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

Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 521 posts

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#31

Post by vorpalhex »

nimbius wrote: post #25
jmann99999 wrote: post #5

If this BBC story doesn't indicate that there is an overreaction to new Twitter management, I don't know what will. It reminded me of when I was considering trying to move all of our customers to receive PGP encrypted mail in 2005. An intelligent employee brought up that an average business person would never do that. Luckily we never implemented it. Mastodon is great but it isn't a replacement for Twitter. Too much…

>there is an overreaction to new Twitter management Oh i think its a perfectly legitimate and reasonable reaction to new Twitter management. a guy worth about 200bn USD spent his first day at the office dragging a piece of plumbing around cheerleading his impending job cuts and upcoming $8 surcharge for a feature that only really benefits and legitimizes the platform. he then axes most of the company, especially the…

The advertisers pulled before any layoffs. Actually they started pulling the day before he took over.

The teams he cut are mostly silly teams. A climate team? At twitter? AI Ethics? He has to stop burning money.

He is moving twitter from ad funded (which never paid the bills) to subscription funded (which might pay the bills? $8/mo is nothing. It will certainly make bans hurt more. It will significantly help spam.)

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#32

Post by whimsicalism »

sigmar wrote: post #24
Eji1700 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having it brought to my attention, and as someone who never got into twitter, I figured I'd give it a shot and see if it fit my desires better. So far it mostly just doesn't work, so that's neat.

What specifically do you mean by "mostly just doesn't work"?

Pretty much all instances are having massive issues keeping up with the new traffic.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#33

Post by sseagull »

abzolv wrote: post #22

The Mastodon software is not horizontally scalable. So, each instance is forced to be relatively small. One instance will not be able to handle millions of users.

Neither could twitter at the beginning:

https://theoutline.com/post/4147/in-twitters-early-days-only...

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#34

Post by boredtofears »

colordrops wrote: post #23
godelski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't it get enough reach? > What if each news outlet ran their own server? I think you answered your own question.

Email is run just like this and it has plenty of reach.

Most companies don’t run their own email servers, either.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#35

Post by addajones »

nimbius wrote: post #25
jmann99999 wrote: post #5

If this BBC story doesn't indicate that there is an overreaction to new Twitter management, I don't know what will. It reminded me of when I was considering trying to move all of our customers to receive PGP encrypted mail in 2005. An intelligent employee brought up that an average business person would never do that. Luckily we never implemented it. Mastodon is great but it isn't a replacement for Twitter. Too much…

>there is an overreaction to new Twitter management Oh i think its a perfectly legitimate and reasonable reaction to new Twitter management. a guy worth about 200bn USD spent his first day at the office dragging a piece of plumbing around cheerleading his impending job cuts and upcoming $8 surcharge for a feature that only really benefits and legitimizes the platform. he then axes most of the company, especially the…

Why does it matter how much he’s worth? Never understood why people are so concerned about him cutting jobs? He bought the company and took it private. It’s his right to restructure it and try to make it generate profit as he’d wish. The board of directors of public Twitter approved of this. What do people think, the USA is FOSS?

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#36

Post by whimsicalism »

jayflux wrote: post #26

A lot of this overreaction reminds me of when Facebook bought WhatsApp. All the alternatives came up for a few weeks/months, but the dust settled and not that many left in the end. Maybe it’s different this time? But the cycle feels the same

Signal is gradually gaining adoption in the circles that I am in. Few years ago? Unusable.

Now, many of the people I meet are fine starting a signal chat instead of SMS.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#38

Post by addajones »

vorpalhex wrote: post #31
nimbius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there is an overreaction to new Twitter management Oh i think its a perfectly legitimate and reasonable reaction to new Twitter management. a guy worth about 200bn USD spent his first day at the office dragging a piece of plumbing around cheerleading his impending job cuts and upcoming $8 surcharge for a feature that only really benefits and legitimizes the platform. he then axes most of the company, especially the…

The advertisers pulled before any layoffs. Actually they started pulling the day before he took over. The teams he cut are mostly silly teams. A climate team? At twitter? AI Ethics? He has to stop burning money. He is moving twitter from ad funded (which never paid the bills) to subscription funded (which might pay the bills? $8/mo is nothing. It will certainly make bans hurt more. It will significantly help spam.)

Absolutely! People love to hate it’s very infectious. I personally believe for-profit social media companies should have always charged a subscription. People tend to be more respectful and use things they pay for.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#39

Post by [deleted] »

ISL wrote: post #18
raytube wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it get enough reach? What if each news outlet ran their own server? Or would this feel like bondage with people wishing for multiple personas/autonomy?

I think GP's comment about reach runs in the other direction: If someone tweets about an issue, it is trivially discovered globally and readily embedded on news sites with arbitrary volumes of traffic (or shown on TV). Is the same true for toots?

[deleted]

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#40

Post by robbiemitchell »

> The first thing you have to do when you sign up is choose a server

> It doesn't hugely matter which one you are on because you will be able to follow users on all the others anyway

> The server you choose becomes part of your user name

> Unlike Twitter, Mastodon won't suggest followers you may be interested in

OK, so this shouldn't be the first step unless the "server" is a key part of the experience or has other benefits. A company laser focused on signups, like Twitter was at one point, would aim a growth team at this and remove all unnecessary signup steps to reduce friction. Steps like... first enter email, then auto-suggest a username, then suggest some interests (i.e., people) to follow, then (and only then) allow for the editing and selection of your username.

> he had over 6,000 new joiners in 24 hours and had to pause registration

You don't turn off signups when things get too hot. You allow signup and then throttle the experience. Reach back out when things cool down and get people re-engaged. (This is difficult, but better than nothing.)

In any case, if Mastodon is a bit like email (as another comment suggested), what will make it "just work" is an upgraded experience to make it easy to sign up. Yes, you will be "picking your server" by selecting your upgraded experience -- such as AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. -- but then they will also need to monetize it or track your usage for other reasons.

In fact, if it gets any traction, perhaps Google will spin up a Mastodon service as a companion to Gmail.

Post reply on HN