Conversation

Notices

1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 20:39:18 JST Aral Balkan

   So apparently there’s been a denial-of-service attack on mastodon.social and it was down for a bit.

   I didn’t notice.

   (I have my own server.)

   That’s the fediverse working as designed.

   No server should be so big that its absence endangers the greater system. And if any are, that’s a problem.

   If we want a healthy, resilient fediverse, we must keep the size of servers small and the number of servers high.

   #fediverse #mastodon #resilience #ddos #thinkSmall

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 20:44:05 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Cybarbie

     @nf3xn Although you would have had you tried to access it when it was under load/down :)

   • Cybarbie (nf3xn@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 20:44:06 JST Cybarbie

     in reply to

     @aral I am on mastodon.social and I did not notice at all.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 20:50:10 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Cybarbie
     • Joxean Koret (@matalaz)

     @joxean @nf3xn https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109781490892884305

   • Joxean Koret (@matalaz) (joxean@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 20:50:15 JST Joxean Koret (@matalaz)

     in reply to

     • Cybarbie

     @nf3xn @aral Neither me. Source Aral?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 22:19:28 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Stevens R Miller

     @stevensrmiller That’s what I call the Small Web. It’s what I’ve been working on for the past several years :)

     https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

   • Stevens R Miller (stevensrmiller@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 22:19:29 JST Stevens R Miller

     in reply to

     @aral

     Pushed to the limit, do you think there will come a time when it makes sense for each of us to run our own server, with a local community of one user?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 22:35:16 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Hughster

     @hughster Hey, maybe if we’re lucky, one day we’ll end up with just one very large server for everyone.

     One can dream.

   • Hughster (hughster@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 22:35:17 JST Hughster

     in reply to

     @aral From everything I've seen (on Mastodon at least), most users will have a better overall experience on larger servers.

     Larger servers are "aware of" more users, more hashtags, more replies in conversation threads, etc., all because more users on the server have introduced them to it to allow it to cache them.

     Larger servers are also less at risk of suddenly going offline, suffering from admin tyranny or being arbitrarily defederated by other large servers.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 23:32:57 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Mackaj
     • Stevens R Miller

     @mackaj Yeah, it’s not the architecture ActivityPub or the fediverse was designed for.

     > these single user social environments you're envisioning don't have to be Mastodon. They can be something else that would happily sit right beside it.

     Exactly.

     @stevensrmiller

   • Stevens R Miller (stevensrmiller@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 23:32:58 JST Stevens R Miller

     in reply to

     • Mackaj

     @mackaj @aral

     Communities would have be maintained as shared lists, but that's not much of a challenge. Onboarding would require an installation that was no harder than the learning curve of the existing UI, web or mobile. The more I think about it, the more I'm expecting this to be the wave of the future.

     And, as @aral points out, you don't have to choose. The only piece we actually don't have today is the virtual community, though hash-tags partly get there.

   • Mackaj (mackaj@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 23:32:58 JST Mackaj

     in reply to

     • Stevens R Miller

     @stevensrmiller

     That's moving away from the goal of Mastodon's current design though.

     As this is the Fediverse, these single user social environments you're envisioning don't have to be Mastodon. They can be something else that would happily sit right beside it.

     @aral

   • Mackaj (mackaj@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Jan-2023 23:32:59 JST Mackaj

     in reply to

     • Stevens R Miller

     @stevensrmiller

     There are generic instances and there are themed instances that support communities with common interests. I can't see how single user instances for all would work well with that. It would also raise the barrier to onboard new users and make it a difficult experience.

     @aral