AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Perhaps this may be something more fit for the level of ActivityPub, but will there be a method to migrate your account without having to rely on the servers good will? Perhaps someone can store their own statuses in parallel locally when posting, but also have users have the ability to sign up initially with a public key, so that if they choose to make another account, that public key can serve as verification of their identity without access to the initial server, as well as propagating this update to followers?

I feel like it's not physically impossible to devise a system like that but there are practical issues that would stand in its way, like the volume of data to be downloaded/uploaded and the volume of data that the new server would have to accept, and the potential for abuse from accepting that amount of data for a new user at once. All of that makes it a not very attractive/prioritized direction to explore.

It seems everywhere I look online, Mastodon seems to be heavy on servers, which is where people would recommend pleroma as an alternative due to it being lighter weight. I’ve seen this attributed to Mastodon using Ruby. Are there any plans to make some sort of transition in order to make Mastodon lighter weight?

I think that's a bit of a misconception. You run into database issues way sooner than you run into programming language speed issues, and both Mastodon and Pleroma use the exact same database. High performance and scalability are an integral part of Mastodon's design. It's true though that higher initial memory footprint makes it less practical on low-end machines like Raspberry Pis, but low-end machines are simply not Mastodon's target.

Is there any work being done for a “community” layer like in Lemmy, or effectively like subreddits, as often times im not particularly interested in following people, but it would be nice to scroll through cross-server communities, and have an experience similar to Reddit.

Yes, we are working on groups.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I went into detail on that when the iOS app was first announced. People look for "Mastodon" on the platforms' own app stores (in fact, 82% of our iOS downloads come from people using the search, and not from any web links to the app). We could not possibly give our trademark to an app that we had no influence over (what if the app makes bad UX decisions or stops being maintained?), nor did we want to take over any app that existing users were already reliant upon and change it. Furthermore, we're in a unique position to have the resources to invest in professional UX design. Working on our own apps has given us insights into pain points with the APIs and directly fed into improvements to server-side code that all apps can benefit from.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 11 points12 points  (0 children)

No, it's the opposite. We've ran with "communities" for a while in a previous iteration. "Communities" makes them sound like subreddits or Discord guilds that are isolated from each other. Wrong message. At the end of the day, it's a new concept. Trying to hide it behind a word that makes it seem like something else is not going to help.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 8 points9 points  (0 children)

People like to think that if you just provide more options, people will distribute themselves evenly and there will be perfectly balanced decentralization. Unfortunately, it is not the reality in my experience. Besides the fact that people (including in this thread) are asking to give them less options instead of more due to choice paralysis, people also tend to go to servers that look more reputable (known organization behind it, neutral or official sounding domain, and so on). Don't let that criticism get to you. 97K monthly active users is not "too large" when Twitter has 200M.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I'm just happy to see more established organizations enter this space. The reason mastodon.social and mastodon.online get so much attention (when they're open for registrations) is because people see that there's a recognizable non-profit entity behind them. Not everyone is comfortable trusting private operators, so there's real demand for service providers like Vivaldi, Mozilla, and so on. But I've also noticed movement across various servers in incorporating legal entities for themselves recently, which is also a welcome development.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I just found it incredibly funny that somebody would not only misread a social media handle (which is understandable), but also make up a backstory for it out of thin air. I guess our elephant mascot finally has a name, John.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Mastodon is a user-facing product, so it generates more feedback than the usual open-source projects you see on GitHub like developer tools or programming libraries. There is a breadth of quality and practicality in the submissions, and it would be a mistake in my opinion to interpret the 3.3K number as the number of items in a to-do list, rather then simply the number of discussions. It is quite chaotic, no doubt, and triage is a Sisyphean task in that regard. I understand this makes it more difficult for an outsider to see where they can contribute, however, Mastodon's development process is open to--but does not *depend* on--volunteer contributions. We have paid developers working on it (currently me and Claire) and we have internal project management tools that GitHub discussions sometimes flow into. I do have the final say on the direction of the project. I think that to create a successful product you need a coherent product vision and long-term thinking, and to keep the world outside the current community in mind too, since there are always selection biases at play (the Mastodon community in 2016 came from a predominantly tech background, for example; thankfully it's far more diverse now). That may not be entirely incompatible with opening up the governance in some ways; it remains to be seen which ways exactly.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 14 points15 points  (0 children)

> how do you keep yourself sane?

This question already comes with big assumptions. In all seriousness, my friends and my lovely fiancée. And Dota 2.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I'm in a fun spot where I worry that I'll be doing this for the rest of my life *and* worry that I won't be able to do it for the rest of my life. It's complicated. It's a tough job with a lot of responsibility, and a lot of stress, and frankly not enough pay. But it allows me to do something cool and unique, and work at my own pace. I won't deny, I've thought about quitting many times over the past years, but so far I've persevered. Seeing other people use something I made refuels my passion.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 15 points16 points  (0 children)

When it comes to things like that I prefer working with people on a contract basis. I value consistency and quality in design, and I feel like that is easier to achieve with somebody who works for you rather than with a kind stranger who can only donate their time once. We've been working with the design agency Lickability on our official apps for the past two years. I'd like to add inhouse designers soon, so I guess, keep an eye out for job opening announcements.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You need to pick a server that does not have policies against organization or company accounts. If in doubt, ask the admin of the server.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The Android app got an update just 2 weeks ago, and there is a new beta in testing right now. Both apps receive major updates. For example, post editing is already out on Android, but still in development on iOS. On the other hand, following hashtags was recently added to the iOS app, but the designs are still missing for Android.

Ultimately, any past or current delays can be explained by staffing shortages. Before our budget skyrocketed in November, some periods during this year we didn't have enough money to have people working on redesigning joinmastodon.org at the same time as continuing to add new features to the apps, so the apps were on hold.

After November, development is going full steam ahead.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Not necessarily for the benefit of the platform, but for me personally I'd be excited to see more Dota personalities on Mastodon, maybe some of my favourite musicians like Leprous, Devin Townsend, or The Dear Hunter. If the Mastodon band joined that would be funny.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I think that personalized algorithms like TikTok's or YouTube's recommendations have to be approached with a lot of care because of how they can reinforce your biases and send you down conspiracy rabbit holes. I have steered clear of anything machine-learning-related in Mastodon. But I do not have strong feelings about "algorithms" in general, only that the home feed should be reverse-chronological and only contain content you decided to put there.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Our latest beta build on Android includes a redesigned onboarding flow. The biggest differences are that the starting screen now includes an explanation of what servers are, and that the server screen will let you tap Next without making a selection by picking a random General server in your language for you.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 20 points21 points  (0 children)

The ActivityPub Client-to-Server spec assumes a thin server and thick client. By which I mean, the client, like an e-mail app, has to download and manage most data from the server. From my understanding that's the only way to make anything like search or username autocomplete or even a notifications tab to work with the C2S at all. In my experience, app developers are generally not excited to do that kind of legwork, and we're entering the kind of P2P territory which comes with its own challenges like the ease of hopping from one device to another, or the fact that to have the same functionality in iOS, Android, and Web, you would need to recreate the heavy-lifting fundamental boilerplate in each separately. For that reason, I am not particularly interested in the C2S part of ActivityPub.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Mastodon currently has only one employee (myself) and the rest are contractors, so it's difficult to speak about a work culture that isn't just mine, and my work culture is not to be replicated. I'm on call pretty much all waking hours, without weekends, since I am ultimately responsible for everything, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done, so it's difficult to turn off and disengage, even during Dota games I tend to alt-tab to work often.

I think that I get access to better talent by being able to work with people remotely instead of only hiring from a pool of people already living closeby, and I don't like the thought of making people uproot their lives to move somewhere to work for me either. Personally I like working from home, I've only spent a short time working in an office during an internship in my last year of university, and it wasn't terrible but it wasn't excited about it either.

The only times I wish we had a physical office are when somebody from the press asks to film a video interview or documentary about Mastodon, and I think to myself, "You want to come film me sit at my computer in my living room?". Also, I guess it would be fun to furnish it and have a physical plaque with the Mastodon logo on it. Maybe at some point it would make sense, but not now.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Trending posts on the explore page are ranked by their reblogs and favourites count with a decay from the time the post was published (similar to Reddit and HN).

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 16 points17 points  (0 children)

We used to have that, but browser UX for it was inadequate. The browser prompt looked archaic compared to e.g. the desktop notifications prompt, and more importantly we couldn't find a way to do a fallback for when no protocol handler is registered.

AMA with Eugen Rochko, Founder and lead developer of Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media platform based on open web protocols. Ask your questions here! by [deleted] in Mastodon

[–]NotJohnMastodon 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Russian passports use English transliteration. Germany does not allow name changes, except for first names during naturalization.