader.
Make sure your screen reader is set to enter text into the box. Common names for this are Forms mode (JAWS), Focus Mode (NVDA), etc.
Type “hello World.” into the box without the quotes.
Press CTRL+Enter to send the Toot.

Coming Up

In Chapter Four, we’ll be taking a more detailed look at working with posts, as well as finding people to follow. In the meantime, this is a good time to sit back and relax. It’s been a long road so far.

#A11y #AccessTechnology #blindness #Mastodon #screenReaders

https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-two-a-closer-look-joining-instances-and-signing-up/

In this Post
Toggle
What Kind of Guide is This?
Why am I Writing This?
How am I Writing This Guide?
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?
Coming Up
What Kind of Guide is This?

This is a guide for using the microblogging service Mastodon. While much of the infromation here can be applied to anyone, this guide is specifically designed for users of screen readers, software that provides spoken interpretations of content displayed on computer screens. It is not intended to replace the documentation for any specific screen reader, nor is it intended to replace any of the official Mastodon documentation. In fact, I’ll be linking to several of the documentation pages for Mastodon throughout these posts.
Why am I Writing This?

When Twitter hit critical mass as a microblogging service, it did so with the help of its then feature-rich API, meaning that you didn’t actually need to be logged on to the Twitter website to be using the service. Instead, you could use programs called clients to access the service, and you would have full access to the service, until the recent changes in Twitter’s API happened over the summer of 2018. During that time, I started looking into alternative microblogging services, because I discovered that is my preferred form of self-expression. I found Mastodon.
When I first encountered mastodon, I expected to need an API and a client to be able to use the service. I have been using a screen reader for over three decades at the time of this writing, and I’ve become used to needing an alternative way to access services like email and social networks. For example, this post is being published on a WordPress blog, but the writing and editing is being done through Google docs which, with the help of an add-on, will upload the doc to WordPress as a draft, and I’ll publish it later. (Just as an aside: The default WordPress is very accessible with screen readers. I just happen to really enjoy using Google Docs.) While I found a few such clients that I will discuss in a later chapter, what I found out is that I didn’t actually need a third-party program to use and enjoy Mastodon. This is because, unlike many services that incorporate accessibility as an afterthought following the building of the service, Mastodon appears to have been designed to be accessible from the beginning. If this is true, you may be thinking, then why is this guide necessary? Wouldn’t the original documentation be enough to get someone started?
Technically, yes. It was certainly enough to get me started, and I’ve seen plenty of screen reader users participating in the Mastodon community to their satisfaction. I’ve also seen people expressing frustration with the service. The most common complaint I hear is that the keyboard shortcuts offered by the Mastodon software don’t work. This series of posts will work to answer that, as well as any other problems a screen reader user may experience while using the service.
How am I Writing This Guide?

You may have noticed that this post had “Chapter One” in its title. This guide is going to be written as a series of posts that I was originally going to call parts and then decided to call chapters. There are two reasons for this.
First, I like to give a lot of detail to things when I write about them. If you’re the kind of person that needs lots of detail to grasp a new concept, this is going to work out splendidly for you. Unfortunately, this also means that the resulting post, were everything to be published in one, would be way longer than anyone on the Internet typically wants to read in one sitting. People click on a page to get their question answered, then they move on.
The second reason for publishing in multiple posts is so that, if you are the kind of person who likes to find an answer to their question and move on, you will be able to do that, and you wouldn’t even need to read an entire post. Each chapter is titled so that you know what’s in the chapter, like “Introduction”. If you’re at a point where you don’t need an introduction to this guide or Mastodon, you may wish to skip the first couple chapters, and start where your confusion started. Once you get there, you can jump to the section that best answers your question, using the “In this post” section below the post title and above the first section of the post, or jumping by heading until you get where you need to go.
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?

You don’t need anything special to sign up for and use Mastodon. However, here is a list of what you should have before you begin. Most of these you will already have, but it’s worth reviewing the list anyway.
A valid email address and password you can remember.
Confidence in your ability to use your screen reader fo choice, particularly with web browsing.
A browser other than Internet Explorer.
You’ll need to except the idea that while it has many features of Twitter, Mastodon is not necessarily designed to replace Twitter. There are some tools that will make your your life on Mastodon after or alongside Twitter easer, but mastodon is not Twitter.
An idea of what kind of online community you’d like to belong to. We’ll discuss this more in Chapter Two, but Mastodon has many communities (instances) one can join based on their interests.
You’ll need to except the idea that Mastodon is not a traditional program. It’s a web app, meaning that how you interact with it is different from what you may be used to. This will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter Three.
The willingness to work toward understanding new concepts.
The willingness to ask for help. You’re joining a community, and everyone there was new at some point. Users are generally friendly. Just remember to treat others how you would be treated.

Coming Up

In Chapter two , we’ll be taking a closer look at what Mastodon is, as well as how to choose and join an instance. the meantime, review the list of things you’ll need before you start, and get those things together so the next chapter will be a smooth experience for you.
https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-using-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-one-introduction/
#A11y #alternativeDocumentation #Mastodon #screenReaders

AddToAny - Share
Share a URL to any service. AddToAny helps you share to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, SMS, email and nearly any social media or cloud service.
^{www.addtoany.com}

Mastodon - Decentralized social media

Learn more about Mastodon, the radically different, free and open-source decentralized social media platform.

^{joinmastodon.org}

#mastodon #a11y #screenReaders #AccessTechnology #blindness

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Changeling

4 years ago

Changeling
4 years ago

In this Post

Toggle

What is This?
What is Covered in This Chapter?
Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)
A Closer Look at Mastodon
- Doesn’t That Already Exist?
  - Common Features Between Twitter and Mastodon
- With So Many Similarities, Why Not Just Stay on Twitter?
  - The Argument I Refuse to Make
  - Don’t Let Me Scare You off
Instances
- How Do I choose My Instance?
Signing Up
Coming Up

What is This?

This is the second in a series of posts that explains how to use Mastodon if you use a screen reader. It is an alternative form of the already existing documentation for Mastodon, subject to my interpretation of concepts. Therefore, I suggest that you use this guide in conjunction with the official documentation, linked to later in this post. I also suggest that you go back and read Chapter One. Once you’ve done that, continue reading this chapter.

What is Covered in This Chapter?

This chapter takes a closer look at what Mastodon is, deals with the concept of instances, explains the differences between Mastodon and other platforms, offers suggestions on choosing an instance, and concludes with a brief description of the signup process. If you’ve already done these things, go on to Chapter Three.

Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)

Microblog
Instance
Federation, fedeverse

A Closer Look at Mastodon

You probably have an idea of what Mastodon is by now, or else why would you be reading this? Just to make sure I’m covering my bases, however, let’s take a closer look. Mastodon is a service that offers its users a microblog, a space to share short posts with no title, and the option to attach media such as pictures and videos. Other users can then interact with these posts in a number of ways, discussed in chapters and Five.

Doesn’t That Already Exist?

It sure does. These days, Twitter is synonymous with microblogging, because it’s the most popular. This is similar to how America Online (AOL) was once the most popular form of Internet access, but it was not the only service like that, and it certainly not the Internet. Just like forms of Internet access, email, and many other services, it is to be expected that different microblogging services would have some features in common. I’ll briefly discuss some of those now.

Common Features Between Twitter and Mastodon

The primary form of communication is short statuses. On twitter, this limit is 280 characters, and 500 on Mastodon.
The ability reply to, like/favorite, and repost posts. (More on this in chapter Five.)
Being able to follow and be followed by other users. (More on this in Chapter Four).
The ability to create custom timelines by creating and adding users to lists. (More on this in Chapter Six, coming soon).
The ability to filter out unwanted content. (Also discussed in chapter Six.)

With So Many Similarities, Why Not Just Stay on Twitter?

Let me take this opportunity to tell you that I have no special reason for you to leave Twitter if you’re happy there. I mean, we’re in Chapter Two of this guide, clearly there is more to come, and if you’re still reading up to this point, it’s because you’ve already made the decision to at least consider having a presence on Mastodon. With that said, there are plenty of differences between the two services, but we need to take a look at a few concepts before we can discuss them. This is a lot like how when you got your first email address, you probably read the documentation of something like Gmail before you decided to switch providers, or at least that you needed a second email address.

The Argument I Refuse to Make

The most common argument I hear for using mastodon is something to the tune of everybody is so friendly on Mastodon. I’ve never had a bad experience on Mastodon, but the fact of the matter is Mastodon is a place for people, and people have the capacity to be hostile regardless of the platform. The most infamous example of this is the situation concerning Wil Wheaton from last summer, followed immediately by many users’ decision to block one Instance when they found out it was admined by someone who had done work for the FBI. In both cases, people had their own reasons for behaving the way they did, but it was still aggressive behavior. If you’re going to be online, if you’re going to interact with people, there’s a chance you may experience some form of hostility.

Don’t Let Me Scare You off

If you’ve come this far, don’t let me scare you off. If you choose your instance carefully, you can minimize the chance for hostile encounters. As you’ll see in the next section, it’s a lot like picking a neighborhood to live in.

Instances

Before you can find out what an instance is, you need to know how Mastodon works. With a service like Facebook or Twitter, you and I, the users, sign up for an account, managed by one central server, accessed when we open our browser and log on to something like twitter.com. To find a user, you put a slash after the web address, so if you wanted to find me on Twitter, you’d go to twitter.com/changelingmx. From there, you can click the follow button, and if I can verify that you aren’t a porn bot, won’t clog my timeline with Bible quotes, etc., I’ll probably follow you back, and we’re connected. We’re interacting within one ecosystem. This is just fine until the ecosystem dies (looking at you, Google+!), in which case we all die, digitally speaking.

As explained on joinmastodon.org, rather than being one website, the Mastodon network is a collection of websites powered by the mastodon software, which enables them to interact with each other. Each of these websites is called an instance.

You pick your instance the way you choose your email address. In fact, my Mastodon address looks like ChangelingRandy@mastodon.social. If you’re reading this on an iPhone and click that link, you’ll actually launch the device’s Mail client. If you want to find me once you join your chosen instance, click here, or see the H-Card widget in the sidebar of any starshipchangeling.net page, which has every link for every service i actively use. If you don’t want to see all of my Mastodon interactions, but want to follow this blog, you can follow it via Mastodon by typing “changelingmx@www.starshipchangeling.net”, minus the quotations. All of these websites together form the fedeverse, or, as Mastodon calls itself, a decentralized, federated social network. This detail becomes particularly important starting in Chapter Four. For now, what you need to take away is that instances can interact with each other, meaning that some on mastodon.cloud can follow me on mastodon.social. It’s also important to understand that instances can block each other, which happens from time to time since anybody can run a Mastodon instance, regardless of whether or not their opinion is a popular one.

How Do I choose My Instance?

To paraphrase a passage from Ernest Cline’s Armada, this is an objective, rather than a subjective task, so there is no right way to do it. It’s not uncommon for someone to join an instance, realize it’s not a good fit, and change instances. You may go through that process, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Here are some suggestions to guide you.

Choose Based on Interest

Anybody can run a Mastodon instance. This means if you can think of it, there’s probably a community for it. The “Getting Started” section of joinmastodon.org has a form you can fill out to get server suggestions. Parameters include everything from what language you speak, to your hobbies.

Choose Based on How You Feel About Rules

Since anybody can run a Mastodon instance, the code of conduct from instance to instance varies. Theoretically, I could start an instance that requires users to be able to quote every line from Disney’s “Aladdin” upon request. Realistically I’d be the only member of that instance. Seriously, though, pay close attention to the rules of the instance. Each instance has them. Here is the code of conduct for mastodon.social. Please believe me when I tell you that these rules are usually strictly enforced.

Considerations for Screen Reader Users

The following is a list of questions a screen reader user should consider before joining an instance.

What version of the Mastodon software does the instance run? Newer versions often have accessibility improvements.
Does the instance run beta versions of the mastodon software? If so, make your life easier by considering the following:
- Have a backup of your data in case you need to leave. (described in Chapter Six).
- Have a backup account on a stable instance. This will help you troubleshoot any problems you may have by enabling you to distinguish between caused by beta software and bug in a stable release.
Do uploaded images appear as links you can click? This will make it easier to download images for further analysis by AI.

Signing Up

If you can fill out a web form, you can sign up for the instance of your choice. Enter your desired username, your email, and your passowrd in the appropriate boxes. Once you’ve confirmed your password, use your screen reader to check the boxes to agree to follow the rules of the instance and privacy policy. Once you submit the infromation and verify your email address, your ready to complete your profile.

Coming Up

In Chapter Three, we’ll be looking at how to complete your profile, as well as send that first post. In the meantime, go ahead and pick your instance and join it, so you will be ready for the next installment.

#A11y #Chromevox #hackerTown #JAWS #Mastodon #NVDA #ScreenReaderUsers #screenReaders #SocialNetworks #technology #Twitter #VoiceOver #WilWheaton

https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-using-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-one-introduction/

In this Post
Toggle
What Kind of Guide is This?
Why am I Writing This?
How am I Writing This Guide?
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?
Coming Up
What Kind of Guide is This?

This is a guide for using the microblogging service Mastodon. While much of the infromation here can be applied to anyone, this guide is specifically designed for users of screen readers, software that provides spoken interpretations of content displayed on computer screens. It is not intended to replace the documentation for any specific screen reader, nor is it intended to replace any of the official Mastodon documentation. In fact, I’ll be linking to several of the documentation pages for Mastodon throughout these posts.
Why am I Writing This?

When Twitter hit critical mass as a microblogging service, it did so with the help of its then feature-rich API, meaning that you didn’t actually need to be logged on to the Twitter website to be using the service. Instead, you could use programs called clients to access the service, and you would have full access to the service, until the recent changes in Twitter’s API happened over the summer of 2018. During that time, I started looking into alternative microblogging services, because I discovered that is my preferred form of self-expression. I found Mastodon.
When I first encountered mastodon, I expected to need an API and a client to be able to use the service. I have been using a screen reader for over three decades at the time of this writing, and I’ve become used to needing an alternative way to access services like email and social networks. For example, this post is being published on a WordPress blog, but the writing and editing is being done through Google docs which, with the help of an add-on, will upload the doc to WordPress as a draft, and I’ll publish it later. (Just as an aside: The default WordPress is very accessible with screen readers. I just happen to really enjoy using Google Docs.) While I found a few such clients that I will discuss in a later chapter, what I found out is that I didn’t actually need a third-party program to use and enjoy Mastodon. This is because, unlike many services that incorporate accessibility as an afterthought following the building of the service, Mastodon appears to have been designed to be accessible from the beginning. If this is true, you may be thinking, then why is this guide necessary? Wouldn’t the original documentation be enough to get someone started?
Technically, yes. It was certainly enough to get me started, and I’ve seen plenty of screen reader users participating in the Mastodon community to their satisfaction. I’ve also seen people expressing frustration with the service. The most common complaint I hear is that the keyboard shortcuts offered by the Mastodon software don’t work. This series of posts will work to answer that, as well as any other problems a screen reader user may experience while using the service.
How am I Writing This Guide?

You may have noticed that this post had “Chapter One” in its title. This guide is going to be written as a series of posts that I was originally going to call parts and then decided to call chapters. There are two reasons for this.
First, I like to give a lot of detail to things when I write about them. If you’re the kind of person that needs lots of detail to grasp a new concept, this is going to work out splendidly for you. Unfortunately, this also means that the resulting post, were everything to be published in one, would be way longer than anyone on the Internet typically wants to read in one sitting. People click on a page to get their question answered, then they move on.
The second reason for publishing in multiple posts is so that, if you are the kind of person who likes to find an answer to their question and move on, you will be able to do that, and you wouldn’t even need to read an entire post. Each chapter is titled so that you know what’s in the chapter, like “Introduction”. If you’re at a point where you don’t need an introduction to this guide or Mastodon, you may wish to skip the first couple chapters, and start where your confusion started. Once you get there, you can jump to the section that best answers your question, using the “In this post” section below the post title and above the first section of the post, or jumping by heading until you get where you need to go.
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?

You don’t need anything special to sign up for and use Mastodon. However, here is a list of what you should have before you begin. Most of these you will already have, but it’s worth reviewing the list anyway.
A valid email address and password you can remember.
Confidence in your ability to use your screen reader fo choice, particularly with web browsing.
A browser other than Internet Explorer.
You’ll need to except the idea that while it has many features of Twitter, Mastodon is not necessarily designed to replace Twitter. There are some tools that will make your your life on Mastodon after or alongside Twitter easer, but mastodon is not Twitter.
An idea of what kind of online community you’d like to belong to. We’ll discuss this more in Chapter Two, but Mastodon has many communities (instances) one can join based on their interests.
You’ll need to except the idea that Mastodon is not a traditional program. It’s a web app, meaning that how you interact with it is different from what you may be used to. This will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter Three.
The willingness to work toward understanding new concepts.
The willingness to ask for help. You’re joining a community, and everyone there was new at some point. Users are generally friendly. Just remember to treat others how you would be treated.

Coming Up

In Chapter two , we’ll be taking a closer look at what Mastodon is, as well as how to choose and join an instance. the meantime, review the list of things you’ll need before you start, and get those things together so the next chapter will be a smooth experience for you.
https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-using-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-one-introduction/
#A11y #alternativeDocumentation #Mastodon #screenReaders

AddToAny - Share
Share a URL to any service. AddToAny helps you share to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, SMS, email and nearly any social media or cloud service.
^{www.addtoany.com}

Twitter rival Mastodon isn’t safe from online mobs either

The mass reporting and suspension of actor Wil Wheaton prompts the open-source platform to examine its moderation tools.

^{Megan Farokhmanesh (The Verge)}

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.net)

#Twitter #mastodon #a11y #Technology #socialnetworks #jaws #wilwheaton #nvda #voiceover #screenReaders #Chromevox #hackerTown #ScreenReaderUsers

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View in context

Changeling

4 years ago

Changeling
4 years ago

In this Post

Toggle

What Kind of Guide is This?
Why am I Writing This?
How am I Writing This Guide?
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?
Coming Up

What Kind of Guide is This?

In this Post

Toggle

What Kind of Guide is This?
Why am I Writing This?
How am I Writing This Guide?
What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?
Coming Up

What Kind of Guide is This?

This is a guide for using the microblogging service Mastodon. While much of the infromation here can be applied to anyone, this guide is specifically designed for users of screen readers, software that provides spoken interpretations of content displayed on computer screens. It is not intended to replace the documentation for any specific screen reader, nor is it intended to replace any of the official Mastodon documentation. In fact, I’ll be linking to several of the documentation pages for Mastodon throughout these posts.

Why am I Writing This?

When Twitter hit critical mass as a microblogging service, it did so with the help of its then feature-rich API, meaning that you didn’t actually need to be logged on to the Twitter website to be using the service. Instead, you could use programs called clients to access the service, and you would have full access to the service, until the recent changes in Twitter’s API happened over the summer of 2018. During that time, I started looking into alternative microblogging services, because I discovered that is my preferred form of self-expression. I found Mastodon.

When I first encountered mastodon, I expected to need an API and a client to be able to use the service. I have been using a screen reader for over three decades at the time of this writing, and I’ve become used to needing an alternative way to access services like email and social networks. For example, this post is being published on a WordPress blog, but the writing and editing is being done through Google docs which, with the help of an add-on, will upload the doc to WordPress as a draft, and I’ll publish it later. (Just as an aside: The default WordPress is very accessible with screen readers. I just happen to really enjoy using Google Docs.) While I found a few such clients that I will discuss in a later chapter, what I found out is that I didn’t actually need a third-party program to use and enjoy Mastodon. This is because, unlike many services that incorporate accessibility as an afterthought following the building of the service, Mastodon appears to have been designed to be accessible from the beginning. If this is true, you may be thinking, then why is this guide necessary? Wouldn’t the original documentation be enough to get someone started?

Technically, yes. It was certainly enough to get me started, and I’ve seen plenty of screen reader users participating in the Mastodon community to their satisfaction. I’ve also seen people expressing frustration with the service. The most common complaint I hear is that the keyboard shortcuts offered by the Mastodon software don’t work. This series of posts will work to answer that, as well as any other problems a screen reader user may experience while using the service.

How am I Writing This Guide?

You may have noticed that this post had “Chapter One” in its title. This guide is going to be written as a series of posts that I was originally going to call parts and then decided to call chapters. There are two reasons for this.

First, I like to give a lot of detail to things when I write about them. If you’re the kind of person that needs lots of detail to grasp a new concept, this is going to work out splendidly for you. Unfortunately, this also means that the resulting post, were everything to be published in one, would be way longer than anyone on the Internet typically wants to read in one sitting. People click on a page to get their question answered, then they move on.

The second reason for publishing in multiple posts is so that, if you are the kind of person who likes to find an answer to their question and move on, you will be able to do that, and you wouldn’t even need to read an entire post. Each chapter is titled so that you know what’s in the chapter, like “Introduction”. If you’re at a point where you don’t need an introduction to this guide or Mastodon, you may wish to skip the first couple chapters, and start where your confusion started. Once you get there, you can jump to the section that best answers your question, using the “In this post” section below the post title and above the first section of the post, or jumping by heading until you get where you need to go.

What do I need to use Mastodon with a screen reader?

You don’t need anything special to sign up for and use Mastodon. However, here is a list of what you should have before you begin. Most of these you will already have, but it’s worth reviewing the list anyway.

A valid email address and password you can remember.
Confidence in your ability to use your screen reader fo choice, particularly with web browsing.
A browser other than Internet Explorer.
You’ll need to except the idea that while it has many features of Twitter, Mastodon is not necessarily designed to replace Twitter. There are some tools that will make your your life on Mastodon after or alongside Twitter easer, but mastodon is not Twitter.
An idea of what kind of online community you’d like to belong to. We’ll discuss this more in Chapter Two, but Mastodon has many communities (instances) one can join based on their interests.
You’ll need to except the idea that Mastodon is not a traditional program. It’s a web app, meaning that how you interact with it is different from what you may be used to. This will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter Three.
The willingness to work toward understanding new concepts.
The willingness to ask for help. You’re joining a community, and everyone there was new at some point. Users are generally friendly. Just remember to treat others how you would be treated.

Coming Up

In Chapter two , we’ll be taking a closer look at what Mastodon is, as well as how to choose and join an instance. the meantime, review the list of things you’ll need before you start, and get those things together so the next chapter will be a smooth experience for you.

#A11y #alternativeDocumentation #Mastodon #screenReaders

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/110169905368463347/embed

2019-03-28 21:26:03

In this Post
Toggle
What is This?
What is Covered in This Chapter?
Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)
A Closer Look at Mastodon
Doesn’t That Already Exist?
Common Features Between Twitter and Mastodon

With So Many Similarities, Why Not Just Stay on Twitter?
The Argument I Refuse to Make
Don’t Let Me Scare You off

Instances
How Do I choose My Instance?
Choose Based on Interest
Choose Based on How You Feel About Rules
Considerations for Screen Reader Users

Signing Up
Coming Up
What is This?

This is the second in a series of posts that explains how to use Mastodon if you use a screen reader. It is an alternative form of the already existing documentation for Mastodon, subject to my interpretation of concepts. Therefore, I suggest that you use this guide in conjunction with the official documentation, linked to later in this post. I also suggest that you go back and read Chapter One. Once you’ve done that, continue reading this chapter.
What is Covered in This Chapter?

This chapter takes a closer look at what Mastodon is, deals with the concept of instances, explains the differences between Mastodon and other platforms, offers suggestions on choosing an instance, and concludes with a brief description of the signup process. If you’ve already done these things, go on to Chapter Three.
Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)

Microblog
Instance
Federation, fedeverse

A Closer Look at Mastodon

You probably have an idea of what Mastodon is by now, or else why would you be reading this? Just to make sure I’m covering my bases, however, let’s take a closer look. Mastodon is a service that offers its users a microblog, a space to share short posts with no title, and the option to attach media such as pictures and videos. Other users can then interact with these posts in a number of ways, discussed in chapters and Five.
Doesn’t That Already Exist?

It sure does. These days, Twitter is synonymous with microblogging, because it’s the most popular. This is similar to how America Online (AOL) was once the most popular form of Internet access, but it was not the only service like that, and it certainly not the Internet. Just like forms of Internet access, email, and many other services, it is to be expected that different microblogging services would have some features in common. I’ll briefly discuss some of those now.
Common Features Between Twitter and Mastodon

The primary form of communication is short statuses. On twitter, this limit is 280 characters, and 500 on Mastodon.
The ability reply to, like/favorite, and repost posts. (More on this in chapter Five.)
Being able to follow and be followed by other users. (More on this in Chapter Four).
The ability to create custom timelines by creating and adding users to lists. (More on this in Chapter Six, coming soon).
The ability to filter out unwanted content. (Also discussed in chapter Six.)

With So Many Similarities, Why Not Just Stay on Twitter?

Let me take this opportunity to tell you that I have no special reason for you to leave Twitter if you’re happy there. I mean, we’re in Chapter Two of this guide, clearly there is more to come, and if you’re still reading up to this point, it’s because you’ve already made the decision to at least consider having a presence on Mastodon. With that said, there are plenty of differences between the two services, but we need to take a look at a few concepts before we can discuss them. This is a lot like how when you got your first email address, you probably read the documentation of something like Gmail before you decided to switch providers, or at least that you needed a second email address.
The Argument I Refuse to Make

The most common argument I hear for using mastodon is something to the tune of everybody is so friendly on Mastodon. I’ve never had a bad experience on Mastodon, but the fact of the matter is Mastodon is a place for people, and people have the capacity to be hostile regardless of the platform. The most infamous example of this is the situation concerning Wil Wheaton from last summer, followed immediately by many users’ decision to block one Instance when they found out it was admined by someone who had done work for the FBI. In both cases, people had their own reasons for behaving the way they did, but it was still aggressive behavior. If you’re going to be online, if you’re going to interact with people, there’s a chance you may experience some form of hostility.
Don’t Let Me Scare You off

If you’ve come this far, don’t let me scare you off. If you choose your instance carefully, you can minimize the chance for hostile encounters. As you’ll see in the next section, it’s a lot like picking a neighborhood to live in.
Instances

Before you can find out what an instance is, you need to know how Mastodon works. With a service like Facebook or Twitter, you and I, the users, sign up for an account, managed by one central server, accessed when we open our browser and log on to something like twitter.com. To find a user, you put a slash after the web address, so if you wanted to find me on Twitter, you’d go to twitter.com/changelingmx. From there, you can click the follow button, and if I can verify that you aren’t a porn bot, won’t clog my timeline with Bible quotes, etc., I’ll probably follow you back, and we’re connected. We’re interacting within one ecosystem. This is just fine until the ecosystem dies (looking at you, Google+!), in which case we all die, digitally speaking.
As explained on joinmastodon.org, rather than being one website, the Mastodon network is a collection of websites powered by the mastodon software, which enables them to interact with each other. Each of these websites is called an instance.
You pick your instance the way you choose your email address. In fact, my Mastodon address looks like ChangelingRandy@mastodon.social. If you’re reading this on an iPhone and click that link, you’ll actually launch the device’s Mail client. If you want to find me once you join your chosen instance, click here, or see the H-Card widget in the sidebar of any starshipchangeling.net page, which has every link for every service i actively use. If you don’t want to see all of my Mastodon interactions, but want to follow this blog, you can follow it via Mastodon by typing “changelingmx@www.starshipchangeling.net”, minus the quotations. All of these websites together form the fedeverse, or, as Mastodon calls itself, a decentralized, federated social network. This detail becomes particularly important starting in Chapter Four. For now, what you need to take away is that instances can interact with each other, meaning that some on mastodon.cloud can follow me on mastodon.social. It’s also important to understand that instances can block each other, which happens from time to time since anybody can run a Mastodon instance, regardless of whether or not their opinion is a popular one.
How Do I choose My Instance?

To paraphrase a passage from Ernest Cline’s Armada, this is an objective, rather than a subjective task, so there is no right way to do it. It’s not uncommon for someone to join an instance, realize it’s not a good fit, and change instances. You may go through that process, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Here are some suggestions to guide you.
Choose Based on Interest

Anybody can run a Mastodon instance. This means if you can think of it, there’s probably a community for it. The “Getting Started” section of joinmastodon.org has a form you can fill out to get server suggestions. Parameters include everything from what language you speak, to your hobbies.
Choose Based on How You Feel About Rules

Since anybody can run a Mastodon instance, the code of conduct from instance to instance varies. Theoretically, I could start an instance that requires users to be able to quote every line from Disney’s “Aladdin” upon request. Realistically I’d be the only member of that instance. Seriously, though, pay close attention to the rules of the instance. Each instance has them. Here is the code of conduct for mastodon.social. Please believe me when I tell you that these rules are usually strictly enforced.
Considerations for Screen Reader Users

The following is a list of questions a screen reader user should consider before joining an instance.
What version of the Mastodon software does the instance run? Newer versions often have accessibility improvements.
Does the instance run beta versions of the mastodon software? If so, make your life easier by considering the following:
Have a backup of your data in case you need to leave. (described in Chapter Six).
Have a backup account on a stable instance. This will help you troubleshoot any problems you may have by enabling you to distinguish between caused by beta software and bug in a stable release.

Do uploaded images appear as links you can click? This will make it easier to download images for further analysis by AI.

Signing Up

If you can fill out a web form, you can sign up for the instance of your choice. Enter your desired username, your email, and your passowrd in the appropriate boxes. Once you’ve confirmed your password, use your screen reader to check the boxes to agree to follow the rules of the instance and privacy policy. Once you submit the infromation and verify your email address, your ready to complete your profile.
Coming Up

In Chapter Three, we’ll be looking at how to complete your profile, as well as send that first post. In the meantime, go ahead and pick your instance and join it, so you will be ready for the next installment.
https://www.starshipchangeling.net/changelings-guide-to-mastodon-for-screen-reader-users-chapter-two-a-closer-look-joining-instances-and-signing-up/
#A11y #Chromevox #hackerTown #JAWS #Mastodon #NVDA #ScreenReaderUsers #screenReaders #SocialNetworks #technology #Twitter #VoiceOver #WilWheaton

Twitter rival Mastodon isn’t safe from online mobs either
The mass reporting and suspension of actor Wil Wheaton prompts the open-source platform to examine its moderation tools.
^{Megan Farokhmanesh (The Verge)}

(Nitter addon enabled: Twitter links via https://nitter.net)

#mastodon #a11y #alternativeDocumentation #screenReaders

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Laurens Hof

8 months ago

Laurens Hof
8 months ago

The Roundup – episode 13

Lots of news items this week. The major milestone is the 1 billion posts across the entire fediverse per month! Lots of new interesting tools as well, it won’t be long before that will turn into an entirely separate post each week.

I’m also fascinated by the speed with which PixelFed is developing. So far, Mastodon has been the centre piece of the fediverse, it’s where all the app development goes, and what everyone talks about. But PixelFed is quickly becoming a big contender as well. The release of Stories will certainly contribute to that. There is a new third party iOS app, Vernissage, and a new easy friend-finding tool. Curious to see how this will develop.

The Links

The fediverse

The Roundup – episode 13

The Links

The fediverse has reached a new milestone: an average of 1 billion posts per month!
Vernissage is a new iOS app for PixelFed.
iOS app Mammoth is trying for a consistent implementation of quote posts across apps.
FindMyFriends is a new tool to find your Mastodon friends on PixelFed.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber did a poll on iPhone case usage on both Twitter and Mastodon. Even though his Twitter account has almost 10 times the amount of followers, the poll on Mastodon got more engagement in absolute terms.
Developer Roni Laukkarinen released a UI for Mastodon that closely resembles Twitter, Mastodon Bird UI. It is currently mainly intended to be installed by admins as the default look for a server. You can see how it looks on his own server, mementomori.social.
Twitter alternative Post.News confirms that they are still planning to support ActivityPub, even though it will not be in 2023. News here, commentary here.
Mastometrics, an analytics tool for your personal data, has an update to easily see the people who you interact with the most.
News outlet EUobserver writes an editorial about the fediverse.
FediMeister is a new Mastodon desktop client for all operating systems with a focus on content creators. It can automatically break up large bodies of text into threads, supports the scheduling of posts as well as hashtag research. Hashtag research gives you an overview on which days which hashtags are used the most.
Ellie is a new Windows client for Mastodon.
The Verge has an extensive article about Tapbots, the makers of Mastodon app Ivory.
A new Fediverse Enhancement Proposal to enhance the ActivityPub protocol with ValueFlows.
Hyperspace, a desktop app for most operating systems, is winding down. In a blog post, the creator reflects: “Apps like Elk, Ice Cubes, and Ivory are providing great user experiences that would feel like a dream to have back in 2019.” (h/t @liaizon )
A fascinating thread on the transition from Twitter to Mastodon for Ethiopian journalists.
Verifiedjournalist.org, a directory of journalists on the fediverse, now allows for full keyword search of accounts who have signed up and verified with the service.
This Monday will be the first event of a Fediverse Developer Network.

The Poll

If you want to get this weekly roundup of news in your mailbox, consider subscribing to my newsletter. You can do this directly via fediversereport.com. Every week you’ll get the weeks biggest news stories as well as the roundup of shorter news bits. Thank you for reading!

#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon #pixelfed

https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-13/

Chris Trottier

2023-04-08 06:34:01

Which Fediverse server software will hit 1 million accounts first?

How Tweetbot died (and lived again)

When Elon Musk’s Twitter shut off API access, beloved third-party apps like Tweetbot were out of luck.

^{Rob Dubbin (The Verge)}

#activitypub #fediverse #mastodon #Pixelfed #fediverseNews @wakest

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Zecharias Zelalem

8 months ago

Zecharias Zelalem
8 months ago

THREAD: Ethiopia's #Twitter to #Mastodon road bumps.

The Ethiopian press corps is a collective of local and foreigners who cover Ethiopia for local and international media. Previously (prior to 2020) most of us would have been based in the country. Now, very few of us actually are. Fear of arrest (or worse), death threats, slander, and for foreigners, deportation and revocation of press permit...have the press largely relocated to neighbouring Nairobi.

#Twitter #mastodon

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Laurens Hof

8 months ago

Laurens Hof
8 months ago

Last Quarter in the Fediverse, Q1 2023

Welcome to the first edition of Last Quarter in the Fediverse, a quarterly summary of the major news events that have happened regarding the fediverse.

In no particular order:

Growth and news
Third party web clients
Governments and the fediverse
Corporations joining the fediverse
Three major new iOS apps for Mastodon

Let’s dive right in!

Growth and news

The last quarter of 2022 was dominated by the explosive growth of the fediverse, dubbed the #twittermigration. This sudden and large inflow mainly happened in November 2022, and slowly growth has dropped back to levels that are more consistent with pre-November 2022, although at a higher base level. Even though the rate at which new users stayed with the network was high, the incredibly large November 2022 inflow made sure that the necessary drop also looked high. This p

Last Quarter in the Fediverse, Q1 2023

Welcome to the first edition of Last Quarter in the Fediverse, a quarterly summary of the major news events that have happened regarding the fediverse.

In no particular order:

Growth and news
Third party web clients
Governments and the fediverse
Corporations joining the fediverse
Three major new iOS apps for Mastodon

Let’s dive right in!

Growth and news

Mastodon reached 10 million accounts in March 2023, indicating a solid strenght of growth underneath the drop in active user count. The accurary of the measurement is of some dispute, as different data sources provide different numbers, with no consensus on accuracy. The growth itself is not disputed, and further confirmed by the fact that it will only take roughly a month to grow to 11 million accounts.

The November 2022 inflow of users came with a discussion if and how news organisations could and should join the fediverse. By and large, this has not played out over the last three months, with no new major national news outlet joining. Instead it were some local news organisations who gathered a major following on the fediverse. Notable examples include the Texas Observer and Boston’s GBH News. A few magazines such as The Markup and Dame Magazine have also managed to settle and find a significant audience.

The bottom-up, grassroots approach of journalism on the fediverse is apparent in projects such as #newstodon. An initiative of the earlier mentioned local news organisations and magazines, they banded together to share their best news stories every Friday under the #newstodon hashtag. Another approach to journalism and the news that launched this quarter is verifiedjournalist.org, which provides verification and discovery for individual journalists.

Third party web clients

Third party clients have attained a new level of professionalism in the last quarter, and with it, a significant boost in popularity. Web clients are a way to log in to Mastodon (to a lesser degree, other software such as Pleroma is also supported), and gives you a completely new user interface. If you have not done so already, it is highly recommended to check them out.

Early January saw the launch of elk.zone. Elk is likely the most popular web client, and focuses on a fully featured client that provides all the options. Its design feels more familiar to Twitter users, even though it is distinctive in it’s own way. It is a fairly large and sophisticated project, with four main contributors, a fundraiser, and corporate sponsers.

Phanpy.social is another web client that really started development in this quarter. It is more opinionated and minimalistic. One of the more notable features is the ´boost carousel´, where boosted posts are in a separate part of the timeline, easily distinguisable. It also supports multi-column layout in various ways.

Other notable web clients currently in use are trunks.social, Mastodeck and sephamore, but they seem to have significantly less cultural cache than Elk and Phanpy have.

Governments and the fediverse

Much has been written about Twitter’s new tumultuous relationship with the press, government and reality in general, and whether governments can still depend on Twitter for their social media strategy. The European Union already set up their own Mastodon presence back in April 2022, with the EU Voice project. The German government started their social.bund.de Mastodon server even earlier, back in 2022. Even with these examples, and the ample though pieces about Twitter dependency, no significant signalling by other major governments towards the fediverse have been made.

There have been some moves toward it in specific places. The entire Dutch higher education system is part of a system that has enabled and integrated a Mastodon server, with almost 30 institutes signed up now, including the major universities. The city of Amsterdam also set up their own Mastodon server, and the German government is still expanding the number of agencies on their server.

Corporations joining the fediverse

A number of tech companies have joined the fediverse in the last few months, and the reception has been very positive. Medium, Automattic and Flipboard have all joined the fediverse in their own way.

Fediverse culture is notably critical of Big Tech companies, which goes beyond a counter reaction to Twitter. There is a huge distrust of companies like Meta and Google. In that context, the positive reaction to these (smaller) companies joining the fediverse stands out. While these companies where already rated more trustworthy beforehand, their approach is notable in how measured and careful it has been. CEO’s have engaged on a personal level in order to find out how to best approach and connect with current fediverse culture.

Blogging site Medium have set up their own Mastodon server, me.dm. This came after a period in which CEO Tony Stubblebine actively got involved with the fediverse on how to approach moderation and the place of Medium. They settled on their own server that is specifically for paying Medium subscribers, and advertise their (pretty cool) domain name as another selling point.

Already in December 2022, browser Vivaldi set up their own Mastodon server, and even integrated it directly into their browser. Mozilla is set to catch up, and announced that they will also set up their own mozilla.social server that integrates with Firefox single sign on accounts. That feature remains in closed testing however.

Flipboard integrated Mastodon into their app, which allows you to browse your Mastodon content in your flipboard magazines. It also allows you to comment and favorite Mastodon posts that you see in your Flipboard app. The other direction also works, sharing Flipboard content with Mastodon. Flipboard’s trajectory has been interesting to see, as it feels likely that other products might also follow a similar path: start with an iOS app that has a bare minimum Mastodon integration, expand to an Android app that also has a Mastodon integration, realize the power of this, and fully commit to an ActivityPub integration that goes beyond just Mastodon. Flipboard is planning to add full ActivityPub integration in the coming months.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, acquired the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, with the developer also joining the company. Automattic has indicated their interest in the fediverse earlier, and is still considering if and how to implement ActivityPub on Tumblr. Their acquisition of the WordPress plugin for ActivityPub demonstrates their continued commitment, and it will be interesting to see how this develops further.

Early March news broke that Meta has some early plans to decentralized text-based social network that uses Activitypub. The plan is still in it’s earliest stages, with not much known about it, besides that it likely uses Instagram credentials and it seems focused on allowing creators to send out updates. Response to this news fell roughly along two lines: a validation of the power of federated social networks, and the threat of an Embrace-Extend-Extinguish action by Big Tech companies.

3rd party apps, on iOS

Last three months have seen a massive inflow of new 3rd party apps, mainly for iOS. While there were iOS apps available already, none have had the impact that the new apps have had. There are three major new apps for iOS, each with a distinctly different approach. It is just as notable that there has not been an Android app that has managed to get the attention and cultural impact that these iOS apps have managed to gather.

Ivory is an iOS only app, created by the small company Tapbots, that comes with a 2.99 USD/month subscription fee. Tapbots is the created of beloved Twitter client Tweetbot. Twitter shut down 3rd party clients in January this year, which dominated the news cycle. Tapbot’s Ivory release came at the perfect moment for this: their original business for Tweetbot was suddenly shut down due to the controversial Twitter changes, which generated them a lot of goodwill. People trust Tapbot, and their skill in making apps that are enjoyable to use. Ivory delivers on that promise, and large tech news outlets paid significant attention to this, with major coverage in The Verge, TechCrunch and Mashable.

Ice Cubes took the open source route. It also released this January and quickly demonstrated that a free app made by a single developer could easily match the new standard set by Ivory. Ice Cubes has repeatedly pushed the boundaries by adding new features that other apps do not have. It was one of the first that allows you to easily read the local timelines of other homeservers, for example.

Mammoth is another iOS only app that launched late February. It stands out (and caused some controversy at launch), by being build by a small startup company backed by VC funds. The grassroots open-source history of the fediverse led to friction in expectations in culture, when people felt that Venture Capital has joined the fediverse. The primary backer of Mammoth is Mozilla, which helps placate some of the fear, but does not fully take it away, considering other backers are Salesforce’s tech billionaire Marc Benioff. Mammoth focuses on a smooth signup flow, allowing new users to sign up directly for their own instance, moth.social. As of now, Mammoth does not have a revenue model, but says they will be experimenting with an optional subscription model.

This does not even mention great apps like Mona, a pay-once app for both Mac and iOS. It focuses on customization as well, with the added benefit over the other apps that it supports Mac as well.

#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon #newstodon #Twittermigration

https://fediversereport.com/last-quarter-in-the-fediverse-q1-2023/

Laurens Hof

2023-03-22 18:50:24

10 million Mastodon accounts
This Sunday marked a major milestone for Mastodon as it reached 10 million registered accounts. Milestones like this are important to acknowledge and celebrate, highlighting the growth of both Mastodon and the fediverse. You may have come across the hourly graphs from the @[url=https://bitcoinhackers.org/users/mastodonusercount]Mastodon Users[/url] account that display the total number of Mastodon users over time.
The 10 million accounts is a good milestone to cheer upon, and worth to be excited about. However, Mastodon’s creator, Eugen Rochko, provided more critical commentary by stating his personal statistics indicate closer to 6.5 million accounts. That is a massive difference of almost a third. So what is happening here, how does this difference happen? It’s worth it to dive a bit deeper into. What exactly are we measuring here, and how correct is it?
Different data sources

Doing proper data analysis depends on having proper source data. For a decentralized network getting proper source data can be surprisingly difficult. There is no single definition on how to count an Mastodon account. A simple question of ‘do you count accounts on servers that are now offline’ does not have a singular answer. This is one of the reasons why different sources show different values for the question of ‘how many Mastodon accounts are there?’.
There are three main publicly available data sources that scan the fediverse, and they all show a different value for the total number of Mastodon accounts:
fediverse.observer (6.9M Mastodon accounts)
instances.social (10.1M Mastodon accounts)
the-federation.info (8.7M Mastodon accounts)
As you can see, all three sources provide significantly different numbers for the total amount of Mastodon accounts. The bot Mastodon User Count makes use of the instances.social data, which is the benchmark that everyone used to celebrate the 10M accounts this week.
How reliable is the data

Which data source should you trust, which one is correct? To answer that question depends on your perspective on servers that are not active anymore. It is hard to get a clear answer on the whether the three sources count deactivated servers or not, but there are some clues to help us:

This conversation teaches us two things:
understanding the account numbers is hard, not even Eugen Rochko, main developer of Mastodon knows for sure.
The 6.5M that Eugen Rochko names aligns roughly with the 6.9M from fediverse.observer.
This leaves us with a first part of the explanation of the discrepancy between the different values: are deactivated servers taken into account or not. Still, ~3M accounts on servers that are offline seems high. Which servers were so popular and had a ton of accounts that are offline?
The complications do not end here either. There are multiple questions that do not have an easy answer.
There is 1.5M account difference between instances.social and the-federation.info, with no clear explanation of the difference between the two.
Making matters more complicated, some servers (mstdn.ca is an example) do show up in the the-federation.info dataset, but not in the instances.social dataset. Considering that the instances.social dataset is 1.5M accounts larger, we would expect the exact opposite. There are probably examples the other direction as well, but I have not been able to find those.
A post by Greg Clarke shows that instances.social incorrectly shows servers as down, and speculates this might be because of Cloudflare blocking.
Chris Trottier notes that the instances.social data shows that 242k Mastodon accounts have registered the last week, and asks the question where those accounts actually are. Maybe they are humans, maybe they are bots, but where are they exactly?
This question is underlined by another bot, which shows every day the top servers with the most new accounts. Here is an example from a few days ago. The data in this daily ranking does not clearly indicate a significant increase in new accounts. This reinforces the question: where are all those new accounts?
It might be clear by now that getting proper statistics is complicated. And this is before we are talking about the Monthly/Daily Active Users. Or the fact that we’ve only been talking about Mastodon, and not the fediverse at large. For now, we can conclude there is much uncertainty. But that uncertainty does not have to stop us from celebrating a milestone when we get there. Mastodon and the fediverse are clearly growing, and that is the most important thing.
#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon
https://fediversereport.com/10-million-mastodon-accounts/

Fediverse Observer checks all servers in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home using a map or list.
Fediverse Servers Status. Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!
^{fediverse.observer}

Mozilla leads Mastodon app Mammoth's pre-seed funding | TechCrunch

Mammoth has at least a year's worth of funding thanks to Mozilla's backing.

^{Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)}

#activitypub #fediverse #mastodon #twittermigration #newstodon #fediverseNews

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Laurens Hof

7 months ago

Laurens Hof
7 months ago

The Roundup – episode 14

Even though many people join the fediverse to avoid the chaos of Twitter, this week was one of those weeks that it was hard to avoid talking about Twitter. The news that NPR was leaving Twitter (and others after it as well) created a lot of chatter about how to get these organisations to join the fediverse instead. For now this is a story in active development, and we’ll see how the situation plays out. Some smaller radio stations have joined, but NPR and PBS have not, even though some of their journalists have. It is also notable how big the support is for GBH News, a local news station from

The Roundup – episode 14

The first Fediverse Developer Network meeting was last Monday, with a big turnout. Lots of developers are interested in connecting with each other, and helping each other build the fediverse. Some of the outcomes:

There is a Matrix chat channel for developers.
A write-up on how to support fediverse developer communities.
Further work and merging of fedidocs.org with fedidevs.org.
The potential for developers to cooperate with fediverse.info.

Meanwhile, the Social Hub of the ActivityPub Rocks community is also working on organization structures. It is exciting to see this interest in better organisation and working together coming from so many different directions.

Mastodon also celebrated 11 million accounts this week. I wrote about the reliability of data earlier. However, gaining 1 million accounts in 25 days is a clear sign of growth.

Some Wikipedians have started a community-run Wikipedia account. They are also in the process of adding support for fediverse verification for all Wikipedia accounts. It’s worth watching how this renewed interest between the fediverse and Wikipedia develops.

The links

FediDB is live in beta! It is a dashboard and API that shows statistics about the fediverse, created by Daniel Supernaut, who also makes Pixelfed.
The Verge on hashtags and Mastodon.
FediFriday is an easy website overview of all the accounts the creator (Dr. Jorge Caballero) recommends, and is currently being expanded to be more generally useful.
Cory Doctorow on how to make the least-worst Mastodon threads. Personally I recommend using phanpy.social however.
Substack came under major controversy this week after a disastrous interview by the CEO on content management. People have been looking for alternatives to Substack, such as Ghost. This week someone created a first version of an ActivityPub plugin for Ghost.
An extensive look at how to migrate your lists if you migrate your account to a different server.

The poll

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/110209371920890016/embed

https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-14/

Jessica!!! :kirby: :verified:

2023-04-13 23:20:55

I reached out to Texas Public Radio on Twitter this morning about considering Mastodon and it turns out they do have an account! Please join me in welcoming @TPR! I'm very excited to see them here! #TPR #Texas #NPR

Phanpy

Minimalistic opinionated Mastodon web client

^{phanpy.social}

#activitypub #fediverse #mastodon #fediverseNews

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Laurens Hof

7 months ago

Laurens Hof
7 months ago

The Roundup – episode 15

Welcome to another episode of the Roundup! The week feels like it has been absolutely dominated by news about Twitter and Elon Musk. Even if you use the fediverse to get away from Twitter drama, it is hard to escape people talking about it. At the same time, this gives extra renewed energy to efforts to get people to use the fediverse. One major of such projects is the launch of SpreadMastodon, a website and movement to get people to use Mastodon. It specifically targets the onboarding flow, and tries to make that as easy as possible. This renewed interest in Mastodon has Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko note that MAU is trending upwards again for the first time in a few months.

Tons of links and news, lets dive in!

The links

WriteFreely, a federated blogging project, has a blog post on how WriteFreely will

The Roundup – episode 15

Tons of links and news, lets dive in!

The links

WriteFreely, a federated blogging project, has a blog post on how WriteFreely will develop into the future.
A blog post by the creator of Mastodon iOS app Ice Cubes on how AI is incorporated into the project.
A presentation on federated software forges such as GitHub.
An excellent in-depth article on The Verge about ActivityPub.
Misskey’s rapid rise (especially in Japan) means its about to be the second biggest fediverse project.
AndroidCentral writes a guide on how to use Mastodon.
A short history on how 10 years ago the first federated comment was posted on the indieweb.
Discourse announced two months ago they are adding ActivityPub support. This week they showed a short demo of how work is progressing.
An extensive reflection on how to write your own ActivityPub server.
Flipboard has moved their most popular curation desks onto Mastodon, which are accounts with hand-curated links of interesting content in various subjects.
Flipboard is extending their integration with the fediverse beyond Mastodon, and is actively designing a next generation of Flipboard on top of ActivityPub.
TootsSDK, an open-source library that helps iOS app developers build fediverse projects is starting work on supporting Calckey.
Fediview is an algorithmic timeline for Mastodon, and is now implementing recommended posts as well.
Fedistats launches a new feature that tracks a number of hashtags and sites and bookmarks each new item in the top 10.
Mastodon is hiring a full stack web developer.
The Nordic Council of Ministers received a recommendation from their appointed think tank that they “embrace open source, open standards and open protocols, such as #ActivityPub and #RSS”
BigRelay.social is a new relay by the newsie.social server that helps connect smaller servers on the fediverse.
Verified accounts on verifiedjournalist.org and lawstodon.org now have access to account and post metrics.
One of the biggest German broadcast networks, ZDF, has joined the fediverse and set up their own Mastodon server.
Medium has made it easier to embed Mastodon posts.
Wikipedia has joined Mastodon.

The poll

Evan Prodromou ran a bracket of polls for the best bot on the fediverse this week. The result? Alt_text is the best bot, but the final championship was very close! @ca_dmv_bot, @mastodonusercount and @APoD were all close contenders!

Meanwhile, Stefan Bohacek is still running polls about fediverse culture and documenting into his netizen’s guide. An interesting one this week was the question whether you refer to posts as ‘toots’. The userbase is very split on this question, see the results here.

This weeks poll:

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/110242777321954557/embed

https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-15/

Eugen Rochko

2023-04-22 18:15:16

After levelling off for a few months, it looks like Mastodon's MAU is climbing upwards again. From 1.15M at the beginning of April to 1.21M today.

How to increase the number of Mastodon poll options

Learning about the fediverse from the people who use it.

^{Stefan Bohacek (stefanbohacek.com)}

#activitypub #fediverse #mastodon #fediverseNews @Astronomy Picture of the Day @ca-dmv-bot @Mastodon Users

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Stefan Bohacek

7 months ago

Stefan Bohacek
7 months ago

Do you still refer to posts on Mastodon as "toots"?

#mastodon #poll #toots #SocialMedia

Yes! (39%, 634 votes)
Sometimes (17%, 279 votes)
Not really (16%, 263 votes)
Never did (26%, 432 votes)

1608 voters. Poll end: 7 months ago

#mastodon #SocialMedia #poll #toots

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Tony Stubblebine

7 months ago

Tony Stubblebine
7 months ago

We added #Mastodon to Embedly. So now Mastodon links embed more naturally on #Medium and every other service that uses Embedly to handle embeds.
https://blog.medium.com/now-you-can-embed-mastodon-posts-in-medium-stories-99b11d0baa7f

Now, you can embed Mastodon posts in Medium stories

This year, Medium announced that we’re embracing the fediverse by creating our own instance on Mastodon. Mastodon is an ad-free, federated social network made up of an independently-owned servers (or…

^{Chris Stiteler (The Medium Blog)}

#mastodon #medium

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adamghill

7 months ago

adamghill
7 months ago

@algorithmshttps://fediview.com can now recommend #mastodon posts based on your personal post history. The #recommendations are generated in real-time and the system is designed to be privacy-respecting.

It's still in beta and https://fediview.com/plus is required for now, but let me know if you would like to help me test it.

#algorithms #nlp

fediview.com now can generate recommended posts.

fediview - The algorithmic timeline for Mastodon

Generate an algorithmic summary for Mastodon timelines

^fediview.com

#mastodon #NLP #algorithms #recommendations @Mastodon Algorithms Discussion

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Laurens Hof

8 months ago

Laurens Hof
8 months ago

New initiatives around journalism

Two new initiatives around journalism on the fediverse popped up this week. The journalism-focused server Newsie.social launched the verifiedjournalist.org project. It aims to provide an extra level of verification and credibility for journalism. Federated.press, another journalism-themed server, launched a new pilot project to fact check specific posts.

Verified journalism

Newsie.social is a server that focuses on journalism, news and current events. It hosts a significant number of journalists, even though the server is open for everyone to join. The admin Jeff Brown is fairly involved with journalistic projects, such as hosting a journalism code of conduct on Fourth Estate. The new project that launched this week is Verifiedjournalist.org, a tool that helps with both discovery and verification of journalists.

VerifiedJournal

New initiatives around journalism

Verified journalism

VerifiedJournalists.org is a database of public journalists account on the fediverse, organised per category, that people can browse and follow. It is based on an earlier lists of journalists that people could sign up for, and has now transformed into a fully functional database.

The new addition to this project is the ability of the journalist to get a verified status. Verified accounts have linked their Mastodon account to the service, and provided some account details to the service. The screenshot below shows the details that I have provided in order to get my account verified with the service:
3259305
Verifiedjournalist.org also manually verifies the account, just providing the account details and linking your account is not enough. This human verification increases the authenticity of the verification status. The website explains that part of the criteria is that a profile must be authentic. It is hard to truly know with a 100% guarantee that a new journalist profile is indeed authentic, and it is unclear how the project actually checks for authenticity.

With discoverability being a major pain point for a lot of people in the fediverse, the ability to help find journalists can be a major boon. It is a great resource to point new accounts towards to help find valuable accounts to follow.

The project has a few strong posts. Any account can link their Mastodon account to the service, and browse the list for journalists they want to follow. Doing so allows you to click the follow button directly from the website, so you do not have to find the journalist again in another tab. It also shows a preview of the timeline of the account. This immediately gives a good indication of how active the account is, how often they post, and what type of content they post.

Fact checking with News Detective

Federated.press is another news and journalism themed server, that also launched a new project this week; an integration with news-detective, a fact checking initiative. With the integration, you can request a fact check on posts that are made on the federated.press server. In the current version, only accounts who are registered on the server can request such a fact check.

The result of the fact check gets added as a ‘reality score’ on a 1 to 5 scale to the post itself. The website of news-detective provides an example:
Imagen/Foto The project is incubating at MIT DesignX. Lots of unknowns still exist about the project. The project does not make it clear how the information is actually checked on factual accuracy. The website makes mention of professional factcheckers, but it is unclear who they are, nor is it easy to find who is currently behind the project. No information provided on how a distinction of a score between one to five is actually made. The mention of AI is sure to raise eyebrows as well, considering LLM´s well-documented ability to give false information.
The project mentions that they are still in the process of hiring developers and potential co-founders. For now, it seems that the project is very early in the incubation process, and it will remain to be seen how it further develops.

#fediverse #fediversenews #journalism #mastodon

https://fediversereport.com/new-initiatives-around-journalism/

Joshua Wood

2023-03-16 14:51:40

Hey everyone, I have an exciting federated.press announcement to share:
We just released an integration with News Detective—a new project to reduce misinformation on social media and teach media literacy with built-in transparency. They're part of MIT's Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, and are working with journalism students and the public to promote media literacy.
Read on to learn more. 👀👇
#Journalism #Misinformation #MediaLiteracy #Mastodon #FederatedPress #NewsDetective

ivy-leaved toadflax on an old brick wall

screenshot of fediversereport as a verified journalist

Verified Journalist | The Authority on Journalists on Mastodon and the Fediverse

Verified Journalist is a trusted directory of real and verified reporters, journalists and news outlets on Mastodon and the fediverse.

^{www.verifiedjournalist.org}

#fediverse #mastodon #Journalism #fediverseNews

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Joshua Wood

9 months ago

Joshua Wood
9 months ago

Hey everyone, I have an exciting federated.press announcement to share:

We just released an integration with News Detective—a new project to reduce misinformation on social media and teach media literacy with built-in transparency. They're part of MIT's Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, and are working with journalism students and the public to promote media literacy.

Read on to learn more. 👀👇

#Journalism #Misinformation #MediaLiteracy #Mastodon #FederatedPress #NewsDetective

#mastodon #Journalism #misinformation #medialiteracy #federatedpress #newsdetective

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Laurens Hof

8 months ago

Laurens Hof
8 months ago

The roundup – episode 10

Compared to the last few weeks, it has been a relatively quiet week in fediverse news. This has allowed me to zoom in on potential longterm impacts of the recent developments, such as taking a look at how WordPress can impact how search is currently used on the fediverse. Luckily, there is still lots of other news.

The news

Mastodon: Research Symposium and Tool Exploration Workshop in June 2023 in the UK.
Already 25 organisations signed up for the project that allows Dutch universities and research institutes to join a Mastodon server, including some of the Netherland’s biggest universities. You

The roundup – episode 10

The news

Mastodon: Research Symposium and Tool Exploration Workshop in June 2023 in the UK.
Already 25 organisations signed up for the project that allows Dutch universities and research institutes to join a Mastodon server, including some of the Netherland’s biggest universities. You can find my interview with the Program Manager for this project here.
Microsoft keeps slowly dabbling in the fediverse. This time it is a way to set up a Mastodon node on Azure.
Pixelfed launches a portfolio feature.
Mastodon.social suffers a data breach.
A new fediverse enhancement proposal to help clarify some of the ways that ActivityPub can be used.
Linus Torvalds, founder of Linux, joins the fediverse, via an Akkoma (not Mastodon!) server for people who have contributed to the Linux kernel. It is interesting to see a high profile account not use Mastodon, but instead use Akkoma.
Moderating the Fediverse, an online event/conversation on April 13th.
Flipboard allows you to follow Mastodon accounts directly from their app. The CEO promises full fediverse integration beyond Mastodon in the near future.
The new website of W3C now shows their Mastodon account.
Mozilla will host a session on the fediverse during their MozFest on March 22nd. It is likely that their Mastodon server mozilla.social will be announced there.

Interviews

An interview with Adam Davidson, admin of the journa.host server.
A podcast with the creator of Owncast (a federated streaming platform).
A big interview with Tim Chambers and Evan Prodromou (both excellent follows) in the big tech magazine IEEE, about the rise of the fediverse.

To keep your eyes on

Not everything is news directly, but an early indication of a trend;

Mastodon.social seems to be dealing with an influx of porn spam accounts.
Most confusing and surprising news of the week: A research organisation for investment firms rate Mastodon highly for equity research. Would not have expected that, considering how mainline fediverse culture is not particularly fond of investment firms, to put it mildly.
An interesting discussion on engagement number comparisons between Twitter and the fediverse.
Flipboard CEO observes that SXSW is highly focused on generative AI, and barely talks about the fediverse.

https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-10/

Laurens Hof

2023-03-17 17:11:25

WordPress and the fediverse
WordPress has their moment to shine in the fediverse news cycle. I reported on it some of the developments last week. The news that Automattic became the author of the ActivityPub plugin, as well as the developer joining the company, gained major traction in the feeds, especially after TechCrunch and WPTavern devoted major articles to it. I’d like to explore this news in more depth, particularly its long-term implications.
The plugin implements the ActivityPub protocol on your WordPress website, allowing people to follow your website from their fediverse account. Every WordPress post has an author, and when you install this plugin, the author gets a fediverse-compatible username. For this blog, this is laurenshof89@fediversereport.com. You can then follow this user just as you would any other fediverse user, by searching for them. Same as you’d search for a user on Mastodon. When you follow this user, new posts created by them on their WordPress website show up in your feed.
The plugin has been around for a few years already and is slowly growing in numbers. Today it is at 2000+ active installations, which is only a small number of the total of tens of millions of WordPress sites around.
The acquisition of the plugin by Automattic, with the developer Matthias Pfefferle also joining the company, fits with the wider strategy of Automattic. The company has been explicit about supporting open-source, and the CEO has been open about experimenting with other ActivityPub integrations in their software such as Tumblr. The timeline on the Tumblr integration is a bit unclear, recently the CEO stated to look at all options, including BlueSky and Nostr, and stated to be worried about the potential to overwhelm the fediverse culture if suddenly tens of millions of Tumblr users would join.
A look at potential future impacts

It’s not hard to imagine the major impact down the line of the ActivityPub plugin, simply by looking at the numbers. Many people did so on posts that went around on the feeds, talking about the massive potential new users for the fediverse. There is a lot to be excited about the mainstreaming of the fediverse in this way.
It also fundamentally alters the dynamic of the fediverse in a few significant ways, by adds a new style of content to the fediverse. Up until now, blogs and websites are barely represented on the fediverse. All of a sudden, there is the potential for millions of them to join the fediverse by simply adding a plugin. How this will impact the fediverse and its culture is unknown, and uptake of the ActivityPub plugin is far from guaranteed. But it is useful to have some form of understanding of how this can impact the fediverse.
Hashtags and search

One example of the potential impact of this development is on hashtags and search. WordPress allows you to add tags to a post. These tags function very similar to #hashtags, with the difference that they do not have to be visible in your text itself. Because the plugin makes the post part of the fediverse, your post now show up if you search for those tags.
First, the good, useful case. Writing hashtagged keywords in a post like this is an eyesore, but I would still like to be found on the fediverse with certain hashtags. So I add terms like fediverse and WordPress to the tags for this post. This is great for discoverability, and if used responsibly, valuable for both users on the fediverse and website owners. You are basically adding your website to a search engine for specific keywords.
The problem with having a good and useful feature however is that it just might be too good and useful. It might just be providing significant value for more spammy and SEO clickbait websites as well. SEO is a huge industry that aims specifically to get as much clicks as possible, and tries to game the system by getting high ranks in Google search results. It seems likely to assume that websites that purely exist to get as much clicks as possible, to game every system in such a way to get more clicks.
Current hashtag search is functionally a search engine, and for some SEO websites that simply means a new way to be found on clickbait websites. As such, we should expect that this type of website is also interested in using the ActivityPub plugin, in order to be found in new and different places.
How this will evolve, and the impact on the fediverse, is something worth keeping your eye on. One thing that seems guaranteed though, that the potential massive influx of new users will change the current culture that exists on the fediverse in ways that are hard to oversee yet.
#activitypub #fediverse #hashtags #search #wordpress
https://fediversereport.com/wordpress-on-the-fediverse/

Tumblr to add support for ActivityPub, the social protocol powering Mastodon and other apps | TechCrunch
Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that today is powering social networking software like Twitter alternative Mastodon, the Instagram-like Pixelfed, video streaming service PeerTube, and others…
^{Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)}

Mastodon and TikTok among important sources for equity decisions

The burgeoning social media platform is among a range of research sources cited by institutional investors

^{Steve Randall (Wealth Professional)}

#activitypub #fediverse #mastodon #fediverseNews

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Mike McCue

9 months ago

Mike McCue
9 months ago

Flying back from #SxSW where I evangelized #ActivtyPub, #Mastodon and the #Fediverse. It’s crazy how few people have even heard of this movement and all anyone could talk about was #GenerativeAI. I felt like an eccentric prophet holding a sign with scrawled writing “The end of the walled gardens is nigh”

But as many of you on Mastodon already know, the dawn of the open social web is here now and next SXSW is likely to be very different.

#fediverse #mastodon #GenerativeAI #activtypub #sxsw

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Louis :emacs:

8 months ago

Louis :emacs:
8 months ago

So, obivously mastodon.social - which earn tousands of € donations every month - provides a home for fake porn accounts that are created for exactly one particular follower and lead to Russian porn sites.

@Mastodon

That is one of the disadvantages of their strategy to massively accumulate as many user as they can and not having the resources to monitor their server activity any more - while keeping smaller, passionately moderated instances, out of the official Mastodon directory.

#mastodon

#mastodon @Mastodon

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Rob Hafner :verified_bi:

8 months ago

Rob Hafner :verified_bi:
8 months ago

In exciting news I appear to be part of one of the first data breaches of the fediverse era!

I got this email 20 minutes ago letting me know my data migration from mastodon.social was dumped in a breach.

I'm going to be honest, I've got some opinions on the fact that a public bucket is used to store archives, with just obfuscation to stop people from downloading them.

#mastodon #infosec #fediverse

#fediverse #mastodon #infosec

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Laurens Hof

8 months ago

Laurens Hof
8 months ago

The roundup – episode 11

A shorter roundup this week, as it feels like we´re transitioning to a different news cycle. Last month has focused mainly on current organisations joining the fediverse. Medium, Flipboard, Vivaldi and Mozilla have all set up their own Mastodon servers, and WordPress acquired the ActivityPub plugin. The next phase is now to experience the new users that will slowly start to join via these new types of servers, and how this will change fediverse culture. Meanwhile, the current weeks are more themed around community meetups. Last week was MozFest, with three sessions about the fediverse, and the coming week will be Fediforum.

The Roundup

Pixelfed is working on an Instagram Import feature, and is at the same time working to make sure Meta meets EU regulation for the data.
Matthias Pfefferle, the dev

The roundup – episode 11

The Roundup

Pixelfed is working on an Instagram Import feature, and is at the same time working to make sure Meta meets EU regulation for the data.
Matthias Pfefferle, the developer of the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, did an interview (in German about this. Important takeaway: Automattic is actively looking to make this plugin a Canonical Plugin, with the suggestion coming from the CEO.
Bookwyrm, the federated platform for book reading and tracking, is used to maintain a list of all books being banned from public schools in the US. Bookwyrm is explicit about their involvement in social causes, so this fits right in.
Tuba is a new Mastodon app for Linux that just got released.
Woolly is a new iOS and MacOS app for Mastodon that got featured in TechCrunch.
The Mastodon organisation will release Mastodon merchandise soon.
Debirdify, a tool to find your Twitter followers on Mastodon, has been suspended from Twitter.
A full list of all the demos at Fediform this week.
Macstodon is a new Mastodon client for MacOS with an incredible vintage look. Worth checking out for the visuals. (edit, thanks to @liaizon: Macstodon is for very old computers only. it runs on 68020+ or PPC Mac and System 7.1 through 9.2.2 so saying its for MacOS is sorta correct but not really since it only runs on 20 year old operating systems)

Readings

A wish list for ActivityPub, by one of the Fediform organisators.
Opensource.com did a writeup of the fediverse.
An in-depth reading on social media recommendation algorithms.