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Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

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Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#51

Post by betwixthewires »

rvz wrote: post #22
betwixthewires wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a failure. This idea that it has to be huge to be a success comes from the instagram, Facebook, twitter and YouTube way of counting success. 100 million views, 10k likes in an hour, 100k followers... these humongous numbers are not normal, and they're not necessary for a rewarding social experience online. In fact I think the opposite is true. Lots of people use the network daily. I do. It's more fun than tw…

> It's not a failure It is a failure. Having 3 million registered users and only 192,000 using it every month in the end after 6 years is more than 90% of all users not using it. With those numbers, there is virtually no-one using the platform which explains why many continued to keep posting on Twitter, more than on Mastodon. So it is still a massive and complete failure in almost every way. [0] http://sp3r4z.fr/mas…

1) it's not a platform,

2) 192000 is the number for mastodon, there's a wider network that mastodon servers are a part of,

3) this is not some company like twitter or gab or whatever with quarterly performance announcements and user on boarding targets, it is software that works, works well and people use it. That's the criteria for "not a failure" in this case.

You know whats a failure? The corporate "unite the world by sharing ideas, a better world through freedom of information exchange" ideology and motivation of the founders of the big tech sites, specifically twitter. They have already proven this by abandoning it. They're failures.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#52

Post by VikingCoder »

assetlabel wrote: post #50
gargron wrote: post #39

The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow app…

This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers. Further, once you pick a server, if you are kicked off, you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.

...so why isn't there another layer of abstraction, where you have like a DNS to register where you (and here's your public key) are currently: you@thatserver, and you sign it... And then you can change (using the same public / private key pair) to be: you@someotherserver?

This seems obvious to me as a necessary feature...?

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#54

Post by kixiQu »

VikingCoder wrote: post #52
assetlabel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers. Further, once you pick a server, if you are kicked off, you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.

...so why isn't there another layer of abstraction, where you have like a DNS to register where you (and here's your public key) are currently: you@thatserver, and you sign it... And then you can change (using the same public / private key pair) to be: you@someotherserver? This seems obvious to me as a necessary feature...?

There is a move feature so you can transfer your account and its following relationships to a new server, without your followers having to update anything or any key signing at all. You can't use it if your account has been nuked, but it's not weird in "we're asking you to leave"-type moderation.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#55

Post by krater23 »

margarina72 wrote: post #4

But was it ever supposed to? If I remember correctly, one of the main element of the product vision was to allow better moderation, to have a "safer" online experience. Provided it is a very relative concept, the community approach makes a lot of sense. In a way, it is very similar to how forums used to be. Can it be improved? 100%. Many UX elements would make the product more popular, but was it meant to be a twitte…

It was in the first way really to cancel some other people talking about things that maiking you up? I think then, it should die immediatly.

Sorry for my bad english.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#57

Post by BiteCode_dev »

I've had a mastodon account for years. Not only you can't get a tenth of the audience or quality publications you get on twitters, but also there is less diversity.

A mastodon instance is often its own island, with one view of the world, and they don't connect to any other instances with a different view of the world because the others are intolerant assholes (but themselves are alright, of course). Ironic, given the protocol is made specifically to link instances together so that the network become more robust, and that people joined because it's a more open design than twitter.

On the other hand, Twitter that is full of trends, SJW, extremists of all sides and censorship, manage to send me toward new paths of thinking regularly.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#58

Post by ArboriaInstitut »

okonomiyaki3000 wrote: post #32

You don't need to replace Twitter. It doesn't need to exist in the first place. Just stop using it. Replace using Twitter with not using Twitter.

Over years on the platform I've built up a number of lists of people who I think have very interesting things to say on a number of topics. Where, outside of Twitter or a close replacement, could I find something like a thread delving into why Hollywood "antiwar" movies are actually usually a whitewash? https://twitter.com/mmabeuf/status/1324573014407729153

Maybe this isn't the way most people are using Twitter though, I would agree that being off the platform entirely would be better than just letting their algos serve up content to you and becoming addicted to the dopamine rush of likes and retweets.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#59

Post by glenstein »

na85 wrote: post #40
gargron wrote: post #39

The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow app…

>The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow ap…

>I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception

You must be part of an exceptionally small minority then. I, too, have known about Mastodon since it's inception, and this was not news to me. As another commenter said, a debate during that time was that users were beaten over the head with too much discussion of federation and instances.

This is always how it's worked, and it's nearly impossible to join any instance without following & interacting with people from other instances on a daily basis. It's like the one thing about Mastodon you can't escape knowing about even if you actively try.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#60

Post by glenstein »

kixiQu wrote: post #18

> a combination of Twitter’s chronological feed with the community-driven spaces of Reddit Eugen's product vision is fighting the "community-driven spaces" idea as hard as he can, as far as I understand – to the extent that that maps onto instances, and not the [groups that don't yet exist]. > But because each server effectively acts as a separate version of Mastodon, participating in multiple instances is a hassle.…

>But from here on out, the piece gets real confused by its idea that this is the only way to use Mastodon and thus that you should have one account per instance – this is not how most people use Mastodon.

Yeah, this is like the most fundamental thing about Mastodon. You can access numerous instances from a single account. You don't need one account on every instance.

>This... is what I do. This is how I use Mastodon. This exists???

I share your sense of incredulity here. That's.... what Mastodon does! How could you write a piece about what Mastodon is or isn't good for and... guh. It's like suggesting that cars are good but wouldn't it be better if there was a highway system so people could drive their cars and meet each other.

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