Here's my first Mastodon post!
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Here's my first Mastodon post!
My mission out here? To understand and promote Mastodon, the only large European social media platform (to my knowledge).
How can we make more Europeans come to the Fediverse?@hpod16 @raymierussell encourage more official news outlets, magazines, blogs, journalists etc to have a presence here.
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@hpod16 @raymierussell encourage more official news outlets, magazines, blogs, journalists etc to have a presence here.
@simonharper @raymierussell
You're giving me ideas about starting a thread to collect journalists and news outlets here. Thanks
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@simonharper @raymierussell
You're giving me ideas about starting a thread to collect journalists and news outlets here. Thanks
@hpod16 @raymierussell that would be great.
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Here's my first Mastodon post!
My mission out here? To understand and promote Mastodon, the only large European social media platform (to my knowledge).
How can we make more Europeans come to the Fediverse?@hpod16 Welcome! I think it's a good time to be having this conversation.
Is there any appetite (& budget?) in your group to do some user experience work to find out what barriers non-technical users have (or perceive) about coming to the Fediverse?
My personal take is that decentralization is not necessarily, in & of itself, a positive feature. Mostly people just want to talk to their friends & other interesting people they've met. The details of how that's achieved are less important to them
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@hpod16 Welcome! I think it's a good time to be having this conversation.
Is there any appetite (& budget?) in your group to do some user experience work to find out what barriers non-technical users have (or perceive) about coming to the Fediverse?
My personal take is that decentralization is not necessarily, in & of itself, a positive feature. Mostly people just want to talk to their friends & other interesting people they've met. The details of how that's achieved are less important to them
@hpod16 And there is no doubt that decentralization causes additional complexities for certain aspects of the Fedi, such as moderation (which is a huge one).
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@ptvirgo
I'm a social media manager at the European Commission.
We didn't have enough Mastodon experts on the team (we do have some) so I decided to join Mastodon myself to learn more about what works here, etc.
I went for eupolicy.social after a brief search, looks like it was made for people in the EU bubble, which I very much am.
(despite the fact that I have purple hair and interesting hobbies)
@hpod16 The European Commission is looking to expand it's presence here, and it's your job to understand how to proceed?
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@hpod16 The European Commission is looking to expand it's presence here, and it's your job to understand how to proceed?
@ptvirgo I never said expand
The European Commission is here already, and I'm just trying to build a little extra knowledge to support my team -
@BrennpunktUA @hpod16 Even if Mastodon itself does not sell, track or monitor - anyone could (since it's all out in the open as you stated before. No need for an account even.)
And I beg to differ about the likeliness of a take over by "fascists"/malicious actors. Not as in server take over, but in "join and spam" or "join and deceive"-runs, the operation financed by e.g. big tech
I think that WILL happen when Mastodon reaches a critical mass, and the @Mastodon developers need to be prepared.
@gagagoogle you can't track a location, if there isn't any. You can't track engagement on other websites, if you don't have neither the cookies, nor the IPs. Just two examples.
I'm pretty sure,
is aware of potential abuse. Yet, ofc, everything that is publically visible, is trackable. You might choose not to go for your real name and not posting any photos of yourself, your friends, neighborhoods or home, for example. -
@hpod16 @Mastodon
It could be hindered if there was more possibilities for server-owners to identify bad actors on their servers.Since moderation is not cheap. It could instead be done with help from the users, by adding a "report abuse"-button to each post. Any user could then flag any post.
The server-owner should be able to mark some users as "trustworthy" giving their abuse-reports some sort of priority and the opposite too, "untrustworthy" for users who abuse this reporting system.
"by adding a "report abuse"-button to each post. Any user could then flag any post"
There already is? Screenshot 3 shows how you can report additional posts (the original one is already marked) of the same "abuse category" of the same user in just one step. If the user is on a different server, you can choose to report to your server only, or to both.
But yeah, trusted flaggers like @hateaid are very helpful, too.
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Here's my first Mastodon post!
My mission out here? To understand and promote Mastodon, the only large European social media platform (to my knowledge).
How can we make more Europeans come to the Fediverse?@hpod16 to what extent is the EU commission interested in "European" services for the purpose of exerting legal or extralegal influence on them? one notable factor about mastodon (more notable than its nationality) is its conformance to a standard set of protocols and open source codebase, which undermines the ability for governments and/or corporations to control it.
you identify that this structure is able to resist US influence, but haven't elaborated on what the EU commission values about mastodon.
i would be very interested to hear more about the goals of the EU commission for social media and to consider how these might align with mastodon. i am a big fan of EU commission projects like NGI Zero and would love to see further government support for open protocols that nonetheless enable instances to exert their own policies—much like the system of international law allows for each polity to maintain its own system while interfacing with others.
i used to work on open source software for the US federal government and would love to see that approach taken up elsewhere.
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@ptvirgo I never said expand
The European Commission is here already, and I'm just trying to build a little extra knowledge to support my team@hpod16 No, you did not say expand! Sorry, sometimes I have to ask silly questions to make sure I understand. Feel free to shush me if I make a rude mistake.
It seems like you've enjoyed most of the introductions, at least.
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@gagagoogle @Mastodon
the panic-button is not a bad idea.@hpod16 @gagagoogle yes, sounds like a good idea.
There's some basic spam and DDOS protection already, afaik. I already got time-limited for posting too much, once or twice
Also, some DMs and follow requests got automatically marked as "potential spam". -
@hpod16 No, you did not say expand! Sorry, sometimes I have to ask silly questions to make sure I understand. Feel free to shush me if I make a rude mistake.
It seems like you've enjoyed most of the introductions, at least.
@ptvirgo not a rude mistake at all!
Just making sure I don't overstep or look like I'm promising anything here
I'm very much here in my *personal* capacity, so I can't talk about anything we may or may not be planning.
I'm here for learning and inspiration
And also to play around and create content.
I'm having a great time so far, and kind of being reminded of why I fell in love with social media in the first place. -
@hpod16 to what extent is the EU commission interested in "European" services for the purpose of exerting legal or extralegal influence on them? one notable factor about mastodon (more notable than its nationality) is its conformance to a standard set of protocols and open source codebase, which undermines the ability for governments and/or corporations to control it.
you identify that this structure is able to resist US influence, but haven't elaborated on what the EU commission values about mastodon.
i would be very interested to hear more about the goals of the EU commission for social media and to consider how these might align with mastodon. i am a big fan of EU commission projects like NGI Zero and would love to see further government support for open protocols that nonetheless enable instances to exert their own policies—much like the system of international law allows for each polity to maintain its own system while interfacing with others.
i used to work on open source software for the US federal government and would love to see that approach taken up elsewhere.
@hipsterelectron sorry to disappoint, I can't really answer that as I don't speak on behalf of the EU Commission, I'm just here to get inspired.
There's a service to answer citizen's questions called the EDCC, and registered journalists can ask questions to our spokespeople. (almost) every weekday at 12 that gets streamed live, anyone can tune into that. You can find it on the EC audiovisual portal: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en -
@morph do we think the fediverse attracts federalists?
@hpod16 Rather Anarchists (jokin').

"The Federation" is more a technical aspect regarding the connection and communication between the instances/nodes where the Federati are located via protocols like ActivityPub, XMPP etc. But of course, even if the phocus is not a political one, a lot of people will have an ethical mindset about what's happening. I hope you'll enjoy your mission. It's more to dig and learn than just what's possible with Mastodon. Be curious.
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@clickhere @Trojaner @mastodonie @alex_p_roe
Ok but let me understand this:
I can only really see those icons, if I'm on that Irish instance? Or if my instance supports those? Wondering if it's worth going down the rabbit hole of figuring out how to make these / use these for our official EU Commission instance...@hpod16 That's a fair question, and I'm not sure of the answer.
On the one hand, it's a bit technical for me: I know that sometimes, I can't see custom emojis from other instances, but sometimes I can; and I don't know why!
otoh, they're a bit 'fun,' so are they necessary for a 'serious' instance? (If yes, maybe as a lower priority!?)
Possibly @FediTips has some guidance on this topic?
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@hpod16 That's a fair question, and I'm not sure of the answer.
On the one hand, it's a bit technical for me: I know that sometimes, I can't see custom emojis from other instances, but sometimes I can; and I don't know why!
otoh, they're a bit 'fun,' so are they necessary for a 'serious' instance? (If yes, maybe as a lower priority!?)
Possibly @FediTips has some guidance on this topic?
@clickhere @hpod16 @Trojaner @mastodonie @alex_p_roe
You should be able to see custom emoji no matter which instance you are on.
However, you can only use custom emoji that are on your own instance.
If you can't see custom emoji from another instance, it's probably a temporary glitch.
More info about them at https://fedi.tips/what-are-custom-emoji-how-do-i-access-them-can-i-add-new-ones/
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@clickhere @hpod16 @Trojaner @mastodonie @alex_p_roe
You should be able to see custom emoji no matter which instance you are on.
However, you can only use custom emoji that are on your own instance.
If you can't see custom emoji from another instance, it's probably a temporary glitch.
More info about them at https://fedi.tips/what-are-custom-emoji-how-do-i-access-them-can-i-add-new-ones/
@FediTips
Thanks, I appreciate it!
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Here's my first Mastodon post!
My mission out here? To understand and promote Mastodon, the only large European social media platform (to my knowledge).
How can we make more Europeans come to the Fediverse?@hpod16 Welcome to the Fediverse!
That's a very good question. I'm glad many people are responding with good ideas.
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@gelbphoenix @karlos would be cool if the European Parliament created a Mastodon Instance, and offered all MEPs (Members of the Parliament) the ability to create an account on their instance. I know some social media savvy MEPs would appreciate that... It's a good idea you have there!
@hpod16 @gelbphoenix @karlos I think it's important to remain distributed; so they're harder to target for nefarious purposes. On the other hand, easy-to-find directories are important for everyone...