æʃliŋ, ring racers purropawgandist @aescling@cat.family

today i learned how to get the mastodon API to always report a particular tag is trending

@Lady what exactly do you mean by the first point? (and what would that look like here lol)

something something 20% cooler

it does!

thank gods for rails console --sandbox

sorry, "cats". lol.

Tag.search_for(cats, 1, 0, {})[0].id ought to work, yeah?

ok how do i just.... get hashtag id by tag name..........

nyffe

knifey

@Lady no need to want

@lesbianBot nice

@manifold also big big agree

@manifold ;3

i thought i wanted to write a blog post but i think really the core ideas i’m trying to get at is that

• there is a heavy conflict between mastodon development & many (often either potential or now ex-)users, and most of the current userbase, over whether the goal of mastodon is to create a One Big Fediverse; and
• mastodon development is only finally conceding to those who want community features by allowing it in a way that does everything it can to make instances indistinguishable, in service of the One Big Fediverse-
• i think trying to create the One Big Fediverse, even if it was possible to achieve in the past, is long past possible to achieve, as the software necessarily requires the fediverse to be developed by people who are, socially, entirely uncooordinated; at a technical level the fediverse has always been, and will continue to be, encouraging fragmentation
• fragmentation is not inherently a design flaw! we of course need to be conscious of the trade-offs (which the constant complaints of non-users have long made obvious), but of course all design is about navigating contradictions these trade-offs; imo the best future for the mastodon-compatible fediverse would involve doubling down on everything that is interesting about fragmented and non-identical instances that are technologically capable of enabling communiciation across those instances

@Lady @Satsuma it’s really something!

@Lady @Satsuma anyway if you have to have multiple independent instances run in a necessarily socially uncoordinated fashion then the best way to go about things is almost certainly to double down on all the interesting possibilites that entails. you have to deal with the fact that it simply cannot sustain a One Big Fediverse anyway

@Lady @Satsuma though mastodon the project sure does want people to look at the software in the One Big Fediverse kind of way

@Lady @Satsuma i was going to say thst some people join for the One Big Fediverse and regard it as a serious design flaw that it does not work like that in practice, but then again, i have literally only seen that opinion held by people who do not use mastodon anyway. selection bias i guess

@Lady @Satsuma nobody here wants what exactly?