Mastodon.technology Shutdown • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#281

Post by otikik » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #277

proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

> This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. People who aren't looking to make a profit (or even break even) means they are running a social media platform while funding it through some other means. What is that means of making money? What pays for the hosting and the time spent doing ops? You can't take money out of the equation because you have hosting costs at th…

There’s lots of space between “not doing things for profit” and “not caring about money”.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#282

Post by rapnie » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

ElCheapo wrote: post #60

berkes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon has a migration path for users to move to other instances. So when the server admins allow it (i.e. don't just shutdown, or kick someone off) moving is rather easy. Today, several in my mastodon timeline mentioned they finished the move. But without them mentioning, I, an outstander (i'm on another instance) wouldn't notice it. What will happen, though, is that a portion of the users won't migrate. Either be…

Well, seems like this is a clear path for improvement: a decent UI tool for migration between instances

Such mechanism already exists. Look for the comment by @nightpool

It works best between Mastodon instances, but between different apps the migrations are often also supported. New apps like GoToSocial have the migration still as open issue sitting in their tracker, but will support as well.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#283

Post by otikik » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #44

proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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.

Google Reader T_T

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#284

Post by teraflop » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #277

proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

> This is one of the strengths of a federated system run by people who aren't looking to profit. People who aren't looking to make a profit (or even break even) means they are running a social media platform while funding it through some other means. What is that means of making money? What pays for the hosting and the time spent doing ops? You can't take money out of the equation because you have hosting costs at th…

"Trying to be self-funding" and "trying to make a profit" are very different things, and it doesn't make sense to conflate them.

Even though funding wasn't the primary focus of this blog post, it seems to make it quite clear where the money was coming from: https://www.patreon.com/ashfurrow

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#285

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

efdee wrote: post #145

importgravity wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The staffers setup the new servers and did all the heavy-lifting. As a user, I only had to point my client from Freenode to Libera (exactly one line change in my client config), run /msg nickserv register to register myself, run /msg chanserv register to register the channels I op-ed, and it was all done. Total time spent was less than 30 minutes. The next few days, others did the same and the community started trick…

And yet userbase got decimated for most channels when moving from Freenode to Libera. Just because it was only 30 minutes (for you or for anyone) doesn't mean people will go through the effort.

anecodote only, but #ardour lost precisely zero users when moving from freenode to libera. just because people on channels you joined weren't willing to go through "the effort" doesn't mean that other people feel that way.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#286

Post by toastal » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

registeredcorn wrote: post #98

proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

Just as a small nitpick, there is still a community on Flickr. There are certain elements that Photographers get out of Flickr that we don't get from Instagram, or other platforms. This isn't to say that the service is as big or powerful as it once was, but it has done an adequate, if not satisfactory job, at meeting the needs of its base.

Very true in comparison to Instagram. Flickr doesn't strip your metadata and color profiles. They allow uploading actual rectangle photos instead of square or square-ish. They don't compress the hell out of the images. They store an original of the upload (great for an archiving failure). There's also more community-building tools even if they're no where near the vibrancy of a decade ago (though the unlimited storage is probably what led to the decline as many folks just dumped everything on it).

The biggest beef is everything that comes with it needing to be for-profit and how you can't control the whims of the product owner.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#287

Post by monocasa » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #209

monocasa wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MySpace and AIM might be better examples then.

MySpace today still has more active users than Mastodon.

MySpace deleted all content prior to 2016, making it effectively a new network from the Myspace people normally talk about.

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#288

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

berkes wrote: post #24

HankB99 wrote: post #13

Ash: I'm sorry to hear about the health issue that precipitated this. I wish you the best outcome but realize that that does not always happen. Rest: As someone who does not (yet) use Mastodon, I'm curious about the impact of a single node shutting down. At least in this case this is happening in an orderly manner and with warning. I'm also curious if this is a problem with Mastodon in general or did this particular…

Mastodon has a migration path for users to move to other instances. So when the server admins allow it (i.e. don't just shutdown, or kick someone off) moving is rather easy. Today, several in my mastodon timeline mentioned they finished the move. But without them mentioning, I, an outstander (i'm on another instance) wouldn't notice it. What will happen, though, is that a portion of the users won't migrate. Either be…

> a migration path for users to move to other instances

Thanks for clarifying - without that bit of background, this post reads like, "if I can't have it, no one can". But I guess the post is directed at people who do understand the background behind mastodon in general (which I and OP didn't).

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#289

Post by philosopher1234 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

Why not consider twitter, Facebook, tumblr as decentralized instances of social media? Why build decentralization into the tech instead of having decentralization through multiple companies existing? A real community is being destroyed here, even though other similar ones exist

Re: Mastodon.technology Shutdown

#290

Post by marcinzm » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

riffic wrote: post #226

proactivesvcs wrote: post #28

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…

> Let's talk once twitter shuts down. Because it will. Bingo. I say this all the time, Twitter is not immune from being a member of this list (Defunct social networking sites, wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network... The Fediverse (or Federated Social Web as it was previously referred to in 2007[0] or so when it was first envisioned) will never close. Single installations may, but t…

Sure, but commercial entities generally shut down when there's too few users to justify the costs. But then you're not comparing the value of current Twitter shutting down but an empty wasteland Twitter shutting down. An empty wasteland Fediverse also wouldn't be of much use to the vast majority of people.