In recent weeks, a few posts had appeared on the #asstodon tag that were of butts, not donkeys, and controversy ensued.
Here it is worth describing some key features of #Mastodon in additional detail.
First, #federation, and #feeds:
As noted, each user is hosted on a specific #server; and this #network of servers comprises Mastodon.
Each user has a personal feed; a “home/neighborhood” feed; and a “federated” feed.
Because of how federation stitches together a user’s experience from the vantage point of their home server, views looking outward to the network vary.
While one can follow individual users across other servers,
👉whether one sees the posts of users one does not follow in one’s personal and “federated” feeds is dictated by interactions and follows across servers.
A user on a very small instance
— and some are as small as a dozen users, or even a single user
— would not see posts from other servers in their “federated” feed unless their instance-mates were following users across each of those servers.
Some servers also choose to, at the server level, silence other servers, often because of lax or poor moderation that home moderators fear will affect their own home users.
Depending on whether this is a silencing or a full block, a user can personally follow another individual user on another instance;
but unless they have a pre-existing reason to know about that user, they might be unlikely to ever encounter them.
By contrast, very large servers, some with over 50,000 users, have quite a lot of activity right at home, before even federating outward.
Those users will see a very lively feed on the “home/neighborhood” feed; and a much bigger pool of posts can be seen on the “federated” feed, as it will be populated by people across many remote servers with whom “home” server-mates interact.
@inquiline@ophiocephalic@cdarwin the Asstodon High Council has issued a long, loud bray but offered no clarification as to the meaning of this ruling. All we know is that they have strong feelings.
@ophiocephalic@inquiline@cdarwin the Council is notoriously non-judgmental. But paradoxically they are not at all lenient. Both infringing and non-infringing conduct are sentenced to a seemingly endless stream of more donkey pictures.
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