masto meta
one thing I hate about twitter is having zero control of your posts’ reach. it strips agency, flattens context, contributes to uncontrollable harassment in the service of “connection”. imo mastodon’s insistence on following the same value of maximization, removing any ability to foster small local community, is equally harmful. if decentralization is about control then why strip that at the individual and community level? it’s no better than twitter. glad to be on the hometown fork
masto meta
@z yeah agreed! and I hope! but still wish many folks’ first introduction to mastodon was different than what it likely will be for next while, due to prevalence of mastodon and the main m.s instance. I have a hard time encouraging folks to join fediverse at this point if they don’t have preexisting connections with a smaller instance
masto meta
@christa i always harp on software needing to scale down, i usually mean this in a computer architecture sense, but it equally applies to that same software in service of (smol) communities
masto meta
@meena yes to both!
masto meta
@christa I was wondering whether hometown has any iOS apps? And do you know whether there are something like masto.host for it?
masto meta
@vega There are no Hometown-specific apps because there don't really need to be. It's basically just Mastodon with a few more features sprinkled in. If you wish to post local-only while on Tusky, Fedilab, Pinafore, etc. you can use the local_only emoji (even if there is no such emoji on your instance) to do so.
There is a masto.host for it though, yup! Look here: https://federation.spacebear.ee/software/hometown
Since there was some drama about this recently I would just like to take a moment to assure everyone that this is completely optional; if you have the know-how, you can set it up on your own for free, as well.
@christa
masto meta
@Mayana Ah, fantastic! Thanks for help :D
masto meta
Can you share some specific information about how the hometown fork solves this? I am unfamiliar.
masto meta
@dynamic Hometown adds another toggle to the web interface; you can choose between posting federated or local-only. Federated means doing it as everyone does, where as with local-only, the toot never leaves your instance. It's useful for community events, or just posting to a smaller audience when you wish to. And of course, you can further narrow it down by posting a local-only followers-only post, if you wish to for some reason.
@christa
masto meta
@christa This feels like a real turning point moment. I expect to see a lot of growth for Hometown, Glitch-soc, and all the alternative implementations of ActivityPub (very excited for GotoSocial)