Live data from Hacker News

It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

simonwillison.net

101–110 of 472 posts

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#101

If Twitter and Mastodon were taken permanently offline tomorrow, would this be of any significant loss to the world? When I see people like the author getting so publicly and verbosely upset about a social media website, I wonder about their perspective. There are surely much more important things going on than preening to the crowds.

It is not what would happen if Twitter disappears that is worrying, it is what it might become if steward unwisely.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#102

It doesn't seem sensible to invest yourself so much into Mastodon without having thorougly explored it. I too was fascinated with the fediverse, until I used it for more than a month and realized the people posting there were just as toxic and annoying as Twitters, not to mention the plenty of instances where the petty owners have made everything even worse

I mean, what instance did you register on? Because I've been using it for a couple years and uhh, the toxicity is nearly non-existent for me. I see some stupid crap once in a while in a response to some highly-followed user, but then I just mute the person's entire instance (if I find that similarly-toxic crap is a common sort of output from there).

Simultaneously, I've had more meaningful communication on Mastodon in the past week than I've had on twitter in the past year. I have just over 200 followers and Mastodon, and nearly 1400 on Twitter.

So yeah, I've thoroughly explored it, and I am definitely investing myself into it -- and have no intention of going back.

I have already stopped checking Twitter for weeks at a time or longer. I only open it to see if I have a message from a friend (since I turn off email notifications for basically everything), or maybe tweet at some brand whose service has made my day crappier.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WhatsApp. Everyone in Latin America uses it. I don't believe that Zuckerberg is reading my chats, and not concerned enough about E2E encryption to bother evangelizing another app to everyone I know.

WhatsApp is encrypted end to end for what it’s worth. They just retain chat metadata that signal does not.

That data includes everyone's phonebook.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#104

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing this that the UI/UX of Mastodon is much better than Twitter. I feel better.

What would a team of "accessibility engineers" occupy themselves with every day anyway? Did they build features that will fail unless someone is there to handhold?

"Day 2: still accessible? check. Day 3: still accessible? check."....

Accessibility is important, but once you build a wheelchair ramp into a building, the ramp builders have nothing more to do. Likewise, Twitter remains fairly static, with only minor changes over the years.

> As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision...

So you could stomach the decision if you didn't have a blind father? That's not how shared values of accessibility should work - the care factor depending on who you know.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#105
post #49

> I can’t see myself putting the same work in to help the world’s richest man pay the loans he took out So Twitter was “really good” (while it was helping the many rich shareholders of a random public company) but it’s suddenly “work” a couple of days after the owner changed? Nothing wrong for not using it because of ideological reasons, but the product’s accessibility (or anything else really) hasn’t changed yet.

There is a very strong signal being given right now about the trend Twitter will be on for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#106
Uh, I don't know about Mastodon, can't judge about it, but I'm following your website's own RSS feed. Website + RSS feed does the job for me. And as long as you keep publishing a feed, I'm able to read your content just fine.

The web is already 'social media'!

Edit: oh, by the way, my homegrown newsreader only shows the first x amount of characters, so I always have to click through to your website if I want to read more.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Musk wants twitter to be the town square for the world, that town square needs to be accessible for all. Even though this might not directly affect Simon, hats off to him for making that decision. If twitter starts becoming as inaccessible as most other systems it will lock out people and remove their voices from twitter. That feels like an incredibly valid reason, and isn't the point of free markets to vote with…

You don’t need a whole accessibility team for a product to be accessible. It can be handled by raising the awareness of other product teams plus some central auditing, for example (Twitter after all is a pretty basic product, UX wise).

Someone needs to do that though. With the foremost experts sacked, and staff down with a half, who will bother?

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WhatsApp. Everyone in Latin America uses it. I don't believe that Zuckerberg is reading my chats, and not concerned enough about E2E encryption to bother evangelizing another app to everyone I know.

WhatsApp is encrypted end to end for what it’s worth. They just retain chat metadata that signal does not.

Is there a proof that there is no backdoor in WhatsApp? Client code is not released. By default it does unencrypted backup to cloud. You don't know if encryption keys are leaving device.
Post reply on HN