Fediverse - Tumblr Posts
there's no place to call home on the fediverse
i've been using Mastodon since long before the implosion of Twitter brought it into the mainstream conscious. i'm a fan of the tech, in theory. i have my hangups, like the fact that switching servers means you lose all of your post history, or the many instances that still play social politics with each other. some of these problems are being worked on, others i've (usually) been able to work around.
but something else is festering lately, and it's more than just the usual social politics.
the promise of the fediverse is alluring: you can follow all of your friends on any other site, from the comfort of your home server! except, lately, that seems to be impossible. no matter what i try, there's always friends of mine that i cannot follow for one reason or another.
for example: i'm not a big fan of Meta's new Threads, but i know a few friends who use it exclusively – and the promise of interoperability with Mastodon means that, in theory, i could just follow my friends from my Mastodon account. win-win, right?
well, no, because my instance has outright blocked Threads. and so have most of the smaller instances i've seen. this is purposeful, because they are (understandably) distrustful of Meta and anything Meta touches.
no matter how much i sympathize, though, it does mean that i cannot follow my friends on Threads from Mastodon.
i mean, hey, i could switch back to the flagship instance mastodon.social! they've openly allowed access to Threads! but there's a problem with that too, because a lot of the smaller instances (that my friends are on) also block mastodon.social.
as to why, many of them cite the waves of spam and bots that harass other users on a daily basis – that kind of thing is hard to moderate on both ends, so i vaguely understand the intent behind this decision. (i do not understand most of the other reasons for blocking the largest instance on the fediverse and alienating folks from their friends, such as disliking its owner. but whatever.)
long story short, right now i am denied access to many of my friends – and if i switch servers, losing all of my post history in the process... i will still be denied access to many of my friends.
"so run your own server!"
okay, let's pretend that i have the spare resources to spin up a server, and the desire to be a sysadmin for that server. like let's just set aside the tech cost that most people cannot afford, just for one second, because there's a more glaring issue here:
i'd still get blocked from many of my friends.
know why?
because many servers AUTOMATICALLY BLOCK small instances with only one user, citing security concerns and data scraping!!
there is literally no right answer here. no matter what i do, i will not be able to follow all of my friends on Mastodon. it is an impossible problem.
many folks like to call Mastodon the Linux of social media and say that the reason it hasn't caught on is that it's too complicated to understand. but even as a techie who understands exactly what's going on, i find Mastodon an impossible to parse social graph of blocked instances and inter-server drama. as things stand, there is no person who can join a server and follow all of their friends – there will always be compromises.
all i want is to find a home on the fediverse... but every house is part of a homeowner's association that wants to secede from the city.
A reminder that I'm available on the Fediverse
Threads:
BlueSky Social: