So, this is probably like setting up a joint mail address on an e-mail server that forwards mails (posts) to the specified people of the group, correct?
What I would need, however, is to thickly "categorize" contacts into group, so as to be more targeted.
E.g. not all people who enjoy #UKpol are interested in #History, etc.
@HistoPol @coloco Well, the other difference is that @fediversenews is moderated. I can remove posts from a group, and also ban malicious actors from participating to the group.
Moderation...someI have been arguing for due to the arrival of the #Metas and #Birdsite users with very different cultures. But is it something that I can do proactively with my threads? Probably not, I guess, for as much as I try working in tandem with myself, I am not a group, correct?
It's so easy that you probably don't even notice you're doing it already now.
You follow the group exactly like you follow a Mastodon user.
At least in the cases of Guppe, Lemmy, /kbin and Friendica groups/forums, you post to them by mentioning them like you'd mention a Mastodon user. Interaction with groups/forums on Hubzilla and (streams) is somewhat different; I've yet to find out how well it works.
In the case of streams, you can use bang-tags or @-mentions for public groups, or if your system supports local or remote wall posts you can just do that instead. For private groups the initial post sort of needs to be a DM for hopefully obvious reasons. In any case if you just select the group as the audience from the permission dropdown, we'll figure it out and just do it.
@jupiter_rowland Hi all, in light of what happened earlier this week, we do have to keep in mind that groups (like guppe groups) are the perfect tool for a spammer to increase his/her reach with very little effort. Perhaps, before implementing groups, we should first look at automated spam-detection / removal systems. If this isn't done, we risk that the groups will be become vehicles for spammers, which will probably completely kill of the service.
#Mastodon feels like it has to implement them. The #Fediverse doesn't have to implement them because they are already implemented.
@Fediverse News is on #Friendica which is not a modified Mastodon instance, but a project of its very own. When Mastodon was launched in 2016, Friendica had already been around for 6 years with a full-blown group/forum functionality.
Groups/forums in the Fediverse are actually older than the Fediverse itself.
It will depend on the platform. For example, #Friendica (and to an extent #Hubzilla and #Streams), the owner of the group (and anyone else given moderation access) can block accounts. There is also chirp.social which can also block accounts.
Then there is #GNUsocial, which is a rebranded #StatusNet itself a rebranded #Laconica (the first #Fediverse software, c. 2008) have built-in groups feature; which IIRC, can also block users if needed.
Personally, services like Guppe really need to add moderation features, otherwise, what you just described will more likely happen.
@youronlyone @jupiter_rowland Hi all! Well, in the end, where and how this gets implemented, who has to do the work, and if you put the workload at the side of human moderators or some automated tools, that is all secondary.
The only point I wanted to make is that the fediverse has grown quite fast in the last year, which starts to make it an interested target for spammers; and that unfiltered "multiplication engines" are the perfect tool for that.
@youronlyone @jupiter_rowland OK for human moderation, but is that still scalable for the fediverse with tens of millions of people?
Why not implement the spam detection engine for activitypub as an independent software-module that can be placed in front of any fediverse server, no matter what software the instance is running? This does probably require a standardized API between the fediverse instance software and the spam-detection module so that these two can work together.
@kristoff @youronlyone @jupiter_rowland Because trying to automate identifying and stopping “bad stuff” at scale is impossible. Millions of dollars spent by the social media companies on automated systems and underpaid sweat shop workers with PTSD in developing countries has failed over and over again. False positives, false negatives. Trolls, Nazis and scammers still there.
People complain about Mastodon’s moderation model, largely because it’s people and people disagree and make mistakes all the time. But it mostly works. Small communities can keep control of the behaviour of their own members. And if they don’t, they get ostracised.
By FB-like, do you mean some sort of membership/access control? Not sure if there's an explicit feature that supports this, if someone knows, I'd love to hear about it.
My guess is this could be sorta doable by creating a forum account and adjusting the security for it so that posts are not visible to the public. Then all you should need to do is curate the contacts. Friendica has a public list of all its forums which can used from anywhere across the fediverse.
@HistoPol @coloco @p4g It depends. On Friendica (and probably Hubzilla) groups look and behave just like Facebook groups. There’s a separate “Forums” section where groups live. Each one has posts that then have a dangling thread of replies. Replies go to on the end of the thread (and to anyone mentioned in the reply). When you look at them from Mastodon, they look like this fediversenews group and…
@HistoPol @coloco @p4g behave just like a bot that reflects every post that mentions it. Follow the bot and you receive all the group posts. As Mastodon is supposed to get built in group support soon, I hope this can be split out and presented better than the current jumble. In fact there’s another type of group that it is just a bot - the p4g group mentioned in this thread.
@HistoPol @coloco @p4g a.gup.pe just creates a new bot every time someone mentions it for the first time. You can then follow the bot and it will boost any mentions of itself just like a Friendica group. However I don’t think it supports moderation and the UX is pants. All I know about p4g is that it’s “a group about p4g”. Finding groups is a hit or miss affair - you have to guess the name.
@HistoPol @coloco @p4g The current group UX on Mastodon is also a bit odd. For example, even if I remove the fediversenews “user” and don’t mention it in a reply, the reply will still be part of the group, boosted to all followers etc as normal. Not what a Mastodon user would expect.
@Kevin Davidson This has nothing to do with Mastodon and everything with Friendica.
On Friendica (and Hubzilla and (streams)), if you comment on a post (remember the start-post-and-comments structure), you don't have to mention the author of the post. They and everyone else who has the post itself in their timeline/stream will see your comment and everyone else's comments even without a single mention. You only need mentions if you comment on another comment, and even these may actually only be cosmetical.
The reason why I keep adding mentions to my comments manually (with a little help from auto-complete) is to make sure that all users on ActivityPub projects involved in the thread receive them.
@jupiter_rowland I know, I use Friendica as well. Just pointing out that it looks strange to Mastodon users.
I see Groups is listed on the Mastodon roadmap as MAS-15 and “in progress”. Maybe the new native groups support will help and it will be displayed in a way that makes it clearer.
I was surprised to learn how easy it is to make a new group with https://a.gup.pe/ - just search for the group you want and it is is auto-created for you if not already made.
@FinchHaven @HistoPol @coloco @p4g Yup. Your post was boosted by fediversenews. Interestingly it hasn’t been boosted (yet?) by p4g, but all of my earlier replies certainly were.
@Kevin Davidson, @FinchHaven, this happens because the post to which you're replying is part of a conversation in the Fediverse News Forum. Even though your post/reply is marked as "unlisted", the conversation as a whole is not, the Fediverse News user will reshare it as that is one of its functions as a forum.
@FinchHaven @HistoPol @coloco @p4g I’m using @IceCubesApp The Mastodon web interface is usually very out of date when displaying replies/boosts/likes and often just doesn’t show the information (even number of boosts or likes). Other clients can display this and make sure it’s more up to date.
@FinchHaven @HistoPol @coloco @p4g @IceCubesApp My instance is on 4.1.2 and usually kept pretty up to date (they were running early builds of v4 in order to get post editing and hashtag following before most other people had that). I personally don’t like the Mastodon web UI. elk or phanpy are probably better if you want a desktop web UI. I mostly use mobile.
Incidentally, this is what the thread looks like on Friendica (actually on the instance hosting this group). You can see it’s boosted (reshared) the posts and that we’re both using Mastodon.
@mathias @coloco @FinchHaven @HistoPol My reading of the document at the head of this thread is that this is how groups are all supposed to work. Each thread in the group has an initial post (the example is a “Page” type), and then all the replies are Note types that are attached to it, or to previous replies.
@FinchHaven @jupiter_rowland @FinchHaven But more than half of those Mastodon users appeared in the last 6 months and was pretty small for a long time before that. Friendica may be lesser known and quieter, but it’s the place to be if you prefer a Facebook style interface, or need to keep in touch with people on diaspora* (an even more insular community).
@Kevin Davidson @FinchHaven Also, Mastodon isn't so big because 10 million people willingly chose Mastodon instead of any of the other Fediverse projects.
Mastodon is so big because 10 million Twitter users were RAILROADED HARD from Twitter to one specific Mastodon instance. They were never offered a choice. They weren't even told that there's more to the Fediverse than Mastodon. And many many Mastodon users, especially on the big, general-purpose instances, still don't know that. I still keep coming across people who have joined in November, and who are completely surprised to learn that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon half a year later.
Mastodon isn't bigger because it's better. Mastodon is bigger because 99.99% of all newcomers to the Fediverse over the last 15 months believed there's nothing else. Again, many still believe that.
@jupiter_rowland I accept that I may not be typical, but before I came across from Twitter last November, I thought I’d end up on diaspora* or Friendica, as those were the two I’d heard of. I just didn’t know anybody there. I hadn’t heard about Mastodon, but that’s where everyone started going, and I wasn’t too worried about where I went first as I was already aware that (in principal) I could move with my followers somewhere else.
@jupiter_rowland In fact mastodon.social (like a lot of instances) was closed to new users, so I spent some time looking around for others. I didn’t fit neatly into many of the specialised instances, so picked a general one. I didn’t realise until after I’d joined mas.to that I already knew the admin from elsewhere.
@jupiter_rowland But it was having an initial handful of familiar faces that brought me across, and the availability of a wider selection of mobile apps that meant I was reasonably happy with Mastodon as my choice.
@MetalSamurai @jupiter_rowland Yeah I was about to say, no one was being railroaded into mastodon.social during November, they were closed to new users unless you had someone who could send you an invite.
So it became a bit of a bluesky situation where people were asking for invites to .social or .art because they didn't understand servers and wanted to be where everyone else was.
@MetalSamurai @jupiter_rowland Yeah I was about to say, no one was being railroaded into mastodon.social during November, they were closed to new users unless you had someone who could send you an invite. So it became a bit of a bluesky situation where people were asking for invites to .social or .art because they didn't understand servers and wanted to be where everyone else was.
@BenjaminNelan @jupiter_rowland It seems obvious to me now that of course mastodon.social is the one run by Mastodon GmbH, but at the time (last November) it didn’t seem any more special to me. Just one of the many that joinmastodon suggested. I’m not comfortable with the current decision to make that the default for anyone using the app to sign up (and also the https://spreadmastodon.org site). https://joinmastodon.org/ still offers you a choice.
@MetalSamurai @jupiter_rowland Definitely agree, I don't think making an instance the default especially as one as large as mastodon.social is a good idea - but I can also sympathise with the reasoning behind doing so.
Definitely. Someone shared this screenshot on GitHub and I think something like it (but with a roulette system to change the second screen so it doesn't start on .social) would be waaay better.
Having said that - I still don't know what a typical user's experience of this would be.
Is there an existing issue for this? I have searched the existing issues Current Behavior With the current setup, the app strongly implies users should just join mastodon.social, with a harder-to-r...
@MetalSamurai @jupiter_rowland Also think November really cemented the need for more 'general' instances. A huge roadblock for many people who were trying to join was this concern over 'siloing' themselves into a single interest.
Arguably too much attention put into instances having some kind of targeted focus. Sort of muddies the waters - the local feed should never really be the most important thing in a federated system.
Toni :mastodon:
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Podrías explicarlo mejor?, gracias.
cc/ @p4g
Mnnn, acabo de ver que >>>>> @fediversenews es un grupo tambien, pero repito, ¿como funcionan y para que sirven?
cc/ @xikufrancesc
Fediverse News reshared this.
HistoPol (#HP)
in reply to Toni :mastodon: • • •I second this, how can I use, Facebook like (?) Groups...
a) on #Mastodon or
b) on other #Fedi platforms.
@p4g @fediversenews
Fediverse News reshared this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) • • •Fediverse News reshared this.
HistoPol (#HP)
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •What I would need, however, is to thickly "categorize" contacts into group, so as to be more targeted.
E.g. not all people who enjoy #UKpol are interested in #History, etc.
@coloco @fediversenews
Fediverse News reshared this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) • • •Fediverse News reshared this.
HistoPol (#HP)
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •But is it something that I can do proactively with my threads?
Probably not, I guess, for as much as I try working in tandem with myself, I am not a group, correct?
@coloco @fediversenews
Fediverse News reshared this.
narF 🎲
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) • • •HistoPol (#HP)
in reply to narF 🎲 • • •Maybe.
Amy link so I can investigate?
narF 🎲
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) • • •And find more info online: https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=mastodon%20how%20to%20use%20lists
Mastodon
Mastodon hosted on mastodon.socialHistoPol (#HP)
in reply to narF 🎲 • • •Thanks.
I will look into this.
Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •It's so easy that you probably don't even notice you're doing it already now.
You follow the group exactly like you follow a Mastodon user.
At least in the cases of Guppe, Lemmy, /kbin and Friendica groups/forums, you post to them by mentioning them like you'd mention a Mastodon user. Interaction with groups/forums on Hubzilla and (streams) is somewhat different; I've yet to find out how well it works.
@Chris Trottier Yes, @Fediverse News runs on the #Friendica node venera.social.
@">t̳̿͟͞o̳̿͟͞n̳̿͟͞i
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.
Mike Macgirvin
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •Fediverse News reshared this.
Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •Hi all, in light of what happened earlier this week, we do have to keep in mind that groups (like guppe groups) are the perfect tool for a spammer to increase his/her reach with very little effort.
Perhaps, before implementing groups, we should first look at automated spam-detection / removal systems. If this isn't done, we risk that the groups will be become vehicles for spammers, which will probably completely kill of the service.
Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 • • •#Mastodon feels like it has to implement them. The #Fediverse doesn't have to implement them because they are already implemented.
@Fediverse News is on #Friendica which is not a modified Mastodon instance, but a project of its very own. When Mastodon was launched in 2016, Friendica had already been around for 6 years with a full-blown group/forum functionality.
Groups/forums in the Fediverse are actually older than the Fediverse itself.
Yohan Yuki Xieㆍ사요한・謝雪矢
in reply to Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 • • •It will depend on the platform. For example, #Friendica (and to an extent #Hubzilla and #Streams), the owner of the group (and anyone else given moderation access) can block accounts. There is also chirp.social which can also block accounts.
Then there is #GNUsocial, which is a rebranded #StatusNet itself a rebranded #Laconica (the first #Fediverse software, c. 2008) have built-in groups feature; which IIRC, can also block users if needed.
Personally, services like Guppe really need to add moderation features, otherwise, what you just described will more likely happen.
@jupiter_rowland @fediversenews
eshep likes this.
Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪
in reply to Yohan Yuki Xieㆍ사요한・謝雪矢 • • •Well, in the end, where and how this gets implemented, who has to do the work, and if you put the workload at the side of human moderators or some automated tools, that is all secondary.
The only point I wanted to make is that the fediverse has grown quite fast in the last year, which starts to make it an interested target for spammers; and that unfiltered "multiplication engines" are the perfect tool for that.
Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪
in reply to Yohan Yuki Xieㆍ사요한・謝雪矢 • • •Why not implement the spam detection engine for activitypub as an independent software-module that can be placed in front of any fediverse server, no matter what software the instance is running?
This does probably require a standardized API between the fediverse instance software and the spam-detection module so that these two can work together.
Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 • • •Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •People complain about Mastodon’s moderation model, largely because it’s people and people disagree and make mistakes all the time. But it mostly works. Small communities can keep control of the behaviour of their own members. And if they don’t, they get ostracised.
eshep
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) • •My guess is this could be sorta doable by creating a forum account and adjusting the security for it so that posts are not visible to the public. Then all you should need to do is curate the contacts. Friendica has a public list of all its forums which can used from anywhere across the fediverse.
Friendica Directory
dir.friendica.socialreshared this
p4g group and Fediverse News reshared this.
Kevin Davidson
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) • • •Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •In fact there’s another type of group that it is just a bot - the p4g group mentioned in this thread.
Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •On Friendica (and Hubzilla and (streams)), if you comment on a post (remember the start-post-and-comments structure), you don't have to mention the author of the post. They and everyone else who has the post itself in their timeline/stream will see your comment and everyone else's comments even without a single mention. You only need mentions if you comment on another comment, and even these may actually only be cosmetical.
The reason why I keep adding mentions to my comments manually (with a little help from auto-complete) is to make sure that all users on ActivityPub projects involved in the thread receive them.
@HistoPol @">t̳̿͟͞o̳̿͟͞n̳̿͟͞i
Kevin Davidson
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •I see Groups is listed on the Mastodon roadmap as MAS-15 and “in progress”. Maybe the new native groups support will help and it will be displayed in a way that makes it clearer.
HistoPol (#HP)
in reply to Toni :mastodon: • • •Esta al principio de todo en la foto con hyperlink, pero en inglés.
@atomicpoet @p4g @fediversenews @xikufrancesc
Fediverse News reshared this.
Ed Ross
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •@fediversenews
Guppe Groups
a.gup.peclacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.
Fediverse News reshared this.
Kevin Davidson
Unknown parent • • •Interestingly it hasn’t been boosted (yet?) by p4g, but all of my earlier replies certainly were.
eshep
Unknown parent • •reshared this
p4g group and Fediverse News reshared this.
Kevin Davidson
Unknown parent • • •The Mastodon web interface is usually very out of date when displaying replies/boosts/likes and often just doesn’t show the information (even number of boosts or likes). Other clients can display this and make sure it’s more up to date.
webhat
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Kevin Davidson
Unknown parent • • •I personally don’t like the Mastodon web UI. elk or phanpy are probably better if you want a desktop web UI. I mostly use mobile.
Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Incidentally, this is what the thread looks like on Friendica (actually on the instance hosting this group). You can see it’s boosted (reshared) the posts and that we’re both using Mastodon.
eshep
in reply to Kevin Davidson • •Wall Photos
social.trom.tfreshared this
p4g group and Fediverse News reshared this.
Kevin Davidson
Unknown parent • • •https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/feps/fep-1b12.md
fep
Codeberg.orgKevin Davidson
Unknown parent • • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Mastodon is so big because 10 million Twitter users were RAILROADED HARD from Twitter to one specific Mastodon instance. They were never offered a choice. They weren't even told that there's more to the Fediverse than Mastodon. And many many Mastodon users, especially on the big, general-purpose instances, still don't know that. I still keep coming across people who have joined in November, and who are completely surprised to learn that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon half a year later.
Mastodon isn't bigger because it's better. Mastodon is bigger because 99.99% of all newcomers to the Fediverse over the last 15 months believed there's nothing else. Again, many still believe that.
Trenton Matthews
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •Jupiter Rowland
in reply to Trenton Matthews • • •Kevin Davidson
in reply to Jupiter Rowland • • •Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Kevin Davidson
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •Benjamin
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •So it became a bit of a bluesky situation where people were asking for invites to .social or .art because they didn't understand servers and wanted to be where everyone else was.
Benjamin
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •So it became a bit of a bluesky situation where people were asking for invites to .social or .art because they didn't understand servers and wanted to be where everyone else was.
Kevin Davidson
in reply to Benjamin • • •I’m not comfortable with the current decision to make that the default for anyone using the app to sign up (and also the https://spreadmastodon.org site). https://joinmastodon.org/ still offers you a choice.
Spread Mastodon
Spread MastodonBenjamin
in reply to Kevin Davidson • • •@MetalSamurai @jupiter_rowland Definitely agree, I don't think making an instance the default especially as one as large as mastodon.social is a good idea - but I can also sympathise with the reasoning behind doing so.
As I brought up here - they should try to strike a balance between friendly to new users while also spreading users out so they're not all in one place.
https://mastodon.social/@BenjaminNelan/110314625854269281
Benjamin
2023-05-05 06:20:06
Benjamin
in reply to Benjamin • • •Arguably too much attention put into instances having some kind of targeted focus. Sort of muddies the waters - the local feed should never really be the most important thing in a federated system.