Newsmast’s updated Mastodon mobile app integrates content from two servers into one interface, a new approach to decentralized social media. Mastodon, the open-source Twitter/X alternative, doesn’t usually do this. Mastodon users may connect with, follow, and join topic-based timelines, called communities, to better understand information on the dispersed social web.
How to filter and provide information to members is a challenge for decentralized social networking communities, which Newsmast’s software addresses.
This problem is being considered by others. Flipboard, for instance, offers “desks” with human-curated feeds in science, tech, culture, and news. Newsmast also draws from Mastodon and the Mozilla-backed company Mammoth for Communities. Smart Lists on Mammoth organize news sources and subjects into easy-to-follow lists.
Like these, Newsmast curates “communities”—topical feeds maintained on newsmast.social. Newsmast’s app lets users follow communities in government and politics, business and work, science, technology, culture, sports, lifestyle, and more. The technology category covers AI, engineering, programming, and a larger technology community.
Newsmast also promises to let users establish their own Mastodon server with selected communities. In the Newsmast app, users may connect to that server instead. Someone might create an art or AI server with specific communities that people could follow and interact with.
This “plug-in” server adds material to Newsmast under “My Communities.” Or scroll over to interact with one community’s content.
Community material may be liked, promoted, commented on, bookmarked, followed, and added to lists like other posts.
Follow Newsmast’s Community Feeds instead of using the Newsmast app if you prefer your existing Mastodon app, such as Mammoth or Ivory. Newsmast will offer its API to developers later this week, allowing your choice of Mastodon app to link with Newsmast Communities for a more seamless experience.
Decentralized social media might operate differently with this plug-in server design.
Mastodon users join an instance (a server, like mastodon.social) and browse their local server’s timeline and a federated timeline, which contains all public postings from recognized users. Compared to Twitter/X, which centralizes all network material, this method may be limited. Server owners may prohibit obscene material, spam, and smaller, unmanaged servers on Mastodon. Server owners have considered disabling Instagram threads when they become federated.
Users on bigger servers sometimes have difficult-to-follow federated timelines with a range of information and subjects in many languages. Because of this, perusing this firehose of information to locate interesting subjects and individuals is sometimes pointless.
Newsmast’s plug-in server with its curated communities filters out NSFW material, but others could construct servers that don’t, filter out bots, filter just for bots (!!), filter only for photos, or filter nothing to everything.
“The community timelines bring a wealth of curated content, so people can explore new topics, make connections, and join the conversation,” Newsmast co-founder Michael Foster told Eltrys. “And the plug-in architecture could support all kinds of Fediverse server specialists in the future.”
Newsmast users’ posts or contributions fill the company’s communities. These communities include followers, filters, and mutes, unlike hashtags. Some Mastodon users didn’t understand why Newsmast’s accounts followed and boosted their material.
The U.K.-based Newsmast Foundation supports Newsmast’s app and works to reinvent social media. A charity, ad-free Twitter-like site will be built to compete with Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. Despite soft-launching last summer, the app didn’t properly federate with Mastodon for months.
The Communities are accessible in the Newsmast iOS and Android apps now and will soon be available on desktop and as a Progressive Web App.
Mastodon, the open-source Twitter/X alternative, doesn’t usually do this. Mastodon users may connect with, follow, and join topic-based timelines, called communities, to better understand information on the dispersed social web.
How to filter and provide information to members is a challenge for decentralized social networking communities, which Newsmast’s software addresses.
This problem is being considered by others. Flipboard, for instance, offers “desks” with human-curated feeds in science, tech, culture, and news. Newsmast also draws from Mastodon and the Mozilla-backed company Mammoth for Communities. Smart Lists on Mammoth organize news sources and subjects into easy-to-follow lists.
Like these, Newsmast curates “communities”—topical feeds maintained on newsmast.social. Newsmast’s app lets users follow communities in government and politics, business and work, science, technology, culture, sports, lifestyle, and more. The technology category covers AI, engineering, programming, and a larger technology community.
Newsmast also promises to let users establish their own Mastodon server with selected communities. In the Newsmast app, users may connect to that server instead. Someone might create an art or AI server with specific communities that people could follow and interact with.
This “plug-in” server adds material to Newsmast under “My Communities.” Or scroll over to interact with one community’s content.
Community material may be liked, promoted, commented on, bookmarked, followed, and added to lists like other posts.
Follow Newsmast’s Community Feeds instead of using the Newsmast app if you prefer your existing Mastodon app, such as Mammoth or Ivory. Newsmast will offer its API to developers later this week, allowing your choice of Mastodon app to link with Newsmast Communities for a more seamless experience.
Decentralized social media might operate differently with this plug-in server design.
Mastodon users join an instance (a server, like mastodon.social) and browse their local server’s timeline and a federated timeline, which contains all public postings from recognized users. Compared to Twitter/X, which centralizes all network material, this method may be limited. Server owners may prohibit obscene material, spam, and smaller, unmanaged servers on Mastodon. Server owners have considered disabling Instagram threads when they become federated.
Users on bigger servers sometimes have difficult-to-follow federated timelines with a range of information and subjects in many languages. Because of this, perusing this firehose of information to locate interesting subjects and individuals is sometimes pointless.
Newsmast’s plug-in server with its curated communities filters out NSFW material, but others could construct servers that don’t, filter out bots, filter just for bots (!!), filter only for photos, or filter nothing to everything.
“The community timelines bring a wealth of curated content, so people can explore new topics, make connections, and join the conversation,” Newsmast co-founder Michael Foster told Eltrys. “And the plug-in architecture could support all kinds of Fediverse server specialists in the future.”
Newsmast users’ posts or contributions fill the company’s communities. These communities include followers, filters, and mutes, unlike hashtags. Some Mastodon users didn’t understand why Newsmast’s accounts followed and boosted their material.
The U.K.-based Newsmast Foundation supports Newsmast’s app and works to reinvent social media. A charity, ad-free Twitter-like site will be built to compete with Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. Despite soft-launching last summer, the app didn’t properly federate with Mastodon for months.
The Communities are accessible in the Newsmast iOS and Android apps now and will soon be available on desktop and as a Progressive Web App.
