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Mastodon.technology Shutdown

ashfurrow.com

191–200 of 604 posts

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#191
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> migrated seamlessly I disagree with that characterization. > and survived Survival is not the issue. Mastodon will survive. Tumblr survives. Even MySpace survives. But major disruptions tend to lose users. (And yes it's true that the potential Twitter acquisition is a potential major disruption. But it's not going to be shut down after a $44 billion investment.)

It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from It's probably more about how much the new owners will want to drop into it and how long before it moves to x.com (?) and becomes an everything app

> It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from

Why did you feel the need to mention this 100% obvious fact?

Of course I meant that the new owners wouldn't shut down something they just spent $44 billion on, thereby throwing their investment in the trash, not that Twitter would magically get a $44 billion operating cash infusion.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#192
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most people don't want to pay for something that they (think) can get for free. The other problem is that charging $1/month is a practical pain in the ass. For micropayments, processors will easily take 20-30% of that.

Annual billing would solve for that.

Yes, but you are also asking for a bigger commitment.

One solution that I implemented in communick as an attempt to solve both cases: sell group packages. Let one person pay for a group of 5-10 people. This way you can still have a monthly subscription and you lose less money to the payment processors. I was also hoping that would help with network effects, as it would be an incentive for one person to bring others along. Alas, I think I am the only "customer" from my own service that has been using this functionality.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#193

why is the maintenance cost of a Mastodon instance so high? What is the technology stack?

Mastodon was created using the Ruby on Rails framework. Your able to quickly write applications at the cost of overhead from all the moving parts and the Ruby language in general (Though in recent years ruby has improved with the introduction of JIT into it's codebase).

Ah, that makes sense then.

I started out in Ruby years ago; wonderful language, doesn’t scale well.

Someone should rewrite it in Phoenix…

EDIT: Oh, someone did! https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just butt in at this point to note that 'federated' systems are more or less FidoNet and Usenet warmed over, neither of which managed to overtake commercial systems, and in the latter case was rendered useless by spam... much like Mastodon and friends which are rendered useless by racism and porn. Speaking of which... there's supposed to be a Mastodon Server Covenant(tm)(c)(pat. pending) in regards to such matte…

>racism and porn. That's what got reddit to be the biggest forum on the planet. So I guess Mastodon is worth another look then.

Now that Reddit is very respectable, we're supposed to pretend that it wasn't started as normie 4chan, even ripping off naming subsections like naked directories, just like every imageboard. A normie 4chan that got lucky by existing when digg decided to commit suicide.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#195

why is the maintenance cost of a Mastodon instance so high? What is the technology stack?

From my experience, both Mastodon and Pleroma are massively overcomplicated resource hogs that are hard to set up, configure, or navigate.

Pleroma too? Usually Elixir apps are much more efficient than RoR apps in my experience

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#196
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense of the word they are already shut down. Moderation is very heavy on both and certain topics just can't become widely shared. For example, a recent thread by a sex worker had something like 8/30 tweets censored off the platform (despite none of the content being graphic, offensive, or illegal). So sure, Twitter will run for a long time. But it doesn't have very strong guarantees to its users about how it…

Neither does any point on the Fediverse. As long as operators think they can run their site any way they want instead of obeying a common protocol then they're federated in name only. To put it another way: If I can never trust that my email will make it to someone on gmail due to the opaqueness of their spam filters, with no way to be whitelisted by a recipient, then email has been thoroughly decommoditized and cent…

> so too a 'federated' system where operators set arbitrary rules that result in whatever server they don't like being unreachable.

Nah. If you can pick your king, he's not really a king. The intended recipient of your communication decided to join a server that censors your type of message.

The problem is when the federation becomes a trust, and members collude. Like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, for example. The more division, the more federation, the harder it is to collude.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to look very hard to find screaming racists, furries, and lolicons. They make no effort to hide themselves since operators apparently endorse that sort of behavior as long as it fits their own particular biases and kinks. Of course not. It's on the Internet. I don't have a problem with furries, people with bias or kinks. What if I'm one of those people, should I not be allowed to make public comment?…

> What if I'm one of those people, should I not be allowed to make public comment? If you do, do not be surprised when the service you're using gains a reputation accordingly. > And on the odd occasion I do, I just ban the user or the entire instance and move on. Yeah, that's actually part of the problem. If anyone can ban anyone for any reason then you don't actually have a federation. You have, at best, a gathering…

You’re trying to redefine “federation” and failing…

It’s a protocol for independent systems to automatically exchange some information.

It’s not a distributed system of interchangeable instances.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#198

This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…

Look, I like open source federated ecosystems like Mastodon, but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable. I'm not sure I could reliably predict whether Twitter or Mastodon will live longer.

That’s true of Facebook, but I can see Twitter receiving a fatal blow if the Musk acquisition goes through.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#199

This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. Firstly, they care about their users and are more likely to take difficult decisions, like the one Ash has made, for the good of themselves and their users. In doing so everyone involved has time to make an orderly move. Secondly, the service survives. Mastodon didn't shut down. The Fediverse didn't close. One beloved insta…

Look, I like open source federated ecosystems like Mastodon, but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable. I'm not sure I could reliably predict whether Twitter or Mastodon will live longer.

> but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable.

where is soon?

And also, do you have a crystal ball to predict the future?

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stopped reading at the first sentence. Stop bringing your personal drama here please.

You do realise that you're the one being personally dramatic here, right? Especially with a comment like that.

It's interesting how some people always assume it's a moral failing when others refuse to engage with their bullshit.
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