@FediTips in my Client ( @ivory) it is possible to select a language for a post. Are there clients, that are able to filter posts by language? E.g. only show posts in English of accounts I follow
@FediTips Thanks for taking the time to answer. This helps a lot, especially the resource you linked. It means though, that I can't filter languages for people I follow.
Cite:
"However, if you follow someone this will override the language filter and show you all their posts regardless of language used."
I’ve recently moved my account to a new instance - and my timeline seems to be less busy, I have the same follows and tags but it seems like less content is available.
In my previous instance 2-3 hours of not checking would result in hundreds of posts to fetch, now it’s around 20/40 what gives?
@FediTips Sure. How does moderation work from one instance to another? e.g. Someone reports an account from mastodon.social
I suspend it from my own instance. The moderators from mastodon.social do nothing. My instance is safe. The rest aren't. What then?
At the extreme end, if an instance keeps doing nothing about problematic content from their own members, other instance admins may consider defederating that instance.
If an instance consistently refuses to moderate problematic content, it will gradually end up being defederated by more and more other instances until it is isolated, and its members will start to notice how difficult it is to communicate with others.
@FediTips what does this mean: “Are you following the publishers that @Flipboard recently federated?”. What does it mean when something becomes federated?
In this particular case: Flipboard.com runs a website where various news services have official news feeds. The people who run Flipboard are big fans of the Fediverse and they have connected these Flipboard.com feeds to the Fediverse as well, so they can be followed from Mastodon etc.
Being federated just means that people on other Fediverse servers can follow these accounts.
@FediTips Do you know of any instances that are focused on a single topic and limit their users’ posts to only those topics?
I’m transitioning a travel photo-sharing community from a closed platform (with similar restrictions) to Mastodon, but am struggling with whether I can effectively keep a “clean” and well-curated federated feed. Wondering if anyone else has tried this, and if so, what their experience has been. Perhaps you know, or know someone else who might?
It varies from instance to instance, it's up to the owner(s) of an instance what their policy is on content.
By the way, "Federated" feeds will almost always be a mix of topics as they include posts from other servers, but "Local" feeds will just show posts from your instance so they are often specialised.
I've tried to list some well-run servers on various topics here, though it also includes some general servers too:
@FediTips
How to not see only specific tags from someone I follow? I wan to see all posts of a person in my timeline, except those with specific tag(s)
The nearest I can think of is filtering posts with a particular hashtag, though that would affect posts from everyone. More info on setting up filters here:
Toot the address of the service and include the address of the RSS feed, it will create an account mirroring the RSS feed which you can then follow from Mastodon etc.
@FediTips alright, that's awesome! I'll start importing some of my feeds in there. Does it work with other things too, for example friendica, or pleroma?
It should work with any Fediverse platform that supports microblogging, as RSS Parrot is just creating a Fedi account anyone can follow.
By the way, Friendica doesn't need this, it has its own built-in RSS feed reader. You can just paste an RSS feed address into the Friendica search box and then click follow, no need for any third party services. The feed's content will then appear in your main timeline.
Once again I'm startled that there is apparently a New!! New!! New!! #Mastodon feature that will let me (or anyone?) create an RSS feed out of -- what? -- anything with a URL?
What if I don't want someone creating an RSS feed of my Mastodon profile?
Is there any opt-in / opt-out mechanism, or am I missing something completely here?
Anyone can create an RSS feed of my Mastodon stream; I can create an RSS feed of any #Fediverse feed?
There's no way of opting out of RSS for public posts on Mastodon, but you can hide stuff from the RSS by using a non-public visibility setting for a post.
There's an alternative Fedi platform @gotosocial which does have opt-in/opt-out for RSS, and I'll be doing more posts about it when it enters beta testing soon.
To be fair to Mastodon though, public posts on social networks are visible to anyone, even people who don't have an account.
The RSS feed isn't new, it's been on Mastodon since the beginning, not as an extra feature but because federation used to happen partially through RSS. It was how servers used to communicate with each other.
It was left in place when Mastodon switched to ActivityPub because many people found it useful to be able to follow accounts through RSS.
"I can create an RSS feed of any Fediverse feed?"
No, only feeds on servers that support RSS. Not all of them do.
So how do I know that some unknown party has added me to their RSS feed?
Is there any way at all?
And apparently it's all on my shoulders because now I have to use a non-visible setting on all my posts?
Fuck -- and let me be very blunt here -- that shit
"To be fair to Mastodon though, public posts on social networks are visible to anyone, even people who don't have an account"
No
This is not "being fair"
This has always been the biggest bullshit cop-out available anytime some bright star wants to invade someone else's online presence without their knowledge or permission
Public things on the internet have always been visible to anyone. If you want to keep a post restricted to a particular audience, it's important to use a non-public visibility setting.
I agree opt-in/opt-out would be better, but even without RSS your public posts are still visible to anyone.
The RSS only shows public posts, it doesn't show non-public posts, and it doesn't show replies of any kind (even public ones).
p.s. Even if Mastodon completely removed all its RSS features, it would still be possible for others to follow your public posts through RSS.
There are various services (I won't link to them) which will turn any website into an RSS feed, because anything public on the internet can be scraped and turned into a feed.
I agree there's no need to make this easier by automatically having an official RSS feed, but simply having public visibility means unofficial RSS is possible.
"I agree there's no need to make this easier by automatically having an official RSS feed, but simply having public visibility means unofficial RSS is possible."
But our boy Gargron gets what our boy Gargron wants, doesn't he
Growing the bottom line by pushing product
And question: why do you keep setting your replies to "Private"?
You don't want the general public to see any part of this convo?
"And question: why do you keep setting your replies to "Private"?"
I'm not. I always set my replies to "unlisted", which is still public. You can check this by logging out, you will still see this reply on the web version of this conversation.
Unlisted replies are a good practice as they are still visible but don't clog up people's search results or federated timelines.
It's been a convention for years on here that you use public for the first post in a public thread and then unlisted for replies. It's considered polite.
Look at any of my threads or replies, they all do this. Some third party apps do this automatically because it is so common.
"Public things on the internet have always been visible to anyone. If you want to keep a post restricted to a particular audience, it's important to use a non-public visibility setting"
You are talking right past what I'm saying
The "Public things on the internet have always been visible to anyone" trope is bullshit because the vast majority of people -- particularly today where The Internet is some "app" on somebody's phone -- simply do not have the technical expertise to scrape a web site and extract the very small amount data they really want
If you think you're fooling me with that line, you most certainly are not
"I agree opt-in/opt-out would be better, but even without RSS your public posts are still visible to anyone."
See: above
You may be duping the majority of kiddies on Teh Internets(tm) in 2024 with that, but I put up my first web site using the pico text editor remotely over telnet in about 1993
"If you think you're fooling me with that line, you most certainly are not"
I'm not trying to fool anyone, I'm trying to warn people that using public visibility carries certain risks.
I agree with you, that's part of why I am keen to start promoting GoToSocial as it has much better safety overall (such as official support for allowlists instead of blocklists). Only reason I'm holding off GTS at moment is waiting for them to enter beta.
I'm not the OP nor a big user of the j/k keys to scroll up and down, but it seemed to scroll and focus for me properly in Firefox/Windows 11. What system are you running?
However you did teach me about a feature of Mastodon that I didn't know about!
@FediTips I have an account on the mstdn.party instance, but found I would be able to cross post to Spoutible from the mstdn.social instance. How can I either add or switch instances to use with my other SM site/app?
All Mastodon apps (official and third party) support being logged in with more than one account at once. There's usually an account-switching button (often in the bottom right corner) which lets you choose which account's timeline you are using.
If you sign up for another account on mstdn.social, you can add this second account to your existing Mastodon app.
@FediTips If you edit a post and add hashtags later, will they appear in others timelines? I mean, if they have subscribed to one of the later added hashtags.
Do you mean questions related to Mastodon and the Fediverse, or completely different stuff?
If you're wanting to discuss any topic you can use hashtags and groups. There's a wider range of hashtags, but groups reach a wider part of the Fediverse.
@FediTips Very occasionally, I come across a toot with no alt text, yet when I open that toot on its own instance, the alt text is there. Is this some weird fedi-block thing?
Is it possible that the person forgot to add the alt text, the non-alt version federated, then they added the alt text in later and the updated version hasn't federated to your instance yet?
AFAIK blocks wouldn't affect alt texts, they would either block the whole post or show it.