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🎉 ¡Buenas noticias para nuestra comunidad! 📣
Hemos renovado con éxito los dominios de nuestro nodo de Mastodon y Bookwyrm 🚀
Dominio comelibros.club (Bookwyrm): Renovado por 1 año - 17,48€
" title="
"/> Dominio xarxa.cloud (Mastodon): Renovado por 1 año - 21,72€
Queremos agradecer de corazón 💖 a todes les que han contribuido con sus donaciones. ¡Vuestro apoyo es fundamental para mantener vivos nuestros espacios digitales!
Que escalera mas adorable.
#art #photography
#mastodon #friends #MastoPhotography #love
#CreativeToots #mastoart #streetphotography #streetart
#catsofmastodon #cats #artwork #FediArt #animals #animal #humor #coffee #breakfast #tea #nature #books #fedicats #MastoCats
#Photograph #cute
Just updated my article on setting up Mastodon inside a FreeBSD jail!
Installing Mastodon inside a FreeBSD jail
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2022/11/23/installing-mastodon-on-a-freebsd-jail/
#Mastodon #FreeBSD #BastilleBSD #Fediverse #WalkThrough #Tutorial #SysAdmin #ITNotes #IT
Installing Mastodon inside a FreeBSD jail
This time I decided to install Mastodon on a FreeBSD jail, managed by BastilleBSD. I’ll describe a simple, one jail installation, with the related rc files.Stefano Marinelli (https://it-notes.dragas.net)
Que bonito árbol de navidad gatuno. 🎄
#art #photography
#mastodon #friends #MastoPhotography #love
#CreativeToots #mastoart #streetphotography #streetart
#catsofmastodon #cats #artwork #FediArt #animals #animal #humor #coffee #breakfast #tea #nature #books #fedicats #MastoCats
#Photograph #cute #christmas
Así que has llegado a #Mastodon. Pues te dejo un par de consejos:
1. Usa hashtags o etiquetas, nos ayuda a encontrar contenido o filtrar temas.
2. Añade descripciones a las imágenes. Esto ayuda a las personas invidentes.
4. Aquí también hay gente tóxica. Pero en menor medida y en general son más fáciles de bloquear.
5. Mastodon no es más difícil que Twitter. Y tiene la ventaja añadida de no estar gobernada por un Nepo baby del apartheid
El si que es todo corazón.
#art #photography
#mastodon #friends #MastoPhotography #love
#CreativeToots #mastoart #streetphotography #streetart
#catsofmastodon #cats #artwork #FediArt #animals #animal #humor #coffee #breakfast #tea #nature #books #fedicats #MastoCats
#Photograph #cute #heart
I am wondering what an algorithmic feed on Mastodon would look like. I see some comments that wish something like the twitter feed but we know that this was moderated and tweaked and far from unbiased. On the other hand it is dangerous to not consider the content of the posts because it would easily lead to hate, spam and bubbles. Is this a solvable problem?
It's very strange to me, seeing Mammoth get so popular somehow over the past few days. Given that a lot of their features, IceCubes did first, it's just kinda weird. Just saying.
Not to mention, IceCubes is free, although it's always good to tip the developer; had better icons to choose from, for free; and generates Alt Text for your images on demand.
What are you waiting for? Go download @IceCubesApp today!
#iOS17 only, due to the new performance features.
⛔️🇺🇦The Price Ukraine is paying for withstanding Russian aggression while US Republicans stall aid. Are you ready to send your country’s children, husbands, wives, and parents to stop Putin’s aggression against the West? Stop the politics and fund the Ukrainian defense now! (The Kyiv Independent News VIDEO Short) #Ukraine #USA #Mastodon #Press #News #russia #russiaUkraineWar #9yrInvasionofUkraine #BoycottMusk #AxisOfEvil
#NoEUPrezForHungary
#NoUSRepublicans2024
Me gustaría escribir todos los días,
a la mañana bien temprano, a la noche bien tarde;
hacer de la escritura lo que abre y cierra mi día
escribir, corregir y reunir, tener paciencia y confianza,
arrojo para mostrar,
escribir con la impunidad de un hombre
que cruza la noche a toda velocidad
con las luces apagadas.
Bonan Nokton! Criaturas cósmicas. Soy Kosmira, (La que va al cosmos) Soy una amante de la vida, una mujer anarquista, vegana y aprendiz en la lengua de la paz y el amor fraternal, #esperanto. Le tengo un gran cariño a la ciencia, la filosofía, las letras y el arte. Desde mis criticas sociales, siempre salen alternativas para llevar la existencia de una manera más consiente y responsable, por eso mismo me decidí a explorar una red descentralizada. #Mastodon
🙄 ...o quizá de menos por vivir,
si hay una insatisfacción,
si algún problema;
el hecho de terminar el presente año y comenzar uno nuevo con #Mastodon me devuelve las ganas de seguir pa'lante.
Summing up tests "activating" and "deactivating" @[Mentioned people only] on #mastodon. Apparently there have been some changes.
(from v3 to v4?)
You can't add more people into already existing posts. They won't be able to display it nore get notifications.
(if that ever existed)
You can deactivate/delete mentions, the profile won't get notifications of updates but still can see or search those toots.
note:
still awaiting confirmation of behaviour on #friendica
Found 6 new servers found and 25 servers de-listed since 1 hours ago. Check out the Monthly and Daily Stats by software or server or the entire fediverse.
24,548 servers checked. 13,782,741 Total Users, 1,736,319 Monthly Active Users today vs 1,737,665 yesterday for the entire fediverse.
New #fediverse servers found:
dogtyping.net a #pleroma server from United States
mastodon.fuhbahr.dev a #mastodon server from Germany
mastodon.ecosyste.ms a #mastodon server from Private
chicago1.peertube.support a #peertube server from United States
microblog.aoi-life.link a #microblogpub server from Japan
arisskey2.com a #misskey server from Japan
De-Listed servers: lemmy.samad.one
mastodon.karatekarnickel.de
esc.ozar.dev
net.staropensource.de
boomer.casino
social.cnmist.xyz
lemmy.nrd.li
mastodon.mandalo.re
activity-relay.misw.jp
lemmy.bringdaruck.us
wbknl.xyz
akkoma.nrd.li
mastodon-ai.net
petrolkorps.cc
social.mwtremblay.com
m.beautifullosers.org
code4lib.net
campbells.social
akkoma.thejar.club
ajar.social
social.n1l.dev
goreslut.xyz
mastodon.aowolfie.com
sosh.space
docpopdatabstg.wpengine.com
Help others find a home, send them to fediverse.observer
Para celebrar mi primer cumple aqui, os comparto los tres capítulos de nuestro podcast solarpunk, ahora en open audio del fediverso!!!
This should bring a lot more advertisers to the platform. Wonder if ‘CEO’ #Yaccarino approved this move?
“Elon #Musk said he would consider letting #AlexJones back onto #X, nearly a year after he said he wouldn’t reverse a ban on the conspiracy theorist”
Maybe another mass migration to #Mastodon?
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/07/elon-musk-considers-reinstating-alex-jones-x-account.html
Elon Musk considers reinstating Alex Jones' X account, backtracking on prior decision
Elon Musk said he would consider reinstating Alex Jones's X account, potentially reversing a permanent ban of the Infowars hostJonathan Vanian (CNBC)
Ayer compartí un post personal y recibí cariño y apoyo de la comunidad mastodóntica.
Quiero decir que sentí calor humano genuino, algo que -de verdad- había descartado que una red social pudiera aportarme.
Me acuerdo que estuve a punto de abandonar Mastodon, hace seis meses o así, porque sentía que hablaba en el vacío, sin nadie al otro lado.
Mi buen compadre @Baltimore me hizo verlo de otro modo. Perseveré y meses después, bueno, pues personas hasta hace poco desconocidas me brindaron su apoyo, de forma sencilla pero significativa para mí.
Y no fue un gesto aislado.
Mastodon sí me parece una red social donde es posible un trato humano.
Al principio cuesta. Porque es real. E integrarse siempre requiere esfuerzo.
Ojalá este mensaje valga a quien está en esa primera fase de poca interacción.
Aquí dar, interactuar, aportar, responder, sí merece la pena. No trabajarás para engordar una compañía. Trabajarás para mejorar una comunidad y formar parte de ella.
Perspectives on wading into the deep end of the pool with Mastodon, from a guy who’s been on the network for 15 years.
The Newcomer’s Guide to Mastodon, from a Crusty Old-Timer
Note: this is a comprehensive guide that addresses a lot of different topics. We hope to answer many questions that newcomers have asked before. This guide gets into the meat and potatoes of what all this stuff is, how stuff works, and how to use it to your benefit.
If you’re reading this, chances are that you’ve just signed up for Mastodon. Or, perhaps you’re thinking about trying it out, or have at least heard other people mention it. There are many guides out there about this topic already, but I think this one has something to offer.
I’d like to believe that I’m qualified to talk about this stuff. I’ve been in this space for nearly 15 years now. After starting on one of the oldest federated social networks, I also helped with managing the Diaspora project. I’ve been here since almost the beginning.
This guide exists as a run-down of how to join in, make friends, and have fun in a new space.
Table of Contents
- What the heck is Mastodon?
- What’s the fediverse?
- Getting Started
- Into the Network
- How do the feeds work?
- How do Privacy Settings Work?
- How do I find people?
- How do I interact with people and their stuff on other servers?
- How do I keep track of who is who?
- How do the feeds work?
- Apps and Frontends
- Dealing with Unwanted Posts, Conflict, and Trolls
- Filtering Your Feed
- Moving to a New Server
- Filtering Your Feed
What the heck is Mastodon?
Mastodon is a social media platform for microblogging, kind of similar to Twitter. There are three very important key differences:
- It’s open source, meaning that you can see the source code, make modifications, and run it yourself.
- It’s federated – people on one server can talk to people on another. In practice, it acts as if two separate parts of the internet can come together as one space to talk.
- It’s more personal – Mastodon doesn’t really use algorithms to promote influencers, and doesn’t really reflect popular statuses or encourage number-chasing. Instead, Mastodon tends to focus more on personal authenticity, where you can openly express yourself.
But now, it’s time to address the elephant in the room (I’m sorry). What you’ve probably heard people call “The Mastodon Network” is actually a much bigger, crazier thing called the Fediverse.
What’s the fediverse?
Wikipedia describes the fediverse as “an ensemble of different platforms that all communicate using a common protocol.” The most popular protocol is a W3C Standard called ActivityPub, which is what Mastodon and many other platforms use. The network is largely composed of open source projects, running across many different servers, using open communication protocols. No individual institution can own all of the fediverse, and there’s no central authority controlling it.
The fediverse started around early 2008 / 2009 with a platform called StatusNet. Some of you may be familiar with Identi.ca, a popular hub for open source nerds to tweet about their interests. A lot of changes have come since then.
“The Many Branches of the Fediverse“ by Per Axbom, Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 International
The biggest thing to know about the fediverse in 2023 is that it’s massive. There are analogues to almost every kind of corporate social platform imaginable. The crazy part is that you can follow accounts on any of the following projects directly from Mastodon:
- Microblogging: Misskey, Pleroma, Bonfire
- Macroblogging: Friendica, Smithereen
- Image-Sharing: Pixelfed
- Meetups: Mobilizon
- Video: PeerTube
- Podcasting: CastoPod, Funkwhale
- LiveStreaming: OwnCast, PeerTube
- Music: Funkwhale, Reel2Bits
- Book Reviews: Bookwyrm, Inventaire
- Blogging: WriteFreely, WordPress (with some plugins)
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an estimated 124+ platforms in various states of development, most of which can interoperate with one another. For many, the common denominator is basic compatibility with Mastodon.
A PeerTube video, shown on both PeerTube’s side as well as Mastodon.
What does this mean in practice? The common barriers you’re familiar with on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook don’t exist here. Why can’t you like an Instagram post from Twitter, or send a Myspace message to someone on Facebook? The people running these sites have a monetary interest in keeping you in, and other networks out.
Getting Started
What platform should I use?
My recommendation if you’re just starting out: try Mastodon first. Mastodon sets a pretty good standard of expectations when using the network for the first time. Most platforms on the network strive for compatability with Mastodon, giving you the benefit to try things out.
Honestly, starting with Mastodon and shifting to something else is pretty common for people on the network. Many platforms implement Mastodon’s own client API, meaning dozens of Mastodon apps can be used elsewhere.
How do I join this thing?
A lot of people say that finding a place to initially sign up is the hardest part of the process. You can always move to a new server, if it feels better than your current one. We’ll get into that a bit later.
Example of the Mastodon Instance picker in action
For better or worse, Mastodon’s own instance picker is pretty decent, and gives you a lot of variety. In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter where you end up. You can still demonstrate your whole yourself, even if you hang out on a themed server. It’s not difficult to start out on a place like mastodon.social or mastodon.online, and then migrate to somewhere more interesting.
Checking Instance Details
Before signing up to your server of choice, take a good look on that instance’s About page. Server details can always be found by clicking the “Learn More” button. You can see an example at: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/about
The About page of Mastodon Gamedev Place,
A well-moderated instance will have fleshed-out details describing the server, its community rules, and how it acts towards particular problem-child servers.
The Moderated Servers section is of particular note, because it lists what policies other servers are treated by. Generally, these are problem-child instances whose own rules don’t align with this servers. there are two statuses: Limited, and Suspended. If a server is Limited, you can still follow accounts, they just won’t show up on the Federated timeline. If a server is Suspended, federation with them will not work at all.
Getting Verified
The first thing to do after signing up is to get verified. Verification works a little bit differently than on Twitter. Instead of having a company verify who you are, the main way to prove your identity is through your website.
By default, Mastodon provides four custom metadata fields for an account. These can contain information of any type, but most often denote accounts on other websites. There’s also an HTML snippet that links back to your profile. Mine looks like this:
<a rel="me" href="https://social.treehouse.systems/@deadsuperhero">Mastodon</a>
Basically, it’s a normal HTML link to my profile, but it uses a property called rel=me
. In a nutshell: putting this link on a webpage and pointing one of your account fields at the page will cause Mastodon to validate the link. It sees that rel=me
and says “Oh yeah, this person’s profile really did make this page, because the link exists there.”
Validating identity through a personal website or other accounts is a great way to say “here’s my proof, I am who I say I am” in a large federated network.
Got Any Usage Tips?
Simple Mode vs Advanced Mode
One other thing you ought to decide early on is what mode you want Mastodon’s interface to take. Mastodon ships with two of them: Simple, and Advanced. Here’s what they look like, for sake of comparison:
Your feed in Simple Mode
Simple Mode is relatively Twitter-like, and it works just fine for those who want that experience. You get a singular timeline of everything sorted in a chronological order. The upside is that posts and profiles are bigger, because of a greater amount of space available.
The multi-column insanity of Advanced Mode
Advanced Mode gives you a multi-column view that’s reminiscent of TweetDeck. It’s the original interface that Mastodon shipped when it first launched. Honestly, it’s really good, and I prefer to use the network this way. Being able to see my home feed, notifications, and DM’s in one place is really convenient, and being able to create individual feeds for tags or lists allows you to keep eyeballs on multiple things without having to navigate away.
Accessibility Features
Before we dive into all of the cool stuff that you can do, it’s important to talk about Acessibility Features. Accessibility is a huge part of fediverse culture and a prerequisite for many users with disabilities.
Media Captioning
Captioning your images, audio, and video attachments in Mastodon is a huge part of the culture. Many users on the network rely on screen readers to parse their feeds. Not everyone has the ability to see images, watch videos, or hear audio. You’re doing those people a huge favor by adding alt text to these things prior to posting. To add a description, simply click Edit on any image thumbnail. Type your description, then click Apply.
A picture, just after attaching it to a post
Hover the mouse over the thumbnail, and click “Edit”
A window will pop up with a text field for a detailed description, and you’ll be able to set the focal point for the thumbnail on the right.
There are a few tools at your disposal to make your life easier. One such feature is the “Detect text from picture” option that shows up. It only really works with screenshots that have a lot of text on them. Things like captions on memes don’t work so well – but it can do a fine job of transcribing lengthy notes.
“Detect text from picture” does a great job at transcribing text in images, but only if there aren’t a lot of other visual elements in the image.
After that, the text you entered will go into a special part of the image, and can be read by screen readers.
When you hover over any picture containing a caption, it will show the description. Screen readers can pick this up and read what it says!
Into the Network
Now that you’ve joined Mastodon, it’s time to explain some of the ins-and-outs of the platform. This might seem like a lot at first. Once you get a hang of the basics, it all clicks into place.
How do the feeds work?
Most fediverse platforms, Mastodon included, include four types of main feeds: Home, Local, Federated, and Public. These timelines basically show you different collections of posts based on what your server is aware of.
Various differnt timelines: Home, Local, and Federated
Home Feed
This feed consists of everybody you’re following, along with whatever hashtags you’re subscribed to. It’s generally the “main feed” that you’ll likely use most of the time.
Local Feed
The local feed is your server’s home feed, and shows every public post made by the people hosted on it. You can kind of think of it as your local town square. On large instances, this timeline tends to move very quickly. On smaller instances, it can be a very cozy way to see what’s going on in your community.
Federated Feed
The federated timeline could be considered the firehose of everything your server is currently aware of. Not only does it feature posts by you and the people you follow, it also includes posts made by people that other folks on your server also follow. This feed is generally the most chaotic and random, but can occasionally be great for discovery.
Public Feed
The public feed is a firehose of absolutely every status an instance is aware of, local or federated, that has the Public privacy setting. Public posts are visible to everyone, even people not logged in.
How do Privacy Settings Work?
Mastodon has limited support for privacy scopes on statuses. Other platforms, like Friendica or Hubzilla, have much more robust options that let you choose which of your contacts can see or respond to a specific post. Mastodon instead has something called scopes, and by default, there are four options: Public, Unlisted, Followers Only, and Mentioned People Only.
Public
The Public Scope is the most open and visible option for a post. Public statuses can potentially appear on all timelines, are visible to people on other servers, and can be seen even by people who are logged out.
Unlisted
The Unlisted Scope is much like the Public Scope, except that it only appears on the Home timeline. Unlisted statuses can still be boosted and replied to, and people with a link to the status can still see it. The key distinction is that it doesn’t appear on other timelines.
Followers Only
The Followers Only scope is effectively a private status, with the understanding that only your followers can read or respond to it. Private statuses cannot be boosted, and people outside of your follower group will just see that a status doesn’t exist.
Mentioned People Only
The Mentioned People Only scope is basically the equivalent of a DM. Basically, only the people mentioned in the message body can see or respond to a status with this scope.
How do I find people?
Joining any new network can feel a bit like a catch-22: for you to get the most out of this place, you need to find people and hang out here. But, you need to hang out here in order to find people.
Here are three approaches that work well for me:
1. Find Your Mutuals
I’m going to give you the bad news first: there were a bunch of great tools for figuring out who your mutuals are, but Twitter made a very bad decision about API pricing, and killed most of those apps. Supposedly, FediFinder might still work, but your mileage may very.
All you need to do is take that file you downloaded, and under Profile Settings, go to Import and export -> Import
The basic premise is that tools like FediFinder scan your list of followers and mutuals, and then compare those people’s accounts to Mastodon accounts that they’ve linked to. You can then upload that into an importer tool that lives in your profile settings. Provided the tool you used found some people, Mastodon will then queue a bunch of follow requests on your behalf.
2. Follow tags and post frequently
I dunno, this just seemed like an easy example tag?
One of the recent updates to Mastodon includes the ability for users to subscribe to Hashtags. This pulls a lot of tagged content into your stream from people you don’t follow, to show you a thing you might be interested in. Contrary to Twitter, Mastodon extensively uses hashtags as the main way to add posts to an index and help people search for stuff.
3. Explore the network!
There are a bunch of different ways to do this. At this point, there are community tools like Trunk, which lists a bunch of profiles under different interest categories. There are also specialized lists that are one internet search away, such as Mastodon for Academics, or Mastodon Journalists. These kinds of resources can help professionals rebuild their community graphs and connect with peers.
Prior to these tools existing, I used to rely on the “human crawler” method of discovery:
- Find a server that looks interesting from the Mastodon Instance Picker. I like to make games as a hobby, so I went with Gamedev Mastodon.
- Most Mastodon servers offer a User Directory. For example, the instance I looked at has one at: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/directory
- Find an interesting account on there that seems active, and follow them.
- Check out some of the people they follow, and some of the people who they’re boosting on their timelines.
- Rinse and Repeat
How do I interact with people and their stuff on other servers?
Some newcomers get kind of confused about dealing with remote stuff, and are quick to classify it as “a clunky experience”. While the experience could definitely be better, there are a few key concepts that, if you learn them earlier on, can kind of help you understand how things are supposed to work.
The User Handle
The first thing to take note of is how usernames on Mastodon work. Each user account has something that looks a bit like an email address. This is called a handle, and it’s a unique identifier for what is called an actor, which is an account capable of federation. Alternatively, I’ve also heard people refer to it as a webfinger address, because the Webfinger technology is used to perform the lookup.
You can always figure out what your handle is by looking at your profile, right under your username.
My webfinger address, for example, is @deadsuperhero@treehouse.systems. Pretty much any profile on the fediverse follows this format of @user@domain.tld. This is helpful to remember: if you’re not sure what the full URL is to an individual account, you can always fall back to the handle.
The Search Bar
Most federated social networks rely on the search bar to pull in remote stuff. I think the primary reasoning is that, technically, you’re performing a lookup, and that counts as performing a type of search. In Mastodon, the search bar looks like this:
So, as an example, let’s throw my webfinger address in the search, and see what comes up.
It’s me!
If we click on that result, we can see a full profile, with any posts that our server knows about.
We can also do the same things with posts that our server doesn’t know about, by using the full post URL instead. Here’s an example for this post I made a while ago:
Okay, so we throw in a URL, and out comes a result! This is really handy for situations where you want to interact with something you saw elsewhere, but your server doesn’t have a copy to interact with.
Handy Browser Extensions
At this point, people have started developing browser extensions to work around some painful UX hurdles. The default experience for Mastodon kind of sucks when it comes to remote content, because other sites don’t really have a mechanism to log you in on their end.
As a workaround, there are extensions such as FediAct and Graze available for both Firefox and Chrome-based browsers. These extensions allow you to like, boost, and reply to statuses on other sites without having to navigate back to your Mastodon instance, and allow you to also follow people in the same way.
There’s also a great browser extension called StreetPass, which can figure out various people’s handles based on what websites you visit. A lot of people use their own websites to verify their identities on Mastodon, so StreetPass is able to pick up that data and put it on a list for you when you visit them.
How do I keep track of who is who?
I won’t lie to you: it’s a big network. A lot of people like to try out different instances and even different platforms at the same time. It can get a little difficult to remember which person’s account goes to which thing. There are two tools that can help with that: Notes, and Lists.
Notes
Every profile provides a Notes section. Only you can see the contents, and they’re simply kept by your account for easy reference.
A note I made for myself, from another account.
Lists
Lists are a less prominent feature in Mastodon, but I sometimes use them to organize fediverse developers and game designers into their own contact groups.
A list featuring Fediverse developers I know.
What’s cool about Lists is that you can use them to basically build a special timeline, and specify whether you’re just seeing top-level statuses, responses between members, or just everything posted by people on the list.
These timelines are really handy. They can help you narrow down the stream of posts to focus on what very specific accounts are talking about. For me, keeping track of Fediverse development is a big deal, so I’m happy to have this.
Apps and Frontends
Mastodon has a lot of apps, and I mean A LOT of apps. It’s very reminiscent of the early days of Twitter, where a zillion different kinds of clients existed, and they all geared for providing different experiences. Mastodon offers a pretty easy-to-understand API for client developers, and it’s so popular that a lot of other fediverse platforms like Pleroma have also implemented it, and can use the same apps.
Mobile Apps (Android and iOS)
There are so many great mobile apps for Mastodon. I can’t overstate how much this changed the game for the fediverse, which only had really terrible apps prior to 2016. Being able to interact with the network easily, without friction, on the go, really made the place more accessible at all hours of the day. I’m not going to name too many apps, but I’ll throw out a few great ones.
Tusky (Android, Free)
Tusky is, for all intents and purposes, one of the best clients on Android. It’s held that title for a long time. The UI is clean, the experience is buttery smooth, and it supports all of the features you would expect from the Web version of Mastodon. It’s great on the go, multi-account, and my go-to app after all these years.
Megalodon (Android, Free)
Megalodon is a fork of the official Mastodon app, but it adds in quite a few features that are missing from the official version: support for the Federated Timeline, post scheduling, and hashtag following are just a few of the many improvements this app brings in over its predecessor.
Ice Cubes (iOS, Free)
Ice Cubes is an exciting new app for iOS that offers a high degree of customization, custom colors, timelines, and more.
Ivory (iOS & Mac, Paid Subscription)
After shutting down work on the legendary Tweetbot, the Tapbots company went ahead and developed and incredible new app for Mastodon called Ivory. It really demonstrates their app design expertise.
Toot! (iOS, $3.99)
Toot! is a unique standout from most of the other ones listed. One really positive upside is how the client approaches complex threads with many replies, where each sub-thread is denoted with a different color.
Web Frontends
Because the Mastodon API is open, and free for anyone to implement, there are also a fair share of alternative web frontends that you can use in the browser, if the default one doesn’t suit you.
Elk
Elk is an incredible project to build a more Twitter-like frontend while making accessibility a top concern of the design process. There’s a public demo on elk.zone you can try out with your account.
Semaphore
Semaphore is a continuation of Nolan Lawson’s excellent Pinafore project, and continues to focus on being lightweight, easy to use, and fast.
Cuckoo Plus
Cuckoo Plus is a clone of the Google+ web interface, and does a pretty convincing job. The only downside is that the client does not currently support Circles, which was a big part of the original Google+ experience.
Brutaldon
True to its name, Brutaldon is a client made with brutalist design tendencies. It’s dead simple, uses no javascript, and even works well in text-based web browsers like Lynx, w3m, and elinks.
Dealing with Unwanted Posts, Conflict, and Trolls
You may have heard some people talking about how Mastodon is so much nicer than Twitter. In some ways, that’s absolutely true: there are massive hobbyist communities, people are all too willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves and be authentic, and people are out there sharing and joking and creating things and having a great time together.
But, the fact remains: this is still the Internet, and there are assholes everywhere. Even on this fabulous new network. In fact, I won’t sugar coat it: some spaces on the network are outright hostile, in that they are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and fascist. Some people are utterly vile, and hang out in spaces that enable them. Others are just petty, and want to stir up drama. Whatever the case may be, here’s a few tips to ensure that none of those people ruin your day.
Filtering Your Feed
One really great quality-of-life feature that newer releases of Mastodon have is the ability to simply filter out stuff you don’t want to see. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be over-the-top, egregious stuff. For example, maybe you’re just tired of seeing posts about Elon Musk in your feed.
The filters screen. Each filter is capable of accepting multiple keywords or phrases in them.
In your Settings, under the Filters category, you can set comprehensive rules on whether or not to hide stuff. You can choose to either cover qualifying posts with a Content Warning, or opt to take that stuff out of your timeline completely. Each filter can have any variety of keywords in it, pertaining to a subject based on keywords in the post body.
Just some examples, I don’t really filter much.
Muting vs Blocking
Occasionally, you’re going to have people in your mentions (or your timeline) that’s just posting in a way that doesn’t suit you. Maybe they’re just being a bit obnoxious, or maybe they’re posting a marathon of text about something you’d rather not see right now. There are two tools for handling this, based on how things escalate: Blocking and Muting.
Muting
Muting can be considered a soft block that you can set a duration on. This person is still technically following you, and can see your posts. The important thing is that you won’t see anything from them for a while. This method is useful when you think somebody needs to cool down, without cutting off the relationship entirely.
Blocking
Blocking is more encompassing, in that a person won’t be able to see or interact with you. You won’t be able to see them, either. It’s basically a way for each of you to pretend that the other person doesn’t exist.
Undoing Blocks and Mutes
Muted Users, Blocked Users, Blocked Domains
Every now and then, you’ll need to undo a block or a mute. Maybe you clicked the wrong thing, maybe that person made public amends, or maybe that marathon of the show they watch finally ended. The good news is that you can manage these things in your own user menu, on your profile page.
Reporting Bad Actors
Sometimes, an otherwise good instance might suffer from a handful of bullies hanging out on it. This is definitely a possibility when it comes to very large instances, with small moderation teams, that happen to be open for public registration. Their moderation team can’t possibly see everything on their own, but filling out a report can help triage between moderation teams.
Blocking a Domain
Sometimes, the dynamic might be the opposite of the last one: maybe there’s some good people on the instance, but the admins and mods are either too lazy to do anything about bad behavior, or actively encourage it.
If your reports are going ignored by the receiving server, and you don’t want to play whack-a-mole with a bunch of different people over there, your best option may be to simply block the domain.
#Fediblock
Fediblock is an ongoing conversation that exists under the #fediblock tag on any instance. It’s an informal way for people to talk about instances with particularly bad policies, problematic communities, and poor moderation, and serves as an advisory for server admins about what domains and/or accounts they should probably think about blocking. If you see an instance that’s repeatedly ignored your reports or engaged in malicious behavior, making a post with the #fediblock tag is probably a good idea.
Moving to a New Server
At some point, you’ll make the decision to move to a new Mastodon instance. The good news here is that you can hook your new account up to your old one, and run an import process. Your old account will get marked as Archived, and your followers and followers will get carried over to your new account.
The layout is a little confusing, but all you need to do is: set up a new account somewhere, and point your two accounts at each other before initiating a move.
Move from a Different Account
After you’ve signed up to a new instance, go to your Account Settings, and click “Moving from a different account“. You’ll be taken to a screen to set up your account alias. Type in the fediverse handle of your old account, and save it here. Afterwards, switch back to your old account for the next step.
Move to a Different Account
Log back in to your old account, and navigate to the Account Settings on there. This time, we’re going to click “Move to a different account“. Type in your new fediverse handle and password, then click Move Followers.
After you’ve done this, your followers will transfer over to your new Mastodon account, and your old one will be set up as a redirect that points to where you are now.
That about sums it up! We hope you’ve enjoyed this guide and maybe learned a useful thing or two, and that it helped you in trying out Mastodon for the first time!
GitHub - Lartsch/FediAct: Chrome/Firefox extension that simplifies interactions on other Mastodon instances than your own.
Chrome/Firefox extension that simplifies interactions on other Mastodon instances than your own. - GitHub - Lartsch/FediAct: Chrome/Firefox extension that simplifies interactions on other Mastodon...GitHub
In this Post
Toggle
- What is This?
- The Road So Far…
- What is in This Chapter?
- Terms in This Chapter (In Order of discussion)
- Before We Begin
- How to Use Keyboard Shortcuts
- Timelines
- Navigating Within Timelines Described
- Navigating Within Timelines Applied
- Take a Break: A Quick Look Behind the Scenes
- Interacting with Toots
- Thank You for Reading
- Coming Up
What is This?
This is the fifth in a series of posts that explains how to use Mastodon if you are a screen reader user. It is an alternative form of documentation, and is not intended to relace the original Mastodon documentation, nor should it be used to replace the documentation that comes with your screen reading software. My suggestion is that you use this information in combination with the original documentation to further your understanding. I also suggest that, due to the advanced content in this portion of the guide, you go back and start the series with Chapter One.
The Road So Far…
- Chapter One gave an introduction to the guide, explained my reasons for writing it, and outlined things you should have to make your experience a smooth one.
- Chapter Two explained what Mastodon was, described the process of choosing an instance, and concluded with a brief walkthrough of the signup process.
- Chapter three guided you through the process of completing your user profile, concluding with the sneding of your first toot, “Hello World.”
- Chapter Four described the different things you can do with toots, as well as the process of searching for and following users.
What is in This Chapter?
This chapter explains how to navigate timelines and interact with toots from other users. We’ll start by discussing the different timelines Mastodon offers, as well as how to switch between them. we’ll then talk about how to navigate timelines, and how to interact with toots from other users.
Terms in This Chapter (In Order of discussion)
- Timeline
- Home Timeline
- Local Timeline
- Federated Timeline
- Notifications Timeline
- Direct messages timeline
- Boost
- Favorite
- Reply
Before We Begin
This guide was written using the ChromeVox screen reader on Chrome OS. If you’re using a different browser and/or screen reader, your experience may vary. If you are using a mobile device, the keyboard shortcuts may not work. I know for a fact that they do not work with iOS and Safari at the time of this writing. If you will be using a mobile device for Mastodon, stay tuned for Chapter Six, which has a section dedicated to mobile solutions.
How to Use Keyboard Shortcuts
Unless otherwise noted, you’ll make yourself ready and able to use keyboard shortcuts by letting your screen reader know to pass keystrokes to Mastodon. Here are some of the most common commands, but you should consult your screen reader’s documentation. To keep this discussion as general as possible and keep me from repeating long sentences, we’re just going to call this passthrough, and I may proceed a set of directions with something like, “Enable passthrough,” or “Disable Passthrough.”
- JAWS calls this virtual keys, and you toggle it with JAWS+Z.
- NBDA calls this Browse mode, and you toggle it with NVDA+Space.
- For VoiceOver on Apple devices, make sure quick-nav is off. You can toggle this by pressing the left and right arrows together.
- Chromevox has a limited version of passthrough, and it won’t come into play here. For the record, that command is ChromeVox+Shift+Escape.
Timelines
A timeline is where toots appear. The kind of toot that appears and who those toots are from depends on the timeline you’re viewing. In the notifications timeline, the messages you see are not necessarily toots, but you will navigate them in the same way. They are displayed newest to oldest.
- Home timeline: Toots from you and people you follow. Includes boosts and replies by default.
- Notifications Timeline: Shows new followers, boosts of your toots, favorites of your toots, replies to your toots. Includes an option to only show replies/mentions.
- Local Timeline: Includes toots from users of your instance, regardless of whether or not you follow them.
- Federated Timeline: Includes toots from users from instances with which your instance interacts, regardless of whether or not you follow them.
By default, your home and notifications timelines are displayed on your home page, the page you land on after logging into your instance. With passthrough disabled, you can jump between these by using the command to navigate by heading. These two timelines are considered to be pinned, and pinning is covered in more detail in Chapter Six.
You can also navigate to the local and federated timelines by activating the links at the top of the page. You can also switch timelines by using the following hotkeys with passthrough enabled. All of these start by pressing the letter g, followed by:
- H for home.
- N for notifications
- L for local timeline.
- T for federated timeline.
- S for “Get Started”.
- D for Direct Messages.
Regardless of whether you click the links or use the hotkeys, Mastodon will not load another page like you may be used to from using other websites. Instead, it expands a new section, and that section is under a level one heading, the title of which depends on which section you called up. Home and notifications are always visible. If you don’t call up one of the other timelines, and if you navigate to the heading beyond the notifications section, you’ll encounter the getting started section. This includes links to various account settings (detailed in chapter six), as well as the complete list of hotkeys and profile directory (See Chapter Three). You can also call up the list of hotkeys by pressing ? with passthrough enabled. Press the Backspace key to go back when you’ve finished with a section.
Navigating Within Timelines Described
This is a general description of how to navigate through timelines. This means that once you apply these methods, you should be able to navigate all timelines. If you need more detail, the next major section(you can jump to it by using the command by jumoing by level two heading), details the navigation of the most common timelines you use on Mastodon.
Generally
To enter a timeline once it’s been called up or made visible, disable passthrough, and move by heading until you hear the name of the desired timeline. Pressing Tab the first time will move you to a “Settings” button, and clicking that will show or hide the settings pecific to that timeline. Later, we’ll take a look at the settings for Home, Notifications and Direct Messages. Pressing Tab again takes you to the toot at the top of the timeline, and pressing Tab a third time takes you to the list proper.
In the List
Enable passthrough, and use j or down arrow to move to the next toot. Use k or up arrow to move to the previous toott. You can review a toot by character, word, etc. by using your screen reader’s commands for that level of analysis.
On a Toot
Once you navigate to a toot, you can press the Tab key to move between the link to the user’s profile, the text, the button to show or hide content behind warnings, the image with alt text if it is there, and the buttons for interacting.
Navigating Within Timelines Applied
This section repeats what has just been covered, except it adds more detail about what you can expect to find. The prompts you should always hear from your screen reader are in quotes. Whether or not you hear the descriptions of controls as you pass over them will depend on how you have your verbosity settings configured. Similarly, whether you hear the name of the section and actually need to Tab to find the settings button, or if you hear the title of the section and the settings button when you navigate to that heading will depend on how your screen reader handles object presentation.
Home
Navigate by heading until you hear “home. Heading level one”. Press Tab, and you get:
- “Home. Show settings. Not pressed.”
- Activating this button will change the message to “Hide Settings. Pressed.”
- When these settings are shown you have checkboxes for what you do and don’t want shown in the timeline. Choose to see or not see boosts and replies by checking or unchecking these boxes.
- The first toot in the timeline. The latest.
- The first toot again. The start of the list proper. The toot is read in full.
- Author name.
- Message or content warning.
- If the toot was boosted, who boosted it.
- When the toot was tooted.
- Each of the elements above, plus:
- Photo and alt text if present.
- Buttons for interacting.
- Continuing to press Tab will take you to the next toot.
Enabling passthrough and pressing j, k, down arrow, or up arrow will take you to the next and previous toot, and the process repeats.
Notifications
Disable passthrough, and navigate by heading until you hear, “Notifications. Heading level one.” Press tab and you get:
- “Show settings. Not pressed.”
- Pressing this button changes the message to “Hide settings. Pressed.”
- You can choose which notifications you receive through either push or desktop. Eliminate entire categories, or only certain notifications for certain types of activity by checking or unchecking the boxes.
- “All.” Activating this shows all notifications.
- “Mentions.” Activating this only displays mentions.
- Message structure with elements as described above.
- Enable passthrough and use j, k, up, or down arrow to move through the list.
Direct Messages
Direct messages are toots that only you or a group of users that includes you can see. To navigate here, enable passthrough, then press g, d. Disable passthrough, and navigate by heading until you hear Direct Messages. Heading level one.” Press Tab, and you get:
- “Show settings. Not pressed.”
- Activating this button will change the message to, “Hide settings. Pressed.”
- The only option in this timeline is the option to pin it. This means it will always be visibile.
- The first message.
- By now, you should have enough to know what to expect.
I just want to point out to you that since direct message do qualify as mentions according to Mastodon, they will show up in your notifications timeline. It’s important to know how to call up different timelines, however, so you can work with lists, which will be covered in Chapter Six.
Take a Break: A Quick Look Behind the Scenes
This is the part where you need to stop and take a break. How do I know? Before I wrote this paragraph, I went back and read what I’d written before and cleaned it up. I’m exhausted, and this content is not new to me. I should also note that, with the exception of the first two chapters, each one of these takes me a couple of days to draft, plus a few extra hours to be ready for publishing. This is because I want to make reading these chapters and applying these concepts as seamless as possible for you, so I put a lot of my effort into making sure my reference points match.
I’m also putting more detail than some screen reader users may need, because there are a lot of people keeping up with this project and showing their support who aren’t screen reader users. They boost, they favorite, they share, they point out mistakes I’ve missed and help me reach my goals for this guide. In Chapter Seven, most likely the final chapter, I’ll have a section dedicated to thanking the contributors. Until then, thank you all.
Now that we’ve had a break, it’s time to talk about interacting with other users. Without that, none of the support I’m grateful to have received would have been possible.
Interacting with Toots
This section is going to be broken into three parts. First, we’ll deal with things you can do that won’t take your focus out of the timeline. We’ll then look at replying, which does take your focus away from the timeline. Finally, we’ll look at actions that open up additional sections and rely on navigation to complete. I’m writing this under the assumption that you went and found people to follow. For this section, passthrough will need to be enabled unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Boosting and Favoriting, and reading Image Descriptions
Neither boosting nor favoriting will take your focus away from the timelin in which you are currently operating. We’ll be working from the home timeline, but you can use these wherever you like, except Direct messages.
Boosting
Boosting a toot means you’ve shared it (Facebook), or retweeted it (Twitter). It basically means that helping a person’s message get heard. It’s also like if one person sings a song, and then you join in, and so on. To boost a toot:
- Navigate the timeline until you find a toot to boost.
- Do one of the following:
- Press Tab until you hear, “Boost. Not pressed” and activate it. The message should change to, “Boost. Pressed.”
- Press B to boost. Depending on your screen reader, you may not receive confirmation. You can Tab to the button for boosting, and you should hear, “Boost. Pressed.”
- Your followers will now see the toot from the original author, and that you boosted it.
- If the author of the toot has elected to receive such notifications, they will receive a notification that you’ve boosted their toot.
Favoriting
Favoriting is similar to using the like feature on other social media platforms. It also saves the toot to a separate timeline, and we’ll be exploring that in Chapter Six. To favorite:
- Navigate the timeline until you find a toot you like. Then, do one of the following:
- Tab until you hear, “Favorite. Not pressed.” and activate it. You should hear, “Favorite. Pressed.”
- Press F to favorite. Depending on your screen reader, you may or may not receive confirmation. Tab until you hear “Favorite. Pressed.” to confirm.
- If the author has chosen to receive this notification, they will be notified that you have favorited their toot.
- Your followers will not see this activity. This is why, if you toot something someone really likes, you’ll often receive a boost and favorite notification.
It’s important to know that boosts and favorites can be toggled, so it’s not a huge deal if you make a mistake.
Finding Image Descriptions (alt text)
If a person has added an image description (alt text) to an image they’ve uploaded, you can Tab until you encounter the image with description, and your screen reader should read it. If the author is using an instance where an uploaded image is not presented you may need to use your arrows, rather than Tab to find the image.
Replying
A reply is a toot posted in response to another toot. Doing this results in both messages being recognized as a thread that can be viewed later. To reply:
- Find a toot to which you wish to respond.
- Do one of the following;
- Tab until you hear, “Reply.” and activate it.
- You will be focused on the compose toot text box, and your screen reader should be ready to type.
- The box will have an at (@) sign, followed by the person’s username and instance, like @ChangelingRandy.
- Type your response, then do either one of the following:
- Tab until you hear “Toot” and activate it.
- Press CTRL+Enter to send your message.
- Your focus will remain in the text box, Disable passthrough, and use heading navigation to return to the timeline where you found the toot.
- Press R for reply.
- Your focus will be moved to the compose new toot text box, and your screen reader should be ready to type.
- The box has in it the at (@) sign, followed by the person’s username and instance, like @ChangelingRandy.
- Type your response, then press CTRL+Enter to send.
- Disable passthrough, and use heading naviagation to return to the timeline.
- Tab until you hear, “Reply.” and activate it.
- At this point, there is no way to quickly return to the toot you replied to (your spot in the timeline) using a screen reader.
Other Actions
By now, you should have an understanding of the process of interacting. I’m not going to detail each of these actions, except to say that most of them will open up additional sections on the page, which you will then to navigate to. Some, but not all, of these will be detailed in Chapter Six.
- Press M to mention the author is similar to a reply, but does not result in a conversation thread.
- Press P to open the author’s profile in a new section.
- Press Enter or O to open the status in a new section. If there is a conversation, it will be displayed.
- Press X to show the content behind a content warining. Your screen reader may or may not automatically read the content. If not, anvigate away from then back to the toot.
Additional Actions
Each toot has a “More” button you can Tab to and activate. Here are the options in that menu.
- Expand to status.
- Copy link to status.
- Imbed. Produces code you can put in a blog post to display a toot.
- Mention.
- Direct message.
- Mute.
- Block.
- Report.
- Delete if the toot is yours.
- Delete and edit if the toot is yours.
Thank You for Reading
At this point, you have all the essentials for using Mastodon. Many of you will choose to stop reading at this point. If this is you, thank you for reading Changeling’s Guide to Mastodon for Screen Reader users. Remember to check back here for updated content as the software updates.
Coming Up
In Chapter Six (to be published), we’ll be taking a look at some tools to make your experience smoother, as well as mobile apps for Mastodon. That discussion will operate under the assumption that you have an understanding of the concepts already covered by this guide, so you may wish to go back and review.
#A11y #boost #Chromevox #directMessage #favoritemetion #iOS #JAWS #Mastodon #NonvisualDesktopAccess #NVDA #reply #Safari #ScreenReaderUsers #screenReaders #timelines #toot #VoiceOver
In this PostToggle
- 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
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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.
More on Posts
The last chapter concluded with your first post, “hello World.” At the time, I listed for you the elements in the compose box, but wanted you to ignore them, the ultimate goal being to do a basic toot. It’s now time to take a look at all the things you can do with toots. If you haven’t already done so, log into your instance, and navigate to the compose box with your screen readers jump command for edit boxes, or with the shortcut key Alt+N. Make sure you tell your screen reader to ignore jump commands for the next few sections. Move to each element with the Tab and Shift+Tab commands.
Emoji
Many operating systems give users access to emoji by default. If you can’t find the emoji you want, you can insert one through Mastodon by doing the following.
- Tab until you hear “Insert emoji”.
- Press enter to expand the dropdown. Your focus will be moved to the searchbox.
- If you’re looking for something specific, type it into the searchbox. Use your up and down arrows to navigate results, and press enter on the one you want. You may need to let your screen reader know to go beyond the searchbox.
- If you want to just browse, skip the searchbox and use your arrows to browse. Press Enter when you find something you like.
- Once you choose an emoji, you should return to compose box. If not, navigate there. Turn off jump commands.
Media
You can add several types of media to your toot. This includes audio, video and pictures. You can upload one video or four pictures. To insert media:
- Tab until you hear, “Insert media,” followed by a list of filetypes Mastodon accepts.
- Press Enter. You will be taken to a browse dialog to select files for upload.
- Select your file, and press enter to insert it.
- If you uploaded a picture or pictures:
- You have the ability to add alt text, a description of the photo for screen reader users.
- Tab until you get to the edit box labeled “Alt Text”.
- Type your description into the field, then navigate back to the main compose box.
Pole
You can add a pole to toots, meaning you can ask users a question, and have them vote. To add a pole:
- From the compose box, type your question. For example, Do you think dragons exist?
- Tab until you hear “Add a pole”, and press Enter.
- Your focus will land on “Remove Pole”. You get two choices that appear as edit boxes by default. Shift+Tab twice to get to the first choice.
- Add your choices. For example, yes, no, maybe. If you need more than two choices, use the “Add Choice” button.
- Tab to the duration dropdown for the pole. The default is one day. Activate the dropdown to change this.
Status Privacy
You can adjust the status privacy of your toots. There are four options. To adjust privacy:
- From the compose box, Tab until you hear “Adjust Status Privacy”, and press Enter.
- Use your up and down arrows to move through options:
- Public: Posts to public timelines. More on timelines in Chapter Five.
- Unlisted: Does not post to public timelines, just the home timeline for your instance.
- Followers Only: Only your followers will see your toot.
- Direct: Only lets mentioned users see your toot. More on mentioning users in Chapter Five.
- Press enter to make your choice.
Content Warnings
Content warnings are one of the most popular features of Mastodon. How you use them will depend on what your instance’s code of conduct says needs a CW, what you personally feel needs a CW, and how you understand the concept of its function. A content warning is text that goes over the content of your toot, and hides it from people who may not wish to see this type of content.
It was intended to give users the choice of whether or not they wish to see content others may find offensive. You can also use it like a subject line in an email, an appropriate comparison, since Mastodon usernames look like email addresses. Here are some popular content warnings:
- Sexual content, nudity, etc.
- Mental health.
- Food.
- Gross.
- Body image, body harm, body horror, etc.
- Gender, gender dysphoria, gender identity, etc.
- Mentions self-harm, thoughts of self-harm, etc.
To insert a content warning:
- From the compose box, Tab until you hear, “Text is not hidden”, and press Enter.
- Your focus will land on the edit box where you can type your warning.
- Type your warning, then tab to the main compose box.
Once You’ve Tricked Out Your Toot
Once your toot has all the features it needs added on, press CTRL+Enter to send. Alternatively, Tab until you hear “Toot”, and press Enter.
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
In this PostToggle
- 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
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In this Post
Toggle
- What is This?
- The Road So Far…
- What is in This Chapter?
- Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)
- Completing Your Profile
- Profile Elements
- Posting Your First Toot
- Elements of the Compose Box
- Compose Your “Hello World” Toot: Method One
- Composing Your “Hello World” Toot: method Two
- 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
In this PostToggle
- 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
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Mastodon - Decentralized social media
Learn more about Mastodon, the radically different, free and open-source decentralized social media platform.joinmastodon.org
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
- Instances
- How Do I choose My Instance?
- Choose Based on Interest
- Choose Based on How You Feel About Rules
- Considerations for Screen Reader Users
- 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
In this PostToggle
- 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
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)
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
In this PostToggle
- What is This?
- What is Covered in This Chapter?
- Terms in This Chapter (in order of discussion)
- A Closer Look at Mastodon
- 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.#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)
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 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
https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/110169905368463347/embed
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/
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)
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.
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 prompted a minor news cycle about how Mastodon was an ‘also-ran’ social network that did not manage to kill Twitter.
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/
10 million Mastodon accountsThis 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)
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 Boston, in this specific context.
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
#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon
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 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
#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon
https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-15/
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)
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)
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)
@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.
fediview - The algorithmic timeline for Mastodon
Generate an algorithmic summary for Mastodon timelinesfediview.com
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.
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:
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: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/
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
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
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
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 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.
#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon
https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-10/
WordPress and the fediverseWordPress 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 investorsSteve Randall (Wealth Professional)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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#activitypub #fediverse #fediversenews #mastodon
https://fediversereport.com/the-roundup-episode-11/
Instagram Inhibits InclusionThey changed the account data export schema (json) in a way that makes it more challenging to parse/structure your own data/posts.
✅ Challenge Accepted
Not only are we working on Instagram Import, we're also reaching out to NOYB regarding challenging IG data exports to meet EU regulations.
Thanks to @NGIZero for suggesting NOYB, we're ready to fight for data sovereignty.
#pixelfed #instagramImport #dataSovereignty
A 5-minute tour of the Fediverse
People want to communicate over the internet as easily as they do in real life, with similar protections but, potentially, farther reach.Opensource.com
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