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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#271

Post by h4b4n3r0 »

danShumway wrote: post #250
bilbo0s wrote: post #112

OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among regular people cares. You guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you. None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people, your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for mastodon that indicates any features at…

> Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. Moderation and content quality. You know the reason why people prefer reading the New York Times instead of checkout-counter tabloids? The reason why people like buying from Amazon instead of Ebay? I mean, Ebay usually has better prices. Why would anyone buy from a store just because it's able to (or at least claims to…

  >> You know the reason why people prefer reading 
  >> the New York Times instead of checkout-counter
  >> tabloids?
I'm not actually sure that's true. Upon a cursory check, People Magazine has a slightly greater circulation than NYT. Heck, a non-trivial number people on YouTube have greater circulation than NYT or mainstream TV News channels and shows, while filming their stuff in the living room of their apartment.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#272

Post by quadrangle »

zazen wrote: post #225
asntbqjkwbucaa wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have standing you need to show that you are an injured party. I believe the original commenter was saying that not attempting to maximize shareholder value is in some cases an injury that is sufficient for an investor to bring a suit. I don't know whether this is true or not, but I believe that's what they were thinking when they referred to standing. In the case of a fiduciary, investors do have recourse to legal…

> A company is not legally obligated to maximize profit. Well, if we agree on that core point - which I think is all the point that wool_gather was trying to make - then that's great! And I think there's no point in the two of us investing any more time in picking over quadrangle's slightly confused reply. I'm afraid I can't resist pulling on one more little thread, though :-) You've sort of hand-waved "legal or fina…

Thanks for the deeper back-and-forth. I did mean "standing" as brought out here. I.e. simply that failure to focus on profit can create a situation where investors can file a suit that won't just be thrown out.

I'm saying that there's enough legal premise around the idea that the business is working for profit. The investors buy stock with the premise that the business is aiming to provide a return. If they don't aim for that, they can be accused of not running the business in good faith or of misleading the investors…

I'm not saying there's an absolute legal imperative to maximize profit. I'm saying that investors are given enough legal tools in our bureaucratic world that they really can use the legal system along with other tools to bully companies into focusing on proift above other values.

A company just saying in court, "X would bring more profit, but that wouldn't be as good for the world" isn't going to get a suit dismissed if the suit is based on a bunch of complex legal allegations about the company misleading investors or I don't know what other wide range of possible legal arguments are available…

But for Benefit Corp or similar, investors would have less have legal standing to bring suits based on the companies following the social priorities laid out in their Benefit Corp bylaws etc.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#273

Post by makomk »

ohtwenty wrote: post #139
azangru wrote: post #48

Could anyone share their thoughts about the attractiveness of a platform that says how many characters long your posts can be? What I see on Twitter is that people are constantly fighting this limitation by writing several tweets in a row (sometimes marking them as parts of a whole message). I would think that’s an annoyance. So what’s the attraction?

It's not mentioned but it depends on the instance how long the character limit is (as in, it's configurable). default is 500, but there's some with a limit of 5000, or 666 (some witchy instance iirc)

Probably witches.town, which was intentionally destroyed by its owner and no longer exists.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#274

Post by ForHackernews »

bilbo0s wrote: post #112

OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among regular people cares. You guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you. None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people, your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for mastodon that indicates any features at…

Honestly, to a first order, no regular people care about Twitter either. Only journalists, celebrities and a small cadre of tech folks who haven't quit yet still use Twitter. Twitter has only a tiny fraction of the users of Facebook or YouTube.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#275

Post by boyce »

makomk wrote: post #259
boyce wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we were comparing Mastodon to Twitter where what you say is already the case Moving instances is not a big deal and yes, know your admin.

One of the ways in which admins often treat instances like their own petty fiefdom is cutting off communication with other instances that don't toe the line. So sure, you can move instances - just don't rely on being able to contact your friends anymore if you do. (Some instances even have a whitelist of instances that are allowed to follow and interact with their users, with everyone else blocked.)

It's rare to outright block an instance (for not moderating child porn or something of course but not otherwise really)

Instead most "blocks" are just muting from the federated timeline, precisely so that you're not cut off from contacts.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#276

Post by oedmarap »

I love Mastodon but the only thing stopping me from using it is the way they approach federation [0].

The "ideal" for me is to make an account on a centralized official Mastodon instance (with Keybase verification, if needed) and then be able to seamlessly join another instance without having to sign up for that instance separately to be a member -- and thus not having to make a per-instance account.

That way my account is created once, and I can jump between other instances OAuth-style.

I do like the fact that niche instances exist, but in my opinion it's better to be known as [username@mastodon.social] even when being a member of [@niche.social] much like how Disqus or Gravatar works, in principle. At least the option would be nice.

[0] https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using...

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#277

Post by asntbqjkwbucaa »

zazen wrote: post #225
asntbqjkwbucaa wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have standing you need to show that you are an injured party. I believe the original commenter was saying that not attempting to maximize shareholder value is in some cases an injury that is sufficient for an investor to bring a suit. I don't know whether this is true or not, but I believe that's what they were thinking when they referred to standing. In the case of a fiduciary, investors do have recourse to legal…

> A company is not legally obligated to maximize profit. Well, if we agree on that core point - which I think is all the point that wool_gather was trying to make - then that's great! And I think there's no point in the two of us investing any more time in picking over quadrangle's slightly confused reply. I'm afraid I can't resist pulling on one more little thread, though :-) You've sort of hand-waved "legal or fina…

Well I think taken literally, "not maximizing profit" can't possibly be sufficient grounds for an action. Nobody really has any idea of whether any particular strategy is profit-maximizing, so it's hard to believe a company can be sued for not following a profit-maximizing strategy.

But shareholders can sue over alleged harm to a corporation. I'm not a lawyer, so I really have no idea what the standard is here. But purely speculatively, I suppose someone could be sued for repeatedly missing obvious profit opportunities because the executives objected to them on ethical or other grounds.

I get the impression, though, that shareholders are more likely to sue for committing an active blunder (like selling off a division for an insanely low price) rather than for missing an opportunity.

There's a list of some famous shareholder actions here: https://www.dandodiary.com/2014/12/articles/shareholders-der...

More charitably, I think what people like quadrangle are really meaning to say is that there is a significant legal framework that very strongly incentivizes and is inspired by the idea that the first obligation of a corporation is to maximize profit. And if that was the point, then I think that's pretty close to the truth.

Sure, you won't be arrested for not maximizing profit, but remaining in business without attempting to put profit first is sufficiently hard that it typically requires special legal protections (as in B corporations).

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#278

Post by egypturnash »

bilbo0s wrote: post #112

OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among regular people cares. You guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you. None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people, your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for mastodon that indicates any features at…

It's a place you can go to talk with your friends and maybe make a few new ones, without constantly having things that show up that try to piss you off.

And as it grows maybe it starts to be a place where you have to go to find some of your friends. I mean, who the hell wants to be on Facebook any more? How many people still go there because that's where they can keep up with certain circles?

It's also a place you can run for your friends, and kick out anyone who comes in trying to start trouble.

We've got chill. We've got quiet. We've got a place to talk semi-publically without EVERY ASSHOLE INCLUDING A ZILLION BOTS being there, and we've got an overall structure that maybe makes it more likely for people to want to keep things civil.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#279

Post by s73v3r_ »

jeffbax wrote: post #58

I think that Mastodon has a lot going for it, and indeed It think an open source federated system is a great idea I hope to see succeed, but I don't think that RT is the main problem with Twitter. Maybe I'm lucky that few pay attention to me, but I haven't had a lot of trouble making Twitter incredibly, if not the most, useful social network. Its easy to find your interests and fairly simple to ignore/block things yo…

"there are people I disagree with also using this space"

Claiming that is what people mean when they claim something is toxic is just as lazy, if not more so. And you’re basically saying that it’s on minority and underrepresented groups to be the one to engage, rather than those that are antagonizing them.

Alex Jones is an even more egregious case because he’s gotten in trouble not just because he “said things people disagree with”, but because he sent a harassment mob against the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook, claiming it was a “false flag operation.” Several of them now are not able to visit the graves of their children, the harassment is that bad.

I’m sorry, but I just do not see this as anywhere near the “slippery slope” you’re complaining it is.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#280

Post by s73v3r_ »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #53
dorfsmay wrote: post #49

Isn't the concept of local servers making it easier to create a bunch of echo chambers? I haven't even tried Mastodon because my understanding of identify is tied to a server rather than an email or a gpg key... so outside of your control (unless you run your own server). My understanding is that when the server you are currently using disappear, your current identity, history, etc... disappear too.

You can export most of your data and move to another instance. It's not the most elegant process, but it seems to work out fine in the long run. You just tell people where you went.

I completely and utterly disagree with your “work out fine” sentiment. It is embarrassing that something set up like Mastodon was from the beginning did not plan for people to move between instances from the start.
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