Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 276 posts

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

#231

Post by toofy »

samizdis wrote: post #38
piuvas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

my guess is this will absolutely happen over time.

whatever forms will be similar to libera being the logical irc network for open source projects channels. if you’re a science org, you’ll just naturally join $science_instance.

it’s still early in the process but i’m stoked to watch it all unfold. it really feels like we’re watching in real time what people mean when they explain how the internet was prior to everything being centralized behind walled gardens and google.

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

#232

Post by Sin2x »

ceejayoz wrote: post #227
Sin2x wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are literally one search query away from it making sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28495086 http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2737/FP_6.pdf There was a huge uproar about it a couple of years back. EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/jkiw1y/can_someon... Gab was "banned" in that the vast majority of instances blocked it and blocked any other instance that didn't do the same . If that's not censorship…

> You are literally one search query away from it making sense... No, that doesn't make it make more sense. You're saying Pleroma instances cannot decide to de-federate with a specific instance, and can't remove/moderate posts? That seems... unlikely.

I'm saying that censorship is ingrained in the Mastodon culture and is considered normal and necessary. Considering that Pleroma is also technically superior, I don't understand why one would prefer Mastodon over it, except popularity which is not a merit.

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

#233

Post by stewbrew »

jeena wrote: post #145
VectorLock wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FidoNET (got I loved FidoNET) had a central coordinating authority, you had to get on a nodelist. With Mastodon it gets incrementally harder to just add someone. Are they on the same Mastodon instance as me? Does my Mastodon instance federate the Mastodon instance they're on? Is this handled client side with multiple identities? Now how do I handle these multiple identities, so I broadcast "toots" (cringe) to all of…

I'm also confused about your description. I host my own single user mastodon instance and have no problems to follow anyone, just put their username into the searchbar and click follow. This way I can follow anything on the fediverse, not only Mastodon accounts but PeerTube, Friendica, PixelFed, FunkWhale, etc. all from my Mastodon account.

Yes you can but that's not how hardcore mastodon users describe things. Did you ever wonder what the local feed is about?

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

#234

Post by yborg »

VectorLock wrote: post #205
yborg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "advertised" as a replacement for Twitter; the word "Twitter" does not appear on the Mastodon homepage. It's talked about because at the moment there aren't many similar alternatives.

Mastodon looks like Twitter, functions like Twitter, apes Twitter's features such as using @username, and even calls its posts "Toots." You really can't honestly argue that Mastodon isn't trying to be Twitter.

Look, I get it - it's not Twitter therefore it's a failure. And some people are ok with that, I really don't get why the need to campaign against Fediverse, it isn't killing anybody's dog.

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

#235

Post by toofy »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #24
piuvas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

it’s not “advertised” as a twitter _clone_, it’s just being talked about as an alternative.

whether or not it fits what people are looking for, it’s being compared to twitter because it’s been pretty clear for a few years, even prior to the elon mess, twitter users really want to move somewhere else, they just haven’t settled yet on where.

this is all reminiscent of discussions around facebook a few years ago, it was clear at the time it was on its way out, people just hadn’t settled on where to go at the time. most just shifted their time to twitter or insta and the kids all just went to tiktok.

twitter will be the same way. if i had to guess it will be similar to facebooks boomerish crowd, twitter will have its user base who refuses to move on—they’ll be shaking their fists at the “cancel culture virtue signal woke woke” sky and the rest of the internet will just continue on somewhere else.

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

#236

Post by WorldMaker »

VectorLock wrote: post #160
Kadin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter didn't really have much of a discovery mechanism in its early years, and that's when it really built the userbase that is its main competitive advantage right now. I'm not sure that's a huge impediment, particularly since Twitter could be the de facto discovery mechanism for people on their way out the door ("Hey, I'm leaving for Mastodon, where I'll be foo@bar.org"). I do think there's an unmet demand for ag…

The experience with twitodon.com is very clunky. Since people seem to be putting their mastodon tags in their Twitter "name" fields now it seems like it'd be a much more streamlined process to just scrape that.

That's the approach tools like Fedi Finder have been using: scraping handles out of Twitter display names and Bios.

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

#237

Post by VectorLock »

yborg wrote: post #234
VectorLock wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon looks like Twitter, functions like Twitter, apes Twitter's features such as using @username, and even calls its posts "Toots." You really can't honestly argue that Mastodon isn't trying to be Twitter.

Look, I get it - it's not Twitter therefore it's a failure. And some people are ok with that, I really don't get why the need to campaign against Fediverse, it isn't killing anybody's dog.

I never said Mastodon was a failure because its not Twitter. I'm somewhat skeptical but I think the jury is still out on Mastodon. There is a lot of potential there. Part of me thinks the Fediverse is a great idea but it causes more problems than the value you get from it.

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

#238

Post by VectorLock »

toofy wrote: post #220
VectorLock wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at it from another perspective what is the INCENTIVE to run a Mastodon server? What are those server costs and time to setup and moderate worth? Notoriety? Control over the users?

my guess is it’s the same rewards that drove people to run usenet servers, bbs servers, irc servers, forums, countless open-source projects, and whatever other non-centralized platforms flourished in the past and present.

Like I said, notoriety and control of users. People ran BBS servers to be sysops, IRC servers to get O:lines, open source projects to get their name out there, etc. "Pure altriusm" could also be a motivator.

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

#239

Post by stiltzkin »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #168

Honest question: Can someone who actually uses and gets value from Twit please explain the use case and value? I totally grok interest-based social, but I do not at all understand why I would want to put effort into figuring out personality-based social (beyond family/friends/blogs/etc) - particularly when posts are limited to bumper sticker lengths (unless they are just URLS to rich posts hosted elsewhere, but that'…

The same you find using HN, by your preferences and algorithm Twitter puts you in contacts with other people with the same interest and have conversation, Reddit have most of the communities but it has its downsides as pro-leftist and censored. Musk want to make it neither too left or right.

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

#240

Post by toofy »

VectorLock wrote: post #205
yborg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "advertised" as a replacement for Twitter; the word "Twitter" does not appear on the Mastodon homepage. It's talked about because at the moment there aren't many similar alternatives.

Mastodon looks like Twitter, functions like Twitter, apes Twitter's features such as using @username, and even calls its posts "Toots." You really can't honestly argue that Mastodon isn't trying to be Twitter.

using pieces that work well and that users enjoy doesn’t preclude you from also doing other things differently.

just because hacker news has usernames, comments, and voting, that doesn’t mean it’s “trying to be reddit”

there are countless little things one can change that make it an entirely different experience even if some features are similar.

just like hackernews to reddit, the experience i’ve had on mastodon has been a noticeable improvement over twitter. yes, there are comments and voting in hackernews, but the experience is noticeably different—and better—than reddit.

Post reply on HN