Who's On Mastodon?
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...Also, GNU Social. Didn't mean to exclude :)
I am a translator!
I'm on diaspora, although I can see you are talking about twitterrino like stuff.. Anyway, I wish more people here used it. We need more smurfs.
SuperTramp83
We need more smurfs.No more snurf or smurfs////
I've been an active user on a GNU Social/Qvitter server for a couple of years ([at]strypey[at]quitter.se). But recently the site is down as often as it's up, so I'm seriously considering my options.
I'd like to try my hand at self-hosting, but before I make a decision on which of the many apps to try setting up first, I want to try them all as a user on existing instances. So far I've also tried; Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendi.ca, Hubzilla. So far, I'm leaning towards Hubzilla, because the neat Nomadic Identity feature means it doesn't matter so much if my instance is a bit patchy at first, it supports all the federation protocols (Zot, OStatus, ActivityPub, and maybe DFRN too, if that's still a thing), and it has the largest range of features (events calendars, wiki, forum, and many others).
How do you create a GNU Social account? And what server to choose?
GrevenGull:
> "How do you create a GNU Social account?"
Find an instance that allows public sign-ups, then create an account there just like you would for any other web service.
> "And what server to choose?"
There are lists here that tell you which ones allow public sign-ups:
https://fediverse.network/gnusocial
https://fediverse.joinout.de/
https://mustafa.kotori.me/
The other option, of course, is to set up your own instance:
https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/blob/master/INSTALL
Of course you don't have to use GNU Social to interact with GNU Social users. Any app that implements OStatus will allow you to do that right now. Once GNU Social and the other fediverse apps roll out their ActivityPub support (hopefully by the end of 2018), you'll be able to talk to people on any of these apps from GNU Social and vice versa (except Diaspora).
From my Parabola wiki profile (https://wiki.parabola.nu/user:hd_scania) I have shared plenties of my profile to the free software communities,
...
https://gnusocial.net/hdscania
https://pod.disroot.org/people/402cd9700d4b013669ab3a6137633966
https://forum.disroot.org/u/hd.scania
https://forum.disroot.org/u/ktpm652204
https://forums.puri.sm/u/hd_scania
https://dev1galaxy.org/profile.php?id=5061
https://g0v.social/@hd_scania
https://guo.media/hd_scania
...
Just to feel free to liaise with me everywhere. :)
I'm on diaspora
I'm on https://quitter.se/akito https://mastodon.social/@ssora also on Diaspora sora [at] mondiaspora.net also on matrix but you can reach me on my site too.
I'm also on quitter.se: https://quitter.se/kkebreau.
it seems quitter.se is down...
It's happening more and more often too. I'm not sure if the problem is too many users, or lack of maintenance, or problems with Qvitter (the web client they use on top of GNU Social). I don't even know who I can contact to offer help, since AFAIK they don't have a website separate from the GNU Social+Qvitter site :{
They do. You can contact En Kompis Kompis, http://enkompiskompis.se/, info at enkompiskompis dot se, those are the guys running quitter.se.
I've contacted them via a written letter after quitter.se was offline for most of last December/January and they (Hannes) replied that they had some hardware issues (they use hardware raid, so that's of their own doing) which they say is now fixed.
Given that even afterwards their uptime is sporadic at best, we contacted them again and asked if we could help out but didn't get an answer. Perhaps they will consider it if more people chime in.
Long story short, we created a GNU social instance ourselves and "moved" our account from https://quitter.se/vikings to https://social.vikings.net/vikings. This is pretty easy to accomplish, so I'd like to encourage everyone who has the means of doing so.
"we created a GNU social instance ourselves and "moved" our account ... This is pretty easy to accomplish, so I'd like to encourage everyone who has the means of doing so."
I think it would help a lot (both them and us) if more of the technically savvy users on Quitter.se did this. Can you describe exactly how you "moved" your account?
My understanding is that the only way to do this at present (with anything but Hubzilla) is to just start a new account somewhere else, re-follow all the people you were following on your old account, post on your old account that you're abandoning it, and leave a luggage tag on your display name pointing to your new account. Being able to seamlessly move from host to host (eg from community-hosting to self-hosting) would be a massive improvement to the UX of fediverse.
EDIT: this website also appears to be down (2018-05-07):
You can contact En Kompis Kompis, http://enkompiskompis.se/,
> I think it would help a lot (both them and us) if more of the technically savvy users on Quitter.se did this. Can you describe exactly how you "moved" your account?
https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/blob/master/INSTALL
> My understanding is that the only way to do this at present (with anything but Hubzilla) is to just start a new account somewhere else
Absolutely, that's why I've put "moved" in quotation marks.
Obviously doing so currently requires a hard switch from one GNU social instance to another; we simply left a note on our old account where people can find us now. This isn't perfect (esp. for someone who cares about keeping their followers) but I think it's the only option with the recent version of GNU social, though it should be technically possible to forward our old account URL to the new one if we only had access to the old GNU social instance.
In retrospective we should have set up our own instance from the start, it takes only 30 minutes.
> EDIT: this website also appears to be down (2018-05-07): You can contact En Kompis Kompis, http://enkompiskompis.se/
Both websites have a terrible uptime. That's why we wrote an old-school, physical letter to them since we also weren't able to reach them by any other means of communication. What's a bit odd is that they say on their website that they're "solely funded by donations" but don't accept help, which I've offered on two occasions.
I am a member!
When there's no more captcha, I may try a diaspora instance.
I really must write a blog piece about this. It would go something like:
Hey webmasters, I understand why you started using captcha, I've advocated it for years after some frustrating experience fighting out-of-control spam fires. But this guy has some better ideas:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Captchas-Considered-Harmful---Why-Captchas-Are-Bad-And-How-You-Can-Do-Better&id=1104207
TL;DR trick bots into revealing that they're not humans, instead of treating users as guilty until proven human.
> TL;DR trick bots into revealing that they're not humans, instead of
> treating users as guilty until proven human.
I read the article, and the ideas do seem like they could replace CAPTCHAs in sign-up forms indented to prevent spam, but these are the least annoying kind of CAPTCHAs. Barring accessibility issues, the CAPTCHAs in forms aren't much more annoying than the form istelf.
The worst CAPTCHAs are the "select every square containing a sign. okay, now do vehicles. whoops, you didn't notice those tiny cars in the corner; let's go back to signs." bullshit. They can take up to a minute if they make you solve three of them, and I have no idea what vision-impaired users are supposed to do. I've never encountered one of these in a sign-up form, but the number of sites that require them just to *access* the site seems to be increasing (I don't have a statistic for that, it's just my impression and could be inaccurate). Since these CAPTCHAs don't prevent spam, my guess is that they are to improve the credibiity of analticks* data.
I suspect that a human-centric Internet wouldn't be as profitable as an Internet in which AI are the users and humans are the data served to the AI.
*stealing that term from you
The captcha system you describe is gOgle Re-Captcha:
https://www.google.com/recaptcha
It's the most common captch system I come across, so much so that a lot of people seem to think that's what a captcha *is*. There are a number of other captcha systems like Akismet, which don't depend on gOgle servers in any way, most of which are much less annoying:
https://captcha.org/
> Since these CAPTCHAs don't prevent spam ...
There's usually some ability to submit data in the pages that use Re-Captcha, but some webmasters may also be deploying them to prevent DDOS?
"my guess is that they are to improve the credibiity of analticks* data."
My understanding is that the pictures users click on while using Re-Captcha is something to do with training gOgle's machine learning algorithms. Perhaps the ones they use for image search, but given that so many of them seem to be about recognising cars, street signs, and shop fronts, I wonder if the data is being used to train self-driving car algorithms for the StreetView cars. In other words, every webmaster who uses Re-Captcha is forcing their users to be unpaid Mechanical Turks for gOgle :{
"*stealing that term from you"
So people don't think you're just being crude, or smearing analytics in general (there are a number of useful free code analytics packages), it's very important to use the full title: gOgle Anal-ticks (goOgle Analticks is also acceptable ;)
> In other words, every webmaster who uses Re-Captcha is
> forcing their users to be unpaid Mechanical Turks for gOgle :{
Disgusting. Another example of humans serving as computers, with AI as the user.
In reading about CAPTCHAs today I was unsurprised to learn that there are "CAPTCHA sweatshops" in which humans solve CAPTCHAs repeatedly so that bots can access websites.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130594039
> it's
> very important to use the full title: gOgle Anal-ticks (goOgle Analticks is
> also acceptable ;)
Yes, I can see how my usage was unclear. "Analytics" wasn't the right word anyway. What I meant was that preventing bots from accessing a website ensures that the view/click counts for ads only include humans, and I wonder if an accurate view/click count is valuable to advertisers.
Can you explain the capital 'O' in your spelling of Screwgle?
Mason:
"Can you explain the capital 'O' in your spelling of Screwgle?"
Ogle:
> to look at especially with greedy or interested attention
we ogled the chocolate confections —Ann K. Ludwig
Mason:
"Another example of humans serving as computers ..."
The word "computer" was originally a job title for humans (often women of colour), see the movie 'Hidden Figures'.
"... with AI as the user."
You could say that corporations are a kind of AI-gone-rogue. Charles Stross plays with this idea in Accelerando.
I didn't pick this up earlier, but when you combine this ...
Mason:
> "I was unsurprised to learn that there are "CAPTCHA sweatshops" in which humans solve CAPTCHAs repeatedly so that bots can access websites."
... with this ...
"What many people aren’t aware of, however, is that each time they complete one of these [reCaptcha] security checks, they are unwittingly training Google’s machine learning datasets."
https://aibusiness.com/recaptcha-trains-google-robots/
(see also: https://www.techradar.com/news/captcha-if-you-can-how-youve-been-training-ai-for-years-without-realising-it and https://medium.com/@AntonioCasilli/is-nocaptcha-a-ruse-devised-by-google-to-make-you-work-for-free-for-their-face-recognition-20a7e6a9f700 )
... what that means in practice is that Google is (indirectly) using sweatshop labour to train their machine learning systems. If it's wrong when Nike and the Gap and Apple do it, it's wrong when Google do it, even if they do it in a way that gives them plausible deniability.
It would be an amazing expose if a journalist could find evidence that Google is complicit in the operation of these sweatshops and the whole anti-spam thing is just a cover ...
CalmStorm:
> "In all seriousness, though captcha needs to go... badly."
We have terrible spam problems on CoActivate.org because the sysadmin is one of the few people who would rather fight endless spam fires than inconvenience new users with captchas. The only way we're going to get rid of captchas is happen is if someone develops a workable replacement based on tricking bots into revealing they are bots, as described here:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Captchas-Considered-Harmful---Why-Captchas-Are-Bad-And-How-You-Can-Do-Better&id=1104207
> ... what that means in practice is that Google is (indirectly) using
> sweatshop labour to train their machine learning systems.
Yep. No need to get their hands dirty. The economic system does the job for them.
> If it's wrong when
> Nike and the Gap and Apple do it, it's wrong when Google do it, even if they
> do it in a way that gives them plausible deniability.
Unfortunately, it seems that most people don't have a problem with those companies doing it either. Apple fans in particular seem capable of pushing any information to the back of their minds to keep feeling proud of their shiny status symbol.
> It would be an amazing expose if a journalist could find evidence that
> Google is complicit in the operation of these sweatshops and the whole
> anti-spam thing is just a cover ...
It would, but given how many people I've spoken to are able to rationalize this[1] I am not optimistic that such a discovery would hurt Google.
> The only way we're going to get rid
> of captchas is happen is if someone develops a workable replacement based on
> tricking bots into revealing they are bots, as described here:
> http://ezinearticles.com/?Captchas-Considered-Harmful---Why-Captchas-Are-Bad-And-How-You-Can-Do-Better&id=1104207
Trisquel does not have a significant problem with spam, presumably due to the email approval process, but tricking the bot into revealing it is not human would certainly be more convenient. I didn't mind waiting a few hours for approval to join the Trisquel forum, but for people who like to post one-off comments on a news site or something I can see this being too inconvenient.
> It would, but given how many people I've spoken to are able to rationalize this[1] I am not optimistic that such a discovery would hurt Google.
Forgot the link.
I am a translator!
>When there's no more captcha, I may try a diaspora instance.
Humm..? captch on diaspora w0t? No captcha...
SuperTramp83
>When there's no more captcha, I may try a diaspora instance.
diaspoea or dispora, it does not matter to me you are on my dispora list!
I hope you all don't mind, but I just started following everyone who added their GNUSocial accounts in this thread. I'm available at https://gnusocial.net/trisquelwhare on GNUSocial, and name at domain on Diaspora. I haven't posted much yet anywhere, as I'm still setting up my new social media accounts, to go with my new home computer setup running Trisquel v8.0 on all the computers in my household (except my wife's proofreading & editing machine, which still runs on Win7).
Trisquel Whare:
"I hope you all don't mind, but I just started following everyone who added their GNUSocial accounts in this thread."
I'm not sure what the point would be in having a micro-blogging account if you didn't want people following it ;)
BTW Are you a kiwi too? If not, what does "whare" mean to you?
@strypey > "BTW Are you a kiwi too? If not, what does "whare" mean to you?"
Yep, I'm definitely a Kiwi, living in Auckland. My entire whare is running Trisquel now, hence the username. For those not in the know here, "whare" is the Māoriᵃ word for house, home, or building.
----
[ᵃ] http://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?&keywords=whare
@strypey > "BTW Are you a kiwi too? If not, what does "whare" mean to you?"
Yep, I'm definitely a Kiwi, living in Auckland. My entire whare is running Trisquel now, hence the username. For those not in the know here, "whare" is the Māoriᵃ word for house, home, or building.
----
[ᵃ] http://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?&keywords=whare
for certain I am fine with having anyone from here connect as well. I'm at https://chaos.social/@davidpgil
I'm glad to see that most people here seem to be on GNU Social which is compatible with Mastodon. I have put out requests to you - the ones that functioned properly that is.
I noticed when I searched for @davidpgil from my new Mastodon account that you also have/ had accounts on mastodon.social and a.weirder.earth. Do you still use those? What was the UX like on those instances compared to chaos.social?
I am a member!
Who's on Mastodon, What's on GNU Social, and I Don't Know's on Diaspora.
I am on Diaspora as brashley46 on joindiaspora, Mastodon as brashley46 on mstdn.io, and pump.io as brashley46 on identi.ca ...
I am a translator!
I'm gargamello on diaspora. The pod is nerdpol.ch
See you there, smurfs!
I'm now name at domain
[EDIT] Oh, the forums hide it: @jxself @ social . bobcall . me
Quitter.se seems to be down for the count, so I have set up a new fediverse account at:
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey
After finally doing a #NewHere post on Diaspora, I finally seem to be getting some *social* interaction out of it. I'm strypey @joindiaspora.com on there for now.
I'm also planning to start using Hubzilla again. Since that can communicate with all the federation apps using the Diaspora protocol, it might end up replacing my Diaspora account as my presence in that network. I just need to make some time to set up an account on the beta hub on Disroot.org, set up some channels, and clone them on to the account I have at: http://hub.libranet.de/
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