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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#71

Post by undoware »

What I find amusing about all these "solutions" to "online outrage" is that they are invariably made by comfortable centrists, with a smattering of libertarians. I can say this with some authority as both of these terms would have aptly described myself, before I lost my career, my home, and everything else in gender transition, and ended up working three minimum wage jobs instead of coding for 2 years.

Let me tell you where the outrage is coming from. It's not coming from UX decisions. It's coming from mind boggling suffering. It's coming from exhausted and starving bodies who are disrespected and discarded, repeatedly. It's coming from a lack of opportunity and a lack of services necessary for survival. It's coming from a parlous minimum wage and no safety net. It's coming from addiction and the homelessness and precariousness that so often drive it.

Those prone to conservatism interpret their pain as an attack on them from people who look different. Those prone, like myself, to systems level thinking about social structures view it (correctly) as an induced state, effectively selected for because the alternative was selected against.

The pain and outrage leaks onto social media, but it is not from there.

It is all around you, and it is nearly big enough to blot out the sun.

Get ready.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#72

Post by cwyers »

The lead point is about misuse of quote retweets. I don't disagree that quote retweets can be misused in the way that the article says, but I don't think that's the primary use. And Twitter didn't invent the quote retweet, users did and Twitter adopted it as an official feature. If people really want to use it, they will without official support.

The points about moderation I found much more interesting, and I wish the author had led with that.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#73

Post by teleclimber »

tablethnuser wrote: post #61
PretzelFisch wrote: post #33

I guess I don't understand why so much effort is put into these federated social networks rather then starting with a blog and rss perspective to build the same kind of network.

I'd like things to go in this direction as well, but with slightly different tech than rss. What you really want is the notification layer of social networks as a standard, so that ppl who follow you are merely alerted that they should visit your site. RSS can be used for this of course, but it's really meant for content syndication rather than as a notification transport layer

You're describing ActivityPub, which is a W3C recommendation[0], which happens to be what Mastodon uses. At least one blogging platform is set up to interact with the fediverse[1]. Hopefully many more one day.

[0] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ [1] https://discuss.write.as/t/activitypub-support/64

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#74

Post by fritz8261 »

ColinWright wrote: post #40
tablethnuser wrote: post #32

I am interested in joining a Mastodon instance but I don't know how to find the right one to join. Every pro-Mastodon article mentions I can pack my bags and leave for a new instance but if you do research you find that that feature isn't built yet and the community can't agree on how it should work. So picking the right server is currently a very heavy decision. I've tried some of these instance finder tools but the…

There are many, many out there. I suggest you join one with a deliberately "throw away" account and start following a few people. Then see where they are, and after a time export the list of people you follow, and move. I'm on https://mathstodon.xyz/ and https://fosstodon.org/ if you want to start on either of those. Then again, maybe you will neither need nor want to move. A quick web search for "mastodon instance t…

Anybody knows of a free speech Mastodon instance? Something that’s not banned from the rest of the network, of course. :/

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#76

Post by vesak »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #62
wool_gather wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the problem you see with the word "toot"?

It's an onomatopoeic term for briefly sounding a horn, but I almost never hear it used for that. In my experience, there are two primary uses of the word in American English: 1) In the expression toot [one's] own horn , which means to praise oneself. Often in the form "I don't want to toot my own horn, but [...]". 2) A cutesy word for a fart, used primarily when talking to young children. Notably, an elephant using i…

Isn't 1) exactly what tooting and tweeting both are really about, though?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#78

Post by _eht »

subway wrote: post #75

Too bad the Mastodon devs hate SRV records so much. The reliance on WebFinger for federation is the biggest blocker for me deploying an instance on my personal domain.

Can you expand more on why WebFinger is the blocker for you? I've been considering running a server lately on my personal domain and didn't even consider SRV vs WebFinger.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#79

Post by kethinov »

What Mastodon badly needs is a desktop client as good as Twitterrific that can crosspost to both Twitter and a Mastodon instance to lower the barrier to slowly switching. Something like Pidgin/Adium is for IM.

That way people can default to Mastodon where possible and fallback to Twitter where necessary.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#80

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jamesrcole wrote: post #25

I think the term "toots" is spectacularly bad, and could majorly hinder broader uptake of their service. Word of mouth (or 'word of text') is a major way services like this spread. Imagine discussions of Twitter in the media but where the words "tweet" and "tweeted" are replaced with "toot" and "tooted".

Surely a short message is a tweet, I can tweet you on Twitter ... but also on FB messenger. You could also just call it a "message" if it's not got a low character limit.

You don't need a new name on every new service.

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