Second Life on Mastodon

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not when the Moderators and policies used on the platform are decided on by a group who are identified by their political affiliation. That would be considered at best an inconvenient fact, not noise.

Idea: Create a Mastodon Server Instance for "Freethinkers".  

Brilliant!

[Arielle Popstar]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Idea: Create a Mastodon Server Instance for "Freethinkers".  

Brilliant!

Not so much because then we go back to Coffee's post about the federation:

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The core of well moderated servers will just block entire instances that are openly problematic and you can highlight any instances you find with the #fediblock tag. Fear of losing federation applies considerable pressure to admins. There are some instances that are nothing but bad, and no one beyond that instance hears what they say.

For the bulk of the fediverse, bad behavior doesn't fly.

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by Arielle Popstar

[Feorie Frimon]

5 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You would be amazed how well a community functions when you don't have reply guys, trolls, *phobes, terfs, crypto pimps, socks, bots and basic standards for interaction with responsive moderation. It's not an echo chamber, it's a better signal to noise ratio.

For what it’s worth, I think Coffee is right on the money here. I have a Twitter account, but have been trying to find an alternative because the bot follows, etc.

It would be awesome if SecondLife had an instance people could join. Moving all of that traffic over from Twitter and Flickr could help fix a fractured social media SecondLife community and create a place that Residents can engage each other in a social media app (that LL doesn’t have to build but can still moderate). My fingers are crossed on this one! 

I get new follows every day, see more SL content, and it’s not as quiet as it was when I started. 

Here’s to hoping! 

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by Feorie Frimon

[Love Zhaoying]

19 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not so much because then we go back to Coffee's post about the federation:

 

That's the point of a Federation..to have Rules.

I read some interesting posts about the "2nd most popular" Mastodon server being sold for $$$$$, but also that it had been de-Federated by a lot of other servers.  That makes it no less popular.  The point is, they ain't complaining.  

Unless you just like complaining, of course. Complaining is fun!

[Prokofy Neva]

On 12/19/2022 at 4:26 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

No it's not.

Mastodon is a federated network of server instances. Every instance is run by people who want to run an instance. You can run your own just like you could run your own web server.

Most instances have a general theme, eg LGBTQ, technology, gaming, retros stuff, music genres, furrys, etc etc.

When you join an instance, you get access to that instance's internal timeline, that is everything everyone on that instance posts. This is not shown publicly even though the individual posts might be.

There is also the federated timeline, this is all posts from all instances that are linked together. 

When you visit an instance as a unregistered user, you might not see any of the timelines, just a list of federated posts & hashtags that are trending on that server.

Each instance has it's own acceptable content and moderation policies.

Moderation is not shy. If someone is a bad fit for an instance, perhaps because they showed up expecting to behave like this is Twitter or a forum and act out their reply guy troll fantasies, they will be asked to leave and find somewhere else. Moderation extends to blocking entire instances across the entire fediverse. Which works surprisingly well as it's human nature for birds of a feather to flock together. 

 

As far as funding goes, that works like any other open source project. People can contribute to the platform creators, or chip in with the running costs of their local instance. There are no adverts and no corporate overlords.

Yes, we recognize that this is the foundational myth of Mastodon.

But like most open source things, it's actually rigidly conventional and the overarching authoritarianism is the code.

The code -- and the open source cults around the code.

The code comes from engineers' culture, and their culture prevails at Mastodon in an intrusive way, much like it did on the early Twitter.

So you get annoyances like FOSS engineers not even on your "instance" crossing over to your "instance" to tell you to put all your posts in a content wrapper and that posts on politics are never welcome -- some sort of uber archaic geek affectation. 

I had multiple FOSSians do this to me on the social instance simply because that's how they are. There was no such TOS. It's just newbie ganking of the type you find in every game.

Reply guys are essential to combat engineering culture. 

The idea that you "fix" humanity by having it calf off into a zillion "instances" in a Russian-like "fediverse" went out with Philip Rosedale's concept that everyone would just buy islands if they didn't like the Mainland and that the big corporations would never affect the early rural hunter/gatherer culture of the original Second Life Wu'ar'ld.

Yes, I'll beat you to it, as one of the FOSS types did against any effort to use irony and metaphor to explain their self-regarding reality: "Sir, this is a Wendy's."

We don't need a "Second Life instance." We have one already. It's called secondlife.com, download the free app.

I see the Mastodon lifers becoming giddy that the Wall Street Journal, etc. are making its own instance. This will not end well.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Feorie Frimon]

41 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

We don't need a "Second Life instance." We have one already. It's called secondlife.com, download the free app.

But there isn’t a ‘free app’ for Second Life . You can’t swing by the App Store and download SL to your phone; SecondLife’s app is a huge program you have to download to your computer and most residents can’t be logged in at their home computer all the time to stay connected.

Sure, there is SpeedLight, but that’s not social media and is intended for Residents to handle SL basics on their phone…..

There isn’t a social media element at all that LL moderates/controls for Second Life residents - the only thing that comes kind of close is these forums and they aren’t like social media at all. 
 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Yes, we recognize that this is the foundational myth of Mastodon.

But like most open source things, it's actually rigidly conventional and the overarching authoritarianism is the code.

The code -- and the open source cults around the code.

The code comes from engineers' culture, and their culture prevails at Mastodon in an intrusive way, much like it did on the early Twitter.

So you get annoyances like FOSS engineers not even on your "instance" crossing over to your "instance" to tell you to put all your posts in a content wrapper and that posts on politics are never welcome -- some sort of uber archaic geek affectation. 

I had multiple FOSSians do this to me on the social instance simply because that's how they are. There was no such TOS. It's just newbie ganking of the type you find in every game.

Reply guys are essential to combat engineering culture. 

The idea that you "fix" humanity by having it calf off into a zillion "instances" in a Russian-like "fediverse" went out with Philip Rosedale's concept that everyone would just buy islands if they didn't like the Mainland and that the big corporations would never affect the early rural hunter/gatherer culture of the original Second Life Wu'ar'ld.

Yes, I'll beat you to it, as one of the FOSS types did against any effort to use irony and metaphor to explain their self-regarding reality: "Sir, this is a Wendy's."

We don't need a "Second Life instance." We have one already. It's called secondlife.com, download the free app.

I see the Mastodon lifers becoming giddy that the Wall Street Journal, etc. are making its own instance. This will not end well.

I've seen other posts from you that seem to "other" coders. Put them (us) in a group who are apparently nefarious, cultish, etc.

Kind of like..intelligentsia. At least we're in good company!

Edited December 21, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Love Zhaoying]

Ok, @Coffee Pancake- I think that I see a potential reason to "switch servers".

Today's @transitiontuesday posts made me realize - perhaps being on a server with LGBT "affinity" would be "safer", and get more follows/likes on certain topics, than on a "generic" server.

Plus, on "and old server" those same LGBT posts may get "judged" or reported etc., but on the LGBT "affinity" server they would be fine.

Does that make sense, or am I off base?

 

[Feorie Frimon]

51 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Ok, @Coffee Pancake- I think that I see a potential reason to "switch servers".

Today's @transitiontuesday posts made me realize - perhaps being on a server with LGBT "affinity" would be "safer", and get more follows/likes on certain topics, than on a "generic" server.

Plus, on "and old server" those same LGBT posts may get "judged" or reported etc., but on the LGBT "affinity" server they would be fine.

Does that make sense, or am I off base?

 

Exactly what I am thinking, too. And that’s why I agree that a Second Life Instance would be cool - because it would, basically, be a ‘only Second Life’ stuff server.

The part I’m stuck on is the mix of rated material. My Twitter feed was pretty ‘adult’ simply by following people using the #secondlife hashtag, but I have a lot of friends in SL that have a much more G or PG rated experience. 

An instance would require heavy moderation of an actual Linden (or more than one Linden), and I think there would have to be a serious case made that having the instance would help retain Residents (because of those Linden paychecks that would be needed to moderate the whole thing). 

Even still - I think its a really interesting idea! An instance could become a sort of optional ‘in-house social media’ for residents once they are part of SL….. and other social media channels could be used to funnel traffic TO Second Life. 
 

[Coffee Pancake]

3 minutes ago, Feorie Frimon said:

Even still - I think its a really interesting idea! An instance could become a sort of optional ‘in-house social media’ for residents once they are part of SL….. 

LL did actually purchase Avatars United way back when, so the desire to have something social is very much there .. sadly all we got was simplistic profile feeds that fell flat at launch, so never got much needed further development ( kinda typical for LL projects back then).

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/01/avatar-social-network.html

An internal only Mastodon with some tweaks to join the dots between it and SL proper would tick all the Avatars United boxes. Even better if it could be accessed via the web too as that would give people a way to stay connected to SL longer term and tempt them back in world. 

 

The "SL app" alone is obviously not everything everyone needs, if it was there wouldn't just be 50k of us logging in daily.

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I've seen other posts from you that seem to "other" coders. Put them (us) in a group who are apparently nefarious, cultish, etc.

Why should coders be treated differently than anyone else?

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

4 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Why should coders be treated differently than anyone else?

For the same reason we used to burn witches, they do stuff we don't understand and therefore we must fear and revile them!  

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I've seen other posts from you that seem to "other" coders. Put them (us) in a group who are apparently nefarious, cultish, etc.

Why should coders be treated differently than anyone else?

You're right! Land Barons are particularly nefarious and cultish, for example.

[Paul Hexem]

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I've seen other posts from you that seem to "other" coders. Put them (us) in a group who are apparently nefarious, cultish, etc.

Kind of like..intelligentsia. At least we're in good company!

To be fair, "coders", like anyone else can be motivated for the wrong reasons.

[Love Zhaoying]

56 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

For the same reason we used to burn witches, they do stuff we don't understand and therefore we must fear and revile them!  

I don't understand, so I revile thee!!!

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Paul Hexem said:

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I've seen other posts from you that seem to "other" coders. Put them (us) in a group who are apparently nefarious, cultish, etc.

Kind of like..intelligentsia. At least we're in good company!

To be fair, "coders", like anyone else can be motivated for the wrong reasons.

Of course! But Prok seems to have it out for "us", as if "oh noes, I can't use a program, because those coders are teh ebil".

How exactly is that "fair"? lulz.

[Paul Hexem]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Of course! But Prok seems to have it out for "us", as if "oh noes, I can't use a program, because those coders are teh ebil".

How exactly is that "fair"? lulz.

Well, in my defense, Prok's posts tend to ramble on a little long and I fade out after like... the second sentence.

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Well, in my defense, Prok's posts tend to ramble on a little long and I fade out after like... the second sentence.

Yeah, this time it didn't start until the third sentence!

 

[Lelani Carver]

I'm back inworld after a long absence, and hoping to connect with some of my old Twitter friends on Mastodon - you can find me as LelaniCarver@universeodon.com

[Taffy Blindside]

@taffyblindside@mastodon.social

[JeromFranzic]

It's official, Mastodon poked me.

@jerralyn_franzic@mastodon.sdf.org

ETA: which app is the best for Android? From what I've been reading via reviews, Fedilab seems like the best option. Web is OK but a bit slow. It is nice to have a web app via Chrome, I'm running a Samsung Galaxy A12 with precious little space ATM *sniff*.

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by JeromFranzic

[Prokofy Neva]

On 12/21/2022 at 9:49 AM, Feorie Frimon said:

But there isn’t a ‘free app’ for Second Life . You can’t swing by the App Store and download SL to your phone; SecondLife’s app is a huge program you have to download to your computer and most residents can’t be logged in at their home computer all the time to stay connected.

Sure, there is SpeedLight, but that’s not social media and is intended for Residents to handle SL basics on their phone…..

There isn’t a social media element at all that LL moderates/controls for Second Life residents - the only thing that comes kind of close is these forums and they aren’t like social media at all. 
 

 

Why would you want to play SL on your *phone*? It's an immersive 3D world, not a phone game like Candy Crush.

It doesn't need to be in the app store - you go online and go into it.

Speedlight and other past apps of this type is good enough for when you can't get inworld to run a business -- which would be really the only viable use case -- to perform functions like sending cash, upgrading someone's group membership to "resident," etc. Most SL people who want to socialize outside the world itself use Plurk, Twitter, even Mastodon and why, even Facebook. They don't need some cranky badly performing app. And then, when they are able and willing to sit down to be entertained -- you know, like they are with most immersive games and Netflix and such -- then they just download SL.

Yes, the learning curve is steep but that's due to engineering culture, FIC culture, and a host of other accidental and relevant factors which are fixed by things like "Caledon" or even in a pinch "Prokofy on Ross".

My God, no one needs the platform provider LL to "control social media for SL residents". They already control too much with Bellisseria, its aspirations to eat the Mainland etc. Honest to God, they would not be welcome or needed in this space. The whole point of Second Life is to be a LIFE, that combines with RL or one's imagination or friendship circles etc and doesn't need a company riding along with you, the way Facebook does.

[HeathcliffMontague]

Mastodon, (genus Mammut), any of several extinct elephantine mammals (family Mammutidae, genus Mammut ) that first appeared in the early Miocene (23 million to 2.6 million years ago) and continued in various forms through the Pleistocene Epoch (from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). Wiki.

Like Juggernaut in other modern speech.

Grow up from the boob jokes. I'll give it a fair shot. Not that I'm convinced in any shape or form, but simultaneously like the decentralized stuff and give it a future, and at the same time it gives me (also extinct) IRC vibes.

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, HeathcliffMontague said:

Mastodon, (genus Mammut), any of several extinct elephantine mammals (family Mammutidae, genus Mammut ) that first appeared in the early Miocene (23 million to 2.6 million years ago) and continued in various forms through the Pleistocene Epoch (from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). Wiki.

Like Juggernaut in other modern speech.

Grow up from the boob jokes. I'll give it a fair shot. Not that I'm convinced in any shape or form, but simultaneously like the decentralized stuff and give it a future, and at the same time it gives me (also extinct) IRC vibes.

Naturally I inquired among the oldbies on Mastodon about all this.

It has nothing to do with extinct elephants.

It's some metal band the founder likes. And universally said to be a *bad* metal band but what would I know.

Like "Da Boom" isn't a reference to the creation of the world via "the Big Bang" as some think, but just the name of a RL street in San Francisco called "De Boom". "Mastodon" is just some personal crank of the founder.

The founder emigrated to what was East Germany from the Soviet Union at the age of 11 in 2004, the age of a Soviet pioneer youth, not so long after Yeltsin's "take as much sovereignty as you can handle" and two Chechen wars that proved otherwise. So he was not too young for imbibing various world views, like the federative nature of large imperialist states, etc.

The Mastodon guy's worldview is really no different from his fellow coder Lindens:  the forced migration solution to every difference rather than liberal democracy or majority votes. It's "fork or GTFO," and "there's the door" and "can I have your stuff," and then: Mute/block/ban.  Great plan for society.

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[HeathcliffMontague]

20 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Naturally I inquired among the oldbies on Mastodon about all this.

It has nothing to do with extinct elephants.

It's some metal band the founder likes. And universally said to be a *bad* metal band but what would I know.

Like "Da Boom" isn't a reference to the creation of the world via "the Big Bang" as some think, but just the name of a RL street in San Francisco called "De Boom". "Mastodon" is just some personal crank of the founder.

The founder emigrated to what was East Germany from the Soviet Union at the age of 11 in 2004, the age of a Soviet pioneer youth, not so long after Yeltsin's "take as much sovereignty as you can handle" and two Chechen wars that proved otherwise. So he was not too young for imbibing various world views, like the federative nature of large imperialist states, etc.

The Mastodon guy's worldview is really no different from his fellow coder Lindens:  the forced migration solution to every difference rather than liberal democracy or majority votes. It's "fork or GTFO," and "there's the door" and "can I have your stuff," and then: Mute/block/ban.  Great plan for society.

 

 

Thanks for the info. Will keep that in mind as I participate at arms length.