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Mastodon hit 10M users

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Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#231

Post by makomk »

ComposedPattern wrote: post #179
makomk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What was progressive yesterday becomes conservative today - think of women's rights, interracial marriage, etc. The same goes for 'who' was progressive. That's really not what's been happening here, though, and the extremely online activists are not simply people who are ahead of the curve on pushing to fix society's flaws. For example, take trans rights, the main weapon currently used to demand people get in line…

I find this version of the story very odd. I'm in my mid-20s and figured out that I was trans about 10 years ago. The main reason I didn't get swept up in the anti-SJW craze of the time was because "SJWs" were firmly supportive of trans and non-binary people, while many of their opponents were either indifferent or comparing us to attack helicopters. Are you talking about more than ten years ago?

Ten years ago is actually pretty much spot on for the time period I'm talking about - this was after the point at which trans people were just outright not welcome full stop (which is still surprisingly recent) and in fact one of the big ways the activists justified their views was by finding young trans people much like yourself with no existing ties to trans communities or activism, welcoming them in so long as they went along with the activists' existing views (including support for those who still wanted trans people not to be welcome), and pointing to them as proof their viewpoints totally weren't anti-trans. A lot of the prominent trans voices from that era were just a few years older than you and burned out hard once their worldview and contacts expanded beyond that of the narrow activist community and they discovered the activists wouldn't listen anymore if it brought their moral superiority into question.

The word "TERF" to describe the people and worldview that wanted to exclude trans people and trans rights from social justice activism wasn't even recorded as existing until 15 years ago, not because those views didn't exist - they're traceable in basically their modern form all the way back to like the seventies and are oddly pervasive - but because they succeeded well enough that even discussing the idea that this was a bad thing didn't start to become a part of activist discussion until then. This whole shift in viewpoint to that becoming unacceptable is incredibly recent.

Also, in general ordinary non-terminally-online people were much, much less anti-trans than both the "attack helecopter" anti-SJW side and the anti-trans campaigners that social justice activists were meant to sympathise with, though that may not have been obvious since one of the big things that was unacceptable was actually talking about what anti-trans people on the same side were doing and the real-world consequences (including stuff like laws they lobbied for). Admittedly, I'm from the UK so my experiences may not be representative of the US and other countries, but we are supposedly "TERF island" so that cuts both ways.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#232

Post by mikece »

nforgerit wrote: post #18

After about 6 months hosting my own little private Mastodon instance, I can say the following things: (1) Whoever cares about that but the atmosphere is nice, cozy, exciting and creative. Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with. (2) Hosting is relatively easy. I think…

> "Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with."

I find it curious and ironic that there are a number of recommended block lists of Mastodon instances with a "free speech" being a category under which many instances are blocked.

I'm all for free-association and eliminating those with whom you disagree but it would be a mistake to credit ActivityPub (of which Mastodon is merely ONE server type) with creating a non-toxic environment without noticing how that happened.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#233

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

realjhol wrote: post #201
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global warming will be by far the biggest challenge going forward. As long as parties on "the right" don't believe in it, or take it seriously or don't address it appropriately there is no way in hell for me to ever consider voting for anything on that spectrum. I can deal with a little over the top wokeness. I cannot deal with the destruction of the planet.

Ok- but what if the planet isn't destroyed after all? What makes you believe we have any control over the climate? What makes you believe that in the sham democracy, your vote makes any difference?

> What makes you believe we have any control over the climate?

CO2 has two vibrational modes that are IR active. We release carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere that was previously bound inside the earth's crust. Humans increased the CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 420ppm (pre-industrial -> today). The science is settled. Whether you believe in it or not: Global warming is happening and humans are causing it. I understand that it is something you don't want to be true (and trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong). But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#234

Post by LBJsPNS »

malwrar wrote: post #146
spicyusername wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does "Mastodon" evoke that for you!?

Mastodon looks like “master-dom” or “masto(urba…) dom” or similar. I also have experience with people giving a weird eye when I mention the name, it’s not pen island or anything but it’s close enough to have caused nonzero issues.

If people are giving you a weird eye over the name Mastodon, I would say it has much more to do with them than with the nane.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#235

Post by Edd314159 »

graypegg wrote: post #199
brabel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toxic and hateful people simply get banned I don't know if that's supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the "correct worldview" is made to disappear and never be heard of again. If you think "only bad people are toxic", you probably haven't been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.

This is an odd minority viewpoint for HN actually. I find most people feel rather empowered by the decentralized nature of mastodon… or email for that matter. Your right to freedom of speech is between you and the government. People aren’t required to publish your work just because you complain. The difference here is you can just hook into the same decentralized system the publisher is using, and subvert them by fin…

> Your right to freedom of speech is between you and the government. People aren’t required to publish your work just because you complain.

This is a strawman. Commenter said anything about the right to free speech, only about the willingness to be exposed to opposing viewpoints.

We all know that Bob is not obligated to listen to Alice, and he is not required to host a venue for her opinions. But Bob's eagerness to run away to a place where there is no risk of seeing Alice's view, while not necessarily bad (if you want to live in a bubble, live in a bubble), it is _not_ a virtue.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#236

Post by dale_glass »

roenxi wrote: post #208
dale_glass wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right are very interested in solving problems; but they are defined by identifying the plans of the left as the biggest problem. That's not so much problem solving as just obstructionism. Surely there are things to be done that don't depend at all on what the competition is doing. > Otherwise the right generally favours non-government approaches to problem solving (partially in an attempt to stop empowering lef…

> That's not so much problem solving as just obstructionism. Surely there are things to be done that don't depend at all on what the competition is doing. My government have made it very difficult for me to take my own health, retirement savings, home improvement and often financial decisions into my own hands. Typically the way his happens is that some leftist will be responsible although in the case of the financia…

> My government have made it very difficult for me to take my own health, retirement savings, home improvement and often financial decisions into my own hands.

> ...

> If I am too effective at savings then there will also be attempts to gain control of the savings and funnel them into causes I usually think are poorly chosen

Right, that's exactly what I was talking about. We can agree on the surface about some things, but underlying priorities and views aren't really compatible even when things happen to align by accident.

Eg, my desire for having guaranteed social minimums isn't really compatible with your desire to personally control what your tax money gets spent on.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#237

Post by Vrondi »

brabel wrote: post #173
devjab wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don't see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation. I'm not sure which mastodon server you are on, or which ones you're linked with, but I'm on Universeodon and I've frankly seen nothing of the sort. You do have a point of course, but I haven't seen any sort of toxic behaviour. Toxic and hate…

> Toxic and hateful people simply get banned I don't know if that's supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the "correct worldview" is made to disappear and never be heard of again. If you think "only bad people are toxic", you probably haven't been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.

Set up your own server and ban the people you want to ban. It's that simple.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#238

Post by LBJsPNS »

krapp wrote: post #127
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.

I agree. Mastodon is dead. You definitely shouldn't bother. In fact, everyone here complaining about how the platform won't put up with their edgy anti-woke shenanigans should just stay away. You're all too smart and cool for such a lame place.

It never fails to astound me how many people think of other humans as actual NPCs instead of, you know, people.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#239

Post by d1sxeyes »

baxuz wrote: post #209

Can someone please explain how Mastodon is anything else except Reddit with more hoops to jump through? You have users, subreddits (servers), and mods. Except everything is federated, so you also have the overhead of choosing your server or making a ton of alt accounts. Flashback to old MMO times.

By the same token, you could say 'how is Hacker News any different to Reddit except there are no subreddits?'

You say you have the 'overhead of choosing your server', but then you have a similar overhead with every post on Reddit—choosing which subreddit to post it on. You absolutely don't have to make a ton of alt accounts, that's sort of the point of being federated. You create your account on a server of your choosing (even one you own/manage), and then you can follow anyone on any server (even those not using Mastodon, provided they're using an ActivityPub compatible server, such as Pixelfed which is similar to Instagram).

Mastodon encourages short form microblogging with individuals who know each other interacting on all sorts of different topics.

Reddit encourages link sharing or longer form posts with communities of like-minded pseudonymous users.

Both platforms can be used for both use cases though.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#240

Post by mxuribe »

neogodless wrote: post #210
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.

What's an example of social media where the user has full control ? Does that not equate to all forms of spam, harassment, flooding, etc. having to be dealt with on an individual basis by every user?

Running your own single-user instance comes the closest to that. (Also, it needs not be exactly the Mastodon tech stack. Can be other tech stacks like pleroma, GoToSocial, PixelFed, etc.)
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