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Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

mastodon.social

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Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#21

Post by ColinWright »

For people who want to know more, I wrote this:

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThinkingAboutMastodon.html?HN_...

Submitted it here ...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14626958

... but it got very little attention. In fact, checking my logs only about 20 people even clicked through.

Perhaps people are genuinely not interested. Attention fatigue?? Who knows?

Edit: I should add that I'm here: https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo

https://mathstodon.xyz is very quiet, but building slowly.

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#22

Post by not_max »

I am a huge advocate for Mastodon. It is worth remembering that nearly all of the value for the users of a social network comes from other users. Most of Twitter's defining features -- retweets, hashtags, and @ mentions -- were invented not by Twitter's employees, but by its users:

https://qz.com/135149/the-first-ever-hashtag-reply-and-retwe...

As a result, building services like this in a distributed way a la email seems much more appropriate. Why let Twitter greedily monetize your content?

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#23

Post by KGIII »

daveid wrote: post #10

Perhaps it would be better to submit https://joinmastodon.org instead of the flagship instance. The project homepage has links to all the info as well as a directory of servers (instances), which might spread out new users better.

One that may interest HN is called mathstodon.

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#24

Post by ColinWright »

KGIII wrote: post #23
daveid wrote: post #10

Perhaps it would be better to submit https://joinmastodon.org instead of the flagship instance. The project homepage has links to all the info as well as a directory of servers (instances), which might spread out new users better.

One that may interest HN is called mathstodon.

Found at https://mathstodon.xyz/

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#25

Post by j_s »

daveid wrote: post #10

Perhaps it would be better to submit https://joinmastodon.org instead of the flagship instance. The project homepage has links to all the info as well as a directory of servers (instances), which might spread out new users better.

When did the 'flagship instance' begin accepting new users again? I wonder how long it will last this time, and whether or not this HN post will affect that!

Of all the random strangers hosting the service, I waited until I could get onto the instance hosted by the actual project itself; the bus factor feels higher, and the account suspension process less arbitrary.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170406103653/https://mastodon.... (April 2017)

Due to exceptionally high traffic, registrations on this instance are closed until quality of service can be assured for existing users. Choose one of the various other public instances to sign up!

https://web.archive.org/web/20170806214711/https://mastodon.... (August 2017)

Given that this is most shared instance, to preserve the ideals of decentralization we have closed sign ups in favour of spreading new users through the various alternative instances — you get the same network wherever you sign up. Click below to find one:

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#26

Post by r3bl »

marban wrote: post #17

Haven't we been through this with the likes of identi.ca / statusnet?

I would say that this is happening at the critical time when Twitter is under a shit ton of pressure: not fighting bots and abusive accounts, not implementing features requested by its users, its overall incompetence to roll out new features in a sane way, and them fucking up the homepage with algorithms.

If there's any decentralized service that has even a remote chance of succeeding, I would say that it's Mastodon. Simply because of the time when it appeared.

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#27

Post by vidarh »

ar0 wrote: post #18
nosuchthing wrote: post #16

Mastodon impliments a very very confusing username system, due to the design of domain-name based federation. alice@mastadon.social alice@mastadon.network Twitter suffers from impersonator accounts on its own network, imagine the confusion of an unfamiliar user having to find a real account on mastadon.

You hear this a lot, but I don't really get this... Everyone is using email and I have never heard anyone complain "email implements a very very confusing username system" because alice@gmail.com and alice@hotmail.com are not the same people. Maybe it would help to make it more explicit that Mastodon works more like email than Twitter in that respect, but to be fair joinmastodon.org and also the new user onboarding t…

A big difference is that with e-mail we've long ago stopped expecting discoverability. You don't expect to be able to search and find their e-mail address. You do expect to be able to search for them on Twitter.

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#28

Post by Vinnl »

marban wrote: post #17

Haven't we been through this with the likes of identi.ca / statusnet?

If I understood it correctly, Mastodon is actually compatible with them (yay standard protocols), so it's more like their rebirth rather than one or the other having to "win" :)

Re: Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

#29

Post by kmfrk »

j_s wrote: post #25
daveid wrote: post #10

Perhaps it would be better to submit https://joinmastodon.org instead of the flagship instance. The project homepage has links to all the info as well as a directory of servers (instances), which might spread out new users better.

When did the 'flagship instance' begin accepting new users again? I wonder how long it will last this time, and whether or not this HN post will affect that! Of all the random strangers hosting the service, I waited until I could get onto the instance hosted by the actual project itself; the bus factor feels higher, and the account suspension process less arbitrary. https://web.archive.org/web/20170406103653/https://…

Gargron closed it off during its peak, not because of the load, but because mastodon.social became too synonymous with Mastodon proper, so he forced people to go to other instances so everyone wouldn't be in the same basket of eggs.

A few months later, I think mastodon.social has been fairly open to signups, especially now that we've got all these French and Japanese instances up and running.

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