[HacktionLab] Mastodon; an open source de-centralised federated alternative to existing closed social networking platforms

[acesabe]

I imagine many of you are already aware of this one, but for those who
aren't:

> "Mastodon is a _free, open-source_ social network. A _decentralized _alternative to commercial platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company monopolizing your communication. Pick a server that you trust -- whichever you choose, you can interact with everyone else. Anyone can run their own Mastodon instance and participate in the _social network _seamlessly."

taken from the most populous Mastodon instance: https://mastodon.social/
[1] (currently not accepting accounts due to popularity!), there are
many servers/instances to choose from, some listed in the link on that
page: https://instances.mastodon.xyz/ but there are certainly many more.


It is Twitter like social media platform but with numerous
servers/instances (effectively groups) that you can sign up to, but they
also federate to some or all other instances, depending on the specific
instance. 

My immediate verdict is that I quite like it, and it's certainly more
manageable than trying to keep up with my current Twitter feed! On the
other hand, if you want your identity/nick, you will only have it on the
server/s you sign up on, so it will be a bit tricky if you are a well
known person as there is no authenticated identity system in place, so
either you need to grab your nick on all servers or accept that others
may use the same nick/id as you elsewhere on the network. 

This seems a good candidate for setting up a social media platform for
any group that could use their own public (or private?) online social
network, perhaps HacktionLab, which could compliment the existing mail
list and (rather quiet!) irc channel,  (hey wasn't Diaspora supposed to
be just that already??!) If anyone has server space and Docker running,
should be pretty quick and trivial to spin up:
https://hub.docker.com/r/gargron/mastodon/ (from main Mastodon
developer) we could test it and build a new expanded online community! I
can help but have no server currently. 

Anyway, check it out if of interest, how to choose which instance is
still a grey area, as is filtering what appears in your local/global
feeds. The Android client seems fine and you are not limited to 140 char
yay! (there is also option to add a content button to hide your post (or
'toot' as they are called) which is handy for those TL:DR posts! You can
find me as @acesabe currently on https://mastodon.rocks instance as well
as some others eg: https://anticapitalist.party. Do share any related
infos, thoughts and your own @name so we can network. 

Re us getting up to Barncamp this year, alas, contrary to rumours, it is
pretty unlikely we will be able to make it, but hope can bring the
family to the next one, really missing all that hands on tech and cider
on top of the hill! 

A 

Links:
------
[1] https://mastodon.social/about
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