"At what point does this just fully degrade into a weird fetish video where someone is just rolling around in raw ground beef for views?" Stop giving them ideas, Ryan!
spot on - we've been doing the multi-platform thing for 2+ years. It's a beast to maintain, but the decentralized way is the only effective way to protect your content & intellectual property. And back up EVERYTHING. Thanks for the site, content & Happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Ryan—after you said that you thought most Mastodon instances seem like they'd work better as Discord servers, I've been meaning to mention that there is, in fact, something analogous to Discord in the way that Mastodon is analogous to Twitter.
The open-source federated platform that's analogous to Discord is called Matrix—see matrix.org—and if I remember correctly one of its largest users is the French government, which helps pay to maintain the platform's security. Also most of the big FOSS IRC servers have been gradually migrating to Matrix, and indeed Matrix is specifically designed around being usable as a frontend for IRC.
Matrix is a bit odd if your point of reference is Discord—some of the user-interface metaphors don't quite translate—and it lacks some of Discord's first-party API integrations—while having plenty more of its own—but if you think about it as IRC with Markdown formatting, emoji reactions, end-to-end encryption, and videoconferencing, you're basically 90% of the way to understanding it.
The main thing that doesn't immediately translate is the concept of a Discord server. Instead there are “spaces”, which are kind of like nested Discord channels—the channel-analogous Matrix “rooms” have most of the same adminisitrative features as Discord servers on a per-room basis—and which can in turn be nested within other spaces more or less indefinitely (like turtles all the way down).
The main first-party API integrations that are lacking are sync with paid subscriptions on, e.g., Patreon, Ghost, or Substack; solutions do exist, but they’re a bit more of a hassle to set up. Instead, Matrix developers have prioritized bridging with various direct-messaging services (in addition to IRC), so you can hypothetically use it as a single, central messaging app, though, again, it’s not immediately straightforward to set up.
(There are paid solutions for hosted Matrix bridges that are probably more straightforward to set up; the difference with Discord is that first-party API integrations on Discord are straightforward even without paid support.)
The other big difference worth mentioning (federation and self-hosting aside) is that, yes, Matrix is end-to-end encrypted, and it includes peer-to-peer identity verification similar to Signal’s, much as one would expect from a secure messaging platform used by major government agencies. In other words, it’s what you use instead of Slack if you want to own your full stack.
On a related note, Discord is, if I remember correctly, heavily backed by Tencent Ventures, and Discord corporate can read anything and everything, so while this does help with moderating away extremists it also means that Big Brother Is Watching, where who constitutes Big Brother is open to your imagination.
One big difference between Mastodon and Matrix is that Mastodon is licensed under the Affero GPL, which is a “poison pill” against Big Tech acquisitions, while Matrix is actually more analogous to ActivityPub, and the “reference implementation” of Matrix, Element, is licensed under the much more permissive Apache license because they want to encourage wider adoption.
Anyway, yeah… if you’re curious about federation and FOSS software, Element/Matrix is worth looking into, alongside the more Twitter-style Mastodon and other ActivityPub implementations.
The newsfeed and trump updates were good. I agree that seniors do need platforms that cater to their needs on the net and am sure no one is really focusing on that. Meanwhile if I were trump I would want to get my account back, though there is a trap there in that Elon can just kick him off once he violates the policies again and get a little bit of cred back. I think the scenario where the site goes broke is more likely than the right wing propaganda machine.
I like the idea of iced coffee influencer I think you would be so successful at it it'll probably end with you destroying a dudes house right in front of him. Happy Thanksgiving!
Two years of Discord
"At what point does this just fully degrade into a weird fetish video where someone is just rolling around in raw ground beef for views?" Stop giving them ideas, Ryan!
I've been trying to figure out how to join the Garbage Day discord, but I haven't found any links anywhere. Where should I have looked? Thanks!
spot on - we've been doing the multi-platform thing for 2+ years. It's a beast to maintain, but the decentralized way is the only effective way to protect your content & intellectual property. And back up EVERYTHING. Thanks for the site, content & Happy Thanksgiving!
Indie Left
http://indieleft.media
- Daily Updated News Hub Website
- Substack (Indie Media Today, Indie News Network, contributor to Tara Reade's Newsletter)
- YouTube
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- MERCH!!!
Hi Ryan—after you said that you thought most Mastodon instances seem like they'd work better as Discord servers, I've been meaning to mention that there is, in fact, something analogous to Discord in the way that Mastodon is analogous to Twitter.
The open-source federated platform that's analogous to Discord is called Matrix—see matrix.org—and if I remember correctly one of its largest users is the French government, which helps pay to maintain the platform's security. Also most of the big FOSS IRC servers have been gradually migrating to Matrix, and indeed Matrix is specifically designed around being usable as a frontend for IRC.
Matrix is a bit odd if your point of reference is Discord—some of the user-interface metaphors don't quite translate—and it lacks some of Discord's first-party API integrations—while having plenty more of its own—but if you think about it as IRC with Markdown formatting, emoji reactions, end-to-end encryption, and videoconferencing, you're basically 90% of the way to understanding it.
The main thing that doesn't immediately translate is the concept of a Discord server. Instead there are “spaces”, which are kind of like nested Discord channels—the channel-analogous Matrix “rooms” have most of the same adminisitrative features as Discord servers on a per-room basis—and which can in turn be nested within other spaces more or less indefinitely (like turtles all the way down).
The main first-party API integrations that are lacking are sync with paid subscriptions on, e.g., Patreon, Ghost, or Substack; solutions do exist, but they’re a bit more of a hassle to set up. Instead, Matrix developers have prioritized bridging with various direct-messaging services (in addition to IRC), so you can hypothetically use it as a single, central messaging app, though, again, it’s not immediately straightforward to set up.
(There are paid solutions for hosted Matrix bridges that are probably more straightforward to set up; the difference with Discord is that first-party API integrations on Discord are straightforward even without paid support.)
The other big difference worth mentioning (federation and self-hosting aside) is that, yes, Matrix is end-to-end encrypted, and it includes peer-to-peer identity verification similar to Signal’s, much as one would expect from a secure messaging platform used by major government agencies. In other words, it’s what you use instead of Slack if you want to own your full stack.
On a related note, Discord is, if I remember correctly, heavily backed by Tencent Ventures, and Discord corporate can read anything and everything, so while this does help with moderating away extremists it also means that Big Brother Is Watching, where who constitutes Big Brother is open to your imagination.
One big difference between Mastodon and Matrix is that Mastodon is licensed under the Affero GPL, which is a “poison pill” against Big Tech acquisitions, while Matrix is actually more analogous to ActivityPub, and the “reference implementation” of Matrix, Element, is licensed under the much more permissive Apache license because they want to encourage wider adoption.
Anyway, yeah… if you’re curious about federation and FOSS software, Element/Matrix is worth looking into, alongside the more Twitter-style Mastodon and other ActivityPub implementations.
I hope the Tumblr fake Scorsese movie never dies.
The newsfeed and trump updates were good. I agree that seniors do need platforms that cater to their needs on the net and am sure no one is really focusing on that. Meanwhile if I were trump I would want to get my account back, though there is a trap there in that Elon can just kick him off once he violates the policies again and get a little bit of cred back. I think the scenario where the site goes broke is more likely than the right wing propaganda machine.
I like the idea of iced coffee influencer I think you would be so successful at it it'll probably end with you destroying a dudes house right in front of him. Happy Thanksgiving!
Hey! Subscriber here and delighted that I joined.
Cannot for the life of me find the discord link. Can it be resent?
Thanks Ryan.