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> "($CONSERVATIVE_PERSON| $LIBERAL_PERSON | $GROUP | $PARTY ) DID A THING, I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT IT, AND YOU'RE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT IT". This phenomenon is more concisely expressesd as "boo outgroup".
I suppose if you are beholden to oversimplifications, sure.
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…
Eventually, it could attract the masses.
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I think you nailed the USP of Mastodon. Keeping out the marketers, advertisers, vanity metric chasing or fandom makes Mastodon that peaceful scenic beach where your fellow beach goers say hello and share some of their food with you. I'll take Mastodon fringe over obnoxious Twitter or Facebook anytime.
That's so for me as well. I've never been able to stand Twitter. There are too many idiots, and even seemingly sane folk all too often act like idiots. But then, I can't stand Reddit, either. Anyway, I've been tempted to try Mastodon. But I don't like the idea of joining a particular instance, and being unable to change later, without more-or-less starting over. If I or my instance got blacklisted, how would I be bet…
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it worsens things. Let's take the widely-known phenomena of 'information bubbles' - where your feeds/networks only serve you information that confirms something you already believe/some worldview you already have.
Not only would a mastadon instance server be prone to attracting users of the same mindset - cross-posting from other sites would be problematic. What if posting on instance A doesn't violate instance A's content guideline terms, but does violate the content guidelines of instance B? Users of B are less likely to see certain content from A. In some ways that's worse than the one-instance for profit networks. As much as I dislike the snarky reply to bad-retweet phenomenon - at least opposing ideas are being discussed there.
Plus, these instances can be run by anyone, and those people can set up any terms they want. Someone like Alex Jones could set up his own mastadon instance, and have his own content guidelines, and wrap his followers in an even 'thicker' information bubble.
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I agree that investors may sue management for fraud or corruption. "Not maximizing profit" is neither fraudulent nor corrupt. Investors who feel that profit is not being maximized can sell their shares or can vote to replace management. They can also buy sufficient shares from other unhappy shareholders to let them take control of the company altogether, and manage it themselves. What evidence do you have that any sh…
It's true that investors can sell if profit isn't being maximized, but how often does that happen in privately held companies? E.g. if startup X has the tech to take over a market, but is insufficiently pursuing a profit opportunity because of moral squeamishness, chances are relatively good that investors in X will simply replace the executives with somebody that will pursue those opportunities since that's vastly c…
Do you agree, then, that there is no legal requirement for a company's management to maximize profits, and that you know of no cases where a shareholder prevailed in a lawsuit against management for failure to maximize profit?
This is a good article. I just wanted to take issue with this claim: "Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can." This is a common misconception. While public companies have some duties to shareholders they are not required to maximise profits as such: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... It's impo…
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I'm a little turned off by posts being called toots but I suppose I could get over it.
Not everyone lives in the U.S. and in Europe toot is not offensive, it just means the sound an elephant makes with its trunk.
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I think you nailed the USP of Mastodon. Keeping out the marketers, advertisers, vanity metric chasing or fandom makes Mastodon that peaceful scenic beach where your fellow beach goers say hello and share some of their food with you. I'll take Mastodon fringe over obnoxious Twitter or Facebook anytime.
People often forget that at the beginning none of the current giants were "mainstream", in fact what made them attractive was the fact that they had a unique audience that formed a strong community amongst each other. The idea of "mainstream" is dying, and will continue to do so. What we're seeing is a deep cultural fracture where communities, ideas, and people do not form the kind of stardom or centralized propagati…
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That's not my job, and that dismissive, terrible attitude is exactly why open source has such a bad reputation. When the people you're trying to recruit to use your service are saying there's a problem, saying, "Then you go do something about it!" is not going to endear you to users.
I don't feel the need to endear myself to users. It's not my job, either, nor is it anyone else's but yours. If you want something, you need to make it happen. What arrogance of yours to think that someone else should volunteer their time to accomodate for your whims! If Mastodon doesn't suit your needs, then fix it or don't use it. Either way that doesn't make it "embarassing" or otherwise bad. It works great for mi…