Mastodon – Simplified Federation(addons.mozilla.org)
addons.mozilla.org
Mastodon – Simplified Federation
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mastodon-simplified-federation/
28 comments
Yeah, it's wild to me that no major browser vendor has moved to expand the permissions system to addons.
We already have the system in place for things like Camera, Mic, and Location access. Why not extend that to anything an addon can do?
We already have the system in place for things like Camera, Mic, and Location access. Why not extend that to anything an addon can do?
I've made a bookmarklet to toggle between the website for the instance you use and the one the post/user used:
https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html
It's maybe easier to just use a separate app though, and avoid the faff of separate webpages entirely.
https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html
It's maybe easier to just use a separate app though, and avoid the faff of separate webpages entirely.
I thought plug-ins can be scoped to only work on a single domain or only work when you click them.
It’s how I run grammerly, which is a descent enough grammar checker except I never want it to correct my chat posts, or GitHub comments.
It’s how I run grammerly, which is a descent enough grammar checker except I never want it to correct my chat posts, or GitHub comments.
I have never heard about such a restriction for plugins.
And on the plugin page for Grammarly, it says it gets "Access your data for all websites":
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/
And on the plugin page for Grammarly, it says it gets "Access your data for all websites":
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/
You've never seen the popups? If a WebExtension doesn't request access to all sites, it can only access sites that it's activated on by pressing the toolbar button (MDN refers to them as action buttons if you want to take a look). The problem is that most extensions that aren't site-specific are useful because they have access to all sites, but that doesn't mean that's a requirement of the system.
Ok. Then it's probably that every time I looked at an extension it wanted access to any site.
You can turn it off for specific sites (via Grammarly settings) OR you can turn it on only for specific sites (via browser settings). The process is different depending on whether you are using a browser extension or desktop integration. Here is an example for the browser extension: https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000091612...
Heads up about Grammarly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470457
It seems like the bulk of it is only a few lines going by the GitHub. I don't know enough to know how to do it, but if you do, you might offer a bookmarklet version for privacy-conscious people as a pull request.
https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation
https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation
Phew, there are so many files and lines in that repo.
As far as I understand it, all that has to be done is something like:
As far as I understand it, all that has to be done is something like:
document.body.innerHTML.replace(/<some_regex>/,'<some_string>')
@[email protected]
<a href=https://yourinstance/web/@[email protected]>@[email protected]</a>Is it possible for a bookmarklet to be able to find RSS autodiscovery[1] links? I've thought about building something like that but I've always been turned off by the "allow reading everything" permission.
[1]: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
[1]: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
I'm curious to see what the adoption of BlueSky will be if ever available
https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog
I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't.
No need for censorship or filtering because you simply don't follow people you find offensive?
No need for ads because it's your own app/data.
The problem is there needs to be an edge cache of each post and storage/bandwidth isn't "free" (just cheap these days).
The app/data is either entirely on your phone or browser.
I guess the thing about twitter/facebook is people want "discovery" and to profit off it by self-promotion. So it's like those drones in the sky no-one asked for, it's someone being obnoxious for attention and profit.
Just like usenet had its first spam sooner or later.
https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog
I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't.
No need for censorship or filtering because you simply don't follow people you find offensive?
No need for ads because it's your own app/data.
The problem is there needs to be an edge cache of each post and storage/bandwidth isn't "free" (just cheap these days).
The app/data is either entirely on your phone or browser.
I guess the thing about twitter/facebook is people want "discovery" and to profit off it by self-promotion. So it's like those drones in the sky no-one asked for, it's someone being obnoxious for attention and profit.
Just like usenet had its first spam sooner or later.
> I don't understand why it's so hard for everyone to just have their own blog that is twitter-sized posts and you follow the people you want or don't.
comments. either you destroy UX, or you suffer intolerable levels of spam, or you roll your own pseudo captcha (“please enter the name of the original grass-type starter pokemon to comment”) that only works as long as your blog stays small and niche. and whatever you choose brings a bunch more hosting complexity compared to the low-barrier-to-entry static site generators so popular today.
comments. either you destroy UX, or you suffer intolerable levels of spam, or you roll your own pseudo captcha (“please enter the name of the original grass-type starter pokemon to comment”) that only works as long as your blog stays small and niche. and whatever you choose brings a bunch more hosting complexity compared to the low-barrier-to-entry static site generators so popular today.
Ah but that's because all models are "opt out" where you block someone afterwards.
Instead make it "opt in"
The same way people browse posts to respond to, people can browse people to allow comments.
Friend requests and all that.
In the current world, especially post-2016, there is a greater than 50% chance any person (or bot) openly allowed to comment without approval is going to offend.
Unless you are in a closed community, in which case all the twitter models are unnecessary anyway.
Instead make it "opt in"
The same way people browse posts to respond to, people can browse people to allow comments.
Friend requests and all that.
In the current world, especially post-2016, there is a greater than 50% chance any person (or bot) openly allowed to comment without approval is going to offend.
Unless you are in a closed community, in which case all the twitter models are unnecessary anyway.
Opt-in is key, thats how I made spam a non-issue on Haven[1]. And really it isnt anything super creative, anyone using an RSS reader for primary consumption gets the same benefits.
[1] https://havenweb.org
[1] https://havenweb.org
if i understand right, each reader has to create one account per blog they wish to comment on?
if so that’s the UX element i was talking about. i follow like 200 people: i’m not gonna create 200 accounts for that.
(i don’t mean to degrade your work: it’s always cool to see what people build when solving a problem they’re passionate about.)
if so that’s the UX element i was talking about. i follow like 200 people: i’m not gonna create 200 accounts for that.
(i don’t mean to degrade your work: it’s always cool to see what people build when solving a problem they’re passionate about.)
I need a better word that Blog for Haven (feel free to make suggestions!) because 'Blog' comes with all the connotations of public posting--but everything on Haven is private. So it's worse than creating an account, you need to have the owner of that Have create an account for you; there is no self-signup.
Account management is admittedly one of the weak parts of Haven's UX right now, but everything needs to be source-initiated or else spam is an even bigger issue. (That was my previous experience trying to do this on Wordpress). I've got ambitions of adopting IndieAuth and building Haven as an IndieAuth identity (IndieAuth is like Oauth, but you sign is as your domain instead of a user @ google/facebook/github/whatever). This would let account creation be more of a whitelisting process--just paste the names of the people (people identified as domains) to which you want to grant access, and authentication is handled by their own domains.
Account management is admittedly one of the weak parts of Haven's UX right now, but everything needs to be source-initiated or else spam is an even bigger issue. (That was my previous experience trying to do this on Wordpress). I've got ambitions of adopting IndieAuth and building Haven as an IndieAuth identity (IndieAuth is like Oauth, but you sign is as your domain instead of a user @ google/facebook/github/whatever). This would let account creation be more of a whitelisting process--just paste the names of the people (people identified as domains) to which you want to grant access, and authentication is handled by their own domains.
You can also paste the URL of any profile or post into the search bar to interact with it. Good way to see if a blog is ActivityPub-enabled.
Someone should make a “is Mastodon Twitter yet” page. So many including me have tried and quit in frustration when the federation/server nonsense gets in the way of actually emulating a centralized Twitter clone.
I am curious what Twitter features you are missing in Mastodon? The only thing I can think of that I feel like many people expect is some kind if "curated" recommendations system (e.g. I only want to see content that is relevant to me). This, of course, is a double-edged sword at best (who gets to decide what content is recommended? What are their goals/motivations?). Personally, I have not had any issues finding interesting folks to follow on Mastodon. Even though I started years ago on a completely fresh instance, I found some lists of recommended follows and started by following the ones who seemed interesting. The networking effect took it from there since following/interacting with those initial accounts surfaced more similar accounts to my server which I also chose to follow. Now my feed is full of cool stuff from the hundreds of accounts that I follow. Looking at the federated feed gives me an even more broad look at lots of things happening the the general fedi!
I really want to like Mastodon but there are two things that really bug me about it. First, searching for anything is very slow. Second, searching for people who are not on the same instance with me seems to return a lot of false negatives.
The first may be a Ruby on Rails problem (although I am not sure), possibly exacerbated by the decentralized layout of Mastodon instances. The second seems to be a fundamental design problem.
It seems to me that the original idea of Mastodon was that people would want to participate in communities that focus on specific themes. Many instances are aiming to serve people who are interested in one particular thing. Because of this, finding people and posts on other instances is harder. But reducing my interests to a single dimension is not how I used to use Twitter, so this is a major usability problem for me.
The first may be a Ruby on Rails problem (although I am not sure), possibly exacerbated by the decentralized layout of Mastodon instances. The second seems to be a fundamental design problem.
It seems to me that the original idea of Mastodon was that people would want to participate in communities that focus on specific themes. Many instances are aiming to serve people who are interested in one particular thing. Because of this, finding people and posts on other instances is harder. But reducing my interests to a single dimension is not how I used to use Twitter, so this is a major usability problem for me.
Exactly this. Mastodon seems to still focus on the community aspect of federation, yet few people want to have one or a few interests/groups. Decentralization is a great idea for operating, but I’ll never see the point of a “node” where I have more interest in interacting with those on the node than with others.
I’m only missing the simple/centralized everything.
I’m not interested in any kind of community/network/discovery effect. I know which people I want to follow so I just want to find them, be fairly sure it’s really them, and then only read their tweets and retweets.
I’m not interested in any kind of community/network/discovery effect. I know which people I want to follow so I just want to find them, be fairly sure it’s really them, and then only read their tweets and retweets.
If you want the convenience of a centralized service run by a single party you have to deal with the consequences.
In other words, just stay on Twitter! Why’d you move to mastodon to begin with?
In other words, just stay on Twitter! Why’d you move to mastodon to begin with?
I worry Twitter won’t be around forever. And a lot of the people I follow on Twitter moved to mastodon already.
A plugin can read everything on every website you use. Your bank statements, your emails, which videos you watch on youtube, to whom you talk on Twitter and what you write with them, what you search on Google ... everything.
A bookmarklet can only read what is on the page on which you invoke it.