[Osmf-talk] Possible Fedi/Masto usage | Re: The use of Free and Open Source Software in the OpenStreetMap Foundation - FOSS...

[Rory McCann]

only a handful. kiwifarms has on fedi instance apparently. gab tried to get on the fediverse, and were widely blocked, incl. by en.osm.town. Though I think they've given up on the fediverse now. It should be clear why.

On Tue, 02 Feb 2021 22:07, Andrew Hain <andrewhainosm at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>  Does en.osm.town block access to any other Fediverse nodes? If so, why?
> 
> --
> Andrew
> *From:* Rory McCann <rory at technomancy.org>
> *Sent:* 02 February 2021 20:51
> *To:* Mikel Maron <mikel.maron at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* OSMF FOSS Policy Committee <foss at osmfoundation.org>; OSMF Talk 
> <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Osmf-talk] Possible Fedi/Masto usage | Re: The use of 
> Free and Open Source Software in the OpenStreetMap Foundation - FOSS... 
>  
> FYI, en.osm.town uses the popular Mastodon software from 
> https://masto.host. For features, you can look into what Mastodon does.
> 
> On Tue, 02 Feb 2021 12:42, Mikel Maron <mikel.maron at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As part of the CWG, we're considering this. The idea of ownership over 
> > posts, and easily posting to multiple channels are good, allowing 
> > people to read where they are (@openstreetmap has 74.5K followers on 
> > Twitter). My questions here are about the experience, reliability and 
> > dependencies.
> 
> The experience of Mastodon is consideribly better than Twitter (which 
> on masto we refer to as “the hell site”). Masto (unlike Twitter) has 
> many features that help marginalized people. It took insighting an 
> armed amateur invasion of the US government session for Twitter to ban 
> Donald Trump. The American Nazi Party had a twitter account until a few 
> years ago. Masto is split into separate instances, which can have their 
> own moderation rules & standards, and federation standards. Most masto 
> servers are either Queers/LGBTQ* people or some FLOSS/Chaos people (or 
> both! 🙂). Masto has content warnings, and anti-harassment features 
> like no quote boosts (“retweets”), and only searching on hashtags, not 
> plain text.
> 
> IME there is often much more, more kinder, interaction with people on 
> Masto/Fedi. It's much more.. social. If you ask questions, people 
> answer. People chat back.
> 
> Oh and it's open source, with open protocols, developed in the open by 
> people who care, rather than VC funded.
> 
> > How do you set up syndication? Is that built into osm.town, or via another site?
> 
> Mastodon is an implementation of the ActivityPub protocol (aka “the 
> fediverse”). Which is how the fediverse does syndication. It's 
> fundamentally a syndication system! That's how status updates (“toots”) 
> are sent to/from other servers & websites. Additionally, mastodon 
> generates RSS feed for every user, which was build for syndicating 
> (e.g. https://en.osm.town/@openstreetmap.rss )
> 
> Twitter, naturally, doesn't support federation, or syndication, like 
> this. You need to use third party services, which you could self-host, 
> which will post to/from both, a “cross-poster”. I currently use this 
> https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/  (source: 
> https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster ). There is also 
> https://moa.party/ .
> 
> Details on the Mastodon ⇄ Twitter crossposter, which should answer some 
> of your questions: 
> https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster#features
> 
> > Does syndication automatically repost everything, or is another action 
> > needed?
> 
> For the Mastodon ⇄ Twitter cross posting software above you can 
> configure it to do (i) everything (ii) everything unless a hashtag/word 
> is used, or (iii) only when certain hashtags/words are used
> 
> For my mastodon account, it only cross posts to twitter when there's a 
> “#xp” hashtag https://en.osm.town/@rory and it only posts from twitter 
> to mastodon for an #OpenStreetMap hashtag
> 
> > Why are some @openstreetmap tweets missing 
> > from https://en.osm.town/@openstreetmap?
> 
> Because I was using a hacky script on my server that used a third party 
> twitter RSS server that stopped working. 🙂 Probably because twitter 
> doesn't like these things.
> 
> > Do tweets posted by syndication from osm.town look identical as if 
> > posted directly in Twitter? Can you include photos? 
> 
> Twitter & Mastodon have different features. e.g. Twitter doesn't have 
> content warnings, or custom emojis. Most fediverse software (incl. the 
> mastodon on en.osm.town) support toots up to 500 characters. So 
> pedantically, they can never be identical. 😉
> 
> Here's an example of a retweet, with a video, cross-posted to Mastodon:
> 
> Original tweet: https://twitter.com/lalonde/status/1352550184593600512
> How it looks on Mastodon: https://en.osm.town/@rory/105598697175057947
> 
> > How do you @- someone on Twitter from osm.town? Retweet or reply to them?
> 
> Twitter hasn't implemented support for ActivityPub, or any other type 
> of federated system like this, so you can't send them messages like 
> this. On en.osm.town, you can send @mentions to any other servers on 
> the fediverse.
> 
> > Is there a way to share an account on osm.town with a group of people, 
> > to spread out responsibility for posting?
> 
> Alas, I pretty sure mastodon doesn't have this feature. You have to 
> give everyone the password. I'm the admin of the en.osm.town, so if 
> someone does change the password to do something dodgy, I can always 
> step in and fix it. That should alleviate some concerns.
> 
> Does that answer your questions?
> 
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