LinuxMusicians

Hey there,

Are some of you guys using Mastodon or some other fediverse possibilities?
You can find me on the micro-blogging platform Mastodon:
https://mastodon.social/invite/V83pXzAt
@openmastering@mastodon.social
It would be nice if some of us would contribute to change the social media world and bring good music to the alternatives.

It might also be a good and new way to spread your music to people who are (most of the time) aware of Linux, privacy, free software and the Commons.

For people not knowing what the fediverse is, here is a short explanation:

The fediverse is an ecosystem of decentralised social media softwares where everybody can host its own instance on its own server.
The instances are able to "talk to each other" so you can interact with users from other instances.

But different softwares can also interact with each other: it's possible to interact with a peertube (an alternative to YouTube) user with your Mastodon (a microblogging platform) account without having a peertube account.
That's where the magic operates. You don't need several accounts to interact with different communities.

Here a link to some fediverse softwares.
https://fediverse.party/

For us musicians and sound dwellers, funkwhale (think of grooveshark, a place to spread and discover music), and reel2bits, (close to SoundCloud) or peertube (to release your videos) might be of interest.
Feel free to ask whatever you want related to this topic.

Welcome!

I'm @raboof@quey.org on Mastodon, I can recommend it if you want to waste some time

We follow each other already
@rgh@mastodon.social

I don't use much, because don't have contacts there, but maybe it is now about to change? I am tavasti@venera.social

I'm trying to make the fediverse a good place for linux musicians. Providing arrangement and mixing tricks is one way for me to do it. Advocating FOSS is another. Interacting and helping the linuxaudio community is yet another way to strengthen ourselves.

From the presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57uhCQBEk0

Making a comparison with facebook saying that this centralized company controls the posts on its platform, and if post does not follow the rules then the account can be closed. OK, that's obvious. But then, not being devil's advocate, but what about this alternative ? Does it allow topics such as commercial non-open source software in music production ? Is there another set of rules ?

Also, is a 'member of the community' that runs a Mastodon instance has instantly everything that's needed, by being part of the community, to protect this node against hackers and prevent infection through the network ?

jonetsu wrote:what about this alternative ? Does it allow topics such as commercial non-open source software in music production ? Is there another set of rules ?

Every instance has its own moderation policies. When a moderator on instance A blocks a user that is on instance B, that user can still post on instance B, the posts just won't be visible via instance A. When instance B has a lot of users that post things that are against the policies on instance A, instance A might block instance B entirely.

jonetsu wrote:Also, is a 'member of the community' that runs a Mastodon instance has instantly everything that's needed, by being part of the community, to protect this node against hackers and prevent infection through the network ?

I think they're following an "open by default" approach: by default instances can talk to each other, but if an instance misbehaves, it will get blocked by other instances. I think the comparison with mailservers may help here: by default you can send mail from any domain to any other domain, but if a mailserver causes trouble it will eventually get blocked by the others.

Thanks. I was more thinking about firewall/IDS protection. The fediverse looks interesting.

And the name is also close-sounding to the French "faits divers" (miscellaneous facts) which is quite fitting.

jonetsu wrote:Thanks. I was more thinking about firewall/IDS protection.

Each instance runs on its own infrastructure, and they only communicate through an API, no 'direct access'. I don't think there is any 'special trust' needed between instance nodes. Not sure if I understood you right?

jonetsu wrote:The fediverse looks interesting.

And the name is also close-sounding to the French "faits divers" (miscellaneous facts) which is quite fitting.

Nice!

The question of trust is essential.
And if you don't trust your instance administrator, you can still roll your own instance and be part of the whole thing.

Being able to pack your data and move to another instance is also cool.

Another point is that you have 3 streams of information.
The people you follow, your instance stream and the complete stream. If you're inline with an instance for musicians, you'll see quite some musicians post, without having to follow them all.

raboof wrote:Each instance runs on its own infrastructure, and they only communicate through an API, no 'direct access'. I don't think there is any 'special trust' needed between instance nodes. Not sure if I understood you right?

All nodes are exposed to the internet. As with any other exposed application there can be ways to hack them through their needed open ports. The goal might not be to 'behave badly' or to disrupt the network. It might be just to collect information and to modify server software to do so. The possibilities are numerous. That's what I meant by firewall and IDS, and having the proper protection.

jonetsu wrote:All nodes are exposed to the internet. As with any other exposed application there can be ways to hack them through their needed open ports. The goal might not be to 'behave badly' or to disrupt the network. It might be just to collect information and to modify server software to do so. The possibilities are numerous. That's what I meant by firewall and IDS, and having the proper protection.

Sure, that's true for any online service. The main difference is with the 'megacorp' services is there you're sure you're being watched

Yes, the latest being FB recording geographical location of users even if users have disabled that option. But still, the concern is more about people who are running fediverse nodes : are they protecting their nodes ? For people who'd like to run nodes, is there an information 'package' about which distro and version, which firewall settings and possibly the use of a compatible IDS ? Or is it more or less left to individuals?