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It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

simonwillison.net

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Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#301

Post by rustybolt »

Aeolun wrote: post #292
hristov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference isn't really who but how much money. One uses a lot of goods and services in ordinary life. Generally speaking one hopes that the provider of these goods and services uses their resources efficiently to provide them for a reasonable price including reasonable profit. When a leveraged buyout happens (this is true for most leveraged buyouts) a large cost is put into the business that wasn't there be…

I’m afraid I don’t understand how Twitter can end up with debt from Musk buying it. How does that even work? Twitter the company takes out a huge loan to pay the current shareholders a fortune (which is decided by those same shareholders, no conflict of interest there at all). But who the fuck would give them a loan like that (like you say, just to have Musk at the helm)?

How I understand the parent post: Twitter has cost Musk a lot of money. Musk will now have to get a lot of value from twitter, and that will probably be bad news for the user.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#302

Post by ErikCorry »

Isinlor wrote: post #39
TulliusCicero wrote: post #12

I think it'd be great for more decentralized platforms to supplant centralized ones, but they usually seem to struggle to acquire more mainstream users. Even if Twitter collapses under Musk's leadership, my hunch is that a (new?) centralized competitor is more likely to take most of their market share, rather than Mastodon. I know, I know, there's some obvious exceptions like email, or just the web in general, but it…

Even email is not really that decentralized - it's mostly Google + Microsoft.

The reason why this happened is instructive. Fighting spam is really hard and the best way to do it is to be good at machine learning and to have access to a good percentage of worldwide mail, unencrypted.

Since there's no reason to think that Mastodon is immune to the spam issue, this strongly suggests that whatever replaces Twitter will quickly consolidate to a single dominant player, or perhaps a handful. Or it could collapse under the spam issue like Usenet did.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#303

Post by mcherm »

firefoxkekw wrote: post #260
DoItToMe81 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Mastodon to 'work' in a way I'd enjoy, it would need a culture that it just does not have, and that has never emerged from any microblogging platform. The Fediverse as a whole is filled with enraged culture warriors, going out of their own way to be upset and exclude others. I don't buy into the "Well, you can just grow YOUR OWN island!" spiel. I don't want to make an echo chamber, I want a healthy environment wh…

Just wait until people start realizing the privacy problems that Mastodon have unless you make your own instance. You don't like the new twitter moderation? oh wellcome to Mastodon where a 12 year old can be a moderator of a instance. Global guidelines for moderation? No in Mastodon since each instance can have their own rules, 10/10 if you love being in echo chambers. Created your account in a random instance? oh we…

I just can't get myself to see this as a genuine disadvantage.

On Mastodon you can choose the server to use (and thus the moderation). Sure, this means you can choose a server run by a 12-year-old who moderates poorly. But if you don't want that... don't pick that server!

The problem (no, ONE of the many problems) with creating good moderation is that different people have different definitions of what constitutes "good" moderation so it's impossible to satisfy all of them. If Mastodon allows the user to choose, that seems inherently better.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#304

Post by Herbstluft »

FortiDude wrote: post #30
OscarCunningham wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but you don't have to follow them. I'm sure some terrible people use email, but email is still good.

I also don't need to follow toxic people on Twitter, so I really don't know why I would use a badly programmed and infinitely smaller social network

> I also don't need to follow toxic people on Twitter

I mean that is true in a sense, because Twitter invests a lot of work to bring the toxicity to you whether you want it or not.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#305

Post by briantakita »

tchaffee wrote: post #265
briantakita wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when the accessibility team acted as political speech commissars.

Source?

Project Veritas had some videos about Twitter employees declaring their politics & their willingness to censor political opponents. I don't think anyone on the accessibility team was interviewed but Twitter as a whole did have a political leaning. Banning people for political speech is an accessibility issue & for some reason it was allowed to continue.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#306

Post by tchaffee »

concordDance wrote: post #275
tchaffee wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your reasoning hating on Kevin Spacey is also in vogue. It's probably not in vogue. It's more likely that his own words and actions are resulting in lots of people not liking him. Imagine that. A world where your own words and actions have consequences.

Based on talking to those who dislike him they're mostly pretty hating him for things he hasnt done, views he doesnt hold and traits he doesnt have (no, he isnt a success because he had an uber wealthy father who owned an emerald mine, it was a tiny share in a mine and his father contributed little to Musks business ventures). Musk is a driven, childish, stubborn, fairly intelligent, 90s era libertarian who really li…

> Based on talking to those who dislike him

So anecdotal evidence?

> they're mostly pretty hating him for things he hasnt done, views he doesnt hold and traits he doesnt have

So they have actual reasons to hate him. Superficial reasons, but you didn't once mention anything having to do with it being in vogue. Evidence of it being in vogue would be people who don't know why they hate Elon, but they do know their friends hate Elon.

> no, he isnt a success because he had an uber wealthy father who owned an emerald mine, it was a tiny share in a mine and his father contributed little to Musks business ventures

This is debatable by reasonable people.

> Musk is a driven, childish, stubborn

These sound like real reasons he could be disliked rather than it being your claim that it's simply in vogue or "traits he doesnt have" in your words.

> who really likes first principles reasoning

That's part of his PR and the image he tries to convey. He fails at it quite often because of his childishness and impulsive knee jerk reactions that he falls victim to on a regular basis. He is far more driven by emotion than by reason. I mean it's highly probable he owns Twitter now by being legally held to a poorly written contract he had no real intention of following through on. It ironically seems like neither he nor many of his customers want to be at this party he ended up at.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#307

Post by herostratus101 »

Emigre_ wrote: post #174
LEDThereBeLight wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How does this apply to the parent post, but not the grandparent?

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#308

Post by andsoitis »

hristov wrote: post #200
tga wrote: 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.

The main difference isn't really who but how much money. One uses a lot of goods and services in ordinary life. Generally speaking one hopes that the provider of these goods and services uses their resources efficiently to provide them for a reasonable price including reasonable profit. When a leveraged buyout happens (this is true for most leveraged buyouts) a large cost is put into the business that wasn't there be…

> So what is the difference between Musk and the previous shareholders? The main difference is that Musk put an enormous cost on the business which will be borne by twitters users and advertisers, and that cost brings twitter nothing more than having musk as an owner.

> By himself musk may be no better or worse than the previous shareholders. But just for him to rule over twitter is going to cost twitter a lot of money that will probably reduce the quality of the service.

It seems to me that his product-focused ownership (remember, he's a big user of Twitter) will either make it better or he will run it into the ground (due to naïvety and incompetence in this domain). Both seem like a win/win situation to me.

I think he has very strong incentives to make Twitter better because it is his stage, both for marketing his companies but also to stay int he limelight (ego).

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#309

Post by tchaffee »

inglor_cz wrote: post #299
dools wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why I deleted my account. Musk and the rest of the PayPal mafia are hardcore neofeudalist libertarians, a movement that has gradually infected more and more of the tech world.

If Twitter becomes interoperable with other services, this is literally the opposite of tech neofeudalism. Tech neofeudalism manifests itself as walled gardens where the cost of leaving is very high for the serfs.

> If Twitter becomes interoperable with other services, this is literally the opposite of tech neofeudalism.

It's not interoperable. It's controlled by one person. Like Facebook. When that changes we can discuss it. But until then, it's just an empty promise.

Re: It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon

#310

Post by bboygravity »

rustybolt wrote: post #301
Aeolun wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m afraid I don’t understand how Twitter can end up with debt from Musk buying it. How does that even work? Twitter the company takes out a huge loan to pay the current shareholders a fortune (which is decided by those same shareholders, no conflict of interest there at all). But who the fuck would give them a loan like that (like you say, just to have Musk at the helm)?

How I understand the parent post: Twitter has cost Musk a lot of money. Musk will now have to get a lot of value from twitter, and that will probably be bad news for the user.

Because Musk is known to increase the value of companies by taking from users and giving back crappy products and services?!

I find that train of thought very unconvincing.

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