Mefi Mastodon server?

November 5, 2022 5:47 AM

Would there be interest in having a Metafilter Mastodon server? I think this idea has come up a couple of times, though scattered around; having the conversation in one thread might be helpful.

More details: Mastodon is federated microblogging software. Think of it like Twitter, only spread across dozens or hundreds of servers, like email. (The addresses for accounts - like my current one, "@[e-mail]" - are heavily inspired by email.) It’s not perfect, but it’s coming along. The Social Explorer shows over 180 mefites on Mastodon now.

Various people are less than thrilled with the Elon Musk acquisition of Twitter. Some are joining Mastodon; the first hurdle to that is deciding on an appropriate instance (or server).

We could rent a managed Mastodon server - masto.host charges $89/month to support (roughly) 2k users. We could charge for access ($2/month? paid yearly?), or have it be free for Mefi users, and also gather donations. This would offer various benefits:

• Mefites wouldn’t have to weigh the pros and cons the various instances
• It could be a fundraiser for Metafilter
• People can follow people on other servers; so, our toots could raise awareness of Metafilter

Some ideas for tiers:

• $8/month to sign up, in a nod to Twitter; or, as a default donation
• free for users, but pay extra to be able to post images
• paid: allow non-mefites to sign up?
• might make more money, but give more moderation headaches

Concerns:

• if it doesn’t work out, users can transfer to another instance easily
• moderation efforts: dunno!
• hassle of running Mastodon: I’m suggesting we get a managed Mastodon host, so it’s not entirely our headache
• note, I haven’t researched masto.host much

posted by Pronoiac to MetaFilter-Related at 5:47 AM (309 comments total)

I don't quite understand how Mastodon works. If I'm already on a Mastadon server, what does that mean for joining this?
posted by iamkimiam at 6:08 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I vaguely glared at Mastodon as a concept, liking the idea of Thing Not Owned By Commercial Surveillance Dudes. I sort of poked and prodded around the deployment package, thinking, fuck it, maybe I'll just stand up a single user instance or something for myself because I'm on that kick lately. I kind of abstractly toyed with the notion of offering a community thing to the community because on the long scale -- going back to the BBS sysop days -- I oscillate through phases of hosting services vs. consuming them.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'd offer to stand one up for everyone or something but then you still have a "one dude who might be flaky down the line" problem.
posted by majick at 6:09 AM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

I support this idea very much!

I started to look into Mastodon for myself some time back. The options for instances both over- and underwhelmed me.
posted by NotLost at 6:10 AM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

If you'd like feedback on what it might be like, check in with those running the Metacrafts Discord server. The community there has remained pretty small and quiet, but it's been fun to have an extra way to connect with Mefites. I suspect your experience might be similar; they may have advice.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:58 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

My only Mastodon account (linked in my profile) is on a server run as an offshoot of an early 00s community blog, and I do really like the feeling of belonging to that and that being in my social media presence there.

It's not big enough for the Local feed (i.e. everything that everyone who is one the server posts, regardless of whether I follow them or not) to be that much to read, and I think I follow all 30 other people on the server anyway, so I just use my Home feed (i.e. the people I follow, across all Mastodon servers), and occasionally glance at the Federated feed (i.e. the feeds of everyone that anyone on my server follows, across all servers) to find new people to follow.

So I do feel it works very nicely as a nexus between an existing online community and the wider social media world, and I had suggested it for MeFi in other places. It would strike me as both

1. increasing the sense of community here
and
2. showing to the wider world that MeFi is a place with a thoughtful and insightful community who say interesting things

So I think it could be a very good thing to revive MetaFilter without taking away resources it needs, and I'm hugely in support.

I think it's a Steering Committee decision to make, and that the server contract has to be owned and run by MetaFilter LLC. There should be a realistic forecast of how much moderation will be needed, and who will do that, plus what a sensible price would be (my realistic ceiling would be $20/year, but perhaps my budget's quite low), but I suspect it is a very realistic way to grow the community.
posted by ambrosen at 7:01 AM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

The idea of running a Mastodon server was raised in the comments in April this year when Musk first put in his proposal to ruin Twitter.

That thread is also a good place to find other MeFites to follow, plus checking in people's profile pages.

If people are already on a Mastodon server, it's possible to transfer your account (including the people who are currently following you) over to an account on a new server, or it's possible to have more than one account, depending how many personae you want to show to the world.
posted by ambrosen at 7:06 AM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

I recently asked a question about mastodon server options that were like Metafilter, and mostly received crickets, with a couple useful suggestions. I am currently attempting to sign up for social.coop, but they don't seem terribly interested in adding new users, considering that it took a week after I filled out the account request form to respond that I needed to fill out another, additional account request form. I would happily pay to be able to join a mefi-hosted Mastodon server.
posted by rockindata at 7:12 AM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

Sounds cool, I’d be up for it!
posted by adrianhon at 7:24 AM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

I have a mastodon account on a generic server, and I’d be interested in connecting with fellow mefites. Whether that’s through a MeFi server or some other mechanism, I don’t know. Is there a way to subscribe to a list of mastodon users scattered across different servers?

I’d be happy to pitch in for a dedicated instance.
posted by adamrice at 7:26 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mastodon is known to be a bear to self-host and scale.

Thanks for the warning, that's very good to know, particularly if the bottleneck is on the database side which would be sort of a bit left of my wheelhouse. I know how to scale the everloving heck out of pretty much everything else but scaling a DB is a vertical exercise at my skill level. On the other hand I... kinda could lay hands on capacity?

It's a fair point, though, that 2k users for like 90 bucks is a steal cost/benefit wise. So, uh, who's collecting the 90 bucks? Please tell me that's not me.
posted by majick at 7:34 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Mixed feelings:

1. I like the idea! Particularly the variant where some level of subscription or donation to mefi gets you automatic access to it. Now (or perhaps, 1-2 weeks ago) is a great time to be doing such a thing.
2. As I commented elsewhere, from people I've known who have done it, the mastodon self-hosting experience seems to be awful a long a number of dimensions, and the software scales quite badly with the number of users. So full agreement that a managed hosting approach is much, much better than self-hosting.
3. Even so, from a range of discussion I've seen I don't think the moderation/management time will be (anywhere near) zero, and because of federation, seems to have its own unique complexities. Does anyone have a realistic estimate based on first-hand experience of what it could be? (My knowledge is mainly second-hand.)
4. My initial foray into mastodon was on a small instance (or at least, initially small instance) loosely centered around my academic research area. This was great while it lasted, but eventually died due to points 2-3 above, and relatively suddenly. I'm currently hesitant to join/migrate to a mastodon instance that doesn't have some premise of longer-term stability. Instances definitely seem to come and go in general due to resource/moderation/staffing issues; for example the medium-sized cybre.space entered eol a few months ago with a relatively gentle sunsetting plan. Many "desirable" instances are currently closed to new users apparently for similar reasons, or adding extra roadblacks (as in rockindata's example). So, very much in tension with 1, I'm a bit unsure that a mefi that doesn't yet know what cuts it will have to make in ~2 months is the right institution to be devoting official resources to something like this right at this moment. These days migration exists if a server sunsets with some notice, but my impression is that it's still not very easy/polished (I could be wrong about this, happy to hear first-hand reports).

posted by advil at 7:38 AM on November 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

this claim is scandalous!

Also if you had been at the show in NYC I went to you would not necessarily have believed this to be true.
posted by majick at 7:39 AM on November 5, 2022

the right institution to be devoting official resources

I agree strongly with your entire thesis except that I believe the proposal on the table is a "hey kids lets put on a show" thing, and not a "hey loup have you got a second?" thing.
posted by majick at 7:41 AM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

I wrote an Intro to Mastodon post this morning, if you are interested.
posted by COD at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2022 [21 favorites]

I believe the proposal on the table is a "hey kids lets put on a show" thing, and not a "hey loup have you got a second?" thing.

Thanks, I wasn't sure, and there are comments in this thread discussing both possibilities; some of the possible membership models would seem to require at least some official buy-in / participation. (Probably the ones that sound the most promising to me!)
posted by advil at 7:51 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I support not charging more than $5 a month at most. One option would be $5 to join, then suggested donation of $x afterward, with the option to waive any of that for anyone who says it's a hardship. If this is done parallel to Mefi but not part of Mefi, I suggest considering donating some portion of the "profit" to Mefi.
posted by NotLost at 7:53 AM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

I believe the proposal on the table is a "hey kids lets put on a show" thing, and not a "hey loup have you got a second?" thing.

I think both options should be on the table.
posted by NotLost at 7:53 AM on November 5, 2022

I think both options should be on the table.

I don't disagree with this at all other than that, well, let's be plain, here: the MeFi fight for survival is on and Mastodon is optional. If we want it to happen we can either backlog it for post-Thrive financial model as an official sponsored kinda thing, or "hey kids" it.
posted by majick at 7:55 AM on November 5, 2022 [7 favorites]

The problem I see with Mastodon is that it has a lot of overlap with Metafilter itself, long text posts, hyperlinks, images and video. So if it succeeds people might start posting there in preference to metafilter proper.

If Metafilter runs out of money and has to shutdown, then a Mastodon instance might be a good 'lifeboat' option for people to move to, but that then raises the question 'if Metafilter cant raise enough money to stay online, why would things be any different running under a Mastodon instance?'

Also the Mastodon experience is more like another LiveJournal group, so anyone expecting it to be a Twitter replacement with a worldwide audience is going to be disappointed.
posted by Lanark at 8:22 AM on November 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've had fun this past week on wandering.shop, a scifi-writers-and-readers-oriented masto instance. There's a nice vibe.
The fact that it's a a limited audience is a feature.
posted by signal at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

Note: masto.host is currently not taking new signups, although you can apparently get on a waiting list.

Another note: if anybody wants to self host, there may be value in picking a different software package that supports the ActivityPub protocol because of Mastodon’s requirements and maintenance. If you choose to go in this direction I wish you well: every time I look into it I just get tired of parsing the requirements, the politics, and all the implementation specifics that come with every new fork of a platform. And a lot of them do seem to come down to one person in charge who may not have the time or the spoons to manage a sprawling codebase.
posted by fedward at 8:39 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think a mastodon instance would be fun and a good fit for MeFites as a chatty/microblog space where the existing culture and expectations of the crowd could set a good tone from the word go. I agree with notion that, at the moment, it'd really need to be a motivated users setting up a thing situation, not another official task for MeFi's formal staff and resources. Running the instance should definitely be either managed hosting or someone who already knows what they're doing and wants to keep doing it for a while; the single-point-of-failure issue of maintenance has taken down an awful lot of small scrappy instances over the years.

I've spent time on mastodon.social for years and I genuinely like the low-tempo, low-heat vibe of the experience I've had there; imagining a more rich, dense MeFi neighborhood in that context would be totally nice. Masto doesn't do what MeFi does and vice versa but they feels complementary in a workable way.
posted by cortex (retired) at 9:01 AM on November 5, 2022 [11 favorites]

I think it’s a good idea and would chip in for hosting.
posted by michaelh at 9:40 AM on November 5, 2022 [7 favorites]

If enough commitments can be gathered to have enough cash on hand for at least a few months of hosting, I'd be willing to plunk down five or ten bucks as a one time thing to help get it started as it would give me a chance to try out the whole Mastodon thing and hopefully hedge against a worst case scenario here. However, for the immediate future I personally wouldn't be in a position to commit to a monthly payment. If I were, it would go toward increasing my monthly contribution here.
posted by wierdo at 10:08 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

moderation efforts: dunno!

I have been thinking about this a lot. Mastodon link in my profile. I would love to have the metafilter community gathered in a Hometown server instance in the Fediverse. But.

Metafilter survived this long and is a developed community because it is moderated by smart people who care about the community. That is the core of the site, not the boxes it is on, or the codebase. Metafilter is the people. It is owners who care about gathering a community, and not growth for the sake of growth or profits.

Admins here adjudicate to keep us kind and are core to the ethos. They are why I have been here, as a more quiet community member, for much of my adult life.

Mastodon community moderation does not scale beyond a certain point. The high level of moderation that would be required at a Hypothetical Metafilter Branded Mastodon Server Instance, to match the user experience here at *.Metafilter.com website, will require a significant amount of moderation efforts. It is the biggest problem.

Thought experiment: 1000 active Metafilter-Mastodon users in a given month, interacting with the rest of the exponentially growing mastodon community, in >10k distinct threads? Plus interacting with mefites who are on other instances. Thats a cross multiplication problem and exponentially harder compared to modding, say, a couple hundred active threads daily here on *.metafilter.com.

Ongoing moderation is the biggest blocker for this proposal, not the server hosting or the day to day administrative tasks to patch problems and advocate for software improvements.

Do the math on a year's worth of full time mod staffing, its a LOT more than 89$/month. I want it to be possible, I want it to work, but the emotional labor and human capital involved for an Official Instance is higher than any in this thread have yet acknowledged.
posted by enfa at 10:19 AM on November 5, 2022 [11 favorites]

I'm also interested.
posted by kathrynm at 10:30 AM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

Official Instance

I also want to just add here: let's get people paid for moderating MetaFilter itself as much as we can, for as long as we can, until we have to change that. Let's, maybe, not add to that burden until labor is fair and happy *now*.
posted by majick at 11:08 AM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

A few thoughts. A long time ago in a galaxy far away back in the mathowie days... I used my free year of AWS small instance to setup a MetaFilter XMPP chat server. Didn't really work out.

First, to keep it Mefi some sort of authentication has to be done. How do you know they're a Mefite? I fell back to "send me a memail of a particular format" and a bot that would read those and create new accounts. Second, it never made it out of the MetaTalk thread, maybe a couple dozen people tried it out.

(Admittedly it was too soon, there were no good web clients, you had to use gaim or iChat or some other desktop chat client that supported XMPP)

One way or another, if it's Mefi, it's going to take backend work from Mefi staff to work out the authentication of people. Not necessarily hard to do that bit, I also ran an XMPP chat server for a language learning site based in the US off of a repurposed $5/mo IRC hosting provider out of Singapore. It's not bad if you control both ends to whip up some authentication/authorization checking.

I don't know anything about Mastadon or how it works.

It might be practical to add it as a 'subscription' part of Mefi. Pony up $X/mo and you get a Mastadon account.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:23 AM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

I also know noithing about Mastodon, but the "microblogging" and "Metafilter style moderation" do not really mesh with my imagining how it would work.

So I have my posts, they are under my byline as part of my blog... and they get deleted when and by whom?

I have commenters I do not appreciate under my blog post, do I get to decide that they can / cannot hang with me in my blog? Or I have to appeal to some MF mod mechanism?

If you can pick and chose your contacts then it becomes multiple mini-communities, with maybe a more easy-to-find group of possible Mefite friends on your server? But you do not HAVE TO read all of their shit? Or?
posted by Meatbomb at 12:39 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would definitely be interested, but also wouldn't want it to undermine everything else. It does feel like a moment to get MeFi noticed in a wider ecosystem, what with the Twitter crisis. And I would enjoy a version of twitter that brings me into the orbit of more people who are attracted to MeFi.

I get that if it's going to be officially an arm of MeFi it needs to have some kind of moderation that reflects MeFi's culture — but is it even possible to mod a platform like that in the same way? Or does it just boil down to silent deletions and user bans? (or....exile to another home server? not sure how it works.)

Without the potential to spawn a multiday MeTa self-criticism session. I don't know, but would expect that MeFi mods active time is taken up more by reactions to what they do than the initial doing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:43 PM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

First, to keep it Mefi some sort of authentication has to be done. How do you know they're a Mefite?

(Not discounting or ignoring thoroughburro's comment, just answering the technical question)

Mastodon and keybase work together already, and Metafilter could conceivably participate, similar to what reddit and HackerNews do with keybase today. As a matter of publicity and being where people are, Metafilter could do that anyhow.

Mastodon also does link verification, but that's oriented toward people who own their own domains. Using that approach on a third-party site leaves the verification in a weak state without some extra steps.

Both approaches require engineering and design resources from MetaFilter. Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze, especially if the goal (to return to thoroughburro's point) is to get more people into Metafilter's orbit.
posted by mph at 12:43 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I also know noithing about Mastodon, but the "microblogging" and "Metafilter style moderation" do not really mesh with my imagining how it would work.

It's just microblogging the way Twitter works, with a few variations: You have an account, you post, your posts show up in a common feed. One key difference is that there are a few feeds you can filter your view on:

- The feed of just people you follow
- Your local instance's feed of everyone else on your instance
- The federated feed, which is all Mastodon instances minus the ones your local feed owner have blocked.

There aren't comments in the sense of "comments underneath a post that random people can put there." There are just replies, same as Twitter. You can mute them and report them. Local moderators can remove problematic content (and leave a message as to why).

Spitballing:

Given a dedicated community manager, a Mastodon instance could be very community strengthening. Local instance owners can moderate for abuse, stuff outside the community norms, etc. so some standards could apply to user activity.

At the same time, the moderation needs of a flat commenting structure aren't necessary or necessarily healthy for microblogging, so some of the facilitation aspects would fall off in that medium, but the basic standards of what constitutes decent behavior would not. Given three tiers of timeline (who I follow, who else is in this instance, who else is on Mastodon - blocked servers), people could pick their level of immersion/exposure by curating their own follow list, occasionally muting other users they simply never want to deal with in a more freewheeling environment, but knowing that the basic standards of moderation apply no matter what.

I think this could be a good thing. There are some tensions on the site around what constitutes acceptable discourse, and users have very little control of how they interact with a normal thread. Mastodon/microblogging of some kind could open up an "outer ring" where users could exert more individual control (muting, not following, blocking) and space could be created for more styles of discussion.

On a more positive note, the community team could inject stuff into the local feed to promote the site, recognize community members, organize community microblogging events, etc. micro.blog does this pretty well.
posted by mph at 1:06 PM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

^ that makes sense.

Also, it's a way to face the fact that 'chatfilter' is exactly the thing that the big social media platforms have turned into a huge business and is the thing that keeps people active and talking to each other.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:12 PM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

Also, it's a way to face the fact that 'chatfilter' is exactly the thing that the big social media platforms have turned into a huge business and is the thing that keeps people active and talking to each other.

The one edit I made before posting was to remove the line "imagine a world where 'deleting several comments and stopping a derail' becomes 'continue this derail on masto, hashtag #26183'" because I wanted more time to think through the implications. One thing I would not want would be for Mastodon to become a nebulous, blobular, free-range, low accountability Metatalk where a regular set of people with oppositional defiant problems pull the eject lever and heckle staff or shit-talk people away from moderator intervention.

Basically you've gotta articulate a whole new set of community standards that conform or are congruent with the broad values of the Metafilter community, and seek to keep from turning the instance into the wastelands beyond the walls of civilization, such as (and with no deep consideration):

- You can refer to a post or its general vibe, you can't call out a specific comment
- You can talk about ideas you've seen in the post broadly, you can't call out another user
- Discussions about moderation go to MeTa, where they're curated
- Staff is not obligated to respond to you on Mastodon
- One-sided conversations with a user who signals they don't care to engage to staff face deletion
- You get some number of strikes, resetting over some arbitrary time period, before we suspend you on this instance

I'd be very interested to talk to Jean, the community manager at micro.blog on how she manages things, and also Manton (who developed it) on the broad nature of their moderation and anti-shittiness tools. It's a very calm community that fuses Twitter-style microblogging with actual blogging via two presentation layers (a timeline of who you follow and a "discovery" timeline of curated posts, and parallel "responses" for a post on the timeline as well as traditional "comments" on an individual post page).
posted by mph at 1:39 PM on November 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

Not sure about the first (and maybe the second) depending on what a "callout" is in that context. It's not as if you need to be logged in to read any MeFi comment; potentially counterproductive in the aim of showing off MeFi to the rest of the world if a "callout" is basically just a 'mention.' It would, for instance, ban discussion of Dee Extrovert's famous post about civil society in wartime Sarajevo. People can't go back in comment in that thread...

The rest seems reasonable (although hopefully there's a user-to-user blocking function that would mostly handle the unwanted persistent interaction stuff; I'm gonna suddenly be less interested in Mastodon if there isn't). Piggybacking on MeTa for moderation that isn't native to Mastodon is a good idea.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:18 PM on November 5, 2022

I mean though, the post isn't open any more so it's not like we can talk about it there. Why not be able to talk about old posts? If it turns sour then maybe, but the sourness is what should be banned, not the discussion.
posted by JHarris at 2:20 PM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

And yes, you can block whomever you like individually on Mastodon as well.
posted by JHarris at 2:21 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

- You can refer to a post or its general vibe, you can't call out a specific comment
- You can talk about ideas you've seen in the post broadly, you can't call out another user
- Discussions about moderation go to MeTa, where they're curated

Restricting what one could talk about re MeFi seems odd. I could discuss any of these aspects of MeFi on literally any other Mastodon instance, but I couldn't mention them directly on MeFi's own instance?
posted by fabius at 2:43 PM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I'm not fond of those restrictions either. I think what snuffleupagus is trying to forestall is a pile-on effect. However, an "official" Mastodon instance (even if not moderated by the mods themselves) would be less vulnerable to that? It's not a corner of the internet distant from MeFi, presumably there'd be a link to it in the sidebar or header. The people talked about could read what it is "up close," which would make wags less willing, I think, to just go off on someone.
posted by JHarris at 3:00 PM on November 5, 2022

Not sure about the first (and maybe the second) depending on what a "callout" is in that context.

When I wrote that, "callout" meant to me a negative mention of some kind, not a simple reference.

This is me struggling a little with the way things sometimes go down in a subreddit devoted to discussion of the goings-on on Metafilter. I'm a participant and I enjoy a lot of the folks there and how they like to discuss things. My discomfort as a member of that sub goes up when conversations get closer and closer to identifying or pointing at individuals in a negative manner.

That struggle informed my thinking about how Masto would work . A bit more in a second.

Why not be able to talk about old posts?

I think it's fine. The first few bullets were to get to "how can we do that without turning the Mastodon stuff into a place where there's a lot of axe-grinding, litigation, negative callouts, etc."

So, "man, so-and-so hit the nail on the head about the marginal tax rate" or "so-and-so's comment about whatever was really illuminating."

Restricting what one could talk about re MeFi seems odd. I could discuss any of these aspects of MeFi on literally any other Mastodon instance, but I couldn't mention them directly on MeFi's own instance?

For all of this, the overarching thought I had was oriented around the different modes and styles of online discourse and charting a course through them, or trying to harmonize them. Like, why do we have online discussions? What do we get from them? How do we want them to be? What is the point of moderation?

Introducing guidelines like this, to my mind, help preserve a sense of comity in a community that is sometimes willing to discard comity to honor other commitments and has an effective means to enforce those priorities broadly in the confines of the site. It's a way to broaden the appeal of the user community, widen participation, and keep the spillover and negativity of Metafilter-as-website honoring one set of commitments from dragging Metafilter-as-an-extended-community-hovering-about-in-Mastodon into a place where comity is undermined. And it's a way to admit certain conversational styles into the community norms in a context where they work better than they would in a single-threaded comment section.

I get that it perhaps sounds like too much structure, but I also think one of the fundamental tensions of Metafilter is around style of discourse. I think the moderation choices I pick up on each day, and over the course of years, are toward favoring a certain style because of the ways it creates a safer, more welcoming space even if that subverts a style of participation people are more used to in online fora (e.g. "the classical enlightenment liberalist" mode, which Metafilter used to have more room for).

Maybe we don't want rules, but I think we do want guidelines. So maybe the better version of that list is to prepend "think before you..." for the sake of comity.
posted by mph at 3:15 PM on November 5, 2022

I think it's pretty important that if it's going to be the lightweight and low moderation space it needs to be, it absolutely has to be first and foremost a place to extend the MeFi community, and to discourage people from treating it as a side channel.

Once again, the very important thing about Mastodon instances is that they're primarily describing an affiliation for the user in the wider world. They're not subreddits. The users follow and are followed back by people from all over the Mastodon fediverse, and most conversations are with people on other Mastodon instances.

In many ways, it should be more similar to wearing a MeFi t-shirt to the pub: perhaps you're wearing it to a MeFi meetup, but more likely you're saying you belong to a community. The difference is that with a Mastodon instance, people can click through to the server from your profile and see who's on it and see its ethos. But someone outside the community cannot see the local feed, and people within the community will mainly not be looking at the local feed.

Apologies for the bolding, but I think it's quite important not to talk about it as if we're creating a new discussion space. It'd be a nice neighbourhood for us to move into and get on with our Mastodon lives.
posted by ambrosen at 3:37 PM on November 5, 2022 [12 favorites]

trying to forestall is a pile-on effect.

(to be clear, those were mph's concerns; I think they're valid but would favor erring on the side of fewer restrictions and seeing how it goes.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:38 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hey all. OP here. There is discussion about moving MetaFilter to other software, but that's a separate thread. Mastodon is vaguely Twitter-shaped, and people can start and run their own, and I was wondering if there's interest in that. Not in the equivalent of "let's move MetaFilter to Twitter," which, no. And not "let's start a Mastodon just to discuss MetaFilter," either.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:49 PM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

The former wasn’t suggested by anyone, the latter is what people are concerned with preventing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:04 PM on November 5, 2022

I am a long-time user and advocate for Mastodon and the Fediverse (PixelFed, etc). I can see some good things coming from this, and I can also see the concerns. But I think (most) of those same concerns are already around in the form of Reddit and Twitter.

I am already very happy on my current Mastodon instance, but I would get a metafilter.social account as well.

I have run my own instance via Masto.host too, so if there is a role I can play to help, let me know.
posted by terrapin at 5:09 PM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm interested in a Mastodon instance for Mefites and willing to toss in to help pay for it. I'm reading along about the rest of it for now.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 5:26 PM on November 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

> Mefites wouldn’t have to weigh the pros and cons the various instances

This is the thing that has kept me off Mastodon so far. I poke around and I see the instances my invisible friends are on all seem to be closed to new members, waiting to get off mailing lists hasn't had any results, and venturing out on my own is scary. What if I accidentally join a bad instance?
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:27 PM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

> What if I accidentally join a bad instance?

Honestly, it isn't that big of a deal. Just start with a general instance until you get the feel for it. You don't have to start in the perfect specialty instance thats adjacent to your field or interests.

I did, joined up mastodon dot cloud in 2017 after this post. I followed a couple mefites and poked around at it every once in a while, but the fediverse community was not super diverse and decidedly felt like a FOSS convention up until 2022. I treated it like a low engagement twitter, and it was fine. I didn't pay enough attention to note that there was absolutely no moderation, and the local feed was 85% spam, to the point that some major instances had blocked my instance entirely. Oops.

If you land on an instance and it isn't good, you create a new account elsewhere, set pointers in your preferences on either end to the other, your old posts stay on the old one (and remain accessible), but bob's your uncle, your follows/followers get transferred over to the new instance. Or don't bother with transferring it, just delete the account, start fresh, everything is ephemeral.
posted by enfa at 5:51 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Or you might have done what I did. I started at mastodon.cloud, then came the TIme of Troubles there, jumped to cybre.space, then they shut down. Then the place I moved next wasn't happy that I posted a lengthy thread about my Doordash experiences. Which, I understand, it's a game-related place, but I didn't know I was signing up for a place that would be limiting.

Picking a good instand is actually not that easy, it turns out. A lot of the people who are the most pleased with it turn out to be at mastodon.social, which, I've never seen their registrations open.
posted by JHarris at 5:57 PM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

I see no point in this whatsoever. Do not split a community. It also doesn't matter what server you're on, no matter what the fediverse "oldtimers" (some of whom were on it a whole week before you were) say.
posted by scruss at 6:53 PM on November 5, 2022

Ah. That’s unfortunate. I had hoped that your profile had a unique hash ID or something and that you could rehome without having to reroll and your connections would follow. But I still want to try it.

Edit: I am pretty sure no one here wants to split the community. More like expand its penumbra and be able to find mefites in wider (online) social space. At an interesting time for it; with both twitter and MeFi’s challenges.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:55 PM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

When one changes instances their followers and follows do move as well. However, currently their posts do not.
posted by terrapin at 7:54 PM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Because of the surge in demand, masto.host has temporarily stopped accepting new subscriptions.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:02 PM on November 5, 2022

Because of the surge in demand, masto.host has temporarily stopped accepting new subscriptions.

I wonder how/if Mastodon generally will cross the chasm and make it to the point where there's demand for masto.host and similar at real scale, not "support is unavailable during the night in Western European Time" scale.
posted by mph at 9:31 PM on November 5, 2022

I don't exactly know what to do with Mastodon, but with a MetaFilter-associated instance I'd be interested to give it a go.
posted by biogeo at 11:13 PM on November 5, 2022 [5 favorites]

It’s interesting how MetaFilter and Mastodon kinda have opposite problems right now.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:32 AM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm in! I can't financially support ANYTHING right now but I'd be an active participant.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 1:00 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wasn't imagining a Mastodon instance as a parallel of MetaFilter itself, with exactly the same rules of discussion (stay on topic, etc). To me it's more of a social space where everyone happens to share some similar sensibilities and leanings.

I've never been to an IRL MeFi meet-up but that seems a close parallel to me. Everyone would expect a certain level of behaviour and politeness, but no one is going to moderate the topics that can be discussed.

It sounds a good idea generally. Most non-general Mastodon instances seem oddly specific to me - I might be really into, say, trains but I wouldn't want to have my one Mastodon account be on an instance devoted to trains because I also love baking, rowing, and bee-keeping! But a MeFi instance is specific enough to have a focus - nice, thoughtful, leftish-leaning, interested people, who spend time on this website - without being focused on a single topic. A nice place to hang out and chat about anything.
posted by fabius at 1:48 AM on November 6, 2022 [8 favorites]

I'm confused by the people who see a MeFi Mastodon instance as a threat to MeFi itself.

You get that many, many, MeFites are on Twitter currently, right? And that no one is proposing moving our MeFi activity there, just maybe some (maybe one day most/all) of our Twitter activity, right? Literally the only reason this would even be interesting to anyone is as a parallel to a still-thriving MeFi.

I get that overthinking a plate of beans is a proud tradition here, but maybe take it t for what it is.

I'd be in, with a small monthly donation to help cover costs.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:26 AM on November 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

I’d also pay a little bit every month to try out a MeFi branded Mastodon. I’d commit to $5/mo for one year anyway, to give it some time to develop. And I could pay for that year upfront.

I count eight people in this thread who have said unambiguously they can and would help to pay. That doesn’t seem like enough so far, if we are talking $5/month. I do see more interested people than that, and it could be that some of those who did not specify would be willing.

Is someone moved to do the cat herding here to see if this idea has legs? Seems like we might could use a poll/Google form to collect informal commitments, and someone to take on the technical work of setting it up, and presumably also the financial risk if people don’t follow through. That risk piece gives me a little bit of pause, because people are people, and I can tell you I personally don’t want to take on $89 x 12 amount of risk for this (assuming the maintainer would need to pony up for a year at the start).

I worry about putting any of this on Metafilter staff, just because they are already in crisis mode. Do we have a trademark issue if we cowboy this?
posted by eirias at 7:18 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

My abiding memory of the dying days of Twitter is going to be three to five new follows every day that turn out to be pig butchering scams based on stolen pictures of women.

That and these endless conversations about Mastodon.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:33 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mastodon is probably struggling with influx at the moment at over 5000 sign ups an hour

posted by adamvasco at 8:32 AM on November 6, 2022

I will contribute to a Mefi instance.
posted by terrapin at 8:36 AM on November 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

That doesn’t seem like enough so far

Two things this project is going to hit at this point: (i) I think some may prefer to put money directly towards mefi itself until either things stabilize or a next outcome is clear, (ii) many potential users who are still sorting things out for this wave of migration may have recently moved their account, and be in the 30 day period where they can't do it again (I am). Also, given discussion so far it would be easier to figure out if there were a concrete proposal (sorry, I realize this is a frustrating chicken v egg problem). A bunch of the discussion about moderation here kind of weirded me out, I'm not really up for (eventually) joining an instance that has server rules / a CoC / moderation that is much different from normal generalist but non-free-speech-zone instances (example 1, example 2; the latter seems to be kind of the default server rules).
posted by advil at 9:23 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Whoops, mastodon.lol went down for server upgrades right after I posted that. A few more varying examples of server rules: 3, 4, 5.
posted by advil at 9:58 AM on November 6, 2022

Hashtags are searchable on Mastodon -- so maybe one way to start even without a dedicated instance is to use the #metafilter hashtag so peeps can find each other (or add it to your Profile | Featured Hashtags)

You could optionally cross-link your Mefi profile to your Mastodon Profile metadata, then you'll get a "verified" check for your Mefi profile on Mastodon (I think).

I understand that everyone might not want to link their identities at this point, though. And I'm kinda new to Mastodon, so I don't even know if this is a good idea or not. Thoughts?
posted by credulous at 10:17 AM on November 6, 2022

Definitely recommend adding #metafilter to one's profile and IF one is okay with it add a link to your Mefite profile if your usernames are different.

Reminder, the easiest way is still to add one's Mastodon account to one's Metafilter profile so it show up here:

https://www.metafilter.com/contribute/socialexplorer.mefi?sid=175
posted by terrapin at 10:23 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Linode has a one-click install. (via Cloudron.) We don't really need support for a thousand users to at least initiate the experiment, and I presume the hosting could be migrated later if needed?
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:24 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

FWIW, I spun up a one-click Mastodon instance on DigitalOcean and the sizing of the droplet has been a problem. It's currently at 2 vCPUs, 60GB disk and 4GB RAM and that's not enough; I had to size up initially because it ran out of disk (it was 25GB disk) and now it's out of physical memory (working around with disk swap for now). This is for a single user instance (well, ok, two, but user #2 is the sysadmin account) although I do have ElasticSearch enabled. Just a data point and to maybe note that you're not going to get this running on a $5 Nanode or Droplet especially if it's going to have other users.
posted by mrg at 10:52 AM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

What are the bandwidth requirements like?

Is there a possibility of someone hosting a box out of their office?

I'd consider doing it if any of my old server hardware was sufficient; but it would be some weeks before I could get to it, plus I may have to give up the office fairly soon as I'm not sure I can justify the rent increase the LL is imposing next year. (And I don't want to see what two aging DL380Ps with spinning arrays from circa 2014 would do to my home power bill).
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:08 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think MeFi runs best when we do things with the maximum amount of community input.

But I think a MeFi Mastodon instance has a better chance of spinning up if one or two gung-ho persons just jump in and get it started. We could hammer down the parameters of its relative MeFi-ness once it actually existed.

I pledge $5 a month to any MeFi instance arrived at by committee and $15 a month to any that just appears without a lot of arguing over plates of beans.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:16 AM on November 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

PS - That $15/month... I'd pay in advance. So that's two months pre-paid on the suggested $90 a month plan. But again, that's for a nice person/team that just makes the thing, as opposed to the preliminary team to propose a coalition to convene a conflagration to initiate a collaboration to work out the parameters of one day possibly doing the thing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:25 AM on November 6, 2022

Can instances be renamed (i.e. if MeFi wants to take over an ad hoc instance & make it official)?

Or maybe at that point MeFi would just stand up its own and people would migrate?

one or other, I suppose. so...
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:32 AM on November 6, 2022

I would absolutely pay $5/month to be a member of a MeFi related Mastodon instance and would be willing to pre-pay $60 for a full year.

Also, just to put in my two beans, this project should at least initially be unofficial and have little or no expected burden on the resources of MetaFilter, and so have little or no expectation of MetaFilter-like moderation. I see this as a replacement for Twitter, not a replacement for or analog to MetaFilter.
posted by Reverend John at 12:04 PM on November 6, 2022 [11 favorites]

I picked up metasocial.chat and put in a request for hosting w/FediMonster.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [14 favorites]

I’d also pay $60 up front for a year. I don’t see a MetaFilter mastodon instance as a replacement for MetaFilter at all. More like a Twitter replacement with a bunch of folks who are likely to share similar sensibilities with me.
posted by syzygy at 12:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

If I joined, I'd probably use it as a replacement for dreamwidth... somewhere I could infrequently post IRL stuff with custom filters on who could see it. I don't think I'd move off my other social media site, which is tumblr, because I use that one for fandom and even though there are a lot of fannish mefite users it's not how I use metafilter currently.

Metafilter is nice because even though everything is public, the site itself is obscure enough (and moderated) that I generally feel safe posting vaguely identifiable details about myself here. I imagine a metafilter masto instance would have that same advantage, as long as you followed general internet safety rules of locking down personally identifiable information to people you trust.

I think the real value of a mastodon account over other social media **is** this ability to decide who sees your post for each post. I think only dreamwidth and facebook currently allow that level of granular control, and facebook is pretty evil.
posted by subdee at 12:25 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I jump-started my mastodon tryout years ago by searching the tag #metafilter and following everyone whose name I recognized. Now that I'm re-visiting mastodon I'm doing the same thing (plus adding people I follow on twitter piecemeal as they post their mastodon names).

Thing is, I'm not sure what above that would be gained by running our own mefi instance? Headache, responsibility, and competition for funds? It's not that I hate the idea, but I'm not seeing the need.
posted by ctmf at 12:39 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I mean, I would join it, but if I had any more donation money Jessamyn would already have it.
posted by ctmf at 12:41 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Pronoiac had the idea and already runs the wiki, I'd think he should make the decision? And I think he's just waiting for masto.host to reopen for signups?
posted by JHarris at 12:58 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm happy to defer if that's the consensus. The domain was a few bucks, so I grabbed it.

(FediMonster seems a little cheaper, is taking signups, and says they consider discounts to non-profits, social orgs and such; so I was thinking if MeFi ever took it over that might be advantageous).
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:06 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

FediMonster also has a couple of interesting forks! Hometown allows posts to be marked local-only, so only people at that server can see them, and Glitch an an experimental fork with lots of new features. And _both_ of those options have text formatting. Glitch (at least) allows it to be done with Markdown or HTML, which seems like something some MeFi users might get used to fairly quickly (raising hand).
posted by JHarris at 1:38 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm catching up on thread, I'll be an hour or two.

As a fundraiser bit, I had considered whether Patreon would make sense for this; what might make more sense would be if we could check for recurring donations on profile pages.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:03 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

(SC member here) Maybe we could have an optional paid level of Metafilter membership, at $5/mo, and Mastodon access could be one of the perks?
posted by JHarris at 2:49 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

There's a kind of poetry there? $5 for an account one time, $5 a month for extras.
posted by JHarris at 2:50 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Glitch seemed like the one to go with to me; the formatting is good and the Hometown feature would seem to be more towards the overlap of MeFi to be avoided rather than expanding its visibility and attracting people who find MeFite's....toots.....appealing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:54 PM on November 6, 2022

The only problem I can see there is that Glitch is experimental. Who knows what kinds of bugs lurk there? Oooooh spooky
posted by JHarris at 3:00 PM on November 6, 2022

$5 for an account one time, $5 a month for extras.

The biggest standard FediMonster install is for up to 8K registered accounts and 500 active users and would a little under $500 annually at their current prices (plus cheap email service for the mastodon domain, the reg and certs when they come up again, etc; a little more for the conversion to euro on the payments, probably). Probably not everyone would use it, but taking the lower number if it's a $5 addon that's $2,500/mo or $30K a year in additional support (or a little less if the instance is supported by the additional pledges). Not enough to get to the subsistence goal from where we are now, and then there's a problem of whether or not it's legit to offer more registrations than the active user limit supports. But I guess then we could negotiate with FediMonster to expand it if that many accounts are active; 5x is still a pretty good return on the cost of the instance.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:19 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have a lightly used acct on octodon.social, what is the benefit of adding another?
posted by sammyo at 3:23 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

there may well not be one for you, personally. Unless you like the idea of your mastodon presence being on the same server as other mefites.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:23 PM on November 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Besides being in an instance unusually rich in Metafilter members. If we go with an option with local-only posts, you'd be able to see those too, presuming there will be any.
posted by JHarris at 3:27 PM on November 6, 2022

I will contribute to a Mefi instance.

Me too.

This should be cost neutral to mefi. Ideally, it might even kick a little bit back.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:16 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've joined is.nota.live because I liked the picture and it mentioned beans. I haven't got a clue what I am doing but ...small steps. I guess I can migrate as and when I want.
Seconding mjj (mwah) I think a mefi instance could definitely help draw more people in and I could probably throw a few $$ your way.
posted by adamvasco at 5:45 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Another vote for a Mefi Mastodon.
posted by jadepearl at 5:50 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

5x is still a pretty good return on the cost of the instance.

That is, 5x the rough annual cost every month -- 60x on the year if 500 users sign on for an extra $5/mo to MeFi.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:50 PM on November 6, 2022

nother yupper
usually michganese for agreeing on a query with 4 or more reasons.
1.I sold my first poem for.....$5.
2. madamjujujive approves
3. I can actually afford it
4. A bonus would be joining is.nota.live and kiss Adam on the cheek, live.
posted by clavdivs at 6:29 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I’m Spartacus! I mean, I’m in.
posted by condour75 at 6:51 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ok, this is a bit of a braindump. I'm not seeing any immovable obstacles, or real cause for delay.

I'm leaning toward, to start:
* set up a Patreon, $2/month for access
** accumulating more than, say, 3 months of hosting, goes toward donations to Mefi
* set up a Mefi account for this, so it can be forwarded to multiple admins
* send invites over Mefi Mail
* I might go with a .social domain instead
* I've heard good things about Hometown software, including from JHarris
* Hosting: fedi.monster looks ok
** from JHarris, the Hometown maintainer likes spacebear.ee, which costs roughly twice as much
** could start with a smaller instance, scale up as needed
* it's not officially part of Mefi

To discuss after launching:
* other tiers
* Mefi integration, being able to base tiers on recurring donations to Mefi
* down the road, it could be made official, no hurry
* moderation
** so it's clear, fuck Nazis
* multiple admins? currently unsure what's needed

I've chatted with JHarris a bit offsite, not necessarily with their Steering Committee hat on, and pinged Jessamyn, who gave an approval with some caveats.

Am I missing anything?
posted by Pronoiac at 6:57 PM on November 6, 2022 [10 favorites]

Ugh, this could interfere with the main fundraiser. We could do a trial run:
* worry about Patreon or charging in December or January
** good: it won't take funds away from the Mefi fundraiser
** bad: this wouldn't directly raise funds for a month or two
* a small instance - meaning, the $20/month, 100 active users tier on fedi.monster
* open it to, say, people who have shown an interest in this thread?
posted by Pronoiac at 8:24 PM on November 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think the people here saying they would contribute to an experiment meant on top of whatever they intend to do in the main fundraiser; and since 500 active users at even $5/mo wouldn't close that much of the month-to-month subsistence goal gap it seems fine to let the main effort run it's course while trialing a small instance.

Plus it's probably good to put the distro chosen it through its paces and see if anything needs to be tweaked for sufficient mefinity before offering it up to the whole site membership.

If Twitter really starts collapsing fast and there's a clamor for more capacity then the timing could be sped up and the service level spun up to catch the wave.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:02 PM on November 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I definitely meant contributing to the Mastodon instance on top of an (upgraded) contribution to Metafilter proper.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:40 PM on November 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

To me, this is key:

* set up a Patreon, $2/month for access
** accumulating more than, say, 3 months of hosting, goes toward donations to Mefi

This would make sense if it was targeted at generating revenue for MeFi, in a way that didn't impact current admin and mod duties. So, a way to get people to donate who wouldn't usually donate to MeFi itself, and have a fun new place to hang out while doing so.
posted by signal at 5:06 AM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’d be in, out of curiosity and because I enjoy the off-site conversations I have with you all. But I hesitate to make anything MeFi-related be available only to people with extra cash.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:20 AM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm excited to see how this pans out. I got a mastodon.social around the time of the 2017 Twitter boycott. Have gone through a few rounds of friending MeFi folks as the topic has come up on MeTa in the intervening years, but it would be really cool to have that be the local feed and curate my home feed differently. Unfortunately, I can't take on any new financial commitments right now, even very small ones, but hopefully that will change in the coming months.
posted by solotoro at 7:09 AM on November 7, 2022

I'd be interested and would contribute (in addition to my recently-increased donations here, not as a replacement for those!) I really enjoy my quiet little corner of Twitter and have been worried about whether it's going to go poof thanks to some dude's bad decisions.
posted by Ann Telope at 7:18 AM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I love this idea and I would contribute. I would also suggest this as a funding stream for MeFi proper; if mefi.mastodon users are paying e.g. $2 / month that would be way more than the quoted price of dedicated hosting. The surplus could become a MeFi donation.

I'm another who looked into mastodon years ago and didn't find it useful at all. Having a MeFi 'home base server' is just the thing to make it make sense for me.
posted by dbx at 10:21 AM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'd pay $8/month as soon as this is set up
posted by rebent at 10:56 AM on November 7, 2022

So on the one hand, since invites (or verification emails?) would be sent in memail(?), then "blue-check" style verification is automatic - everyone on the server could be presumed to be a mefite. For good and evil. What happens when "the feds" request someone's information, and does that drag mefi proper into the mess? Do we need a "Nobody's personal information has been requested by the government today (watch this space)" sign?

What happens when a Elon Musk demands we delete someone's "toot". Or even not Musk, what happens when the Proud Boys complain about someone? What happens if a reasonable person complains in good faith? I'm gathering the current answer is "we'll take that as it comes", which isn't crazy. I just think that if mastodon gets twitter-magnitude big, that's going to happen sooner and way more frequently than estimated, and be a full-time job.
posted by ctmf at 11:26 AM on November 7, 2022

Unrelated to mefi, I also think this is paralleling the late 90s email path. Everyone can make their own email server! Then you can block abusers yourself. Local control. But then all the spammers migrated to places where they could get away with it, and the black-hole wars started. And now everyone runs their own server and there is no spam.
posted by ctmf at 11:32 AM on November 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I won't use it much, if at all. But I'll put up whatever monthly to get it up an maintained.

I would just like to see it under a metafilter subdomain.
posted by The Power Nap at 12:31 PM on November 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

CTMF can you say more about that? Do you think an open protocol like Mastodon will end up having the same issues that our other open protocols (email and text message) have with spam?
posted by rebent at 1:58 PM on November 7, 2022

I also think this is paralleling the late 90s email path

With your email, you kinda stuck your address out in the aether come what may. The microblogging paradigm is a big different in that the format has "subscribe/follow" built into it.

Sure, you have an endpoint, that's a target just like anything else. Microblogging just seems to have better tooling for individual users along with admins to defend themselves.
posted by The Power Nap at 3:05 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I mean abuse issues generally, of which spam is one. If someone's being abusive on Twitter, you can complain to Twitter abuse (for whatever that's worth, opinions vary, but at least there is one.)

In the "federated" model, you'd have to figure out where the abuser is coming from and complain to a local administrator. Policies might vary. Someone might make a "free speech" server and refuse to act on any complaints. The recourse there, I guess, is blocking individual users on an individual whack-a-mole level, or having your server admin de-federate with the problem one? I'm not an expert, but that's how I understand it.

I'm just saying, that second path sounds a lot like email server admins refusing to accept mail from "rogue" servers who hosted spammers, and look how well that worked.
posted by ctmf at 3:16 PM on November 7, 2022

That's not intended to be relevant to whether mefi should or should not have a server. Just a thought about the way mastodon itself is going to work out long-term. I foresee it congealing into a small handful of big-name servers, analagous to gmail, etc. You theoretically could run your own, but why would you, kind of thing.
posted by ctmf at 3:28 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

And now everyone runs their own server and there is no spam.

[SOBS IN SYSADMIN]

There’s also the problem that the Mastodon (server) app has a lot of dependencies and strains under heavy load. What “heavy” means is unclear, but stopping signups implies some sort of resource limit is being hit. You can always sign up on a different instance where the resources aren’t as scarce, but this really does lose out on the one stop shop convenience Twitter had. It’s distributing work among all the volunteer admins running instances, with all the good (many hands make light work) and bad (for one thing, all those volunteer admins now need to duplicate so much work to block abusers).

(Am I spinning up my own tiny, resource-limited instance this week to get a handle on it? Yes. Yes, I am. Sigh.)
posted by fedward at 3:38 PM on November 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Just chiming in to say that I'd also love to see this, and would pay monthly for it. I think it'd be really good timing right now to get people to join -- lots of people from my field of work are switching to mastodon from twitter right now, and it'd be cool knowing that any post I make on mastodon would be a subtle advertisement for metafilter. I would also love love love to have a home base of mefites.

My only personal stipulation is that I'd want to be able to separate my public identity from my username here on mefi, in that I'm cool with saying publicly that I use metafilter, but that I wouldn't want anybody to connect my username to my real name.
posted by bongerino at 4:31 PM on November 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

The recourse there, I guess, is blocking individual users on an individual whack-a-mole level, or having your server admin de-federate with the problem one?

Those are the options too. It's not hard to figure out which server an individual is a member of, a Mastodon address takes the form @[user]@[server]. Just, everything past the second at. Defederating a whole instance is something that does happen. A while back I was a member of mastodon.cloud, but then several big servers defederated from it, apparently because it had become a hotbed of spam.

Of the various pros and cons of an official Metafilter Mastodon server, the need for good moderation is the biggest problem. Steering Committee discussion has hit upon that as a particular sticking point. The current mods are already overworked, and it's been mentioned that it should have a reasonably similar moderation ethos as the main site, meaning mods should probably be trained by the main mods, or at least be in contact. If Masto-mods are paid, then similar to the main site, that could end up being a bigger expense than the service itself.

It's not necessarily a complete deal breaker, but it should be thought about.
posted by JHarris at 5:56 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Looks like Twitter is down. Sometimes, karma is prompt.
posted by JHarris at 6:01 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Wait, maybe it was just a connection issue, seems to be up again.
posted by JHarris at 6:03 PM on November 7, 2022

I wonder if it's like Brewster's Millions, where Musk has to throw away lots of value in order to inherit even more?
posted by Pronoiac at 7:02 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another thought: how about auctioning off Mefi Mastodon invites? Looking at the auction page, though, it looks like it could only handle one, instead of, say, ten.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:05 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mastodon sorta seems like an implementation of old school USENET NNTP except server based vs client based and data retention policies. MetaFilter could possibly do it, but maybe not worth it at the moment and conservatism. Best done client side. Threading of comments, kill files (plonk!), filters for words you don't even want to see, internet death penalty. Local site can choose which other sites and groups (tags/taxonomy) that they're willing to carry, users can remove stuff they don't want before they ever see it (well except for the first time when they add it to their kill file). Posts expire, all cloud service like, it might go away at any moment. If you want it, you keep it locally all client side like.

Sadly I think that "everything is a web or phone app in the cloud" is not a viable solution when there is the idea of permanence and self determination. Things get out of manageable when all places keep everything forever and provide everything to each individual. The only sane approach is client side takes care of all of the storage and work and thereby transferring the bulk of the cost to the client/user.

All such things will fail eventually due to costs or other things unless they figure out the bit about letting/using the client's resources to do most of the work.

(tosses soapbox into the fireplace).

Rehashing old problems that keep being redone because everything today is just a web browser.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:11 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mastodon sorta seems like an implementation of old school USENET NNTP except server based vs client based and data retention policies.

Going through the protocol documentation, yes, I can see the DNA of USENET there. It seems to be an easier job to host a server, than to write an app that can be easily used by thousands to bittorrent tiktoks though. As far as I know all cellular networks operate behind CGNATs, and the vast majority of people social on their cell. I'm sure it can be done, but writing a client based decentralized system in those constraints seems like a taller engineering task than cranking out some python/ruby/javascript and hanging it on an instance with some CSS majik to make it pretty.

If any of my statement sounds dismissive, let me assure you it is not. I've spent a lot of time prototyping IoT things that don't have to boop a server just to notify your phone that your tomatoes might need watering (insofar as I've even put an "email" server on the damn thing to send messages to a cell carrier's email-to-sms bridge, which, thank you very much memory-holes any email that doesn't come from a blessed IP like gmail G@#DD@#^t!).

Trying to get the web back to the decentralized state it once was is a lot like working on an old house. If you strip it back to the studs all at once, your going to have to deal with all the problems sealed up in the walls at the same time. Mastodon and its ilk are the latex sheen to the lead covered walls of your social internet.
posted by The Power Nap at 10:57 PM on November 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

zengargoyle, thanks for mentioning some of those things for the first time in my hearing for many years.
posted by JHarris at 11:38 PM on November 7, 2022

So I just need to renew my subscription to the German server and re-install MacSoup? I have my X-Face file here somewhere, even.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:01 AM on November 8, 2022

Mastodon sorta seems like an implementation of old school USENET NNTP

                    __
                   /  \
                  /|oo \
                 (_|  /_)
                  _`@/_ \    _
                 |     | \   \\
                 | (*) |  \   ))
    ______       |__U__| /  \//
   / FIDO \       _//|| _\   /
  (________)     (_/(_|(____/

posted by snuffleupagus at 6:28 AM on November 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

I'm looking at Twitter alternatives, so I'd be into this... especially as it seems it's very hard to get onto Mastodon right now.

I may be missing something, but I don't see that any Mefi staff would need to be involved, any more than they are at MefightClub— or Twitter.
posted by zompist at 7:34 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I barely know anything about Mastodon but I'm excited to try a Mefite community instance and would happily pay like $5-10 a month for it, possibly more.
posted by daisystomper at 7:43 AM on November 8, 2022

Yeah I’d sign up and pay up-to $10 a month. Been looking to give it a whirl.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:50 AM on November 8, 2022

I don't do Twitter, but I think a MeFiMasto sounds fun. If we are initially limiting to people in this thread, please sign me up. I would be up for ~$5/mo (exclusive of my currrent mothly contribution to the Blue.)
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 11:27 AM on November 8, 2022

I'm probably interested and willing to pay a bit. I need to look into Mastadon a bit more, but if I give it a go, I would definitely want to be on a MeFi instance.
posted by quiet wanderer at 1:00 PM on November 8, 2022

Willing to pay a bit, as well. I'm on another instance under my IRL name, but would be happy to be on mefi.social or something as signal.
posted by signal at 6:21 PM on November 8, 2022

Also in and also willing to chip in
posted by bxvr at 7:11 PM on November 8, 2022

I’ve used Twitter in read-only mode but signed up on Mastodon in one of the big instances due to recent events. I would be glad to hop on MeFi-instance and contribute to the upkeep in addition to my regular monthly MeFi contribution.
posted by baueri at 9:09 PM on November 8, 2022

Also interested and willing to contribute!
posted by catcafe at 9:32 PM on November 8, 2022

I'm not sure if my cashflow will improve, but please count me in. I'll join masto in a mefi instance for sure.
posted by cendawanita at 10:49 PM on November 8, 2022

I think I'd definitely join, not sure how active I'd be because I already have a social media homebase, but it would be fun just to have for occasional politics & IRL talk.
posted by subdee at 3:25 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would also join and contribute $.
posted by Osrinith at 6:13 AM on November 9, 2022

Mastodon hasn't struck me as all that compelling, but man, I miss the MeFi Google+ group quite a lot. This could be really really fun.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 12:42 PM on November 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm quietly working on it, btw.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:59 PM on November 10, 2022 [26 favorites]

Yay, thanks Pronoiac!
posted by catcafe at 10:12 PM on November 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Current status: The ball is in fed.monster's court, "takes a few hours to a few days at most". I've emailed about the waitlist for masto.host, in case they pick up sooner.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:24 AM on November 11, 2022 [15 favorites]

Coming in late to say that I’m interested (and I’d kick in a few bucks for it a month too).
posted by montag2k at 12:46 AM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Could I also add my interest? I know nothing much about Mastodon but would like to put my toe in.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:05 AM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Adding to the list of interested mefites! I made an account last week on mastodon.social, but would love to migrate to a metafilter server, especially if it helps kick back some funds to metafilter itself eventually!
posted by heyforfour at 8:23 AM on November 13, 2022

I am also interested! Thanks to Pronoiac for getting the ball rolling!
posted by Tsuga at 9:44 AM on November 13, 2022

Grah! How are people creating accounts on mastodon.social when it says signups are closed, and has apparently been that way for years? Do they have an in? Is it something I'm missing?
posted by JHarris at 12:22 PM on November 13, 2022

How are people creating accounts on mastodon.social when it says signups are closed

I'm pretty sure they were open just a few weeks ago (not sure of the exact timing). But mastodon scaling is so bad that a lot of servers have had to shut down signups and add hardware to catch up to the initial wave of people fleeing twitter, including the biggest ones. (Also, some servers have an invite system, no idea if that applies to this one though.)
posted by advil at 7:25 AM on November 14, 2022

There are other servers open. toot.community appears to be.
posted by adamrice at 7:34 AM on November 14, 2022

Late to the party, but I would join and pay dollars.
posted by Crankatator at 1:02 PM on November 15, 2022

Also late to the party, but I would also pay the dollars for access to a MeFi Masto instance.
posted by angelchrys at 3:41 PM on November 15, 2022

I am also interested in this.
posted by Songdog at 6:34 PM on November 15, 2022

Oooooh got an interesting mastodon notification...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:47 AM on November 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

(Checking this thread 3x a day...)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:52 AM on November 16, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm poking around at it. I rolled out a Hometown instance, as it offers local-only posts, which a friend wanted to try out. I'm not seeing Boosts or Favourites from outside the people I follow. I think that's a "small instance" thing, but I'm trying to verify it's working as intended.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:37 PM on November 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'd also be glad to up my support (but not by $8. $10 or $5 or something. I don't want to let goons dictate my frameworks for anything.)
posted by Shunra at 1:25 PM on November 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm in for a $5/mo experiment.
posted by Tehhund at 7:40 PM on November 16, 2022

I'm also interested.
posted by ourobouros at 3:25 AM on November 17, 2022

I'd definitely be interested in this, and in contributing to running costs.
posted by bent back tulips at 8:33 AM on November 17, 2022

There are sources saying Twitter is down to 238 employees after the "hardcore" email.

It's going to be dead sooner rather than later.

So we're gonna need a place to go.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

I haven't really looked at Twitter today. Yikes!

I tried MefiMailing something on Tuesday night, and it silently failed. I've let the mods know. I'm leaning toward rolling forward over email.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]

Hahaha. I sent some invites over email, when it was visible in profiles, and then my internet cut out. I’ll return to it shortly.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:28 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

I am also interested but cannot contribute money because all of my donation funds are going to the blue. Hoping you fine folks will allow me to piggyback on your generous donations.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:39 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I also interested, and will kick in a bit.
posted by odd ghost at 4:57 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh, do we have to express our interest to be invited during the initial phase? I’d def also contribute! Tho I think I’d wait until it’s definitely up and running, and move over from my main instance (mastodon.cloud, which isn’t really maintained anymore).
posted by ClarissaWAM at 6:23 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm interested and happy to help fund!
posted by MrBobinski at 7:00 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm interested.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 7:22 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m down as well. I have a mastodon.social account but been looking to move to a smaller instance for a while, and considering most of the people I follow there are mefi folks, makes perfect sense.
posted by bxvr at 7:42 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would be excited to move to a MeFites instance.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:44 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I suppose I should express explicit interest. Have enjoyed seeing some tire-kicking toots the last couple days, does my little heart good.
posted by cortex (retired) at 10:00 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Ok, I'm back on my bullshit sending out invites. After I've made a pass through the thread, I'll answer questions.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Count me in please if I didn’t say so earlier!
posted by iamkimiam at 12:32 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would absolutely be interested in moving to an instance of MeFi community members.
posted by lemonshush at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would like an invite, please!
posted by Jeanne at 12:36 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I see I'm too late to suggest crouton.pet or beans.plate as domains.
posted by Tehhund at 12:37 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Count me in as well
posted by noneuclidean at 1:47 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ok, I finished a pass through the thread. If you showed interest, and I could see your email address in your profile, I sent an invite. It's a couple of dozen folks.

Some questions that came up:
One is about moderators. That feels like a decent concern, but not the most immediate. I'm hoping folks are grateful for the lifeboat from Twitter. This is a small start. It's experimental. For lifespans, I expect lettuce < mefi.social << Metafilter.

I haven't written a Code of Conduct yet, or set up a way to donate. I'll mention those in (possibly local-only) toots when I do.

Although MefiMail quietly failed to send some messages for me, I've gotten a couple of MefiMails! It's working to some extent! I'll wait to hear back from the mods about it before I send invites that way, though; this is already a manual process, and I'd rather not add "troubleshoot MefiMail glitches, over MefiMail" to the list.

It's running on Hometown, not vanilla Mastodon. This lets us make local-only toots. If you're worried about the admins of other instances prying into things, that might help?

I've blocked instances from a couple of lists that I stumbled on in my regular browsing. That's also a slow, manual process.


> I see I'm too late to suggest crouton.pet or beans.plate as domains.

Timing!
posted by Pronoiac at 2:35 PM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh good, now that I'm too late for the 1st pass, please add send me an invitation when you get around to a 2nd. Thanks!
posted by kingless at 2:44 PM on November 18, 2022

Oh me too if possible. I’d love to be signed up <3
posted by pickles_have_souls at 2:49 PM on November 18, 2022

Just like in the 90s, my e-mail address is in a gif: http://www.zompist.com/contact.html
posted by zompist at 3:19 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'd be happy to participate and pay.
posted by signal at 3:29 PM on November 18, 2022

I'd like to try it out.
posted by team lowkey at 3:39 PM on November 18, 2022

Thanks for setting it up, Pronoiac! Just made my email visible in my profile - very interested for round 2 when you get there.
posted by ourobouros at 5:49 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Setting up website specific email addresses may have been the most big brain moment I ever had.
posted by wierdo at 6:35 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ah i also just made sure my email was visible. Thanks again Pronoiac
posted by bxvr at 7:30 PM on November 18, 2022

I'm finally paying attention to all the floating instructions but I'm still confused: set up an account (thank you!) But i can't seem to follow a friend on a masto? But where to paste their link on the web (mobile browser rather) interface of hometown? (Not on any apps, am in travel mode, my apologies)
posted by cendawanita at 9:29 PM on November 18, 2022

I also made my email visible in the profile. Thanks!
posted by baueri at 10:45 PM on November 18, 2022

If you paste the URL of a user on another instance into the search box on your home instance's page, it _should_ find it and then let you follow. It doesn't always work (from experience), but it should, at least. Is there a search box visible on the mobile interface? You might want to get the official Mastodon app, or one of the unofficial ones.
posted by JHarris at 11:16 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would like to join the MeFi Mastodon instance.
posted by Mad_Carew at 11:32 PM on November 18, 2022

i found this thread when thinking that this was a cool idea. i’ll totally bump my donation for the service!!
posted by osi at 11:35 PM on November 18, 2022

Is there a search box visible on the mobile interface?

That's the essential problem: nope. I finally had to crack open my laptop and there's one on the home page. But I'm travelling now. That's just not doable (and in the long term). I'll try the official app then, if it works for the fork. I added the Hometown app and same ish.
posted by cendawanita at 11:48 PM on November 18, 2022

Hah! I found one heck of a bug apparently. On the Fold, the inner screen is in tablet mode, but when I use it folded in phone mode the search bar shows up. FYI TO EVERYONE ELSE ON A FOLDABLE (OR A TABLET) I GUESS.
posted by cendawanita at 12:03 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

This is great but I think I just screwed it up? I followed the link and filled out the fields and realise that I now have a new account @iamkimiam on this server AND my existing one on for @[e-mail]

Oops. What do I do now?

(sorry to be so helpless…I had thought of this weeks ago, but then I got the email and followed the shiny link and got real excited and well, here we are!)
posted by iamkimiam at 1:15 AM on November 19, 2022

I'm interested, though I haven't been on Mastodon since 2017 or 18 or something, and don't remember anything about how it works! I just signed in (I'm octodon.social/@taz, and I see my bio is already out of date — I no longer fold fitted sheets, or even use fitted sheets at all. Fuck fitted sheets.) to see what I could see and get my feet under me again, but one of the very first things I read seems important to this conversation:

Very useful information for US-based mastodon mods, and it links to a twitter thread:

"Hey, US folks newly running Mastodon instances: do Future You a *huge* favor, mitigate your potential liability, and register with the copyright office and designate an agent to receive DMCA reports *right now*. https://copyright.gov/dmca-directory/"

Threadreader link (if anyone is a member or whatever with threadreader, can you grab the pdf of this, since if twitter goes down I think this will disappear. In the meantime, I'm just going to do an old fashioned copy/paste and stick it somewhere.)
posted by taz (staff) at 1:19 AM on November 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

I would be interested in trying this.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:26 AM on November 19, 2022

iamkimiam: This is great but I think I just screwed it up? I followed the link and filled out the fields and realise that I now have a new account @iamkimiam on this server AND my existing one on for @[e-mail]
Oops. What do I do now?

You could keep both! It won't mess anything up to have multiple accounts on different servers.

If that's too much to keep up with, or you'd rather consolidate everything on the MeFi server, you could transfer your mastodon.social account to the mefi.social instance, although since mastodon.social signups tend to close unexpectedly, and sometimes for quite a while, you might not want to?

If you transfer your account, basically what it means is all your followers from the old account will end up automatically transferred to following your new account instead. I believe this means they won't be following your old account anymore. This also disables your old account, although this need not be permanent, you can reenable it later.

Other things, like the people you follow and block, you have to transfer by exporting those lists from the old account and importing them on the new account. When you do this, the people you follow will get a message that your new account is following them. When I imported my list from gamemaking.social to mefi.social, I immediately got a plethora of people from that list following, even though I haven't transferred my followers yet, so they had to have been notified.

Because your followers get transferred, this is not something I would do lightly? Since it requires coordinating two different, unrelated servers, there is a certain formality to the process, so that they both know you are you.

One particularly big drawback: your posts do not make the trip with you. Mastodon does not, to my knowledge, let you import posts to a server. In fact, I don't know of a way to export your posts yet-there's an entry for posts from the export screen, but I don't see a CSV link. There seems to be no way to bring your post history with you. Any uploaded media also won't make the trip with you.

(In fact, Mastodon generally does not archive old media beyond a certain point. It saves server space by autodeleting images and stuff like that as they age, so don't think it'll stick around forever like on Twitter. Mastodon doesn't prevent you from just saving copies of things people post, so if you want to keep something you should avail yourself of that sooner instead of later.)

If you do decide you want to move--

FIRST, on the old account, you'll want to export the various things you want to transfer to the new account that are not people who follow you. This may be people you follow, lists you've made, people you block, people you mute, domains you've blocked, and bookmarks you've saved. (The exports are in CSV format, which is human readable.) The option is available by clicking on the Gear icon in the top-left area. Go under Import and export > Data export. Save the various links marked CSV that you want to transfer. You could do any, all, or none, at your option. You could even do it at a later date if you wanted, it doesn't have to be immediately. Then on the new account, go under Gear > Import and export > Import, choose the specific exported file from the Import type list, click the Browse button under Data and choose the proper file, make sure the Merge radio button is selected (so you don't wipe out anything you've already done on the new account) and click Upload. You'll want to do that with every file you exported.

SECOND, on the account you want to move to, go under Gear > Account > Account Settings, and go to Moving from a different account, to create an account alias. You'll have to specify the name of your old account in the format of [username there]@[account name]. For instance, my old account would be [e-mail]. Yours (iamkimiam's) would be [e-mail]. This sets up the new account to receive the followers from the old.

THIRD, on your old account, go under Gear > Account > Account Settings. The option you want is Move to a different account, which brings you to the Account Migration page. It'll ask you for your new name and instance in the same format as you put for the old one. For me, that would be [e-mail]; for you/iamkimiam, it'd be [e-mail]. It'll also ask you for the password of your old account. There will be a list of limitations and caveats printed in orange on this page, it is worth reading through them.

You can't move too frequently, I think there's a month enforced between moves by default. This process will lock your old account for a period while your followers are being moved, and afterward deactivates your old account, although it's possible to reactivate it later. While it's deactivated, you can still export some things like the people you follow and block, so you could do the export/import thing after transferring your followers if you like.
posted by JHarris at 3:00 AM on November 19, 2022 [11 favorites]

Thanks so much, pronoiac! I am there!!

As a reminder to all, you can put a link to your Mastodon page on your Mefi profile page. And should, so people can find you! Assuming you're using the new server, enter https://mefi.social/@yourname. (@yourname is gonna have so many links!)
posted by zompist at 4:09 AM on November 19, 2022

Pronoiac, thank you for doing this. I'd love to join but don't want to make my email address public on my profile. Can I send it to you by memail?
posted by eirias at 5:20 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the help! Can it do it the other way? Join mefi.social with my existing mastodon.social account?
posted by iamkimiam at 5:24 AM on November 19, 2022

(is there any way to just follow...all the mefites? like, could someone follow the mefi.social instance itself, or is that bad form?)
posted by mittens at 5:59 AM on November 19, 2022

mittens: I’m on a different instance but follow everyone who I notice using #metafilter, because I figure it’s their way of flagging people down.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:19 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'd like to join this, please.
posted by whir at 7:01 AM on November 19, 2022

Same. I am still catching up on the thread.

Do I need an invite?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:19 AM on November 19, 2022

I think we need an invite, yeah
posted by taz (staff) at 9:26 AM on November 19, 2022

Yes you need an invite, but Pronoiac is watching the thread and making invites as he feels comfortable adding them. Mastodon servers are surprisingly resource intensive, and more users means more cost and more work.

If you're on a Mastodon account, you don't have to follow everyone on the server directly! One of the big benefits (and one of the reasons I was excited for a MeFi server) is the Local Timeline, which is a chronological listing of posts of the people on that server.

If you're on a Mastodon instance but don't feel like you want to give up Twitter yet, or at all, I know of a couple of crossposting solutions, that automatically echo posts you make in one place to the other, or that go both ways. One is Moa Bridge, which is crossposting software that you can set up for your own use; a public Moa Bridge server is Moa Party.

Speaking to Pronoiac here, I think it's only a matter of time before MeFi site drama reaches the Mastodon server. I think it might be useful to lay down some moderation principles? I have heard some concern that a Mastodon server might end up splintering the community, like happened with Monkeyfilter and Politicsfilter. It could also end up being like the MeFi subreddits, which have become a place former (and maybe even some current?) members relentlessly slag the site. I really hope mefi.social's culture doesn't go in that direction. It's currently a light place to talk to other members, not attack them. I do not look forward to the day that Drama comes to it, although it's probably unavoidable in the long run.
posted by JHarris at 11:14 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've quietly gone through all the comments since my last batch. I'll go back through from the top and look for newly displayed email addresses. And then maybe try some of the open questions, though I think JHarris has fielded them.

If you'd rather not display your email address, you can try MefiMailing it to me. If I don't respond in a day, I guess it didn't work?
posted by Pronoiac at 3:26 PM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

I added my email to my profile.

I also deactivated my Twitter. Not because of this project, but because Elon is allowing Trump back.

Nope nope nope.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:35 PM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ok, I made another pass, from the top.

How to display your email to other members:
* go to Preferences
* under Contact / Privacy Preferences, select "Display email to other members?"
* at the bottom, "Save Your Preferences"

---

eirias: if you mefimailed me, it didn't go through. My email is in my profile.

---

fedi.tips is helpful but it's also a lot.

Kinda wondering if I should set up a wiki for this. It's feeling sprawling. Like:
* what is mastodon
* onboarding people
* how do I transfer my account

I have notes to myself for more instances to block, and ideas for hashtags for tracking things like these, but altogether Mastodon toots feel pretty ephemeral and not great as reference.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:58 PM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

FWIW, rahaeli on Twitter has some legal advice for Mastodon server owners.
posted by suelac at 6:25 PM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hello Pronoiac, I would love an invite. My email is (now) in my MeFi profile.
posted by suelac at 6:27 PM on November 19, 2022

Thanks for doing this Pronoiac! I didn’t have my email shared in previous rounds so I just sent you an email directly.

I hope Hometown moves to the 4.0 base soon.
posted by montag2k at 6:29 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

My email address is now visible in my profile.
posted by syzygy at 6:42 PM on November 19, 2022

Ok, I'm caught up.

It looks like Trump's account is viewable, but he claimed he'd stick to his own site. Still: dumpster fire.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:47 PM on November 19, 2022

suelac, that legal advice: how much do you trust rahaeli? I don't know them and I can't tell if that's legitimate or a hoax.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:50 PM on November 19, 2022

Some early feedback from East Africa: the instance isn't loading? But I'll settle down in a day and I'll try other connections and will report back.
posted by cendawanita at 7:57 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Pronoiac, I sent you memail. Hadn’t had a chance earlier.

If I am not mistaken, rahaeli was someone senior in community safety stuff at Livejournal and is one of the founders of Dreamwidth. Not the same as a law degree, but deep social media experience.
posted by eirias at 8:18 PM on November 19, 2022

Hi Pronoiac, I'd love an invite, too. My MeFi profile is updated as per your instructions.

I'll be moving over from Tooot.im - which is lovely, and active, and isn't home.
posted by Shunra at 9:01 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

My email address is now visible in my profile. Thanks for doing this, Pronoiac!
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:23 AM on November 20, 2022

I'm there! mefi.social/@taz open for business. Funny business.

/me fluffs cushions, waters the fern.

TY, Pronoiac ❤️
posted by taz (staff) at 1:41 AM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

Ok update: that was just the airport wifi in Nairobi lol. Looks good here!
posted by cendawanita at 2:26 AM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

OK, made my email visible. I am so down for this...
posted by jadepearl at 3:15 AM on November 20, 2022

🙏 Pronoiac, setup was easy & fun. I went with my MeFi username (whereas I'm NuisanceFactor on mas.to) to see whether I like it like that. Having Hometown's local-only feature seems right for a MetaFilter instance.
posted by kingless at 3:15 AM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Pronoiac, really, thank you again. While for real life networking reasons i cannot delete Twitter i do appreciate the space. Do let us know how to chip in for the maintenance!
posted by cendawanita at 4:01 AM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

My email is now visible on my profile. I'm very eager to join the Mastodon MeFites!
posted by Reverend John at 11:17 AM on November 20, 2022

Thanks for doing this, Pronoiac. My email address wasn’t shown when I noted my interest earlier in this thread. Now, temporarily, it is.
posted by Songdog at 11:38 AM on November 20, 2022

I’m just a lurking lurker who has always mostly lurked around here, only occasionally piping up to say something, but I would be quite interested in being a member of Metafilter's little corner of the fediverse.
posted by Orb at 12:13 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm caught up on recent comments, Mefi Mail, and emails. I haven't re-checked every interested profile in this thread today.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:53 PM on November 20, 2022

Hi Pronoiac, I'd be interested in an invite too - my email should be available.
posted by sarble at 1:55 AM on November 21, 2022

Thanks Pronoiac! I'm in as:

@[e-mail]
posted by signal at 2:32 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Really excited to get into this, but still haven't been able to figure out how to sign up with my mastodon.social account. I see others have, so I'm curious how you did it please?
posted by iamkimiam at 4:34 AM on November 21, 2022

Just popping in to say thanks to Pronoiac - as well as anyone else who made this happen. It's running great, and nice to have a mefi home base!
posted by madamjujujive at 6:19 AM on November 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thanks, Pronoiac! I’ve made it in! Now to figure out how it works. LOL!
posted by Orb at 7:28 AM on November 21, 2022

I'd like to give this a try, please. My current instance is.. a bit restrictive.
posted by cmyk at 7:29 AM on November 21, 2022

I've sinced learned that my questions don't make sense, it's not how Mastodon works. Please bear with me.
I think I could use a better metaphor for understanding all this?

Thanks pronoiac and others who are making this happen! It's a lot of work and much appreciated. Especially dealing with confused noobs like me.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:39 AM on November 21, 2022

Hi Pronoiac, I'd like to try this instance as well. Please and thank you. :)
posted by Gridlock Joe at 8:13 AM on November 21, 2022

Kim, short version is you’d be setting up a new account on mefi.social, end of sentence. Like a new second email address.

It’s possible to subsequently transfer your older account to the new one (with some caveats), metaphorically a bit like letting all the people in your email contacts know you’re using New Email Address except more automatic which is nice.

So for now no reason not to just sign up the new account on mefi.social and figure the rest out later.
posted by cortex (retired) at 8:48 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hello Pronoiac, I would like an invite too if available. Email is in my profile.
posted by Mitheral at 12:56 PM on November 21, 2022

Pronoiac, I would also love to participate---email in my profile. Thank you!
posted by rishabguha at 1:09 PM on November 21, 2022

Thanks, cortex. I understand now what was confusing me. I thought that because I was seeing people with other server names in my timeline they were able to sign up to mefi.social *with* their other accounts. So I was trying to figure out how to sign up to mefi.social with my @[e-mail] account. Which is…not a thing.

I've signed up as @[e-mail] now, yay. Now just gotta think through where/how I want to move forward (and I do NOT have the spoons for this at the moment). Having two accounts that look the same is a bit silly, especially when it comes to following people and posting. But I haven't decided if I want to merge, ignore, or delete the mastodon.social account.

I would imagine this is a very common thing lots of people are working through.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:44 PM on November 21, 2022 [4 favorites]

I would love an invite if you still have room!
posted by Dr. Zira at 2:15 PM on November 21, 2022

So I have been hearing that the instance I am on is not good and so I would also love an invite if they are available. Email is in my profile.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 3:46 PM on November 21, 2022

The following might be helpful for those looking to re-establish connections from the birdsite: https://mastodon-bridge.vercel.app/. (Note: I've not had an account there for a while so can't speak to it's effectiveness myself.)
posted by sarble at 12:03 AM on November 22, 2022

sorry, working link
posted by sarble at 1:34 AM on November 22, 2022

Any room on this instance for a lapsed lurking mefite? I have seen the rest of the internet and I have returned seeking safer pastures. Email in profile.
posted by typewriter at 4:08 AM on November 22, 2022 [8 favorites]

I'm, honestly and truly, feeling a little verklempt about joining you lot in the Fediverse.

Sign me up, please, straight into the veins.
posted by enfa at 7:08 PM on November 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

I caught up on comments, emails, and MefiMails. I started sending invites over MefiMail, working from the top of the thread! I requested an upgrade to the instance, so I'm less worried about hitting the maximum number of users. I'll keep working on that later on Wednesday.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:48 AM on November 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

My email is now on my profile. I'd love an invite, please!
posted by quiet wanderer at 3:00 AM on November 23, 2022

I would like an invite too
posted by one4themoment at 4:43 AM on November 23, 2022

I feel so much better over on mefi instance already! I can say what's really on my mind! Which, uh. Might be something I should apologize in advance for.

I've delisted myself from the local timeline just because I do tend to post a lot sometimes and don't want to flood it.

Thank you so much, pronoiac. Feels like home already.
posted by cmyk at 7:47 AM on November 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Well, after some indecision, I’ve signed up under my real person name. I never really had a reason to be anonymous on mefi, just wariness.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:04 PM on November 23, 2022

I'm having a good time over there, and it's great to be on an instance with folks I know from MetaFilter! Thanks again, Pronoiac. I hope you'll be assertive in letting us know about resource or moderation demands as they arise, this is a really kind service of you to provide to the community. Not sure if there's interest in making mefi.social "official" at some point (seems like there's a big question regarding additional moderation demand), but I do agree with Pronoiac's original suggestion that this could be a good way to help advertise MetaFilter and attract new members!
posted by biogeo at 3:50 PM on November 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm very much enjoying myself over there.

It's nice to be on a server where a) I already know people and b) there are implicit standards of behavior.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:19 AM on November 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's also nice that we're a smaller group with breathing room to take in each other's stuff.

We're not drowned out by like, inane viral posts where celebs with like 200k followers say stuff like "really feeling my breakfast rn."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:08 AM on November 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

I would be interested in moving my Mastodon account to mefi.social. My email is visible on my profile.
posted by eemeli at 1:37 PM on November 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’d love to move my Mastodon account to mefi.social. My email is in my profile.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 8:55 PM on November 24, 2022

Could I get an invite too? I've been to-the-bitter-end-ing on Musk's Twitter but I think his Walter Peck-ish "amnesty" is likely to be the final straw for me; and to be honest the "temptation" meme should have been. I just set email visible in my profile.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:36 AM on November 25, 2022

I would like an invite, please. Thanks for setting this up!

And then I’ll need to figure out whether I want to migrate my main account from social.seattle.wa.us, or maintain both accounts...
posted by mbrubeck at 9:53 AM on November 25, 2022

Please let us know when we can start chipping in to cover costs. I assume you can message us over there on the Mastomefi.
posted by Crankatator at 12:10 PM on November 25, 2022 [5 favorites]

Woot! I caught up! And I worked through the thread for Mefimail invites, from the top to the bottom. That brought the total number of invites to over 100.

I have a laundry list of things to do. Like, code of conduct, federation policies, donations, etc.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:15 AM on November 26, 2022 [17 favorites]

Thanks so so much!
posted by JHarris at 3:25 AM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think a code of conduct should be more of a community project. At the least, the people writing it should be diverse.

At the same time, you could link to Mefi's own Guidelines and Content Policy, and just add whatever extra info is necessary for Mastodon.
posted by zompist at 3:51 PM on November 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Hello! I revealed my email on my account, I can haz masto plz? Did I do that right?
posted by secretseasons at 6:28 PM on November 28, 2022

Pronoiac, just want to thank you again for all your efforts! So very much appreciated!
posted by madamjujujive at 7:41 AM on November 29, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'd love an invite, Pronoiac. Thanks for setting this up!

My email should be visibile, if not it's in the 'about' bit of my profile too.
posted by jack_mo at 10:23 AM on November 29, 2022

I’d like an invite, too.
posted by jimw at 8:57 PM on November 29, 2022

I’d like an invite please!
posted by grahamparks at 12:51 AM on November 30, 2022

I self-host (as @[e-mail]), using pleroma - anyone know whether there is a URL I can plug in as a relay that will make the mefi.social public timeline appear for me? Or is it a matter of following everyone?
posted by larkery at 2:59 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm interested in an invitation to mefi.social if that is possible. Thank you!
posted by gauche at 5:13 AM on November 30, 2022

I am *SO* late to this party, but PLEASE send me an invite. Email is in my profile.
posted by briank at 5:49 AM on November 30, 2022

Hi! I would love to join mefi.social! I currently have an account on mastodon.social, but would love to move.
posted by slogger at 7:43 AM on November 30, 2022

I'd like an invite for mefi.social as well, if possible. Thanks!
posted by mollweide at 8:13 AM on November 30, 2022

Hello Pronoiac, I would like an invite too! Thank you for setting the server up!
posted by valrus at 8:51 AM on November 30, 2022

I'd also like an invite, thanks!
posted by Superilla at 9:09 AM on November 30, 2022

Yay I'm on (different username - starting fresh) and its fun! It's a little quirky and random and sometimes slow, but in my head I imagine each instance is a space station/planet/ship, and the reason sometimes messages or queries or lookups fail is that the space antenna between them is down, or there is an asteroid shower in the way or something. And people's Mastodon address is really which space station they are on @person@spacestation-name. I like to imagine this is how communication works in The Expanse when @[e-mail], is sending messages to @[e-mail]. Oh, that's just me? Ok...

Also is it possible to add a cover photo (not profile avatar) in the app or do you have to use the web app version (the only way I could see to do it). Clicking on the cover photo when in edit profile doesn't do anything for me...
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:35 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Here is another plea for an invite! Currently I am @[e-mail]. I got hooked into that group due to a metafilter posting quite awhile ago that mentioned a fellow Subgenius, who I contacted and it turns out he runs that group and invited me in. My email has been in my profile so I guess I’m partially setup.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:41 AM on November 30, 2022

I'm interested in an invite as well, please! Not sure I can really translate this username to a Mastodon handle, so I might fallback to another alias. Thank you!
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 9:59 AM on November 30, 2022

using pleroma - anyone know whether there is a URL I can plug in as a relay that will make the mefi.social public timeline appear for me

In Akkoma (a Pleroma fork) there is a "Bubble Timeline" view. Instances added to the Local Bubble in the Instance tab of the admin control panel show up there. I'm not sure if it's just a relay under the hood, or if it's something else. And I don't know if this feature is unique to Akkoma or if it's in Pleroma too.
posted by fedward at 11:43 AM on November 30, 2022

If there's any room left, I'd like an invite.
posted by Runes at 4:03 PM on November 30, 2022

We could charge for access ($2/month? paid yearly?), or have it be free for Mefi users, and also gather donations.

Since it seems like this may not have been resolved, I would like to put in a vote for the latter. It looks like there's plenty enough support to keep the instance alive and generate some extra donations for metafilter, and I personally think the community will be a more diverse and thriving place with free (as in zero required money-related hurdles) access for all.
posted by aniola at 5:29 PM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Email in profile, would love to try out mefi.social!
posted by boogieboy at 11:10 PM on November 30, 2022

Also interested in joining Mefi.social if the getting is still good.
posted by supercres at 1:04 AM on December 1, 2022

Just discovered there's a mefi.social - would like an invite if they're still available.
posted by each day we work at 1:43 AM on December 1, 2022

I’m interested in an invite. Email in profile. Thanks Pronoiac for all your care, thought and work on this!
posted by dttocs at 3:44 AM on December 1, 2022

I would appreciate an invite.
posted by tzuzie at 3:55 AM on December 1, 2022

I'm catching up.

> Also is it possible to add a cover photo (not profile avatar) in the app or do you have to use the web app version (the only way I could see to do it). Clicking on the cover photo when in edit profile doesn't do anything for me...

You're talking about the header or the banner? I see buttons to update it, though it depends on the app:
* yup: tooot, Metatext, Mastodon
* nope: Toot!
posted by Pronoiac at 4:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Great idea, I'm down to clown.
posted by pepcorn at 5:25 AM on December 1, 2022

Thanks, Pronoiac. Me too, if I may.
posted by flabdablet at 6:29 AM on December 1, 2022

Please add me - I'm on octodon.social but looking for a second/potential new home.

Thanks Pronoiac!

While I was making my email viewable in my profile, I took the liberty of removing the Twitter account line. End of an era...
posted by pianoblack at 6:39 AM on December 1, 2022

Hi, Pronoiac - I’d like an invite too, please! My email is visible. Thanks!
posted by matildaben at 8:52 AM on December 1, 2022

I'd love to have a metafilter.social account, if possible.

I made my email visible on my profile. Thank you very much. (I'm also @[e-mail] and @[e-mail] but haven't used them much at all since I signed up years ago.)
posted by mrgrimm at 9:04 AM on December 1, 2022

I would love an invite, thank you!
posted by donnagirl at 9:53 AM on December 1, 2022

I'd llke an invite, please. Email in my profile.
posted by neuron at 10:47 AM on December 1, 2022

I too, would humbly request an official invitation to the unofficial mefi mastodon instance.

Yr. Obdt. Svt
posted by Craven Yeti Superstar at 4:29 PM on December 1, 2022

Pronoiac, your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by Snerd at 5:03 PM on December 1, 2022

I would like an invite.
posted by bleary at 5:17 PM on December 1, 2022

Pronoiac, I would love an invitation! My email address is in my profile.
posted by Gadarene at 6:36 PM on December 1, 2022

I'd also like an invite.
posted by aneel at 9:07 PM on December 1, 2022

My email ought to be visible and I would like an invite to try this out, thank you!!
posted by jpziller at 6:43 AM on December 2, 2022

Would love to get an invite too. Email should be visible. Many thanks!
posted by Hairy Lobster at 5:18 PM on December 2, 2022

Would like an invite too, if that's possible. Happy to support on Patreon or whatever, when that gets going.
posted by bonehead at 5:21 PM on December 2, 2022

(FWIW I'm technically already on Mastodon from an earlier sign-up years ago but I lost access...)
posted by Hairy Lobster at 6:09 PM on December 2, 2022

Hello, could I also have an invite too. Thank you...
posted by ben30 at 7:21 AM on December 3, 2022

Hey all! This is Pronoiac, writing from a new account I set up for this. I'm caught up on invites again, sent as this new username. I can keep the directions in my profile up to date, even after this thread closes, in the next day or two.
posted by mefi dot social at 2:18 AM on December 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

Could I please have an invite? Thanks to everyone for making this happen!
posted by BrashTech at 6:04 AM on December 4, 2022

Dittoing on the invite, much thanks!
posted by Buntix at 7:38 AM on December 4, 2022

I'm interested in joining but I can't find anything about mefi.social's backup policy, emergency response team, etc. E.g., the about/more page is completely blank. How many people are running it? How much attention does it get? Is it resting solely on one person checking things or is there a team of folks who split it up? Etc.

Thanks for any information folks can provide!
posted by introp at 7:38 AM on December 4, 2022

At the moment, mefi.social is run solely by Pronoiac, as far as I know. He has been pretty active and available so far, but as a one-person operation I don't imagine it will be sustainable if it grows too much further. However so far it's been working well. I think it's probably best to think of mefi.social as currently an experimental project, like a lot of new, small Mastodon instances. Pronoiac has indicated that they're thinking about more concrete policies, etc., and several of us have already chatted about some ideas on the instance, but right now everything is informal and ad hoc; the ethos seems to be "act like you would on MetaFilter." If the lack of more concrete policies keeps anyone from feeling comfortable from joining right now, I think that's a totally reasonable reaction. I can't speak for Pronoiac or what kind of timeline more concrete developments might be coming on, but it might be worth checking back in a month or two if clearly-defined policies and procedures are a prerequisite for you. Personally, I think it's working fine right now; everyone on the instance is being great, and I haven't seen anything ugly coming through the federated timeline. But I can understand seeing the lack of explicit policies as a risk that's not worth taking.
posted by biogeo at 9:51 AM on December 4, 2022 [6 favorites]

At the moment, it's just me, seeing how far we can go. We're hosting with fedi.monster, who mention daily backups. Somewhere on my todo lists: following @rahaeli's requirements for services she'd sign up for. "Emergency response team" wasn't on my radar, though; what does that mean?
posted by Pronoiac at 4:17 AM on December 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ah, I think this thread closes in a few minutes. MeFi Mail me or mefi dot social! I hope to address more concerns soon!
posted by Pronoiac at 5:41 AM on December 5, 2022 [4 favorites]