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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
colak wrote #310394:
Did you create an instance of Mastodon
No. I do not run an instance. I thought about doing it for CSF, but CSF is no more.
But you can regulate how many accounts you want to allow on your instance, from 1 to any greater number, which should make it feasible to run on a shared server if your accounts allowance is low.
Hardcore privacy/security (P/S) proponents run an instance for their own use (1 account). For example, if I did that it might look like:
@rootsbeard@masto.wion.comWhere the instance is setup as a subdirectory at masto.wion.com. Aral Balkan, a big P/S proponent, is one such person who runs his own Masto instance like that:
@aral@mastodon.ar.alBut you could have an instance for, say, your friends, or a local club, where the account limit might be 10 to 100 people. Or even just a general interest topic like Lovers of Sparta, but restrict the accounts to the first 300 Spar… er, users accounts.
As for fediverse networking, you can keep it open so your users have free access to any and all instances on the Fediverse, or close your instance off to be private, or block any number of other instances if they don’t jive with your code of conduct. There’s a large degree of flexibility about how an instance admin can manage things. The understanding between admin and accounts on that instance is that whatever is decided is usually decided as a group or community decision after the initial creation of the instance. Nobody likes a tyrant admin.
And that’s the beauty of decentralization. You are not stuck to one instance. Any person can close their account on one instance and create a new one on another. Just like moving in real live.
You can also create multiple accounts across instances using the same nick, or create multiple accounts across instances (or on the same instance) using different nicks. The thing to realize here is that you do not own your nick in the fediverse. In a decentralized system, you only own your account on a given instance. That’s why decentralization is so nice, IMO. Marketers and brands can’t dominate it. Not only is there no incentive in trying to create a brand account on every existing instance, it would be a fools chase anyway because they come and go like the tides. (This harkens back to the notion of picking instances wisely.)
Here’s a fact: the bigger the instance you join, the quicker you have access to more of the fediverse. The inverse is also true.
But, what I’ve found is that just like any other socmed platform, there are a lot of pointless shitposters. They may not be as hateful as on Twitter, but they’re still just as irrelevant and time-wasting. Memes, cat pictures… the usual shit. They exist on Masto too. And the bigger the instance, the more of these people flood the instance stream.
So, my advice is to find an instance that limits accounts to 1000 max. That’s plenty to get you interacting with people and connected to the rest of the fediverse.
People on your instance will have three views/streams:
- Their own toots (Home)
- Toots of everyone on the instance (Local)
- Toots of everyone in the fediverse that are followed by people on your instance. (Fediverse)
The last one is key, of course. Just because your instance may be open to all the fediverse, your instance users will only see fediverse toots from people who are collectively followed by your users. This is important because it reduces a significant amount of shitposting. And if you think about it, if the entire fediverse was allowed to stream through your instance’s “Fediverse” stream, it would move so fast you wouldn’t even be able to see toots, let alone read them.
So, answering your initial question, I think you can setup an instance on a shared server if you limit the user accounts to something low. But if you want to go with an open-ended instance, then you should find a dedicated server and upgrade resources as needed along the way. Or find a feasible balance in between, whatever.
As admin, you can even set how long toots last, whether or not people can post image files (a resource hog), and so forth. There’s a lot of customization at your control for how to initially start.
I mentioned this before, but I can easily imagine an open source project on a Masto instance, where accounts must be requested or validated against an existing community of users. For example, you have a proven forum account with more than 100 posts? You can join the Masto squad
@you@textodon.textpattern.ioI.e. make it something to achieve, and desirable.
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
Please help this 2009 interview of Facebook’s CEO get seen by people who don’t use Twitter. Here’s a download link so you can pull and repost it: https://www.sendspace.com/file/wqwtq5
…. texted postive
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
To return to the thread’s topic: this is all the data Facebook and Google have on us.
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
and the invasions keep on coming:
As Facebook Struggles With Privacy, Adobe Announces It’s Helping Companies Track People Across Devices
…. texted postive
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
Ad-blockers will never not be important as long as we have to follow articles like most of these to read about these things. And I don’t know if browser readers function as ad-blockers too, but I sure love them for stripping out all the visual junk.
I think the article by Doc Searles in my head post is the most poignant; showing how all the news media sites track you just as much as a tech giant does. The Times website, for example, is ridiculous. Forbes and Rolling Stone are a couple others that come to mind thare especially bad too. But they all are. Every single one.
And, to be honest, if you’re using Google Analytics, or even PiWikii (I think it’s called something else now), or put socmed buttons in your site, etc, then you track people too.
The final phase of my self audit is to completely get off Google, as much as I possibly can, which is far worse than Facebook as a tracking company. No Drive, no GA, no gmail, no search, no G+, no YT, etc.
For me the two hard ones to abandon entirely will be Street View and Translate. There doesn’t seem to be ANY competition there.
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
I didn’t see the memo about the <span class="caps"> style change.
(Hashtag FOMO etc.)
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
On a related note, here is a (to my eyes) a decent introduction on the GDPR – EU’s General Data Protection Regulations coming into force soon.
Me wishes we had something similar here – will take a long time I fear; on the flip side, those EU regulations have de facto global reach, which in this case is probably a good thing.
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
Sand space – admin theme for Textpattern
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
phiw13 wrote #310459:
…a decent introduction on the GDPR – EU’s General Data Protection Regulations coming into force soon.
Excellent share, phi! Bowles is becoming a decent writer. ;)
Particularly interesting is the para on right to erasure (a deep topic on its own), and the last para, which actually has me excited about seeing how the web explodes.
Meanwhile, the not so wonderful CLOUD Act was signed into effect by tRump a few days ago. Here’s a quick summary of of the civil abuses that will make easy.
What this all adds up to, in my book, is get out of centralized platforms as fast as you can. Export your data archives if you want, but make sure to delete data regardless, then delete those accounts.
This is what I’ve been working on for the last months, and now I’m going to double-time it with what remains. When the shit hits the fan, I want as little of me tabulated as possible. It has nothing to do with having anything to hide, but just not being anywhere a gov wants to track. Period.
Right to erasure, indeed.
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Re: Cambridge Analytica + (good reading)
gaekwad wrote #310452:
I didn’t see the memo about the
<span class="caps">style change.(Hashtag FOMO etc.)
If I remember correctly, the early versions of txp had inline styling regarding this. Later ones, replaced it with the class.
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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