jtode
Tangent produced feature animation, but also was working on an asset manager product, which is now owned by Autodesk after Tangent went under. Our animators doubled as dog food tasters. I mention this because the execs were 100% very much out to make a profit from this enterprise - I myself was living my wet dream because I am Free Software zealot, but they were looking to turn a profit from it all, and even these fiscally-motivated folks were frequently heard to say that "Blender is the future" because everyone there understood that that is the case.
Expect more Blender movies.
I was once managing a few large file servers, with bog standard users as well as devs using a pretty complex directory tree of "assets".
There was a pretty high-up, specific directory level, which was where the ZFS file servers were given their different loads to handle. This was a directory level where new directories were created rarely (99% at the start of the project).
For reasons of money as well as speed, I asked that the server admins (ie. me) be the ones to create any further directories needed at that particular level. The head dev refused to entertain the idea of not being able to create directories anywhere he wanted at any time, and therefore, a new system was brought in at five-figure costs in order to make the file servers into a large abstracted blob that users never had to think about the complexities of managing.
I was given an opportunity to exit the IT dept and become a Python dev and I took it, shortly before that system came in, because it caused many problems which were much worse than needing to have an admin create a directory for you maybe once or twice, and the evident ignorance of everyone I spoke to at the vendor made it very clear ahead of time that it would.
This was not the only such massive expenditure on a toxic boondoggle in the name of "simplicity" that I witnessed.
The only thing I would have a problem with them doing with my data is exploiting it; the idea that they delete it after a period is a selling point for me if it's anything.
But your case is one of demonstrating the strength of Mastodon. If you don't like what Twitter is doing, your only choice is to leave. If you don't like what your instance is doing, you have any number of others to try out.
I'm not defending the server option or its use; I don't have to because it's Mastodon. You should likewise point out the problem in a more constructive way.
And if you find the format unreadable, perhaps you should work on a little code yourself to make a Mastodon Archive Reader app. Or perhaps... oh look, here's a few for you to try:
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu-sn&q=...
You're working very hard to not accept responsibility for your own data. You are not bad for this fact, but you are pretty typical.
My bad, OP, you are not censorious.
edit: and you, speaking directly, did not advocate for Twitter. I was way off on that one point.
You saw the South Park episode, what they call it, with the... oh yeah, The Human Centipad, you saw that, right?
Does Mastodon even have an EULA? Maybe it needs one. It could say "Your data is your data, we do not own it, we won't sell it, and we also won't guarantee to store it for you indefinitely, so do your backups like a smart person."
So let me leave my wrong statement above intact and add that OP did not censor me, I just have no patience for this service, apparently lol
>How many of the 1.8 million monthly active Mastodon users are doing weekly backups of their Mastodon data?
I obviously do not have that information, but I would say this:
Anyone who makes a habit of actually exploring the Preferences of a new thing they're trying out, will have gone and looked at the Preferences area of their Mastodon page.
There they will have discovered the Data Export page, where it is explained to them that they have the option to do weekly backups, generally speaking.
Anyone who thinks about backups as a thing they try to do will just naturally start to do backups of this very personal data as soon as they feel the data is important enough to rate backing up.
People who have been using a Service to handle their backups, well, they might just kinda blow over that aspect of things and trust Big Machine Daddy to handle that, like the vast majority of internet users do.
As I keep saying, the problem here is people's expectations, which is born of not really understanding what the thing is in the first place. I read an article here on HN sometime back on some business times or financial post maybe, I don't remember, but I do remember they called Mastodon a "Vendor".
So many people simply do not understand so much. It was not so easy to say that in earlier times because it was not so easy to see that. It is now quite easy to see.
That being said, new tools come out all the time to improve the situation; "we" (I am not an admin, just a fan) are figuring out what a functioning federated social network needs by doing a federated social network. Mistakes will be made.
The answer to the mistakes is not retreating to "monolithic single-entry service only without billions of dollars of startup capital," which is what your advice to only go to the biggest instance smacks of.
There is a new thing, I encountered the hashtag yesterday but I can't recall it now and I didn't look closely, but it's some sort of database I think in which instance admins can leave notes and ratings of other instances, or something like that. I wish I could remember the hashtag, but it looks to me like an attempt to at least start setting up a clearing house type thing for the deeper details of instance administration.
I believe the problem it was created to solve has more to do with moderation and lazy admins who don't bother doing it, but it could easily be extended to examine the settings of instances and give users optics.
I'm certainly not saying that you should not point out that this is happening, by the way, and if your admin was lazy/complacent/obnoxious about it, you are quite correct to leave. I, likewise, chose to leave the main instance some time back, and I'm not gonna get into why, it was different and personal reasons, and the miracle of this network is that I found a new place that suits me as well.
I do think your piece reads as entitled and ignorant, and you should give it a rewrite with a better understanding that you are addressing a community, not a company.
I would posit that your error is in thinking of Mastodon as a service, rather than a community of people trying to get away from using "services" to live our lives through.
In that context, I would expect exactly these sorts of errors, and as an admin, I would expect the community to understand and be forgiving, because we are all figuring this out together as we go - again, with only the money in our bank accounts.
I think that if you're genuinely interested in participating in the Mastodon project and helping it to succeed, I would suggest that writing a polemic which reflects your service-based expectations and shits on the efforts of the earnest sysops who do this for the passion of it and the desire to see this better alternative happen is about the worst way to express your frustration at losing data that you had the option to do a weekly backup of yourself.
You need to let go of your "service" expectations and start thinking of Mastodon as what it is: a network of personal computers which people are using to talk to each other. You need to think of your personal Mastodon profile the same way you think about your personal hard drive.
All of the negative writing I've seen has basically been different versions of "I have expectations as a user, and Mastodon has not met those expectations, so I can't recommend it" with no further examination. No questioning of their own assumptions and expectations, no respect for a culture that has evolved over years by its own bootstraps while they languished in comfy gardens run by evil autocrats, very rarely even a clear explanation of the differences between Mastodon and other networks.
Mastodon is not "another social network" that comes from the same place as the others. It comes from hating the others and wanting something different from t them. These writers who come from this "why, Mastodon, should I bestow my precious attention onto your platform rather than these others?" as though Mastodon had something to gain from capturing your attention.
It does not; Mastodon rejects the attention economy, so in fact, everyone should be asking themselves what kind of quality content they have to bring. Mastodon does not care about your attention, it only wants to provide you with the tools to find things that your attention craves with no fascism or vile spam or propagandizing by billionaires.
Ask not what your social media can do for you - ask what you can do for your social network.
His father was a wily one too. This is just people with ridiculous policies trying to whip up the hate in hopes that the hate will take him down this time, after failing to do so every other time.
We exist in very different realities; mine is informed by the reality I see around me in the physical world, yours apparently exists in links to economics papers. I suspect that we don't have the same day-to-day experience at all.
As to socialism and fascism... I did not say that only the two exist. I did say that one or the other is coming to America. The idea that this is all going to continue indefinitely, in the USA of all places, is absurd. You people hate aristocracies more than just about anything.
At that time, America rejected Fascism and chose Socialism, and they prospered for the rest of that century, though by the end the process of dismantling the source of their own success was well along.
Laptops in the 90s had swappable batteries, as did phones. It's perfectly doable.
You have the scent of someone with Apple stock.
Couldn't source enough.
Why was that?
Supply chains stretched so taut that a single disruption shut the whole world down.
Why was that?
Profit.
Capitalism is the problem.
This was the default at one point. Look at the manual for any home appliance from the 1950s.
The difficulty in replacing an iphone screen is not that it's hard to plug it into its receptacle - the difficulty is in acquiring a part (they won't sell them) and then in opening the device, which requires skill and a specialized tool in pretty much every case.
Maybe, hold them together with small screws, instead of that.
"but then it will weigh an extra .237oz!"
Shut up.
But the day is coming that we can't afford the gas for em, one by one it'll become too expensive, and with each day worth less and less, until one day you'll have to pay someone with a horse and cart to pull your pile of useless toxic steel and fibreglass away, and she'll judge the hell out of you as she takes your money.