 So Elon Musk has bought Twitter and while it still has to go through regulatory approval There's a good chance that by the end of the year He's going to be the man in charge of Twitter now. I don't cover Twitter on this channel for good reason It's not anything to do with Linux I have covered a Linux client that lets you tweet from the terminal and that video absolutely Tanks, so I'm very worried about this video here because there's a good chance. Nobody gives a rat's ass About Elon Musk's using Twitter at least in terms of the people who watch my videos However, I do want to take this opportunity to at least to talk a little bit about mastodon because I Haven't talked much about the free and open source social media Giant if you want to call it a giant That is mastodon because honestly, I don't know that anybody really cares but it is definitely in the news so I wanted to talk about it a little bit and Really, I want to pose a question and that question is can mastodon actually be a respectable and well used and easily Maintained and easily moderated alternative to Twitter Because I've used mastodon now for quite a while I was on Distritube's instance of mastodon for a little while. He had something called Distritute It's no longer available, but I will use that for a while and then I've now moved over to fostered on which is a larger server Dedicated to open-source software and it's great So I actually have found that I'm using mastodon more since I've moved to fostered on than I ever did on Distritute and that's just because there's more people there and the fostered on maintainers filter allow a lot of the garbage that can be found On the federated timelines So if you've ever actually joined Mastodon before and you've gotten into a server that doesn't moderate the federated timeline You'll see a lot of garbage and I'm not just talking about garbage politically like you'll definitely see that But she'd get that on Twitter too left and right both have just a ton of idiotic opinions that People seem to think that they need to share with everyone else. I don't really care It's they're free to do so but leave me out of it is the whole point But back to mastodon you'll find a ton of stuff in the federated timeline if it's not moderated that is just it's kind of gross So there's a lot of adult content and while I'm not opposed to adult content There's some adult content that takes things a little bit too far And and there are instances that support things that are just blatantly illegal So you'll find some things that you probably don't ever want to see if the instance You're on doesn't regulate that federated timeline and that is kind of the peril you get when you're on a social network that is truly free and open source In a way that Twitter only wishes it was or at least Twitter under Elon Musk only wishes Because let's face it Elon Musk has said he's going to open source the algorithm for Twitter and nobody cares about the algorithm for Twitter Quite honestly the people who are excited about this being open source They're very naive and the reason why I say that is because the it's not like he's open sourcing Twitter He's not open sourcing Twitter. That's not the what he's planning on doing. He's open sourcing the Algorithm that ranks the tweets that shows you tweets out of order Which nobody uses by the way anybody who goes to the Twitter website automatically switches over to the Chronological view for the tweets for the most part. That's what people do Especially because the algorithm is not awful. It's really bad So chances are if you don't switch to the chronological view You probably end up going to Twitter every a couple days or whatever or however often you go And you'll notice that the same tweets are at the top because the algorithm is not showing you the appropriate Tweets and it doesn't realize that you've already seen these things. So It's not very good. That's what he's open sourcing. He's not open sourcing Twitter Mastodon on the other hand is actually free and open source anyone can download Mastodon create it Put on their blonde hair wig and create true social and then not give credit for Mastodon That's what you know happened there and anybody can do that, right? Anybody can grab the coach for Mastodon create their own instance and Carry on their way, you know, just do whatever they want They would be their own little fiefdom on the internet their rules go That's the joy of open-source software, of course but it also means that Anybody can create this even people that you don't necessarily want to interact with on the internet whether that's people that you disagree with politically or people that just are just horrible human beings, you know They can create their own instance of Mastodon and just by the nature of the way Mastodon works All other instances are going to interact with that instance like it can be filtered out, obviously But by default all the instances I interact together even the ones that are not necessarily great, right? So that means that when you are on a instance that doesn't filter out that federated timeline You're going to come across content that is necessarily kind of bad And a lot of the good stuff is going to kind of fall by the wayside because that Federated timeline is going to move very fast. So getting back to the original question Ken Mastodon Go mainstream, which is you know paraphrasing what I said there at the beginning The answer I have to that is probably not the nature of open-source means it's really hard to Create rules that are going to apply to everything when there are by definition no rules system-wide like there are no Things that you just can't do on Mastodon because you can download this thing and create it in your own image and If you happen to be a really bad person or you are interested in some really nasty illegal shit You know there is you know nothing that Mastodon can do about that because that's just the nature of the way Mastodon works the only way that kind of stuff gets filtered out is if the instances themselves filter those things out So for example the instance that I'm on fostered on that org Takes some of the bad actors and filters them from the federated timeline. So let me show you this These are the servers that fostered on Filters out and to get remember by default these things show up on the federated timeline The only way they're filtered out is if the individual instances then suspend them or filter them out themselves So things like child is on here things like there's one like where was it? I saw this earlier this one here like With that this thing exists this one right here like I'm gonna say that right and there's just a ton of that kind of stuff there's things like Nazis and Racism and all that stuff the reason why they've some of these things they've filtered out is because of just terrible stuff, right? And this is the only way you will not see the federated timeline So if I show you the federated time it this is the federated timeline for fostered on and It's actually pretty good right because they thought they filtered all that stuff out If they hadn't you'd see a whole bunch of other stuff and I will say that it does Kind of take out a lot of the content. I'm just gonna put it that way This doesn't move as fast as the Federated timeline you'll see on something that is not filtered So it's definitely something that you're going to have to keep in mind if you move on to to Mastodon so bottom line. I actually like Mastodon quite a lot I like fostered on even more than I like Distritute now That's nothing against DT, you know He just set that up because people everybody asked him to and it was you know nice of him to do it while he did it but fostered on seems to filter out a lot of the stuff and I Prefer that I prefer something that is a little bit more moderated than the general Wild West that is the rest of Mastodon and that's gonna be the bottom line Is that anyone can create one of these instances like I could create an instance if I want to I don't want to I'm not going to don't don't ask me to do so. I'm just gonna tell you no I'm not doing that But anyone can do this right and it doesn't matter why you've created the instance whether you're creating it for Good reasons or you're creating it because you want to create something that is not so good It doesn't matter anyone can do it and that's going to be Mastodon's biggest problem is that it It really is open source in the worst possible way and that there are no rules to what you do with this thing and Because all the servers interact with each other you're gonna be very reliant on your instance creating at least some kind of structure rules to make it not only safe for you, but also Not just a cesspool of terribleness for whatever you're not interested in saying if that makes sense So I think that it's going to be an interesting thing because I know that Mastodon has gained just like a ton of users over the last two days and I think that as it grows and I think it will grow Mastodon will change quite a bit because more and more people from different Viewpoints will come on there and up until now. It's been very much a Place where you you'll you have open source nerds like me on there But you also have a whole bunch of people who were kicked off from Twitter for various reasons Creating their own instances and interacting with each other So they're going to those people who've been there for a while and have been kicked off Twitter for a while are going to have to find a way to interact with people who are migrating from Twitter and Probably have different viewpoints to them and that's going to be something that is going to be a very interesting interacting to see because a lot of those people disagree Just to put it mildly so If you're interested in following me on Faustadon you can do so Faustadon org slash at the Linux Cast You can follow me on Twitter. I'm still on Twitter at the Linux Cast You can support me at patreon at patreon.com slash Linux Cast if you have any comments about all this stuff This the record time of this is actually quite long because there were several times where I meandered into politics and I I'm cutting all that stuff out So I tried to keep this as neutral as possible because for the most part I don't give a rat's ass about politics whatsoever I have my views everyone else has their own views and we're never gonna you know come to the point where we agree on everything and That's just the nature of humanity and I'm fine with that But it just doesn't means that I'm not really interested in talking about politics. So anyways I still ended up talking about politics there for a minute You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash Linux Cast I'd like to thank my current patrons Robert, Sid, Devon, Patrick, Fred, Kramer Megalyn, Jackson, Anton, Steve, Sebrega, Linux, Garrett, Samuel, KB, TGB, Keith, Andy Uncle Bonehead, Trideville, Mitchell, J-Dog, Carbondated, Jamie, Sean, Odin, Martin, Ross, Eduardo, Archenter, Elliott, Merrick, Kamp, Joshualy, Peteray, Cruisible, Darkman, Six Primes, and PM Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time