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Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

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Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#221

Post by blacklight »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #167
blacklight wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I run my own instance, and it's not that hard to set up and get connected to other instances. Those that don't want to run their own instance usually either join an existing instance (there are about 10k servers out there), or just join mastodon.social (and that's where most people are anyways). 2. When I joined I didn't know anybody either, but in a short time I connected to a lot of new interesting people. Now I…

1) I don't have time to run that on top of everything else, and mastodon.social is not accepting new signups. I don't want to just jump on a server run by some random. 2) I don't want to connect to a lot of new interesting people, I want to connect to the interesting people I'm already connected with. 3) I don't see the fun in joining a social network where I need to mute 98% of all posts and profiles every single ti…

The closed signups on mastodon.social are only temporary. They've really had a huge spike of signups after Musk took over Twitter and people jumped boats, as well as a lot of automatically generated spam accounts that mods are still trying to prune. I'm quite confident that signups will reopen once the situation gets back in control.

When it comes to muting, in my experience you don't have to mute 98% of the profiles. Spam usually comes from a handful of instances that are relayed to the instance you're registered - in the Fediverse instances can relay to one another, and tap into each other's feeds. If you have a lot of spam, that's usually because of the content from 3-4 relayed instances. Good instance admins usually intervene in this cases and mute that spam on instance level. If they don't, you can usually mute those few instances yourself, instead of muting every individual account.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#222

Post by sneak »

tiarafawn wrote: post #207
jules wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the advantage of being distributed?

Content moderation (which seems to be the biggest point of contention with Twitter right now) is decentralized. By choosing your hoster, you delegate content moderation capabilities for your feed to them. If you don't agree with their policies, you can switch to a different hoster without having to leave the ecosystem. I am not sure to which degree this is practiced/convenient in Mastodon currently, but its distribut…

> If you don't agree with their policies, you can switch to a different hoster without having to leave the ecosystem.

But you lose all of your followers, so in practice this is never done. You’re stuck with the censorship imposed by your chosen instance operator. Most are more strict and less transparent than Twitter.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#223

Post by declnz »

Jenk wrote: post #159
blitzar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is an "elite" anyway? The richest people in the world ... but not the ones that agree with me? The politicians ... but not the ones on my side? The athletes ... except for my team?

What a completely pointless and banal digression into divisive politics when nobody asked for it.

Lol, so just like Twitter then

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#225

Post by MikusR »

elcomet wrote: post #121
onion2k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "blue check" verification on Twitter is its most powerful asset. The most important people in the world (culture icons, heads of state & companies, and subject matter experts) congregate there to share their thoughts. Elon has proposed selling blue check marks for $240/year. That's a lot of money for a lowly academic and nothing to a rich kid who wants to shout about their chosen topic. If that happens yo…

> They've never been a mark of subject matter authority. That's false, the owner has to be notable enough to get a blue check mark. Authenticity is just one of the requirements

> That's false, the owner has to be notable enough to get a blue check mark. Authenticity is just one of the requirements

That's false, you just have to know/bribe someone who works there.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#226

Post by Barrin92 »

reacharavindh wrote: post #137
benjaminwootton wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much potential in WhatsApp. With a few baby steps they could move into the Discord/Slack space, Telegram channels, Twitter type interactions etc. And that’s before you get into a WeChat everything-app. I’m not saying to add it all and change what makes WhatsApp good, but it could encompass a lot more social stuff (with small groups being the niche) and it’s absolutely ubiquitous. It could also be a cash c…

WeChat keeps coming up every so often. I have never used it, most certainly not in China where it seems to be intended for. How does it work? Apple as far as I see in EU does not allow an app to be an "everything app" and holds tight control even over updates being shipped. I also see iPhones are wildly popular in China.. So, how does WeChat get its everything functionality in china?

it pretty much works the same way it does on Android because Apple just doesn't really enforce its App Store rules. Chinese users heavily indicate that they'd switch to Android if WeChat would suck. So the short answer is, Tencent has enough leverage. Also iphone share still isn't that big, like 20% of the market I think.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#227

Post by mariusor »

jstx1 wrote: post #202
mcv wrote: post #171

Isn't Mastodon pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter? And it has the advantage of being distributed and it supports Fediverse cross-platform sharing (with Friendica, GnuSocial, etc). I'm on Friendica so I can follow people on both Mastodon and Diaspora (which would be the drop-in replacement for Facebook). Still, I think we need something better. I'd like to see a social network with all of that, and support…

Mastodon/Friendica/Diaspora look way too weird to normal people. Their branding doesn't have mass appeal (it's like they coordinated to deliberately pick bad names) and most people don't care about decentralisation at all. People want a cool app that has other people on it (their friends, other people they know about and celebrities).

I'm surprised that people don't remember how silly twitter, twitting, twit were considered by serious people when the service launched back at the end of the naughties.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#228

Post by dsfyu404ed »

lazyeye wrote: post #209
remarkEon wrote: post #138

The vast majority of commenters here fundamentally misunderstand what Twitter is, or rather what it has become. It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're…

Agreed. Nothing has accelerated media groupthink more than Twitter.

Reddit, HN and other online commentary platforms where contributions get "scored" are thoroughly deserving of an honorable mention when it comes to fostering groupthink.

Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?

#229

Post by Bud »

blacklight wrote: post #114
mradek wrote: post #11

I think the "blue check" verification on Twitter is its most powerful asset. The most important people in the world (culture icons, heads of state & companies, and subject matter experts) congregate there to share their thoughts. Personally I think Twitter would work best if it was left to be just that. I don't think anyone really cares about what I have to say, for example. I'm just some random guy who works at a so…

We have solved this problem in a much better way on Mastodon. Do you want your account to be verified? Do you have a personal or business website or blog that is associated to you? Then just add an to the page, add the link to your profile, and the connection is done - you have proved that you are the owner of that website. Do we really need anything more than this?

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