Notices by Tom Walker (tomw@mastodon.social)

Mastodon is the world's biggest community of people who deeply love computers and also think that the world would probably be better off without computers

@Gargron The first social network to be funded entirely by plushie sales

The state of identity verification in the UK:

1. "You need a utility bill with your full name and address".
2. Of course these are all online now, and even if you try to get paper ones for this very purpose the companies keep pushing you to online instead.
3. Go download a PDF of the bill.
4. "We cannot accept online bills, it must have been posted to your address"
5. Print out the PDF
6. Take a photo of it
7. Email it to them
8. Accepted

Here's a blue sky invite:

Go outside

@aral

> "This is the sort of design a VC-funded startup would implement"

It extremely isn't. There's a "pick your own server" button right there. It's trying to smooth out the process for new users so the very first screen isn't a big explanation of what an instance is.

Hyperbole is not how we win this, etc.

Seeing people post positively about Substack now that it's challenging Twitter.

Reminder: Substack is also centralised. Worse, the business model is basically to take what would once have been blogs and paywall them as premium 'newsletters'.

Substack is not a friend of the open web.

People worry a lot about losing knowledge — about "burned-down libraries".

Comparatively few people seem to worry about what happens if you take a billion books full of auto-generated, often-untrue junk text and *add* them all to the library.

In theory, nothing is lost. In reality, everything is lost, because nothing useful can now be found.

@aral It's interesting to see the original post of this image that just basically says "look at these book benches" and the replies say "wow" etc, then your exact same image with different framing and the replies say "how terrible"...

@chriscoyier @aral It doesn't seem to be a great idea to run single-user instances on the full Mastodon software, since there's so much overhead. I don't think this is a reason to write off or be concerned about Mastodon though since there are lighter weight compatible alternatives.

There was once a dream of a decentralised web.

As recently as a decade ago we had a still very active blogosphere, connected via blogrolls and RSS. Specialised web forums were still mainstream and messenger apps could largely interoperate.

Centralised social media slowly ate that dream. It had plenty of positives, but it pulled more and more people away from the open web and into corporate walled gardens.

Some people kept the dream of decentralisation alive. And now you are here.

@aral It is funny/interesting that venture capitalist types don't have any obvious alternative platform to flee to apart from the one whose very existence is a rebuke to their idea of how "building" on the internet works