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Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

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Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#121

Post by ryangibb »

klooney wrote: post #106
snickerbockers wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fediverse has the unique problem (or benefit depending on your perspective) of the instance owners being able to cut their users off from other instances, which is unheard of in email. At face value this is done to keep users from being tormented by pedophiles and internet nazis, but my experience is that most of the server admins get a weird power trip out of blocking things, and will overzealously block anything th…

> unheard of in email Not true- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...

I think the parent comment was referring to blocking access to other server instances rather than blocking individual users.

Overzealous spam filters seem like the email equivalent. I have reoccurring issues trying to get self hosted email received by GMail/outlook addresses. Although these filters are an impersonal corporate policy rather than up to an individual instance admin's discretion.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#122

Post by betwixthewires »

rvz wrote: post #114
slater wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I thought we were doing the "my opinion is the rightest, because i said so!" thing. But no, it's not a failure. "low user numbers" does not automagically mean something is a failure, as others in this post have hinted at

> Sorry, I thought we were doing the "my opinion is the rightest, because i said so!" thing. Except mine isn't an 'opinion' and is based on Mastodon's own statistics in daily active user numbers, registered users, user behaviour and the claims, and comparisons made at the time when it already launched and was pitched as a Twitter alternative, especially on HN. [0] [1] Fast forward 6 years later, 94% of people registe…

It is absolutely an opinion. Your metrics are right, but "it's a failure" is absolutely an opinion. It's your opinion, based on what you place value on. Mastodon is not a failure to the 200k people that use it, it's a success to them. Thats their opinion, because they value different things than you.

"194k people use it, that's more than the populations of 20 sovereign nations! That's a success" has correct metrics, as correct as yours, but using that to call it a success is an opinion. Just like your statement is an opinion.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#123

Post by slater »

betwixthewires wrote: post #122
rvz wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, I thought we were doing the "my opinion is the rightest, because i said so!" thing. Except mine isn't an 'opinion' and is based on Mastodon's own statistics in daily active user numbers, registered users, user behaviour and the claims, and comparisons made at the time when it already launched and was pitched as a Twitter alternative, especially on HN. [0] [1] Fast forward 6 years later, 94% of people registe…

It is absolutely an opinion. Your metrics are right, but "it's a failure" is absolutely an opinion. It's your opinion, based on what you place value on. Mastodon is not a failure to the 200k people that use it, it's a success to them. Thats their opinion, because they value different things than you. "194k people use it, that's more than the populations of 20 sovereign nations! That's a success" has correct metrics,…

I just don't get OP's "years have passed, only a few hundred thousand ppl use it daily, therefor it's an abject failure" stance.

Not everything has to be used daily by a million+ people to be considered a success.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#124

Post by safety1st »

kaba0 wrote: post #111
safety1st wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this idea is that if by some unfortunate accident of history, Nazis gain power again, they'll say exactly what you just said except replace the word Nazi with Jew. I would flip what you just said on its head and say practically the opposite: the virtue of Mastodon is that when the Nazis seize power not all instances will be forced to censor Jews (whereas Twitter will be forced to do it or shut down).

What exactly is your threat model — every single country will simultaneously become a nazi dictatorship? Is their a world domination beforehand which somehow misses the “nuke the Earth” part? For a server to operate you only need a very basic power source and internet connection, even in an occupied country it seems plenty doable.

Example: an extremist government comes into power in the US and orders all social media and traditional media companies to censor a certain type of speech. They could very well have popular support if there has been a war or a depression or some other crisis, it was only 75 years ago that we had a literal Office of Censorship, were putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps etc. US media is very concentrated today, the government only needs to go around to a handful of companies to censor the vast majority of outlets Americans get their news from.

Sure someone can set up a server somewhere and publish whatever they want but if no one reads it it won't really matter. Most people won't change where they get their news overnight even if the government does impose censorship. That's why federated social media is so valuable, widespread use of it ASAP is a benefit to society. It can de-concentrate the ownership of media distribution, decentralize control and make the next Office of Censorship's job much harder.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#125

Post by rakoo »

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…

There is a kernel of truth though. Many communities are organized per instance, so if you want to be part of multiple communities you must register on multiple instances. You can follow an account, but you can't follow an entire instance and have all toots of everyone there displayed in a timeline on your own instance.

Humans are naturally converging towards communities, and Mastodon leaned into that. But it's actually not the right tool, because in the end it's centered around individual accounts. Lemmy is the closest thing to what the author wants I guess.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#126

Post by Ferret7446 »

rakoo wrote: post #125
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…

There is a kernel of truth though. Many communities are organized per instance, so if you want to be part of multiple communities you must register on multiple instances. You can follow an account, but you can't follow an entire instance and have all toots of everyone there displayed in a timeline on your own instance. Humans are naturally converging towards communities, and Mastodon leaned into that. But it's actual…

It seems like it should be trivial to extend the Mastodon protocol and software to support following other instances. Is that not so, or why has that not been done?

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#127

Post by egypturnash »

sph wrote: post #70
egypturnash wrote: post #23

It's largely replaced Twitter for talking to a lot of my friends. Which is the only reason I ever joined Twitter in the first place - all their Livejournals got replaced by these autoposts of cryptic fragments of conversations, and I reluctantly followed them to this annoying world of ultra-short posts that just kept getting shittier and shitter as Twitter kept on trying to make it profitable. And I can preemptively…

Please indulge me: what's wrong with email for talking to your friends? Unless you think your conversations have to be public for everybody else to see.

Have you looked at your email inbox lately? Email is full of spam, and business, and businesses I dealt with in the past trying to entice me into giving them more money, and spam filters that can register false positives on stuff I do want to see.

A non-profit social media site just has my friends, without any need to regularly spend time keeping up filters.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#128

Post by elsjaako »

imwillofficial wrote: post #120
elsjaako wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring to some of the mobile clients not interacting with gab. This wasn't mastodon itself. It's an open protocol, anyone can write a client. If you're referring to something else let me know, I'd be interested.

Just because anyone can work around it, doesn’t mean they should have to. If the package maintainers themselves are censoring stuff as best they can, that’s beyond the pale. Gab had no more toxic content than any twitter thread on a contentious topic.

If MS Outlook started refusing to communicate with 163.com, would it be fair to say that email had banned 163.com? Would it be fair to say that email users had to work around this block?

I think it's an issue with MS Outlook, not with email.

AFAIK, the two apps that blocked gab were Tusky and Toot!. This isn't like all email clients were doing this. The other thing is that local server admins blocked gab en masse. This is why you should find an instance that matches your requirements.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#129

Post by sohkamyung »

puyoxyz wrote: post #74
sohkamyung wrote: post #68

The good thing about having multiple Mastodon servers is you can sign up for multiple accounts (one on each server) and use each one for a specific purpose. I have three separate Mastodon accounts: one for general postings, one for posting photos only, and one for book reviews. Followers can choose which 'aspect' of me to follow and ignore the rest. This is unlike Twitter, where followers have no choice but to put up…

You can have multiple accounts on Twitter; it’s allowed and even encouraged since both the mobile app and the web app have an account switcher, and TweetDeck lets you use multiple accounts at once IIRC.

I never use Twitter apps, so I have no idea about TweetDeck's capabilities.

If multiple Twitter accounts are encouraged, I've never seen the people I follow use it. They all post multiple kinds of things through one account, and never ask followers to follow any other Twitter accounts they may be using.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#130

Post by sohkamyung »

rsolva wrote: post #80
sohkamyung wrote: post #68

The good thing about having multiple Mastodon servers is you can sign up for multiple accounts (one on each server) and use each one for a specific purpose. I have three separate Mastodon accounts: one for general postings, one for posting photos only, and one for book reviews. Followers can choose which 'aspect' of me to follow and ignore the rest. This is unlike Twitter, where followers have no choice but to put up…

You should check out bookwyrm.social for posting book reviews! It is a federated Goodreads alternative that makes it easy to share my book-related activity via my Mastodon account, and to keep track of my reading progression, quotes, reviews etc. I REALLY like the idea (and practial implementation) of linking different domains of information together trough an open standard like ActivityPub!

I have a Bookwyrm account. It's what I'm using to toot my book reviews. :-)
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