Can you explain how Mastodon instances interconnect?
November 21, 2022 9:32 AM Subscribe
For personal and professional reasons, I'm interested in setting up a Mastodon server. In fact, I asked about it in 2018, but that went nowhere. I think I've kind of wrapped my head around the idea, but am having a devil of a time understanding how instances interrelate.
Back in 2018, I set up an account at chaos.social, for reasons I honestly don't even remember now. So I fuzzily understand that I don't need to set up accounts on other servers/instances, but... only some of those instances will connect with chaos.social, which only itself connects to other instances? So while I can find Jessamyn on chaos.social from her connected instance, I can't find other people because chaos.social doesn't connect to the instances they are on. There's a ton about this I just don't get: are instance connections unidirectional or bidirectional? Should I just create accounts all over the ding-dong place because instances connect haphazardly? Is there a way of seeing what instances an instance connects to before setting up an account or connecting to it?
I have read the Mastodon Help page -- all the way down to the bottom, where I found myself baffled by the diagrams and lines and charts.
Is there a for-dummies breakdown of how Mastodon's ecosystem works that I can wrap my head around?
Back in 2018, I set up an account at chaos.social, for reasons I honestly don't even remember now. So I fuzzily understand that I don't need to set up accounts on other servers/instances, but... only some of those instances will connect with chaos.social, which only itself connects to other instances? So while I can find Jessamyn on chaos.social from her connected instance, I can't find other people because chaos.social doesn't connect to the instances they are on. There's a ton about this I just don't get: are instance connections unidirectional or bidirectional? Should I just create accounts all over the ding-dong place because instances connect haphazardly? Is there a way of seeing what instances an instance connects to before setting up an account or connecting to it?
I have read the Mastodon Help page -- all the way down to the bottom, where I found myself baffled by the diagrams and lines and charts.
Is there a for-dummies breakdown of how Mastodon's ecosystem works that I can wrap my head around?
fedward laid some of this out over on the Blue. It's not intuitively obvious, and figuring out who blocks *your* instance is not something I've discovered how to look up yet.
posted by restless_nomad at 9:59 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by restless_nomad at 9:59 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
By default, your Mastodon server will allow connections to any other server. There are a variety of moderation actions you can take to block or limit access to specific users or entire servers. Or you can switch to limited federation mode where your server will only allow connections to servers that you specifically allow. (Most Mastodon servers stick to allowing federation by default, with blocklists that vary greatly from server to server.)
Also, just because your server allows connections to my server doesn’t mean they will actually connect and fetch content from each other. But if you know the account of someone on my server, you can follow them from your server, and then your server will start automatically fetching that person’s posts from my server. Various features like searching and the federated timeline will only work on content that is “known” to your server because it has appeared in the feeds or searches of one of your users.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:09 AM on November 21, 2022
Also, just because your server allows connections to my server doesn’t mean they will actually connect and fetch content from each other. But if you know the account of someone on my server, you can follow them from your server, and then your server will start automatically fetching that person’s posts from my server. Various features like searching and the federated timeline will only work on content that is “known” to your server because it has appeared in the feeds or searches of one of your users.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:09 AM on November 21, 2022
I think you can make a general assumption that the instance you are joining connects to all others except those which have actively blocked it or been blocked by it. Instances can choose to list all the servers they have blocked on their "about" page, so if you are thinking of joining one, you can check there to see if a particular server you're worried about being cut off from has been blocked. As an example, here's the about page for one of the instances I use, mastodon.lol - you'll see the "moderated server" section at the bottom. Although...hm, I see parts of the instance names are asterisked now, I could swear that wasn't the case last week. Maybe it's something that happened with the last upgrade a few days ago. I still feel like that's good enough that skimming through it would give you a good sense of the kinds of instances that get blocked from this one, and why.
[I was going to talk about 'limiting' here but I see it's already been linked in a previous comment. Suffice it to say I'm not sure if a limited server would show up in this "moderated" section.]
posted by Stacey at 10:10 AM on November 21, 2022
[I was going to talk about 'limiting' here but I see it's already been linked in a previous comment. Suffice it to say I'm not sure if a limited server would show up in this "moderated" section.]
posted by Stacey at 10:10 AM on November 21, 2022
Mastodon will federate with all other servers by default (and with a lot of non-Mastodon software as well). It's only when moderators take specific action that a server blocks another server.
In general, I'd recommend making a single account on a server that is somewhat conservative about blocking other servers (just blocking nazi/racist/hateful/spam/etc servers) — you can always block a server for you personally, and that'll let you talk to the most people. There will always be weirdos who will block you or your server for strange and inscrutable reasons, but if someone doesn't want to interact with you or your instance, that's for them to decide.
posted by wesleyac at 11:18 AM on November 21, 2022
In general, I'd recommend making a single account on a server that is somewhat conservative about blocking other servers (just blocking nazi/racist/hateful/spam/etc servers) — you can always block a server for you personally, and that'll let you talk to the most people. There will always be weirdos who will block you or your server for strange and inscrutable reasons, but if someone doesn't want to interact with you or your instance, that's for them to decide.
posted by wesleyac at 11:18 AM on November 21, 2022
I can't find other people because chaos.social doesn't connect to the instances they are on
More to just double-check as it caught me out initially , you are searching for the whole user id, as in “user@server.name” and not just the first part?
Suffice it to say I'm not sure if a limited server would show up in this "moderated" section
Limited servers do at least sometimes turn up e.g. here on mstdn.social.
posted by scorbet at 12:49 PM on November 21, 2022
More to just double-check as it caught me out initially , you are searching for the whole user id, as in “user@server.name” and not just the first part?
Suffice it to say I'm not sure if a limited server would show up in this "moderated" section
Limited servers do at least sometimes turn up e.g. here on mstdn.social.
posted by scorbet at 12:49 PM on November 21, 2022
Here's your instance's list of specifically what servers they are blocking or silencing; anyone not on an instance explicitly listed there as blocked should be findable.
posted by advil at 3:25 PM on November 21, 2022
posted by advil at 3:25 PM on November 21, 2022
This introduction to Mastodon goes into the federating/following/blocking topology at the end, a bit more than I've seen elsewhere. (But I haven't checked all the assertions!)
posted by clew at 4:14 PM on November 21, 2022
posted by clew at 4:14 PM on November 21, 2022
Response by poster: Not intending to threadsit but a quick thanks for the questions above about how I'm attempting to connect, which I'm going to mess around with a bit more when time allows. Thank you for all the replies/help to date!
posted by Shepherd at 9:45 AM on November 22, 2022
posted by Shepherd at 9:45 AM on November 22, 2022
One subtlety that people often miss is that your instance only federates with instances that your instance's user base has followed. Not seeing posts from an instance in your federated timeline doesn't automatically mean they've been blocked or silenced.
If you are running your own instance and don't follow anyone outside of it, you'll never see anything outside your own instance even on the federated timeline. You can get around this as an instance admin by joining a relay which is basically a way of quickly bootstrapping your federated timeline to show more of the network without having to explicitly follow accounts.
posted by Aleyn at 4:52 PM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you are running your own instance and don't follow anyone outside of it, you'll never see anything outside your own instance even on the federated timeline. You can get around this as an instance admin by joining a relay which is basically a way of quickly bootstrapping your federated timeline to show more of the network without having to explicitly follow accounts.
posted by Aleyn at 4:52 PM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by Alensin at 9:57 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]