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Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

theguardian.com

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Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#31

Post by philipov »

VectorLock wrote: post #26

People used to think the network effect for MySpace and Friendster were insurmountable. I played around with Mastodon last night and I think it has some bad but not insurmountable ergonomic wrinkles, but I worry its decentralization will prevent it from ever becoming mainstream. Centralization makes it easier to deal with "bad" actors. Also Discovery is a huge problem: how do I discover people I know? How do content…

Centralization makes it harder to deal with bad actors, because the cost of moderating a huge platform is massive, and the centralized social media platforms we have today have been unable or unwilling to do it.

Federal platforms like Reddit and Discord are able to moderate effectively, on the other hand, because the cost of moderation is devolved to the municipal governments: subreddits and servers. Moderation at this scale works; it works right now on this forum.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#33

Post by [deleted] »

moooo99 wrote: post #14
chiefalchemist wrote: post #4

It's impressive how quickly those bot accounts can jump ship. Now Mastodon use them to juice their growth figures. p.s. They gained accounts. That's not the same as actual users using the platform.

Mastodon is a not for profit project ran by many community members in a federated fashion. What do they have to gain by „juicing“ their growth figures?

[deleted]

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#34

Post by mempko »

cloutchaser wrote: post #2

How many conservatives are still on Twitter complaining about censorship, rather than using Gettr or Parler or Truth Social? Network effects are WAY stronger than we think. Also, if you built a following on Twitter over 10-15 years, leaving it is a massive sacrifice. I wouldn't bet on an actual twitter exodus.

Except history is littered with dead social networks that were once huge. People said the same thing 'network effects' yet phase shifts happen. Don't just bet on twitter staying twitter.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#35

Post by cmrdporcupine »

VectorLock wrote: post #26

People used to think the network effect for MySpace and Friendster were insurmountable. I played around with Mastodon last night and I think it has some bad but not insurmountable ergonomic wrinkles, but I worry its decentralization will prevent it from ever becoming mainstream. Centralization makes it easier to deal with "bad" actors. Also Discovery is a huge problem: how do I discover people I know? How do content…

It doesn't need to be mainstream, nor do I want to be mainstream.

I just use it to follow a number of interesting people and to write my thoughts here and there. A bit like how Twitter was in its early days. (Except without the stupid short word limits which encouraged pithy one liners.)

I don't need it to have celebrities or big media organizations. That is literally the worst part of Twitter. I don't need my mom on there, or to get in an argument with the jackass down the street who is angry because underpaid education workers are going on strike. Or to hear random people's uninformed 200 character "hot-takes" on complicated issues.

Further I resent that the tech industry seems to have cultured its own weird industry-celebrity culture of short-thought hit'n'run tech-thoughts in the form of tweets. I have no desire to "show off" my engineering work on twitter in that form or follow people who do so. But I've seen some nice content on Mastodon of people doing neat things and talking about it; the 500 word limit is far better for this.

Twitter is/was a toxic cesspool of narcissism and engagement. I had no desire to have that in my life and didn't really use it...

But I am enjoying checking Mastodon a few times a day and engaging there. A few thousand people leaving Twitter and contributing to that is good. I don't expect them all to stay, but hopefully the good ones do.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#36

Post by Krisando »

rsynnott wrote: post #18
MichaelZuo wrote: post #6

It's difficult to see the value in spending time on Mastodon, compared to other services. For example, just checking joinmastodon.org gives the following top 10 recommended options: " GENERAL INVITE ONLY snabelen.no Ein norsk tenar for den desentraliserte sosiale media platformen Mastodon Get on waitlist 1.8K GENERAL INVITE ONLY mastodontti.fi Tämä on suomenkielinen Mastodon-instanssi. Julkisten päivitysten tulisi ol…

> So it's a bit weird why it's advertised as a Twitter replacement at all. Clearly competition will balkanize everything into thousands of mostly invite-only niche servers. That doesn't _really_ matter, though; Mastodon sites largely interconnect. I'm on mastodon.social because I am very lazy; most of the people I follow are on other, more specialised sites.

> That doesn't _really_ matter, though; Mastodon sites largely interconnect. I'm on mastodon.social because I am very lazy

Mastodon is a mess. Pawoo.net is the LARGEST userbase Mastodon node, professionally ran by a company and is one of the few that can scale appropriately to demand. You'll find that mastodon.social has limited its federation abilities with it.

Your choice of Mastodon nodes matter.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#37

Post by tsol »

candiddevmike wrote: post #13
cloutchaser wrote: post #2

How many conservatives are still on Twitter complaining about censorship, rather than using Gettr or Parler or Truth Social? Network effects are WAY stronger than we think. Also, if you built a following on Twitter over 10-15 years, leaving it is a massive sacrifice. I wouldn't bet on an actual twitter exodus.

I feel like if people truly cared about what you had to say they would seek you out regardless of the platform. Follower numbers are glorified internet points meant to keep you engaged/chained to the platform.

I think this is too simplified. For example, I don't care much for Stephen King(he's a great writer horror just doesn't do anything for me), but I still heard what he has to say on this due to it being posted on twitter. I pay attention because I know he's a significant person. I wouldn't seek him out otherwise, but because he happens to be in my network I pay attention to him even though I don't consume his works.

Without that large network, the only people seeking him out will be fans. There are at least two negatives to that. The audience is smaller, and there's less exposure to non-fans

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#38

Post by samizdis »

piuvas wrote: post #19
MichaelZuo wrote: post #6

It's difficult to see the value in spending time on Mastodon, compared to other services. For example, just checking joinmastodon.org gives the following top 10 recommended options: " GENERAL INVITE ONLY snabelen.no Ein norsk tenar for den desentraliserte sosiale media platformen Mastodon Get on waitlist 1.8K GENERAL INVITE ONLY mastodontti.fi Tämä on suomenkielinen Mastodon-instanssi. Julkisten päivitysten tulisi ol…

You're forgetting that Mastodon runs on ActivityPub, which means that the point is to divide users into different servers. For example, when everyone joined mastodon.social, the balance tipped and a lot of users lost access. Concentrating users into a single instance is not what's supposed to happen. Ideally, you wouldn't want to go through joinmastodon.org and join the highest ranking server since that would central…

I'd be interested to see what might happen if quality daily/weekly news publications, science journals, academic institutions, professional bodies (representing educators, medics, dentists, climate scientists, mathematicians etc) were to set up and run Mastodon instances. Seems like a possible way to encourage a return to the old-school newsgroup discussion communities; to bring focus and avoid the chaff clogging up the centralised megaplatforms.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#39

Post by SuoDuanDao »

sounds like a win-win to me. I doubt I'd agree with many of the people who left Twitter on much - I might actually start using Twitter now - but I admire their willingness to stand by their beliefs and I'm sure Mastodon will be better for their arrival.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#40

Post by MichaelZuo »

Spivak wrote: post #28
MichaelZuo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if it serves a different use case then Twitter, why is it even advertised, or talked about, as a replacement?

Because it’s a microblogging platform.

Does a platform of mostly invite only communities count as microblogging?

Is Facebook a microblogging platform too?

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