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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#391

Post by Nextgrid »

tptacek wrote: post #388
Nextgrid wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the concept of instances raises a lot of issues as I’ve described. Google Reader/RSS works for its purposes because there is no instances and most of the work is delegated to the client.

And why won't that be the configuration ActivityPub converges to? Why will people be signing up for random group instances rather than just pushing a button to get their own? That's what happened with blogs. Why won't it happen here?

Because the client-server paradigm means than an instance can’t be hosted by a mobile client (and even if it could, the system relying on DNS or a static IP wouldn’t work as most mobile IPs are dynamic) and thus should be provided by someone at a loss (or other user-hostile business model such as advertising if not outright extortion). The system needs to be as easy as Facebook/Instagram/Twitter if it wants to succeed. Having to manage a domain or a (stateful) server is a non-starter.

RSS doesn’t have this problem because it doesn’t require the client to have a static hostname, thus mobile RSS clients are totally possible.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#392

Post by Klonoar »

abraham wrote: post #387
gfodor wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't parse what you wrote - shutting down any API relieves some maintenence burden.

No APIs have been shut down. Specific apps competing with the Twitter mobile apps have had their access banned.

Thank you.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#393

Post by tptacek »

Nextgrid wrote: post #391
tptacek wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why won't that be the configuration ActivityPub converges to? Why will people be signing up for random group instances rather than just pushing a button to get their own? That's what happened with blogs. Why won't it happen here?

Because the client-server paradigm means than an instance can’t be hosted by a mobile client (and even if it could, the system relying on DNS or a static IP wouldn’t work as most mobile IPs are dynamic) and thus should be provided by someone at a loss (or other user-hostile business model such as advertising if not outright extortion). The system needs to be as easy as Facebook/Instagram/Twitter if it wants to succee…

This doesn't make much sense. I agree: the instance won't be mobile. It'll be hosted, the same way Blogger was. It'll be provided with the same economics as Blogger. Manage a domain? Most people will be "theirdumbname.mastohost.com". For like 20 different values of "mastohost". Those "mastohost.coms" will make all their money on the subset of people who will provide a credit card to be "theirdumbname.com".

People are sleeping on how well the blogosphere worked, and how much Twitter and Facebook were able to divert it purely through a catchy UX. The blogosphere now has that UX: it's called Mastodon. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook are collapsing, because the centralized social network is inherently unstable and susceptible to gaming.

RETVRN! As the kids say.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#394

Post by nomel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #294
nomel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> filled with ads and irrelevant clutter. I always assumed the third party clients just provided a better interface. I didn't realize they circumvented the income stream. If the third party clients were removing the means of monetization, for a company who struggles to profit, then it seems obvious that requiring paid access on its way, regardless of the owner. Twitter can't go forever at a loss. The "surprise" is su…

> Twitter can’t go forever at a loss. But for nonrecurring expenses, Twitter was profitable before Musk’s buyout both torpedoed ad revenue (when it was announced, before it was even completed) and saddled it with massive expenses to finance the buyout. The acquisition is literally the only reason it is any concern how long Twitter can operate at a loss.

> Twitter was profitable before Musk’s buyout

My mistake. Last I looked was 2020, when they were down about $1B.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#395

Post by kalleboo »

vlachen wrote: post #207
shadowgovt wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the challenge. Musk's tantrum has made an already-solved problem for a lot of people something they now have to re-solve. I'm generally recommending Mastodon to people (and can recommend a handful of specific nodes), but nothing auto-replaces Twitter. Point is, unfortunately, Twitter's dying and its prognosis is poor. We can imagine it'll get better but the realistic strategy is to bail. (My previous post lac…

I would take those node recommendations. I've dipped my toes in, but don't have the wherewithal right now to really figure out how to find what's worth following.

What I did was use fedifinder to find all the people I already followed on Twitter and bootstrapped my account that way. It shows you what the most common instance is among the people you follow which is a good recommendation to choose that for signup, and then you can naturally find other people to follow through their boosts.

Also you don't have to fret about what instance you start off on. I started with one of the generic instances and then after a week of lurking I migrated my account to an instance that I wanted to join (which moves over all your followers/followings but not your posts)

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#396

Post by kalleboo »

themagician wrote: post #234
system16 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said the same thing even a few weeks ago, but the momentum for Mastodon is growing rapidly and it's really impressive to see, and Ivory is a very impressive client even in beta. Almost everyone I followed on Twitter is using it now, and I actually prefer the experience. It's like Twitter but without all the bots/spam/hate, at least for now.

What is "almost everyone"? Four people? Using it on what server? Mastadon is more like Discord than Twitter. There is no core server. There is no core experience. It's just an instanced message board.

72 users spread among 34 servers, but the number of servers doesn't matter since you can follow anyone on any server

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#397

Post by kalleboo »

Sunspark wrote: post #252
themagician wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "almost everyone"? Four people? Using it on what server? Mastadon is more like Discord than Twitter. There is no core server. There is no core experience. It's just an instanced message board.

I don't know why Mastodon is hyped up so much. I do not have an account on it as I have some concerns. My understanding at the current time is that a server can be run by a single random individual, they can read your DMs as they are not encrypted, and they can kick you off the server if you write anything the server operator does not agree with. At least with Twitter, it was a corporation with rules and procedures.

> I don't know why Mastodon is hyped up so much

Among tech-folk, it's hyped up because it's federated, with the hope that if it succeeds it brings us back to the original design of internet services like E-mail and Usenet where everything isn't centralized and owned by a single corporation where you have to live by the whims of it's advertisers.

> they can read your DMs as they are not encrypted

I have yet to send or receive a DM on Mastodon, I'm not even sure how you do it. As long as you know this fact, just don't send sensitive info in DMs? It's not a core feature of the platform so I don't understand why it's looked at as such a deal-breaker.

> they can kick you off the server if you write anything the server operator does not agree with

But, with Mastodon, you can just join another server with different rules if that happens. On Twitter, if you offend Elon, he kicks you off and now you have no recourse. Mastodon is strictly better in this regard.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#398

Post by kalleboo »

jmann99999 wrote: post #173
hiidrew wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what happens after that? 40B acquisition to bankruptcy sounds brutal. I'm sure there's some nuanced financial way they can recover and continue but wow.

At over a billion a year in interest payments to just service the debt is going to be hard. Twitter, before Elon, was already losing a couple hundred million a year. It has to be worse now. I do agree that Morgan Stanley and the other financiers are going to be the kids without a chair when the music stops.

> Twitter, before Elon, was already losing a couple hundred million a year

Twitter's business was making a profit in 2018 and 2019, but then 2020 happened (because 2020), and in 2021 they had a $800 million class action settlement to pay (without that it would have been $600m profit), and then in 2022 Elon tanked the company in the 4th quarter.

The core business was (just about) profitable before Elon. It was just far below the FAANG-level expectations from a tech company.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#399

Post by kalleboo »

bink wrote: post #71
kemayo wrote: post #48

Speaking as someone who had mostly been using the first party twitter app in recent years and so wouldn't have been impacted by this even if I was still actively using twitter, this seems pretty poorly done by Musk. Shutting down third party clients? It's arguably a valid decision. They presumably want to consolidate the users into directly controlled clients, where they can be advertised to and can have premium subs…

Very true. But announcing it ahead of time and providing time for a wind down also would've required a comms team.

Musk could have just tweeted "As we focus on increasing the velocity of developing new features we don't want the baggage of maintaining the legacy API for clients so we're going to wind down support for third-party clients in a month from now." and it would have headed off like 70% of the hate. You don't need a comms team for that.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#400

Post by wheats »

jrmg wrote: post #292
themagician wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "almost everyone"? Four people? Using it on what server? Mastadon is more like Discord than Twitter. There is no core server. There is no core experience. It's just an instanced message board.

From your description I’m not sure you understand Mastodon. People who don’t know about it and read your description will get the wrong impression, at least. You can follow someone on any Mastodon server from your account on any server. It’s not siloed like Discord (which, ironically, actually is a centralized service!) - it’s much more like Twitter than Discord in real use. There may be no official ‘core experience’…

I agree with everything you said, and also want to point out Twitter doesn't really have much of a "core experience" shared across its entire userbase either. Trending topics and promoted tweets on Twitter are largely determined by your language, location, who you follow, and interests Twitter has determined you have. You and another Twitter user are going to see very different content shown to you even beyond the things you subscribe to.
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