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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

#81

Post by watwut »

kibwen wrote: post #50
philipov wrote: post #15

The most important quality I hear people are looking for in a replacement for Twitter is "Everyone else is on it" so they're all stuck in a catch 22. I don't think this energy to get off Twitter is going to go anywhere.

I think it's a mistake to think that Mastodon would necessarily be the beneficiary of any Twitter exodus. I think it's more likely that the beneficiaries would be established, centralized services like Discord or Reddit. The underlying media models may be different, but I suspect people care less about the model than about seeing things they're interested in, and plenty of these people will already have accounts on t…

I dont think discord or reddit could replace what I do on twitter. As in, on twitter I following selected bunch of people I am interested in. Neither twitter nor reddit can do that. It is not that twitter cant be replaced or abandoned, I think that I will move out over time. I expect there to be a lot more drama over time and it already had enough drama already. (I even muted Elon Musk cause he was source of quite of lot nonsense crap).

But, it wont be reddit nor discord. Maybe it will just be nothing.

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

#82

Post by Macha »

jstx1 wrote: post #77

Can someone explain how Mastodon works? Right now I can sign up at twitter.com and get to see and talk to everyone else who has signed up - where do I sign up for Mastodon and do I get to interact with everyone else who has done the same? (the fact that this needs to be explained at all should already be a hint that it will never be mainstream)

Mastodon.tech and yes (unless they've been banned)

There's no reason the answer needs to be more complicated than Twitter. Options exist, but in the literal ELI5 explanation people can already figure out "how do I message my friend who uses a different phone manufacturer than I do" without a long detailing of the inner workings of signal, or iMessage or whatsapp

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

#83

Post by aloisdg »

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…

> how do I discover people I know?

The twitodon can help: https://twitodon.com/

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

#85

Post by Zak »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #40
Spivak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s a microblogging platform.

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

I would describe Facebook's core post/newsfeed feature as a microblogging platform.

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

#86

Post by jokethrowaway »

Considering Elon Musk is likely to revert the ridiculous censorship that went on at Twitter, rhe people leaving twitter are the ones who want censors.

Kind of ridiculous for them to go to Mastodon where decentralisation makes banning harder. They will be exposed to - the horror! - other people's ideas!

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

#87

Post by multiplegeorges »

jstx1 wrote: post #73
rsynnott wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is very confusing. Why do they largely interconnect? (Why do they connect at all / why don't they always connect?) What's the point of multiple sites if they connect to each other?

Think of it like email servers. My emails go through mine, and yours go through yours, but if I know your address I can still send you a message.

It doesn't matter that I'm on Gmail and you're on Protonmail. Just like it doesn't matter that I'm on ruby.social and you're on mastodon.online.

It's email servers for social posts.

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

#88

Post by lapcat »

kibwen wrote: post #50
philipov wrote: post #15

The most important quality I hear people are looking for in a replacement for Twitter is "Everyone else is on it" so they're all stuck in a catch 22. I don't think this energy to get off Twitter is going to go anywhere.

I think it's a mistake to think that Mastodon would necessarily be the beneficiary of any Twitter exodus. I think it's more likely that the beneficiaries would be established, centralized services like Discord or Reddit. The underlying media models may be different, but I suspect people care less about the model than about seeing things they're interested in, and plenty of these people will already have accounts on t…

The biggest beneficiary of a Twitter exodus may be... our free time.

There's no reason we have to go anywhere after Twitter. Global social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc., didn't even exist 20 years ago. We're probably better off without them IMO. The best Twitter replacement may be nothing.

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

#89

Post by Macha »

jstx1 wrote: post #73
rsynnott wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is very confusing. Why do they largely interconnect? (Why do they connect at all / why don't they always connect?) What's the point of multiple sites if they connect to each other?

The operators can choose who to work with and can ban other servers as well as just other users. Many do this because the other server is too right wing, too left wing, content illegal in some jurisdictions (the above mentioned pawoo is a Japanese server involved in the Japanese anime scene and therefore has lolicon on it), etc.

Think of it like Twitter if the use of shared blocklists was standard rather than niche behaviour.

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

#90

Post by multiplegeorges »

vander_elst wrote: post #12

That's about 0.018% of total twitter user base (assuming total user base = 396.5 Million, 0.018 = 100*70K/396.5M). In relative numbers that's very little.

How many users generate content and value for Twitter? Maybe 500k/day? It's a lot in terms of value generation.
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