StarPterano I very vaguely remember happening upon StarPterano in my very first moments on Mastodon, so finding it still published on the App Store – buried as it was – brought me a particular sort of joy. If I’m not mistaken, it holds a special personal accolade as the only iOS app which has caused me to involuntarily shriek. This might sound like an insult, but it is actually the peak of my praise. I believe my knowledge of iOS development safely allows me to suppose that StarPterano was built with complete disregard for any established UI element libraries. That is, the familiar toggles and buttons developers rely on to standardize the iOS experience were cast aside entirely in favor of handbuilt, translucent buttons of a sort of neon quality which call menus and text entry fields no less alien to the platform. The most astonishing bit, though, is that it works. On my 12 Pro Max, it’s exceptionally smooth, in fact. I would imagine those real iOS developers among you should find StarPterano’s GitHub Repository particularly interesting, considering. In the interest of preservation, I have forked it as well, and fully intend to dive in to its code, one of these days. The audio player embedded above cites a three-second .mp3 file in the repository which perhaps once accounted for the “Sounds” toggle still found in the Settings menu of StarPterano’s current build. I couldn’t get the app to reproduce it, which is actually what set me on the hunt that led to the repo.

One of its main features is “local only posting,” which gives users the option of not federating their posts.

Measuring the health of an online community by librarian:libertarian ratio

utilities

How to Mastodon

Mastodon deliberately does not support arbitrary search. If someone wants their message to be discovered, they can use a hashtag, which can be browsed. What does arbitrary search accomplish? People and brands search for their own name to self-insert into conversations they were not invited to. What you can do, however, is search messages you posted, received or favourited. That way you can find that one message on the tip of your tongue.

Another feature that has been requested almost since the start, and which I keep rejecting is quoting messages.

Each individual message can either be: Fully public, appearing to your followers, the public timelines, anyone looking at your profile Unlisted, appearing to your followers and anyone looking at your profile, but skipping the public timelines Private, appearing only to your followers and people mentioned in it And direct, appearing only to people mentioned in it

I am giving this one a go as it seems to be the most widely used.

Is stability a problem in the Fediverse? 

What was that about crowdfunding instances?  How much of an instance’s conversation was visible to the outside?  How much of this is Google-spidered?  What are those anti-abuse tools?  Why can’t governments “completely block” Mastodon (as a whole, or just instances?)? Can one join more than a single instance?

No other options presented themselves on the page

other routes in.

Any pointers or experiences to share?

I have my own Mastodon instance, mastodon.laurakalbag.com where it’s just me (and Oskar). This is referred to as an “instance-of-one.” It’s hosted on my own domain, so I own and control everything I post on there, but because I have the Mastodon installed on there, I can see what other people post on their Mastodon instances, and reply to them with mentions, or favourite and boost (like retweet) their toots, even though they are on different instances. It’s like having my own Twitter which can talk to other Twitters, where I make the rules.

I have used the user-supported Mastodon.Social site for the past few years, but would really like to explore with the OpenETC this year what it might take to host our own instance of Mastodon within the OpenETC specifically for educators within BC to have their own Mastodon account.

At the moment, several projects in the space are working to adopt new supplementary protocols, with the intent of building better bridges between one another. The proposed development might end up looking like this:<img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia-inner" src="https://via.hypothes.is/im_/https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*3pEK-Fwq7bNOVcnXfVdNuQ.png">Diaspora at this time has no plans for new protocols, having just significantly upgraded its own. postActiv intends to adopt support for Diaspora federation in a future release. Mastodon just released support for ActivityPub, and Pleroma , Socialhome and GNU Social are thinking of adopting it. Nextcloud is also notably getting into the federation space, and Hubzilla and Friendica will likely both support the ActivityPub protocol as extensions.

seeps inthrough thecracks

a fear more friend thanfoe in the knowledgeit seems to knowof me.

It's small wonder

Can Mastodon keep its anti-harassment, pro-furry, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-Nazi focus as it grows? What to do about content that’s acceptable by some instances but illegal elsewhere? Is the influx of new people who don’t understand the network’s culture the start of an “Eternal April”, like Usenet’s Eternal September?

What is interesting is that the sense of early 90s cyberoptimism has started to reappear. It is possible to do things again, to change things, to build things that will make a difference. Suddenly, it is possible to discuss what things are and what they should be. What is an interface, what does it mean in its current form, how should we change it? What can and ought we do to establish sustainable social norms? How do we go about surfing together on the information superhighway without colliding with each other?

Interesting things are happening over at Mastodon. If you have had your ears tuned to the hacker grapevines, you will most likely have heard that Mastodon is an open source federated social network that works very much like Twitter but is, in fact, not Twitter, and thus poses a challenge to the venerable bird site.

Mastodon.py Documentation

Mastodon::REST

issue tracker