Interacting with the Mastodon API from R

using the R package rtoot

David Schoch

Introduction

about me

about today

What is Mastodon?
Research with data from Mastodon
The R package rtoot

What is Mastodon? 🦣

mastodon is (not) an open source twitter clone

Mastodon is a software to host microblogging social networking sites
tweets (280 char) → toots (500 char)
retweet → boost
like → favorite
quote tweet → 🚫

But
it’s not a single application!
it’s a distributed network of servers that interoperate
servers form a large decentralized federation
no ads, no insentives for “going viral”, no “algorithms”

centralized/federated/distributed

image from https://docs.joinmastodon.org/

centralized: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
federated: Email, phone networks, physical mail
distributed: BitTorrent

Why does decentralization matter?

reduced operating costs ⇒ no need for big monetization schemes
servers don’t need to grow beyond their financial capacity
more resilient to censorship (positive/negative)
more control over your own data

The Fediverse

The fediverse (“federated universe”) is the name for all websites that can communicate with each other over ActivityPub and the World Wide Web.

Mastodon: Fediverse alternative to Twitter
PeerTube: Fediverse alternative to YouTube
PixelFed: Fediverse alternative to Instagram
Lemmy: Fediverse alternative to Reddit
Friendica: Fediverse alternative to Facebook

But wait, there is more

Tumblr will join the Fediverse
BookWyrm (like goodreads)
FunkWhale (like soundcloud)

There is a Fediverse alternative for almost anything

History of Mastodon

Mastodon instances

A Mastodon instance is a server running Mastodon

anyone can start a Mastodon instance

“Fun Fact”
Gab and Truth Social are technically also Mastodon instances

Mastodon instances

Get all instances via instances.social

Code

library(rtoot)
tbl <- get_fedi_instances(token = Sys.getenv("RTOOT_INSTANCES_SOCIAL_TOKEN"), n = 0)
tbl

# A tibble: 16,400 × 23
   id     name  updat…¹ check…² uptime up    dead  version ipv6  https…³ https…⁴
   <chr>  <chr> <chr>   <chr>    <int> <lgl> <lgl> <chr>   <lgl>   <int> <chr>  
 1 59067… mast… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 4.0.2   FALSE       5 "F "   
 2 58f0c… pawo… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 3.3.3   FALSE       5 "F "   
 3 58edf… mstd… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 3.5.1   TRUE       10 "E "   
 4 58e38… mast… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 3.4.6   TRUE       10 "E "   
 5 5f283… mast… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 4.0.2   FALSE       5 "F "   
 6 59d93… coun… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 2.8.0   TRUE        5 "F "   
 7 637b3… mstd… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 4.0.2   TRUE        5 "F "   
 8 5c9d4… mas.… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 4.0.2   TRUE        5 "F "   
 9 604db… mast… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 TRUE  FALSE 4.0.2   TRUE        5 "F "   
10 637b3… gc2.… 2022-1… 2022-1…      1 FALSE FALSE 3.5.3   TRUE        5 "F "   
# … with 16,390 more rows, 12 more variables: obs_score <int>, obs_rank <chr>,
#   users <int>, statuses <int>, connections <chr>, open_registrations <lgl>,
#   thumbnail <chr>, thumbnail_proxy <chr>, active_users <int>, email <chr>,
#   admin <chr>, added_at <chr>, and abbreviated variable names ¹updated_at,
#   ²checked_at, ³https_score, ⁴https_rank

Mastodon Instances

Research with Mastodon Data

Twitter

Terms of Service

Every instance has its own Terms of Service

Who is on/coming to Mastodon?

Controversies (Part 1)

Open letter from the Mastodon Comunity

Controversies (Part 2)

Blog post

Recommendations

Check the ToS of all instances you gather data from
Discard data from instances that do not allow research
Don’t publish datasets as is (if even)
Don’t use third party APIs with the data
respect #nobot
understand community norms
To be sure, get ethical approval

The R package `rtoot`

Development

repository created: 2022-11-05 21:25:06 CET

submitted to CRAN: 2022-11-11 16:49:16 CET

Acknowledgment

Co-author
Chung-hong Chan (CSS department, team TSA)
many many lines of code and ALL unit tests

Contributor
Johannes Gruber (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
initial authentication code

Why `rtoot`?

a post on twitter: tweet

a post on Mastodon: toot (prior to 15 November 2022 😢)

R package for twitter: rtweet

R package for Mastodon: 🤔

Install

CRAN version (0.2.0)

install.packages("rtoot")

Dev version (0.2.0.9000)

devtools::install_github("schochastics/rtoot")

(Includes bugfixes and new minor functionality)

Authentication

API calls can be made anonymously, with a client, or user token.

auth_setup()

The function guides you through the process of authentication

By default, the token is stored in a directory R has determined to make sense for you and it is called “rtoot_token.rds”.
You do not need to worry about it if you are only using rtoot on your local machine and you are only using one token.

Consult the vignette for more advanced authentication options

vignette("auth",package = "rtoot")

Overview of functions

account information

All calls need a user id, which can only be obtained by searching
for the account

search_accounts("schochastics")

# A tibble: 1 × 21
  id        usern…¹ acct  displ…² locked bot   disco…³ group created_at         
  <chr>     <chr>   <chr> <chr>   <lgl>  <lgl> <lgl>   <lgl> <dttm>             
1 10930243… schoch… scho… David … FALSE  FALSE FALSE   FALSE 2022-11-07 00:00:00
# … with 12 more variables: note <chr>, url <chr>, avatar <chr>,
#   avatar_static <chr>, header <chr>, header_static <chr>,
#   followers_count <int>, following_count <int>, statuses_count <int>,
#   last_status_at <dttm>, fields <list>, emojis <I<list>>, and abbreviated
#   variable names ¹username, ²display_name, ³discoverable

id <- "109302436954721982"

account information

dplyr::glimpse(get_account(id))

Rows: 1
Columns: 21
$ id              <chr> "109302436954721982"
$ username        <chr> "schochastics"
$ acct            <chr> "schochastics"
$ display_name    <chr> "David Schoch"
$ locked          <lgl> FALSE
$ bot             <lgl> FALSE
$ discoverable    <lgl> FALSE
$ group           <lgl> FALSE
$ created_at      <dttm> 2022-11-07
$ note            <chr> "<p>Team lead for &quot;Transparent Social Analytics&q…
$ url             <chr> "https://fosstodon.org/@schochastics"
$ avatar          <chr> "https://cdn.fosstodon.org/accounts/avatars/109/302/43…
$ avatar_static   <chr> "https://cdn.fosstodon.org/accounts/avatars/109/302/43…
$ header          <chr> "https://cdn.fosstodon.org/accounts/headers/109/302/43…
$ header_static   <chr> "https://cdn.fosstodon.org/accounts/headers/109/302/43…
$ followers_count <int> 530
$ following_count <int> 102
$ statuses_count  <int> 52
$ last_status_at  <dttm> NA
$ fields          <list> [<tbl_df[3 x 3]>]
$ emojis          <I<list>>

account relations

id must be your own account

get_account_blocks()
get_account_mutes()
get_account_bookmarks()
get_account_favourites()
get_account_relationships(ids)

any account id

get_account_featured_tags(id)
get_account_statuses(id)
get_account_followers(id)
get_account_following(id)
get_account_lists(id)

Example

tags <- get_account_featured_tags(id)
glimpse(tags)

Rows: 1
Columns: 5
$ id             <chr> "6444"
$ name           <chr> "rstats"
$ url            <chr> "https://fosstodon.org/@schochastics/tagged/rstats"
$ statuses_count <chr> "21"
$ last_status_at <chr> "2022-12-14"

following <- get_account_following(id,limit = 5)
following

# A tibble: 5 × 21
  id        usern…¹ acct  displ…² locked bot   disco…³ group created_at         
  <chr>     <chr>   <chr> <chr>   <lgl>  <lgl> <lgl>   <lgl> <dttm>             
1 10942746… hadley… hadl… Hadley… FALSE  FALSE TRUE    FALSE 2022-11-29 00:00:00
2 10947327… German… Germ… German… FALSE  FALSE TRUE    FALSE 2022-12-07 00:00:00
3 10947158… vtraag  vtra… Vincen… FALSE  FALSE FALSE   FALSE 2022-12-07 00:00:00
4 10937243… yoyoel  yoyo… Yoel R… FALSE  FALSE TRUE    FALSE 2022-11-19 00:00:00
5 10943164… GESIS   GESI… GESIS   FALSE  FALSE TRUE    FALSE 2022-11-17 00:00:00
# … with 12 more variables: note <chr>, url <chr>, avatar <chr>,
#   avatar_static <chr>, header <chr>, header_static <chr>,
#   followers_count <int>, following_count <int>, statuses_count <int>,
#   last_status_at <dttm>, fields <I<list>>, emojis <I<list>>, and abbreviated
#   variable names ¹username, ²display_name, ³discoverable

Example

statuses <- get_account_statuses(id)
glimpse(statuses)

Rows: 20
Columns: 29
$ id                     <chr> "109511522860009258", "109499560815557081", "10…
$ uri                    <chr> "https://fosstodon.org/users/schochastics/statu…
$ created_at             <dttm> 2022-12-14 10:20:27, 2022-12-12 07:38:20, 2022…
$ content                <chr> "<p>Still cannot believe my approach worked<br …
$ visibility             <chr> "public", "public", "public", "public", "public…
$ sensitive              <lgl> TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE…
$ spoiler_text           <chr> "Day 14 - Advent of Code 2022", "Day 12 - Adven…
$ reblogs_count          <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 5, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 16, 0…
$ favourites_count       <int> 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 6, 4, 3, 2, 0, 5, 5, 2, 8, 29, 1…
$ replies_count          <int> 1, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1,…
$ url                    <chr> "https://fosstodon.org/@schochastics/1095115228…
$ in_reply_to_id         <chr> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, "1094570466…
$ in_reply_to_account_id <chr> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, "1093370445…
$ language               <chr> "en", "en", "en", "en", "en", "en", "en", "en",…
$ text                   <lgl> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA,…
$ application            <I<list>> , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 
$ poll                   <I<list>> , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 
$ card                   <I<list>>             , https://....,             ,  …
$ account                <list> [<tbl_df[1 x 21]>], [<tbl_df[1 x 21]>], [<t…
$ reblog                 <I<list>> , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 
$ media_attachments      <I<list>> c("10951...., c("10949...., c("10949...., c…
$ mentions               <I<list>>             ,             ,             ,     …
$ tags                   <I<list>> c("rstat...., c("rstat...., c("rstat...., c…
$ emojis                 <I<list>> , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 
$ favourited             <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, F…
$ reblogged              <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, F…
$ muted                  <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, F…
$ bookmarked             <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, F…
$ pinned                 <lgl> FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE…

Parsing content

content is given in html format

statuses$content[2]

[1] "<p>I m always happy when I can solve one of these with a graph. This time, the solution was distances on a lattice graph.</p><p>code: <a href=\"https://github.com/schochastics/adventofcode/blob/main/2022/day12.R\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"><span class=\"invisible\">https://</span><span class=\"ellipsis\">github.com/schochastics/advent</span><span class=\"invisible\">ofcode/blob/main/2022/day12.R</span></a><br /><a href=\"https://fosstodon.org/tags/Rstats\" class=\"mention hashtag\" rel=\"tag\">#<span>Rstats</span></a> <a href=\"https://fosstodon.org/tags/AdventOfCode\" class=\"mention hashtag\" rel=\"tag\">#<span>AdventOfCode</span></a></p>"

Parsing content

rvest::html_text2(rvest::read_html(statuses$content[2]))

[1] "I m always happy when I can solve one of these with a graph. This time, the solution was distances on a lattice graph.\n\ncode: https://github.com/schochastics/adventofcode/blob/main/2022/day12.R\n#Rstats #AdventOfCode"

parse all content at once

purrr::map_chr(statuses$content, ~ rvest::html_text2(rvest::read_html(.)))

understanding timelines

home timeline: all statuses of accounts you follow

local timeline: all statuses of an instance

list timeline: all statuses of a list of accounts

hashtag timeline: all statuses including a specific hashtag

public statuses: all statuses of accesible Mastodon servers

Examples

local timeline

get_timeline_public(instance = "mastodon.social",local = TRUE,limit = 5)

public hashtag timeline

get_timeline_hashtag("rstats",limit = 5)

local hashtag timeline

get_timeline_hashtag("rstats",instance = "fosstodon.org",local = TRUE,limit = 5)

public timeline

get_timeline_public(limit = 5)

Special parameters

get statuses older than…

cannot specify a date/time
need a hidden id as starting point

example <- get_timeline_public(limit = 5)
maxid <- attr(example,"headers")$max_id
get_timeline_public(limit = 5,max_id = maxid)

get statuses younger than…
same as above but with since_id

exception
followers work with user_id

Pagination

one API call returns 40 statuses
rtoot (>= 0.2.0) automatically paginates if limit>40

timeline <- get_timeline_public(limit = 50)
nrow(timeline)

[1] 80

functions always return full pages.

Ratelimits

300 calls in 5 minutes

attr(timeline,"headers")

# A tibble: 1 × 5
  rate_limit rate_remaining rate_reset          max_id             min_id       
  <chr>      <chr>          <dttm>              <chr>              <chr>        
1 300        292            2022-12-14 16:50:00 109513049014780913 109513050783…

The package checks rate limits automatically

If retryonratelimit = TRUE,
a function “sleeps” untill calls are available again.

Streaming

get everything that is posted

stream_timeline_public(timeout = 20,file_name = "test.json")
parse_stream("test.json")

stream a specific hashtag

stream_timeline_hashtags(hashtag = "rstats",timeout = 20,file_name = "tags.json")
parse_stream("tags.json")

timeout: for how many seconds to stream
file_name: where streamed data is stored (if not specified a temp file is used)

24 hour streaming test

From 2022-12-11 10:17 to 2022-12-12 10:17

streamed toots: 95508
(Twitter: ~500mio/day, after Musk took over: ~400mio/day)

24 hour streaming test: Instances

instance	n
mastodon.social	12016
mstdn.social	3382
botsin.space	3216
mastodonapp.uk	2604
mastodon.online	2530

unique instances: 2959

Interlude: extract instances from statuses

The statuses include a list column account which holds all account data.
The acct field has the form user_name@instance

accounts <- toots$account
instances <- map_chr(accounts,function(x) str_remove(str_extract(x$acct,"@.*"),"@"))
head(instances)

[1] "ruhr.social"     "mastodon.social" "fediscience.org" "mastodon.gal"   
[5] "nobigtech.es"    "mastodon.scot"

but:
If the user is from the same instance as your token, OR you are streaming locally, then @instance is not shown. Any value that is NA in the above vector instances is thus actually an account from fosstodon.org (my instance).

Interlude: extract instances from statuses

Better solution:
extract instance from URL

instances <- purrr::map_chr(toots$url,function(x) str_split(x,"/")[[1]][3])
head(instances)

[1] "ruhr.social"        "mastodon.social"    "fediscience.org"   
[4] "mastodon.gal"       "masto.nobigtech.es" "mastodon.scot"

24 hour streaming test: Hashtags

24 hour streaming test: Languages

24 hours streaming test: misc

table(toots$visibility)


public 
 95508

obviously you only get public posts

table(toots$sensitive)


FALSE  TRUE 
89871  5637

Instance with the highest sensitive fraction:
social.horrorhub.club 0.689

24 hours streaming test: observations

returns toots from outside the time window

filter(toots,created_at<as.POSIXct("2022-12-11 10:10:00",tz = "UTC")) |>
  pull(created_at) |> sort() |> head(n = 5)

[1] "2022-04-17 02:04:56 UTC" "2022-04-17 02:04:56 UTC"
[3] "2022-04-17 02:04:56 UTC" "2022-04-29 15:23:17 UTC"
[5] "2022-07-02 19:45:34 UTC"

writing to file slows down over time.
better stream 24 1 hour windows
random errors can occur at any time
not sure if the stream includes 100% of the data (Twitter: 1%)

Instances: activity

get activity of an instance in the last three months

activity <- get_instance_activity("mastodon.social")
activity

# A tibble: 12 × 4
   week                statuses logins registrations
   <dttm>                 <int>  <int>         <int>
 1 2022-12-14 15:51:58    68384  36754          2726
 2 2022-12-07 15:51:58   619567 102068         12011
 3 2022-11-30 15:51:58   685353  97169           913
 4 2022-11-23 15:51:58   798553 111300          1647
 5 2022-11-16 15:51:58  1059889 172336         45816
 6 2022-11-09 15:51:58   952856 119902         14252
 7 2022-11-02 15:51:58   689168 109316          5342
 8 2022-10-26 15:51:58   450355 106426         58680
 9 2022-10-19 15:51:58   166309  24617          2417
10 2022-10-12 15:51:58   161111  23891          1980
11 2022-10-05 15:51:58   158205  24582          2517
12 2022-09-28 15:51:58   149615  21528           504

Instances: blocked domains

blocked <- get_instance_blocks("mastodon.social")
blocked

# A tibble: 173 × 4
   domain             digest                                     sever…¹ comment
   <chr>              <chr>                                      <chr>   <chr>  
 1 bgzashtita.es      9c74ca7a36db36bf782a264ce69033cca4317c416… silence Misinf…
 2 brighteon.social   0be5721be2346e0b892e6cc0db706b6b950a0d215… silence Conspi…
 3 bsd.moe            e19231735923fbb5ce6d73986339b08e5dad96c75… silence Harass…
 4 fr13nd5.com        86811acd84b7c3124aead2125fa22ae0a8f617517… silence Misinf…
 5 freeatlantis.com   23414c6b236b245c662efa05db8662743261e08cf… silence Misinf…
 6 freezepeach.xyz    079978fa420e3804995892d3da797cba45ab926ed… silence Harass…
 7 krdtube.org        e454341c985b667c14302990019e0045dde64a1de… silence Misinf…
 8 mstdn.foxfam.club  ae63b259151df535f1d408367458f52f8aaecbf48… silence Third-…
 9 noagendasocial.com 03862ed4050b1d6c7b914e369284d75f9cffd1728… silence Harass…
10 pawoo.net          e7c641cf9cd8b5c4513e22d0dfd3f914835a16bd4… silence Inappr…
# … with 163 more rows, and abbreviated variable name ¹severity

count(blocked,comment,sort = TRUE)[1:3,]

# A tibble: 3 × 2
  comment                   n
  <chr>                 <int>
1 Hate speech              51
2 Third-party bots         44
3 Inappropriate content    27

Instances: emojis

emojis <- get_instance_emoji("fosstodon.org")
emojis

# A tibble: 745 × 5
   shortcode                url                          stati…¹ visib…² categ…³
   <chr>                    <chr>                        <chr>   <lgl>   <chr>  
 1 0ad                      https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    <NA>   
 2 AntennaPod               https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    <NA>   
 3 BlobCatGoogly            https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    Blobcat
 4 Clojure                  https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    <NA>   
 5 GrapheneOS               https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    <NA>   
 6 NSFW_Stamp               https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    <NA>   
 7 StarfleetInsignia        https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    <NA>   
 8 ablobcatangel            https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    Blobcat
 9 ablobcatattention        https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    Blobcat
10 ablobcatattentionreverse https://cdn.fosstodon.org/c… https:… TRUE    Blobcat
# … with 735 more rows, and abbreviated variable names ¹static_url,
#   ²visible_in_picker, ³category

Instances: peers and rules

peers <- get_instance_peers("fosstodon.org")
length(peers)

[1] 29344

rules <- get_instance_rules("fosstodon.org")
rules

# A tibble: 12 × 2
   id    text                                                                   
   <chr> <chr>                                                                  
 1 2     "Do not use slurs or racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist …
 2 3     "Do not harass anyone, participate in group harassment of anyone, or o…
 3 4     "Do not be intentionally antagonistic. A post or reply designed to pro…
 4 5     "Do not post adult content, including pictures containing nudity, or u…
 5 6     "Do not post spam. Toots that are nothing other than a link and/or con…
 6 7     "Do not use automated tools to toot without participating in the commu…
 7 8     "Do not “shitpost” - while humorous posts are allowed, and actually en…
 8 9     "Do not post about inflammatory, controversial subjects without a Cont…
 9 10    "Do not engage in name calling, ad hominem attacks, or any other unciv…
10 11    "Do not tone police. Toots may violate the standards of civility we se…
11 12    "Do not toot in languages other than English (which makes moderation p…
12 13    "Do not debate moderation actions in public toots. If you disagree wit…

Instances: trends

trends <- get_instance_trends("fosstodon.org")
trends

# A tibble: 70 × 5
   name                    url                          day        accou…¹  uses
   <chr>                   <chr>                        <date>       <int> <int>
 1 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-14      36    81
 2 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-13       0     0
 3 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-12       0     0
 4 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-11       0     0
 5 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-10       0     0
 6 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-09       0     0
 7 songsormoviesaboutfleas https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-08       0     0
 8 waterfallwednesday      https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-14      40    43
 9 waterfallwednesday      https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-13       2     2
10 waterfallwednesday      https://fosstodon.org/tags/… 2022-12-12       1     1
# … with 60 more rows, and abbreviated variable name ¹accounts

unique(trends$name)

 [1] "songsormoviesaboutfleas" "waterfallwednesday"     
 [3] "pmqs"                    "TombTuesday"            
 [5] "tuesday"                 "ArgCro"                 
 [7] "ThickTrunkTuesday"       "fbi"                    
 [9] "openweb"                 "kyiv"

Post a toot

on some instances, automated posting is frowned upon
(some reports of being “shadow banned”)

# post a simple status
post_toot("my first rtoot #rstats")

# post a media file with alt text
post_toot("look at this pic",media = "path/to/image",
          alt_text = "describe image", sensitive = TRUE)

posts can be scheduled using the parameter scheduled_at (5 minutes in future)
spoiler_text is used as a content warning (careful with terminology!)

User actions

perform actions on behalf of a user (your own account)

# follow 
post_user(id, action = "follow")

# unfollow 
post_user(id, action = "unfollow")

# also: (un)mute, (un)block, (un)pin, note

Advanced: Go beyond Mastodon

you can (now) get data from outside Mastodon, but not every fediverse alternative works

#Pleroma
get_timeline_public(instance = "pythondevs.social", limit = 2L)

# A tibble: 2 × 29
  id           uri   created_at          content visib…¹ sensi…² spoil…³ reblo…⁴
  <chr>        <chr> <dttm>              <chr>   <chr>   <lgl>   <chr>     <int>
1 AQbSZH4lLtS… http… 2022-12-14 16:41:45 "<p><s… public  FALSE   ""            0
2 AQbSQg1pD3P… http… 2022-12-14 16:40:12 "<p><s… public  FALSE   ""            0
# … with 21 more variables: favourites_count <int>, replies_count <int>,
#   url <chr>, in_reply_to_id <chr>, in_reply_to_account_id <chr>,
#   language <lgl>, text <lgl>, application <I<list>>, poll <I<list>>,
#   card <I<list>>, account <list>, reblog <I<list>>,
#   media_attachments <I<list>>, mentions <list>, tags <I<list>>,
#   emojis <I<list>>, favourited <lgl>, reblogged <lgl>, muted <lgl>,
#   bookmarked <lgl>, pinned <lgl>, and abbreviated variable names …

#Pixelfed
get_timeline_public(instance = "pixelfed.social")

Error: something went wrong. Status code: 500

Advanced: unsupported Endpoints

use endpoints not yet fully supported

notify<- rtoot(endpoint = "/api/v1/notifications",params = list())
purrr::map_chr(notify,function(x) x$type)

 [1] "favourite" "follow"    "mention"   "follow"    "favourite" "follow"   
 [7] "follow"    "favourite" "follow"    "favourite" "follow"    "favourite"
[13] "mention"   "favourite" "mention"

announce <- rtoot(endpoint = "api/v1/announcements",params = list())
announce[[1]]$content

[1] "<p>Hey folks! We&#39;re so excited to see all the new faces around Fosstodon. With more members comes more traffic and more traffic means higher demands on our server. That being said, we&#39;ve had to bump up our resources to accommodate the growth. </p><p>We&#39;ve already had some generous members either begin donating or increase their monthly donation amount and we&#39;re very thankful for that. If you want to help us make sure our monthly overhead is covered, you can find out more, here: <a href=\"https://hub.fosstodon.org/support/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"><span class=\"invisible\">https://</span><span class=\"\">hub.fosstodon.org/support/</span><span class=\"invisible\"></span></a> </p><p>We appreciate all of you helping to make Fosstodon such an awesome place!</p>"

Resources

vignettes in R: browseVignettes(package = "rtoot")
online documentation: https://schochastics.github.io/rtoot/
report issues: https://github.com/schochastics/rtoot/issues
these slides: https://schochastics.github.io/rtoot2022

Interacting with the Mastodon API from R

Introduction

What is Mastodon? 🦣

mastodon is (not) an open source twitter clone

centralized/federated/distributed

Why does decentralization matter?

The Fediverse

But wait, there is more

History of Mastodon

Mastodon instances

Mastodon instances

Mastodon Instances

Links

Research with Mastodon Data

Twitter

Terms of Service

Who is on/coming to Mastodon?

Controversies (Part 1)

Controversies (Part 2)

Recommendations

The R package rtoot

Development

Acknowledgment

Why rtoot?

Install

Authentication

Overview of functions

account information

account information

account relations

Example

Example

Parsing content

Parsing content

understanding timelines

Examples

Special parameters

Pagination

Ratelimits

Streaming

24 hour streaming test

24 hour streaming test: Instances

Interlude: extract instances from statuses

Interlude: extract instances from statuses

24 hour streaming test: Hashtags

24 hour streaming test: Languages

24 hours streaming test: misc

24 hours streaming test: observations

Instances: activity

Instances: blocked domains

Instances: emojis

Instances: peers and rules

Instances: trends

Post a toot

User actions

Advanced: Go beyond Mastodon

Advanced: unsupported Endpoints

Resources

The R package `rtoot`

Why `rtoot`?