We need easy cross posting and responding tools, to post on twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, gab, Parler, mastodon etc all in one.
Something like hootsuite but compatible with more alt socials. Anyone know of a tool or building this?
@stephanlivera I actually think that'll dilute things. Better to pick a platform and stick to it.
@pete fair point. Though perhaps what 'works' for a podcaster like me is different than for most - I have to get my shows out in front of a large enough audience.
Bitcoin Mastodon isn't big enough right now, so I kind of have to work across multi platforms IMO
@stephanlivera Absolutely. Sounds like you're using Twitter for something closer to one-way-ish advertisement to a wide audience than two way discussion with a narrower audience. I totally agree strategy may be different there.
Also, there's a difference between what's good for you and everyone. :)
@pete right, at the end of the day, I think it just has to 'organically' happen that enough people go over to alt platforms.
Dunno if there's much you or I can do to drive/force the issue of getting everyone over here.
@stephanlivera "organically" is short hand for "lots of people forcing the issue" :)
@stephanlivera I've been wanting to move to something like Mastodon for a long time. This feels like an special moment where there's a chance of getting the network effect for it to actually work.
@pete "This time is different!" Unlike those other two times we tried lol 😂
Tbh I don't think this time is it. There wasn't any coordinated shift from Bitcoin Reddit to Bitcoin Twitter, and unless a bunch of influential Bitcoin Twitter accounts get cancelled/shutdown, I think most will stay there.
I'd love to be wrong about that though...
@stephanlivera Things don't work until they do. :)
I think re: reddit →twitter, the nature of the discussion changing was a big part of it. Notably, that happened around the block size debate, towards the end of it.
Also, that was going from a smaller social network to a bigger one (in the sense that subreddits are their own social networks).
@stephanlivera also, software maturity matters. Looks like Mastodon is more polished than before. It took me all of 20 minutes to setup a self hosted instance!
...and gifs!
What I found previously on Mastodon is that you don't need many people, you just need the right people.
I thought that I was going to miss big followings, but I got invited into a community of interesting people on Masto and it was enough.
There are benefits to being small. The toxicity goes away because everyone knows every else. What is important is to have a group to learn from and be able to contribute.
Stephan - understand that with your pod it's different.
What you don't have is the opposition to troll ... but maybe we really don't need that at this point.
@pete @stephanlivera can I pick your brain on this? You using docker or the instructions on the mastodon docs? You hosting from home or using a VPS?
@k3tan @stephanlivera I used this: https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/mastodon
Basically log in to digital ocean and just click the "Create Mastodon Droplet" button on that page. Setup dns records, and then SSH in as root.
@pete @k3tan @stephanlivera Until DO start following AWS' lead in taking down things like Parler
@michaelfolkson @pete @k3tan @stephanlivera If things get bad, you can run a Mastodon server from home over Tor. I think @orionwl has that setup for his instance (I'm lame; I haven't tried that yet for my instance).
@harding @michaelfolkson @pete @k3tan @stephanlivera
it's possible to run an instance completely behind Tor but it'll have limited federation, because other instances usually don't federate to hidden services (as this is an extra setup step)
what many people do that run an instance at home, for privacy, is to use e.g. wireguard to a tiny VPS to give it a public IPv4
FWIW, mine is reachable as a Tor onion service for its users, but it doesn't federate over Tor
@orionwl @harding @michaelfolkson @k3tan @stephanlivera I looked at that too and it wasn't clear to me how federation would even work. IIUC the identifiers rely on DNS names, so if a DNS name isn't reachable, things simply don't work. So if you had to move to Tor, after some censorship, you'd wind up having to restart the identity from scratch.
Scuttlebutt is better suited to that, being crypto based.
@pete @harding @michaelfolkson @k3tan @stephanlivera
yes i think the instance name in that case (for lack of DNS/naming) is the .onion address
> Scuttlebutt is better suited to that, being crypto based.
thanks—i've heard of scuttlebutt, but never looked into it yet, there's only so many of these things i can handle at the same time
@orionwl @harding @michaelfolkson @k3tan @stephanlivera The software for Scuttlebutt seems much less mature. Just one mobile client - Manyverse - and there's a lot of rough edges. Also, the protocol seems to inherently make it hard to use the same account on multiple computers as it expects a linear hash chain.
@michaelfolkson @k3tan @stephanlivera Not as likely to do it to individuals, and not too hard to move somewhere else later. Most important thing is to setup your own server, even if the hosting is imperfect.
Mastodon itself is imperfect compared to the alternative of Scuttlebutt. But it's a practical choice.
@stephanlivera @pete just a few more big player on Twitter to move over and commit to only posting on Mastadon and then it will get very interesting.
@stephanlivera @pete They don't have to be cancelled. They can simply decide to move, and others will follow.
@pete @stephanlivera it is time now 😉
@stephanlivera you could make an episode on decentralized social media. Not sure if it fits your show but worth thinking about
@stephanlivera Twitter/Mastodon isn't my day job. So I can afford to do the more right thing for others at the expense of something that doesn't actually matter that much. :)