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Mastodon hit 10M users

mastodon.social

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Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#131

Post by jeroenhd »

gray_charger wrote: post #50
pohl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sampled one instance in a fediverse with thousands upon thousands of instances. Do you think none of them have a community more aligned with your worldview?

Most likely, yes. Those with a different worldview are cut off from the fediverse and many client apps blacklist those instances that gain momentum from being usable in the client app. For example, Gab.

In my experience, the blacklists are all pretty sensible. Mostly porn, neonazis, that kind of stuff.

I haven't opened Gab in a while so I just loaded the front page, and I can see why Mastodon moderators don't want to deal with them either. The content is not as blatantly illegal as many other blacklisted sites, but the front page is incredibly toxic and hateful. I would block most of those posts if they woulf ever hit my personal instance.

Feel free to join (or set up) an instance that doesn't employ blacklists, though. The default Mastodon configuration comes with an empty blacklist so I'm sure there are servers out there that will let you access Gab and other blacklisted servers if you wish.

However, other servers are allowed to block you or your server at their digression if you're boosting or posting content they don't care for. After all, freedom of speech does not imply any obligation to be heard.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#132

Post by Nextgrid »

glass3 wrote: post #121
stevebmark wrote: post #73

This is sad to see. Mastodon is already dead. It's fundamentally impossible for it to catch on with a wider audience. Right now the only platform worse than Twitter is Mastodon. Whatever the Twitter replacement is, we haven't found it yet.

Where is the fundamental limit? It's a protocol. Somebody could create an instance that does everything right for mass adoption.

Focusing on the "protocol" is the limit. Nobody among regular people cares about the protocol, they care about a social media experience on-par or better than what they're currently using. If they have to figure out this whole technobabble mess that is the "fediverse" it becomes a non-starter.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#133

Post by bmacho »

jacooper wrote: post #44

Honestly I really tried to use the fediverse, but its not good enough. Search is hot garbage, can't find anything useful, or what people are actually talking about, not that Twitters search is great by any measure. Missing content when visiting external content, cuz why would anyone ever want to see or search old content. Also most clients I have seen show replies in a really stupid way, you have to actively click to…

There are no non-js clients (that I am aware of) yet. Twitter is still way more accessible and privacy friendly, due to nitter.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#134

Post by Nextgrid »

smsm42 wrote: post #68
whywhywhydude wrote: post #48

I wish they changed the name to something better. Would probably increase adoption greatly if they can come up with a name that doesn’t sound like a porn site specializing in bondage.

TIL a large prehistoric elephant is somehow closely associated with bondage porn. Will the wonders never cease.

A "large prehistoric elephant" isn't really a good name for a social platform either.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#135

Post by glass3 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #132
glass3 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the fundamental limit? It's a protocol. Somebody could create an instance that does everything right for mass adoption.

Focusing on the "protocol" is the limit. Nobody among regular people cares about the protocol , they care about a social media experience on-par or better than what they're currently using. If they have to figure out this whole technobabble mess that is the "fediverse" it becomes a non-starter.

Yes. That would be doing it wrong for mass adoption. Doing it right means that users don't have to care about the protocol.

But there still has to be infrastructure. Instead of reinventing the wheel, a new social network could be built on the Mastodon foundation. There would already be users and there would be an exit strategy for power users if the new network fails. Right now, it's not worth investing time in a new network because the social graph doesn't survive the end of the network. With Mastodon, it would be easy to migrate to a new service.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#136

Post by dym_sh »

phplovesong wrote: post #92

I applied for mastodon, but never got an confirmation. I think the tech has some serious bugs, and afaict needs polish. When users cant sign up theres red flags going on.

> I applied for mastodon

which server?

there are multiple server-side platforms too, incl. some forks, so if mastodon.social is not for you – look around for better lighter alternatives (as well for self-hosting)

start around here: https://github.com/emilebosch/awesome-fediverse#applications

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#137

Post by KoftaBob »

berkes wrote: post #113
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #110

Individual Mastodon instances have already begun exhibiting insane behavior, and relying on someone else's fiefdom isn't for me. Social media should give full control to the user on top of a credibly neutral layer.

> Social media should give full control to the user Are you implying this isn't possible with Mastodon/ActivityPub?

It's possible if users host their own Mastodon instance, which for the vast majority of users is way too much of a hassle to do.

This is one of the reasons I think the nostr protocol is a better way of building a decentralized + censorship resistant social network.

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#the-problem-with-mas...

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#138

Post by jacooper »

MisterSandman wrote: post #47
jacooper wrote: post #44

Honestly I really tried to use the fediverse, but its not good enough. Search is hot garbage, can't find anything useful, or what people are actually talking about, not that Twitters search is great by any measure. Missing content when visiting external content, cuz why would anyone ever want to see or search old content. Also most clients I have seen show replies in a really stupid way, you have to actively click to…

Is search really that big of a deal? > Outside of the English speaking indie-privacy-tech bubble (and germans seem to be very active on it too) its a ghost land. "Outside of the super-active communities using Mastodon everyday, it is a ghostland."

These communities are active if not more active on Twitter. One of the things that made Twitter good is that every niche uses it.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#139

Post by jeroenhd »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #110

Individual Mastodon instances have already begun exhibiting insane behavior, and relying on someone else's fiefdom isn't for me. Social media should give full control to the user on top of a credibly neutral layer.

The neutral layer approach which some decentralised alternatives seem to favour isn't all that great in my opinion.

Browsing the commonly blacklisted Mastodon instances has given me more than enough reason to not want to moderate that crap. From AI generated child porn to calls for various genocides, there's plenty of disgusting material posted online that I'm not willing to sift through. When a server's front page is full of swastikas (and not as the religious, peaceful symbol they once were) then I'm not going to vet every single account on there; the people who flock to such servers are of no interest to me.

My experience is that most digital free speech absolutionists just seem to be upset that they were banned from Twitter for promoting some kind of QAnon conspiracy or for hate speech.

I personally think the ActivityPub/Mastodon approach of "let server moderators decide which servers can't interact with their servers anymore" approach is very reasonable. If Gab and Truth Social want to federate, they can, and if you want to set up your own server without blacklists you're completely free to.

However, your freedom of speech does not give you any freedom of consequences, and if others don't want to hear what you have to say they're as free to ignore and block you or your server as you are to speak your mind. This includes some incredibly toxic behaviour from popular "safe" Mastodon servers as well.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#140

Post by actualwitch »

PixyMisa wrote: post #96
benatkin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the platform doesn’t matter, its the people. Neither mattered in that case. It was just a conundrum. Something a lot of people wanted to boycott had a AAA game built for it. I assume you're coming on the side of Nathan, but can't you see why people were going to have a strong reaction about posts about the game surfacing in the feed? It was a wedge issue. I'm not on either side, except I am against those who actual…

The people who want to boycott Harry Potter are as toxic as it gets. They attacked Pikamee. If you don't know who Pikamee is, that's like stamping on puppies.

You have to remember that there are some people who just want to leverage the free pass to bully people. In this very topic a user was suggesting to masquerade as trans to be able to troll scot free, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt.
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