@strypey I tried following myself (as a test) but Counter.Social does not allow interactions outside of the domain.

That said it is a great group to interact with. The current theme right now is pirates 🏴‍☠️!

@darnell
I did some reading on the counter.social site. Turns out they had a bit of a spat with @Gargron over their geoblocking, and got instance blocked by mastodon.social and other instances who follow his blocklist. So they forked Mastodon and stripped out the federation code.

#CounterSocial #Mastodon #GeoBlocking #forking

@strypey @Gargron Oh wow! I did not know that! I guess that explains why some were upset when I said I was using the Mastodon iPad app to login into Counter Social as their iPad app does not work.

@darnell @strypey Bear in mind that’s not an accurate summary of events. For example, I never blocked counter.social. Originally they disabled federation by accident by haphazardly putting a login wall on all controllers.

@Gargron @strypey Thanks for clarifying! I can “view” accounts on Counter.Social within the Mastodon app, but I can not follow Counter.Social accounts from any other instances.

I also did a search for the evil Mastodon instance full of trolls called Truth Social. Fortunately, their server never showed up! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

I wonder if troll social is blocked via the app settings‽

@darnell @strypey No, again, nothing is blocked. Truth Social disabled federation or broke some other API.

@Gargron @strypey Oh ok. Thanks again for clarifying! For what it’s worth I think Mastodon is to social networking what WordPress is to blogging & website building.

It also has the potential to take off in regions overlooked by centralized social networks (like Southeast Asia & Sub Sahara Africa).

@Gargron @strypey @darnell no TruthSocial.com deactivated the federation of mastodon on their server side so that none of their users can see the rest of the 'verse

@Gargron I suspected as much, which is why I @mentioned you in the post. Thanks for sharing your side of the story. Given that it was all a misunderstanding, it's sad that it wasn't resolved to the point where counter.social users could interact as full fedizens. Do either of you think it's worth someone from SocialHub reaching out to them?

@darnell

@strypey @Gargron I think the community prefers the lack of federation at Counter.Social as there is virtually no spam or trolls there. I guess it’s the ultimate trade off.

I think over 100,000 users have signed up but I am not sure how many are active as they do not realize those stats.

@darnell It's a myth propagated by walled garden vendors that federation = spam or trolls. The truth is, lack of effective moderation = spam or trolls and there are plenty of centralized examples of this too. Robust moderation can be done on federated instances, as evidenced by the many admins who go all out to curate a fun experience in their slice of the 'verse.

@Gargron

#moderation #MythsOfCentralization

@strypey @Gargron I concur, & Counter Social has numerous algorithmic defenses to squash spam & trolls.

However, the users there enjoy their walled garden. I prefer a solo instance which works best for me—at least on Mastodon.

I am experimenting with @pixelfed right now, although I am experiencing issues that might make me reconsider Tumblr & Instagram.

@strypey @pixelfed Basically the site does not Federate. I think I might simply use WordPress & install the activitypub plugin & use that instead.

@darnell
> Basically the site does not Federate.

Hmm, that's definitely not normal performance. Probably a configuration issue of some kind. Any suggestions @PixelFed team?