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Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

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Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He stated his true plans privately, these comms were unveiled by the discovery process from the Twitter lawsuit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475031 for more details and sources. p.s. thanks to Dan Luu for putting it all online!

That actually seems… pretty reasonable and probably a net good? Why are people so mad about this? The Twitter status quo seems incredibly toxic.

Maybe, it's still too early to discern what the end state will be. I feel disdain for the dishonesty and poor treatment of / regard for human beings in his sphere, though.

So far it's a case study demonstration of poor and uninspiring leadership.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#22
post #14
post #4

Wasn't it the idea of Musk to give everyone on Twitter absolute freedom of (amplification of) speech?

He stated his true plans privately, these comms were unveiled by the discovery process from the Twitter lawsuit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475031 for more details and sources. p.s. thanks to Dan Luu for putting it all online!

Nothing even remotely objectionable there? It's no secret that twitter has been a money-losing toxic cesspit for years. Making the moderation fair and transparent will go miles all on its own.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#23
post #4

Wasn't it the idea of Musk to give everyone on Twitter absolute freedom of (amplification of) speech?

I honestly can't tell if your comment is sarcasm. Are you attributing the idea of free speech in social media to Musk? Like you think he came up with the idea?

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of those servers stopped registrations when the exodus from Twitter began. One reason, so that communities wouldn't get diluted. The other, it's expensive to run this.

I wouldn't say "most". According to that site, of the 4880 instances list, 1909 are close and another ~300 are invite-only. > it's expensive to run this As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements and installation process, I decided that it…

On the topic of costs I saw this today in my Mastodon feed:

>The costs were already ~$35/month even with reserved instances; back-of-the-envelope is that the new costs would be in the ballpark of ~$50/month.

https://toot.cafe/@nolan/109295574721909717

toot.cafe is #216 (by MAU) in the list above, MAU=315 - there's a data point.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#25
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is running current 5k servers? Same kind of people. http://demo.fedilist.com/instance?q=&ip=&software=mastodon&r...

A list of the servers is data, but where does one go to find out about the people or organizations running them? How do we know that that a couple of thousand of them aren't all run by one group?

Mastadon provides a way for servers to have an “about” page, which often has more details about who runs the server. In some cases they prefer to be pseudonymous, but in some it’s possible to attach the instance to a human.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#26
post #14
post #4

Wasn't it the idea of Musk to give everyone on Twitter absolute freedom of (amplification of) speech?

He stated his true plans privately, these comms were unveiled by the discovery process from the Twitter lawsuit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475031 for more details and sources. p.s. thanks to Dan Luu for putting it all online!

Who is that "Jason C"?

Also, further down in the chat log there's this:

> [redacted]: Hey Elon -my name is Jake Sherman. I'm a reporter with Punchbowl News in Washington I cover Congress. Wonder if you're game to talk about how Twitter would change for politics if you were at the helm?

What's with the [redacted]? Does Musk give journalists insulting names in his contact list?

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#27
post #11

The uptick of interest in Mastodon due to Musk buying Twitter doesn’t make sense. Only the left is angry about the acquisition. The right is gleeful. What the left is angry and the right is gleeful about is the idea that Musk is a “free speech absolutist” and might unban Donald Trump and other right wing / fascist media personalities. Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been possible to ban Trump in the…

I think you’re underestimating the number of people hedging their bets on twitter not for ideological reasons, but because a company left with a billion dollars in annual interest is going to have to squeeze that out of whichever users remain. Whether it is through ads or fees, the dynamic on the site will change substantially.

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#28
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He stated his true plans privately, these comms were unveiled by the discovery process from the Twitter lawsuit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475031 for more details and sources. p.s. thanks to Dan Luu for putting it all online!

Who is that "Jason C"? Also, further down in the chat log there's this: > [redacted]: Hey Elon -my name is Jake Sherman. I'm a reporter with Punchbowl News in Washington I cover Congress. Wonder if you're game to talk about how Twitter would change for politics if you were at the helm? What's with the [redacted]? Does Musk give journalists insulting names in his contact list?

Jason Calacanis, a wealthy VC friend to elon.

Check out the clickable link sources, it's interesting to see how cavalier billionaires are in their private life, the "hard work" consists of mostly just scheming. Not even data-driven in this case, only napkin math:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475152

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of those servers stopped registrations when the exodus from Twitter began. One reason, so that communities wouldn't get diluted. The other, it's expensive to run this.

I wouldn't say "most". According to that site, of the 4880 instances list, 1909 are close and another ~300 are invite-only. > it's expensive to run this As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements and installation process, I decided that it…

> After perusing the requirements and installation process

Was that the original Mastodon? That does have a reputation of being faffy to install and resource-hungry. Pleroma is much easier and less resource-hungry. Even I managed to spin up a Pleroma server without any trouble.

> most likely any instance of moderate popularity is going to require a team.

It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users will, surely?

Re: Mastodon's founder has a vision to democratize social media

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say "most". According to that site, of the 4880 instances list, 1909 are close and another ~300 are invite-only. > it's expensive to run this As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements and installation process, I decided that it…

On the topic of costs I saw this today in my Mastodon feed: >The costs were already ~$35/month even with reserved instances; back-of-the-envelope is that the new costs would be in the ballpark of ~$50/month. https://toot.cafe/@nolan/109295574721909717 toot.cafe is #216 (by MAU) in the list above, MAU=315 - there's a data point.

They should migrate to Pleroma and reduce their monthly costs.
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