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   Björn Brembs (brembs@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Oct-2025 21:16:57 JST Björn Brembs

   • Eugen Rochko

   TIL: apparently one of the main technical hurdles for universities to run their own #Mastodon instances is to make the instance work with the institution's SSO (most often Shibboleth). It seems there would be a huge opportunity to facilitate the entrance of such major multiplicators into the Fediverse. cc. @Gargron

   #academicchatter

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Oct-2025 21:16:56 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @brembs @Gargron Do we actually want Unis running Mastodon servers? Maybe for official role accounts, but having students/faculty/employees using an institutionally owned identity is just a horrible antipattern I've written about extensively before. Mastodon already has a right way to do this: put your account on an independent instance you trust and verify your institutional affiliation with rel=me.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Oct-2025 21:20:42 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko
     • Rich Felker
     @dalias @brembs @Gargron Yeah, quite more glad to be seeing students/teachers/… associations and some worker unions hosting the instances for that kind of case.
     
     Official accounts on the other hand can make sense for the university to host.
   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Oct-2025 21:22:25 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @brembs @Gargron Why is this a horrible antipattern? If you're expelled or fired unjustly, is the institution going to let you keep or transfer your account to communicate with your existing followers why that act was unjust?

     Nope. They hold all the power.

     Your account should never be held by a party with this kind of power relationship dynamic.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Oct-2025 21:30:16 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Eugen Rochko

     @lanodan @Gargron @brembs Right, but official accounts don't need SSO integration with institutional identities which was the original topic. They're role-based.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 09-Oct-2025 02:37:50 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Eugen Rochko

     @brembs @lanodan @Gargron Institutional is important, but personal or individually professional accounts never belong on institutional servers under institutional control.

     We don't need a growth hack that sends us backwards on autonomy & ability to exercise free speech.

   • Embed this notice
     Björn Brembs (brembs@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 09-Oct-2025 02:37:51 JST Björn Brembs

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Eugen Rochko
     • Rich Felker

     @lanodan @dalias @Gargron

     If I look around here and see how many students even know what Mastodon or the Fediverse is, this sure looks like a very promising strategy. 😇

     Maybe almost as successful as the old strategy decades ago, to ask the professors if they wanted to become accessible to their students 24/7 with this newfangled tech called "email"? 🤣

     Personally, I find institutional Masto servers as crucial for the future as email and web servers were for the internet.

   • Embed this notice
     Björn Brembs (brembs@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 09-Oct-2025 02:53:09 JST Björn Brembs

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Eugen Rochko
     • Rich Felker

     @dalias @lanodan @Gargron

     Interesting take. Do you use, e.g., your work email at all?

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 09-Oct-2025 02:53:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Eugen Rochko

     @brembs @lanodan @Gargron Not as a way of having an audience to my professional activities. A work email is purely for the purpose of communication one is being paid to do as part of one's job.

     One's own professional/scholarly development should be kept separate from the authority of the institution one is working for/under.