ragica

For those wondering what this is about, I quote:

This is a retrospective post about my experiment Searchtodon, an attempt at building a privacy conscious personal timeline search tool for Mastodon.

I've been tossing in hashtags on lemmy posts for some time. I actually started doing it on reddit also before that. They are so prevalent elsewhere, I just figured they may be useful for discoverability in these places someday too. And now that accounts here can be followed by Mastodon, for example, it's nice the my hashtags show up and are possibly useful elsewhere in the fediverse, even if not yet used here.

In my view hashtags allow for 'virtual communities' that potentially span platforms. The sub-reddit style of community is good for organization, management and moderation; but hashtags allow for crossing all boundaries with minimal friction; one doesn't have to find a group or "join" anything to be a part of a topic's conversation (or at least see what other people are saying, and where they are saying it). Obviously this is how they became popularly used on Twitter, and then appeared in other big closed systems. But those systems don't talk to each other, so your hashtags are trapped on each platform. They are even more potentially powerful in the fediverse as they can potentially span everywhere ActivityPub is federated. And in fact do span many fediverse platforms already.

It's just a shame hashtags look so ugly. It's a wonder they got traction on twitter at all, in the crude form that they did. It just goes to show how useful they proved to be.

This is one of the most pleasant home feed UIs I've yet tried. It's not that much different functionally than the default Mastodon, it's pretty basic, but it feels good. Spacious, with nice big images, and a cozy functional colour scheme.

Here's a link to a running instance of the actual app, for those who don't want scrape through the github readme to find:

https://elk.zone/

Security through obscurity raises it's head again.... we've been down this fraught road so many times.

If control is wanted over this privacy/discovery balance, better build it in fast. Or, third parties that prove themselves significantly more useful than what is built in will soon take over, once the network reaches a significant size. Search becomes a key feature of every network and communication/sharing platform there is.

Unless of course the hope is that by limiting the utility of the network it remains small and therefore obscure and less used as a whole.

The linked article is thoughtful and covers many of these points from multiple sides already though.

Also, Fedilab android client can schedule posts and boosts. It's free on F-Droid, but can be supported by buying it in the play store.

(I don't know anything about Sengi desktop client, but there's a link to it that works.)

It should be noted that the linked article concluded that, in the authors' opinion, moving to Mastodon IS ethical, despite vasuous issues.and concerns which the article catalogs.

Though it would seem we overwhelming and vehemently disagree with those that suggest there might be unethical to abandon them on the birdsite, we also should not just dismiss those who do think or feel that. Especially marginalized people trying to express the good thing they found.

It seems pretty clear that most humans do not prioritize "freedom" very highly compared to comfort and familiarity. And I can see a logic where, unfortunaltely, marginalized people whose lives tend towards experiencing more discomfort than most would be especially resistance to letting go of what little comfort they have found.

And the network effect is biggest boss to overcome (as all the vc feuled corps know very well).

All we can do is keep trying to make a place that is useful enough and iteratively more comfortable. If we care about these people, and the concept of decentralized freedom.for all. And we need to seriously listen and consider, and maybe even compromise, as the linked article has tried to do.

On android the official mastodon app is the weak. Long established third party Tusky is better. And Fedilab has by far the most features.

But bring on more apps, by all means. One of the nice things about reddit is how many apps there are to choose from.

I was worried that a headline like that was going to be some silly pseudo-science link. So I'm going to quote the fun analogies from the opening paragraph of linked article, to give a better sense to someone looking here where this is going :

I'll start by giving you a few similar questions to answer.

1. How perfectly do you have to build a house so that it will become a single brick?
2. How well do you have to write an entire dictionary to change it into a single word?
3. What would you have to do to change an entire symphony into a single note?

If you are thinking that those questions don't make much sense, then you are feeling very much like a scientist who has been asked "How much proof does it take for a theory to graduate to being a law?"

I just found it interesting how the Canadian founder of Farm Aid sees things differently than his American partners in regards to Covid-19 delta context.