Is there a mastodon server that doesn't require email for signup? Throw away providers did not work for me, free email providers require a phone number. It's like signal, the benefits are contrasted against metadata exposure.
I'm not aware of one. Unfortunately any server not requiring e-mail confirmation for sign-up would be overrun by spammers (we don't want to add CAPTCHAs because 1) they are unpleasant for real humans and 2) they require loading external resources which is minus points for the user's privacy).
You are lying. I have ran many Pleroma servers that do not require email to sign up, and have used Pleroma servers that do not require email to signup. None of them are overran by spammers.
You have forgotten your origins, James, and it bums me out. Email sucks. Requiring email to join a site sucks. Let's cite a popular essay from our old community:
* Registration keeps out good posters. Imagine someone with an involving job related to your forum comes across it. This person is an expert in her field, and therefore would be a great source of knowledge for your forum; but if a registration, complete with e-mail and password, is necessary before posting, she might just give up on posting and do something more important. People with lives will tend to ignore forums with a registration process.
* Registration lets in bad posters. On the other hand, people with no lives will thrive on your forum. Children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to go register an account and check their e-mail for the confirmation message. They will generally make your forum a waste of bandwidth.
* Registration attracts trolls. If someone is interested in destroying a forum, a registration process only adds to the excitement of a challenge. One might argue that a lack of registration will just let "anyone" post, but in reality anyone can post on old-type forum software; registration is merely a useless hassle.
I prefer captchas or even arbitrary btc donations. Matrix.org Riot does this just fine. Since it is just for registration, it's easy for me to register in a privacy preserving conditon (vpn, private mode,noscript,etc...)
I used Tutanota just a few weeks ago for this and they didn't require a phone number. I also found that trying a few providers, sooner or later a throwaway address would work.
But I also think asking for at least an email is not that unreasonable. Sure, I value my privacy, but I also value a good community and keeping the worst spammers out often helps. Talking smaller instances here, obviously, but I think that's where the value is with something like mastodon. Tight knit communities with the option to reach out to others.
Perhaps they do that when I used a VPN. You can police your community without spying on them or collecting sensitive information. Reddit and HN did it since the start!
This seems a bit harsh to me in response to asking for a valid email address for proof of realness and to be contacted when necessary. Reddit surely requires one. Can't remember if hn did, but don't know how they keep out spam.
I also like the idea of using BTC you mentioned in another post to state good intentions, but acquiring BTC to use in the first place seems like much more hassle, registrations and sharing of data is required.
Reddit did not mandate email as of about a year or so ago. I only use HN because no email (well I might have signed up with email anyways but I certainly never provided one). Look at all the dead posts under new on HN, they get spam and do a good job of managing it.
You can get btc with cash, if you already have it,it's a nice option.
"If it can be abused,it will be abused".
Captchas and small btc payments can't easily be abused against the user but email and phone number can. Email and phone number are also not costly to an attacker to spoof or churn out at a high rate. Captchas and small payments have accumulating prohibitive cost for an attacker.
IfI create a gmail just to sign up,it certainly is much more of a hassle. Even temporary inbox services are a hassle these days compared to a 20sec captcha.
HN must do more to block spam than to filter it out by hand. The dead links are far from the kind and number of automated spam you see elsewhere.
That Email is a hassle but not a big one is exactly the point why sites ask for one.
And Captcha? You talked about spying before and this is exactly what captcha does these days. Its massively invasive, plus it was always annoying and never really worked well for its intended purpose.
I have to say, it seems a bit like your argument is stuck a few decades ago. While I quite like the thought experiment of how the internet could work with essentially anonymous and frictionless participation, I don't think it ever has or at least not for decades. And examples like hn and reddit are interesting, but every other blogs open comments section show that this working is rather the exception than the norm.
I consider myself privacy conscious, and from the options captcha, email and BTC, email for me strikes the right balance of ease of use, anonymity and effectiveness. More options would always be welcome though. Conecpts like Indieauth for example, look promising, but let's not kid ourselves, privacy wise, they require more of me than providing a fake address to get an email. And just like the BTC solution, it would probably keep many more people out if it were the only option.
I run the server busshi.moe, if you sign up there I can manually confirm your account if you use a fake email. Mastodon has no option to disable requiring an email, but Pleroma does.
I just wanna note that there is a strong comorbidity between "being a Pleroma" and "being blocked by a lot of Masto instances because you're run by someone with an anime girl icon who thinks the whole internet should be an acceptable place to behave like a denizen of the bowels of 4chan".
Is being an anime fan a bad thing now? Or do you feel that putting a political label on someone just because they find a specific piece of software comfortable for them is a nice thing to do?
Anyway, in the same spirit one could say that "there is a strong comorbidity between being a harasser who jumps on random threads just to insult people as well as subscribing to racist and authoritarian idelologies and using mastodon" which (while true in my personal experience) would be unfair to the nice people that use mastodon and possibly cause these that read it to be prejudiced against mastodon users due to their software of choice.
“Wanting the Internet to be 4chan forever” is a political label? Watching anime is fine by me, I’ve enjoyed the hell out of a lot of the stuff in my time.
I run a Masto instance and I am just speaking from my experience in what shows up in the tags where us admins share block recommendations; there are bad actors using Masto too! I defederated from a Masto instance just this morning after seeing its admin aggressively escalate a conflict with well-practiced speed. One of those pops up about every six months. Pleromae where the admin encourages escalating conflicts and wears an anime girl icon are a constant feature of the block suggestion tags.
> in what shows up in the tags where us admins share block recommendations
Things like #fediblock you mean? Most of the block suggestions there are
- against instances because they federate (as in, they let their users view and reply to posts) with certain other instances (gab, kiwifarms, etc) even if indirectly <https://tabletop.social/@host/103308182908324413>
- against instances that host anyone who kyzh doesn't like
Seeing an instance on a block tag does not mean anything other than that certain extremist elements are finding said instance to not strictly follow their party line at the first glance.
> Watching anime is fine by me, I’ve enjoyed the hell out of a lot of the stuff in my time.
What was your intention by focusing at the anime avatars then? To promote prejudice? To focus on the fact that they are introverts? To make fun of them for being unmanly and having cute avatars? There seems to be a lot of bullying directed at people just because of their avatars.
As I said before my experience is exactly the opposite. I started making all of my statuses private because I was getting stressed every time that someone from mastodon reposted or replied to my status. There seems to be an endless supply of mastodon users willing to jump on random threads just to insult, harass, and shit-talk people behind their backs.
If you are that rare shining example of someone with a cute anime girl icon who does not regularly engage in '''ironic''' assholery straight from the bowels of 4chan and vehemently argues that their right to free speech is being impinged any time someone tells them to fuck off because they are being a jerk, then I have nothing but the best wishes for you and your friends of a similar bent. You are a lonely flame in the darkness and I wish there were far more of you, whatever your actual and/or desired gender in the fleshy world is.
I just think the fact that this association exists is fucking hilarious, it's a detail that nobody even began to get anywhere near imagining in all the sci-fi I read growing up.
Nope! And a look through the local timeline, as well as the one public admin account, doesn’t show anything I’d block, either. I think this may be the first time I’ve looked at a Pleroma run by moe girls and not been smacked in the face by hate propaganda or admins encouraging trolling behavior.
(I also don’t go looking at any fediverse site besides my own unless I am investigating reports of bad behavior, tbh. So if there is a vast constellation of chill moe Pleromae I’m missing it. And quite possibly forming invalid stereotypes due to this bias in my sampling.)
Tried both. Proton let's you donate as an alternative, but only with a card. I haven't tried cash visa/mastercard giftcards with it.
It's a recent thing they're doing. I routinely create at least half a dozen free email addresses a year, phone number did not use to be an issue. They've locked down pretty tight.
