Notices by iona 🐝 (iona@social.coop), page 53

@gc But if you own the hardware and put it in someone else's datacentre, it also doesn't count.

So you buy a server and put it in the spare room at home. You're still buying transit from your domestic ISP.

The only safe solution is to put your stuff on an external hard drive and lock it in a drawer, then you're in control.

How come some people are able to write essays in toots when we have a limit of 500 characters?

@dajbelshaw You could probably reduce that toot to just the final four words and still be right

@bobstechsite That's a bit of a soft idea. I want my toots to go out to a reasonably sized audience because most of the interactions I have are positive.

But there are issues with certain instances which have a population of trolls who just want to hurl abuse.

I don't want to have to silence myself and broadcast only to a small trusted audience to placate a few trolls who are piling on. F**k off the trolls rather than silencing reasonable folk. :)

Someone told me about an alternative to Google Fonts the other week but it's a long way down my mentions now and I can't find it again.

Can anyone help? I'm working on my website today and I'd like to dump the last bit of Google it has, which is the fonts. ( @aral perhaps?)

@kensanata @superruserr The Good Place would like a word :)

@kensanata This is a good point - you pay X per month for a VPS to self-host stuff and that's fine when you're around and solvent to pay that.

But what if you disappear, or your financial situation changes to the point where you can no longer afford a VPS? It all goes down.

@Graham_Mitchell I just tried it on my own instance (reported a news post by one of my own bots!) and it comes up in the admin interface. https://social.coop/media/_RjDgmepaisSDaFmw1c

@clayton @Matt_Noyes I don't even look at the federated timeline. Much of it is in languages that I don't speak, and there are instances hosting eg. types of pornography that are illegal to possess where I live.

A lot of the issues seem to come from instances promising "free speech" - it seems to be code for "be as racist etc as you want".

@woozle It doesn't seem right that random mentions from people you don't know on dreadful racist Pleroma instances come into your mentions at the same 'volume level' as direct messages from actual friends.

@woozle There has to be some kind of technical solution, perhaps based on 'distance' on the network from your instance to the source instance of the post you're receiving.

For example, social.coop is likely to have very few connections with terribleracistinstance.com so posts from that instance will be 'quieter' than posts from say, toot.cat which is more connected with social.coop. You can choose not to receive posts from instances 'a long way' from yours.

Does that make any sense at all?

@vfrmedia @Damage North lower cost of living and lower cost business premises, more viable to run a specialist business that doesn't do huge volumes.

@vfrmedia @Damage We are lucky to have both an RS and an excellent one-man specialist electronics/maker shop within a very short drive.

@woozle I don't want to post stuff unlisted or followers-only etc, because I think it's important to have open conversation and most of the interactions that come from posts I make are positive.

But there are next to no tools available to protect users from the "ha ha fuck you snowflake n****r etc etc" type drive-by abuse that pops up in mentions more and more often.

It is starting to feel polarised, like two parallel networks that occasionally intersect with negative results.

@Damage Ever since I started my business I've made a point of supporting local suppliers when I can - using a local packaging supplier, getting business cards done locally instead of on Vistaprint, etc.

But so many local businesses are 'meh' in terms of customer service, and so many online businesses are running rings around them. Makes me wonder why I bother.

It kind of feels like as this platform grows, it loses something. It is starting to become a bit like Twitter, where you post and then get direct abuse flung at you from some distant part of the network.

There is some deeply disturbing stuff out there, and some strange folk. Couldn't #socialcoop be a little more proactive in protecting us from such things?

I know I will get dog's abuse just for writing this - which is a big part of the problem. It's going to shut people up.

@Damage He's cheap, but he can't be arsed - I've got a pile of unused mailing bags he sold me that were the wrong size gathering dust in the cupboard. And they're nasty quality too.

I will take a look around for a new online supplier, I think. :)

@Damage This bloke doesn't do any printing, he just sells office supplies

@Damage It's probably a side effect of spending too much time in a small room with lots of printer toner.

@Damage My current supplier is a mard arse, I went in his shop today to pick up some packaging materials and he was really narky, he literally walked out of the room as I was talking.

So a new supplier is called for!