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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

#151

Post by gbraad »

whimsicalism wrote: post #127
Joeboy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two big, vanilla instances are https://mastodon.social and https://mas.to . Unfortunately they've both been struggling to keep up with demand lately. If you're paralyzed by choice, I'd say just go for one of those if / when they're accepting new users. I think Mastodon would get more signups if interested people were just pointed at like ten working, non-specialized, non-tiny instances, rather than being confronted w…

They're wasting a massive opportunity. Mastodon should have been built to scale from the start because huge viral growth is exactly how social networks like this make it big. As it stands right now, I am struggling to join because every mastodon instance I've checked is struggling with scaling.

Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.

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

#152

Post by xaduha »

arjvik wrote: post #146
DavidSJ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can’t choose wrong then why am I forced to choose at all? The user experience doesn’t add up.

If there's no wrong answer between Gmail and Outlook, why must you choose one of them?

You have a good analogy attempt there, but you didn't quite nail it I think, because Outlook is also an email client.

It's more like if someone asked why they need to choose between someone@gmail.com address or someone@outlook.com, but in reality email would work just fine regardless.

EDIT: fixed

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

#153

Post by Bud »

nemo44x wrote: post #141
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like most people I know on the left have essentially abandoned social media as inherently unproductive and instead gather in local group chats which can only be found by being active in a community. So the only people who will really be hanging around are probably techno optimists

That’s pretty much what their opposition wants. Previously they controlled what was allowed to be said on the mainstream platforms and that was influential. Scattering off to 1000 different Balkanized ghettos puts them back on the margins. This was what happened to the far right already.

No post body was provided.

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

#154

Post by whimsicalism »

gbraad wrote: post #151
whimsicalism wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're wasting a massive opportunity. Mastodon should have been built to scale from the start because huge viral growth is exactly how social networks like this make it big. As it stands right now, I am struggling to join because every mastodon instance I've checked is struggling with scaling.

Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.

Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without having to spend bucketloads on new servers.

Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new registration/break down are at a few thousand members, maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented, but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or even Java service should be able to handle that many users on a single instance.

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

#155

Post by arjvik »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #55
tomrod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally joined yesterday to a niche (academic) community that is moving from Twitter. 18k migrants in the 30 hours since it opened up with virtually linear growth. I can search other similar niche communities and they are seeing similar growth. It's not seeming like much of a desert, and is just starting to benefit from network effects as some of the more known members of the community announce their moves.

Right. I'm on the mathematics server https://mathstodon.xyz/ and it's already feeling like a big community.

How do you get invited?

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

#156

Post by raarts »

zaik wrote: post #64
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #58

I really want to like Mastodon, and every few years I make an attempt to join. But then, I am faced with the decision of choosing a server - if I like cooking and golf, do I join the cooking server or the golf server? What if I choose wrong ? - and the choice overload makes me just give up. And even if I really joined, then apparently my server's administrator would be able to silently prevent me from seeing other "e…

You should join a server you think has a reasonable approach to moderating other servers. On any other service the administrator can also prevent you from seeing posts, this is not specific to Mastodon at all. For private messaging other standards exist, for example XMPP+OMEMO.

How do you find out if that is the case? Believe what they say? What happens if they die, or throw you out? Do you need to get another handle? Will this drop you from other people's contact lists?

These are things I worry about.

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

#157

Post by DonHopkins »

ceejayoz wrote: post #59
samsepi0l wrote: post #46

I dont think Mastodon will gain mainstream adoption because of the naming, and they call messages "Toots". Normal people will baulk at the branding of it all.

I remember complaining the “iPad” sounded like a menstrual product. Seemed to do fine.

iBrator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-ReZh0sQw

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

#158

Post by arjvik »

xaduha wrote: post #152
arjvik wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's no wrong answer between Gmail and Outlook, why must you choose one of them?

You have a good analogy attempt there, but you didn't quite nail it I think, because Outlook is also an email client. It's more like if someone asked why they need to choose between someone@gmail.com address or someone@outlook.com, but in reality email would work just fine regardless. EDIT: fixed

Yup, you're right. I guess I was specifically referring to outlook.com, Microsoft's hosted email solution for consumers.

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

beardedman wrote: post #81

Mastodon is too fragmented to work... well. For example; this tweet: https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/1585756076305444864 . Would you really host your email on a server that some dude in rural Canada runs in his spare time? I don't think so. Not just for reliability reasons, but for privacy reasons as well.

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by xaduha »

baq wrote: post #150
killing_time wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty straightforward: you either click on their profile or (if you know someone's username@server via some other medium), search for them on your 'home' server and you'll see their profile. Then just click the 'follow' button. Under the covers this sets up the federated follow relationship, but the UX feels the same as following someone on twitter. There is one slightly more complicated scenario; if for some r…

That makes sense, but my case is before I know who to follow. Is there any way to explore what’s going on on a server? Like browsing a news group on Usenet or checking a subreddit before subscribing?

> Like browsing a news group on Usenet or checking a subreddit before

How would you do that on Twitter? Follow the hashtags. Why do you insist on limiting it to a server? That's not really how it is supposed to work anyway, it's not those things you mentioned.

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