If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!
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If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!
Don't worry if it seems inactive or blank, it probably just looks that way because you're the first person to follow it from your server. (More info about why this happens and how to see the actual complete version of a "blank" profile at https://fedi.tips/why-does-someones-account-page-look-completely-blank-is-it-really-blank)
Once you follow an account, its posts will start showing up on your server too. Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers.
Usually I agree with your advice but not in this case. Before I follow a profile that looks blank, I click on "open original page" to see it on their server (which you describe in the article, but don't mention the importance of doing it before you follow). Otherwise, it's easy to follow somedody who happened to make an interesting post but is also racist, anti-trans, or a spammer -- and following them gives them credence.
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Usually I agree with your advice but not in this case. Before I follow a profile that looks blank, I click on "open original page" to see it on their server (which you describe in the article, but don't mention the importance of doing it before you follow). Otherwise, it's easy to follow somedody who happened to make an interesting post but is also racist, anti-trans, or a spammer -- and following them gives them credence.
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I've edited the post so people know to look in the guide for a way to find the original version of a profile.
The post was mainly aimed at people who avoid apparently-blank profiles completely on the assumption that they're inactive. I often get people telling me on @FediFollows that I'm posting about blank accounts because they can't see the account's posts from their server.
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I've edited the post so people know to look in the guide for a way to find the original version of a profile.
The post was mainly aimed at people who avoid apparently-blank profiles completely on the assumption that they're inactive. I often get people telling me on @FediFollows that I'm posting about blank accounts because they can't see the account's posts from their server.
Thanks for editing! And agree that it's useful to let people know that apparently-blank accounts aren't necessarily a sign of no activity. But, it still recommends following without looking.
Also, in terms of the overall framing ...
"Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers."
Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing. Another thing I do before following (or accepting a following request) is check to see what The Bad Space has to say about the other server. 95% or more of the time there's nothing to see, which is great, but it's still worth the time.
(I started doing this a while ago after somebody made an interesting post about something wiki-related and I engaged in a conversation with him, also tagging somebody else I know, and it quickly degenerated into the person saying somewhat-racist things and then somewhat-more-racist things. After I blocked him I looked at TBS and realized geez, I could have saved myself and this other person a lot of time -- and the stress of dealing with hate speech.)
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Thanks for editing! And agree that it's useful to let people know that apparently-blank accounts aren't necessarily a sign of no activity. But, it still recommends following without looking.
Also, in terms of the overall framing ...
"Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers."
Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing. Another thing I do before following (or accepting a following request) is check to see what The Bad Space has to say about the other server. 95% or more of the time there's nothing to see, which is great, but it's still worth the time.
(I started doing this a while ago after somebody made an interesting post about something wiki-related and I engaged in a conversation with him, also tagging somebody else I know, and it quickly degenerated into the person saying somewhat-racist things and then somewhat-more-racist things. After I blocked him I looked at TBS and realized geez, I could have saved myself and this other person a lot of time -- and the stress of dealing with hate speech.)
TBS is generally meant for admins I think? I don't think users would be able to check an entire blocklist for every follow?
I try to recommend blocklists to admins over on @homegrown so users don't have to do this each time.
"But, it still recommends following without looking."
I don't think so? It leaves it up to the person to decide. I'm trying to get people to read the article as I only have 500 characters.
Don't want to edit lots as each edit spams every booster's notifications.
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Thanks for editing! And agree that it's useful to let people know that apparently-blank accounts aren't necessarily a sign of no activity. But, it still recommends following without looking.
Also, in terms of the overall framing ...
"Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers."
Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing. Another thing I do before following (or accepting a following request) is check to see what The Bad Space has to say about the other server. 95% or more of the time there's nothing to see, which is great, but it's still worth the time.
(I started doing this a while ago after somebody made an interesting post about something wiki-related and I engaged in a conversation with him, also tagging somebody else I know, and it quickly degenerated into the person saying somewhat-racist things and then somewhat-more-racist things. After I blocked him I looked at TBS and realized geez, I could have saved myself and this other person a lot of time -- and the stress of dealing with hate speech.)
"Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing."
I'm trying to encourage people to build connections between smaller servers instead of everyone going to mastodon.social.
A really important part of this is people on smaller servers building connections between each other through follows.
Most people are unware of how powerful their follows are. I'm trying to get across to them that a follow doesn't just connect you but all the people on your server too.
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TBS is generally meant for admins I think? I don't think users would be able to check an entire blocklist for every follow?
I try to recommend blocklists to admins over on @homegrown so users don't have to do this each time.
"But, it still recommends following without looking."
I don't think so? It leaves it up to the person to decide. I'm trying to get people to read the article as I only have 500 characters.
Don't want to edit lots as each edit spams every booster's notifications.
TBS is accessible to everybody! Just go to https://tweaking.thebad.space/ and search the domain. I'm not saying you should necessarily recommend that though ... Ro's FSEP proposal included UI support for get info from TBS or similar services when evaluating a follow request, a great idea I had never seen before but alas wound up not moving forward after the firestorm. Without that it's a more of a hassle. It's worth it for me but I'm not sure others would see it that way.
"But, it still recommends following without looking."
I don't think so?
Well your post at the top of the thread still says "If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!"
And the longer post still says "If you want to stop someone’s account looking blank, give it a follow. There is no harm in following people" before telling people how they can check.
"Don't want to edit lots as each edit spams every booster's notifications."
Yeah, I can relate. Notifications on edit are a good thing but also notifications on edit can be very annoying.
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TBS is accessible to everybody! Just go to https://tweaking.thebad.space/ and search the domain. I'm not saying you should necessarily recommend that though ... Ro's FSEP proposal included UI support for get info from TBS or similar services when evaluating a follow request, a great idea I had never seen before but alas wound up not moving forward after the firestorm. Without that it's a more of a hassle. It's worth it for me but I'm not sure others would see it that way.
"But, it still recommends following without looking."
I don't think so?
Well your post at the top of the thread still says "If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!"
And the longer post still says "If you want to stop someone’s account looking blank, give it a follow. There is no harm in following people" before telling people how they can check.
"Don't want to edit lots as each edit spams every booster's notifications."
Yeah, I can relate. Notifications on edit are a good thing but also notifications on edit can be very annoying.
The "no harm" was about people worrying that following an account would affect an algorithm, that's what it leads into in the next part of the sentence. I was responding to people who thought that following an account would trigger some kind of hidden algo that adjusted their entire feed. (People are so used to this happening on Instagram etc.)
I've removed the "no harm" bit so that this is clearer.
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"Connections between servers are not necessarily a good thing."
I'm trying to encourage people to build connections between smaller servers instead of everyone going to mastodon.social.
A really important part of this is people on smaller servers building connections between each other through follows.
Most people are unware of how powerful their follows are. I'm trying to get across to them that a follow doesn't just connect you but all the people on your server too.
Agreed on encouraging people to build connections between smaller servers, and that people are unaware of how powerful their follows are. So, useful to help people understnad the impact of connections!
But that power is a two-edged sword, so I think think connections between servers aren't inherently a good thing.
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The "no harm" was about people worrying that following an account would affect an algorithm, that's what it leads into in the next part of the sentence. I was responding to people who thought that following an account would trigger some kind of hidden algo that adjusted their entire feed. (People are so used to this happening on Instagram etc.)
I've removed the "no harm" bit so that this is clearer.
@FediTips thanks!
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Agreed on encouraging people to build connections between smaller servers, and that people are unaware of how powerful their follows are. So, useful to help people understnad the impact of connections!
But that power is a two-edged sword, so I think think connections between servers aren't inherently a good thing.
Oh yeah, sorry, I see what you mean now. I didn't mean to imply that every connection was good.
Some accounts and servers should not be connected to.
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@FediTips thanks!
Thanks for flagging it! I hadn't considered that possible interpretation of the phrase.
EDIT: I've added a sentence to the end of that section saying people may want to check what an account looks like before following, and it leads into the next part which tells them how.
EDIT 2: I'll also try to phrase this topic better in future posts. Sorry for the mess.
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If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!
Don't worry if it seems inactive or blank, it probably just looks that way because you're the first person to follow it from your server. (More info about why this happens and how to see the actual complete version of a "blank" profile at https://fedi.tips/why-does-someones-account-page-look-completely-blank-is-it-really-blank)
Once you follow an account, its posts will start showing up on your server too. Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers.
@FediTips huh, I've been ignoring followers who have no posts. I didn't realize that they might appear to have no posts because no one from my server has followed them yet. Is it server :: user or server :: server? IOW, if any user on my server follows any user on their server, will the posts of any users on their server be apparent to me on my server?
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@FediTips huh, I've been ignoring followers who have no posts. I didn't realize that they might appear to have no posts because no one from my server has followed them yet. Is it server :: user or server :: server? IOW, if any user on my server follows any user on their server, will the posts of any users on their server be apparent to me on my server?
If at least one person on your server is following that account, then its posts will show up for everyone on your server.
If no one on your server is following that account, then it may appear blank.
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If at least one person on your server is following that account, then its posts will show up for everyone on your server.
If no one on your server is following that account, then it may appear blank.
@FediTips got it, so it's server :: user. Thank you. I'll try following back some of these no-post accounts.
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@FediTips got it, so it's server :: user. Thank you. I'll try following back some of these no-post accounts.
You can check what they really look like by clicking ... on their profiles and then "view original page" or "view in browser" or similar phrases depending on your app.
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@FediTips huh, I've been ignoring followers who have no posts. I didn't realize that they might appear to have no posts because no one from my server has followed them yet. Is it server :: user or server :: server? IOW, if any user on my server follows any user on their server, will the posts of any users on their server be apparent to me on my server?
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I think it was a decision not to overwhelm smaller servers by fetching every post for every discovered profile.
Mastodon can backfill profile posts, it already does so with pinned posts for every discovered profile, but these are more limited as only five posts can be pinned at a time.
Having said that, it looks like they've found a way to implement this for general posts in one of the current pull requests: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/34597
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If you see an account that looks interesting, follow it!
Don't worry if it seems inactive or blank, it probably just looks that way because you're the first person to follow it from your server. (More info about why this happens and how to see the actual complete version of a "blank" profile at https://fedi.tips/why-does-someones-account-page-look-completely-blank-is-it-really-blank)
Once you follow an account, its posts will start showing up on your server too. Following accounts is a key part of building connections between servers.
@FediTips
Why do I get an 403 this action is not allowed for some servers if I want to follow someone?Is this a result of some block from my instance or the other one? Checked it on multiple accounts on a specific instanz.
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@FediTips
Why do I get an 403 this action is not allowed for some servers if I want to follow someone?Is this a result of some block from my instance or the other one? Checked it on multiple accounts on a specific instanz.
Are you able to see the profile you want to follow within your own server, or are you trying to follow by browsing the other server's website?
