Mastodon hit 10M users • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#381

Post by wlonkly » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 11:45 PM UTC

kitsunesoba wrote: post #278

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what I see often happens that gets people banned based on their political views tends to be someone trying to start a debate where someone else was not in a debate. Trans person: *exists and makes a post* "Honest debater": I don't think you should... And they get banned. Not everything is or was an invitation to "debate".

Also known as (if I’m not mistaken) “reply guys”: those who attempt to hijack threads by replying to posts and steering the conversation towards something only tangentially related to the post/poster, almost always in an adversarial manner, rather than starting their own threads for the topics they’re wanting to discuss.

I think "reply guys" are men who tend to always reply to tweets from women, inoffensively but repeatedly,[1] and the thing you're describing is "sealioning"[2].

[1] https://mashable.com/article/twitter-reply-guys

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-int...

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#382

Post by wolverine876 » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 12:00 AM UTC

eecc wrote: post #261

the_gipsy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could also argue that the left has widened from being at the service of white male workers to a much broader range of minorities. That is, it is at the service of more people, but white males have lost the exclusive control of it. There seems to be no middle ground anymore for white males that exclusively want to address labor issues. Perhaps it is true that to push for progress in labor, the root problem of the…

well if there's no way to spin anything without getting entagled in some sort of intersectional original sin, then it's devolved in Jacobin Terreur.

> it's devolved in Jacobin Terreur

Can you give examples of that happening? I don't see any at all. I mean actual violence and terror.

These wild claims are becoming comical. The other day, it was the Cambodian genocide. Are we just picking catastrophes and arbitrarily saying they are happening? What's next? The Fall or Rome? The 10 Plagues from the Bible?

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#383

Post by wolverine876 » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 12:08 AM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #115

wolverine876 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What forum are you talking about. All of Mastadon? Doesn't each instance have its own rules? > As someone who'd consider themselves progressive by the yardstick of 10 years ago but not measured to the new progressives of today ... > The New Left has become unrecognizable to me That's an expected phenomenon. What was progressive yesterday becomes conservative today - think of women's rights, interracial marriage, etc.…

> What forum are you talking about. All of Mastadon? Doesn't each instance have its own rules? It's one of the larger instances but the top heaviest constitute the majority by far and they all enshrine these policies. I don't think you're really answering my criticism. You're lumping my "retrograde" progressiveness in with the well-worn wheel of timely revolts against the corruption of the past. I'm saying that both…

> It's one of the larger instances but the top heaviest constitute the majority by far and they all enshrine these policies.

So can you provide any evidence? Name this instance?

> both sides of the political aisle have become hives of extremism

It's laughable. Look at the people in power. What progressive is in any major office: Look at the President, the Minority Leader of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, Democratic Governors, etc. etc. All are mainstream Dems, hardly a progressive to be seen. Meanwhile, a majority of the GOP in Washington voted to overturn democracy and as sided with the rioters who attempted a coup.

> the left, particularly, has become the thing it once hated, an instrument of control in the service of the few

What has the left controlled? The right wing has used governmet power to ban books, educational topics, political freedom for teachers, criminalized gender choices, protests, etc. etc. Even in colleges, the right has shut down dissent, including among faculty (e.g., at UNC, in Florida, Harvard, Yale, etc.). The right is trying to eliminate tenure and academic freedom.

The left is trying to break the control of a few. Whether you like their tactics or not, they are trying to give power to minorities and other vulnerable people.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#384

Post by th4row » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:36 AM UTC

Can someone explain what's the benefit of ActivityPub/Fediverse for forums? I mean, if you want descentralization isn't it easier to have different forums in different domains, like we had in the 90s/00s?

This feels like a solution looking for a problem. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that this concept will eventually die.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#385

Post by dym_sh » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

phplovesong wrote: post #365

dym_sh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Literally one of the first ones i found in mastodon.org. Clicked "tech" servers, then browsed until i found fosstodon.org, which seemed like the best match for my own preferences. So signed up, and still nothing. This was months ago, so i have pretty much given up on the entire thing.

if all you wanted to do is look around, it is understandable why giving up was this easy.

honestly, if github and HN suffice for all your social needs, you probably dont need anything else.

microblogging is not for everyone. but for others, since twitter is just no longer viable, people have been migrating to something that can't be just bought out by yet another rich asshole. plus privacy, extended control over your own data, and all that other nerd shit no one cares about.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#386

Post by phplovesong » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 6:11 AM UTC

dym_sh wrote: post #385

phplovesong wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally one of the first ones i found in mastodon.org. Clicked "tech" servers, then browsed until i found fosstodon.org, which seemed like the best match for my own preferences. So signed up, and still nothing. This was months ago, so i have pretty much given up on the entire thing.

if all you wanted to do is look around, it is understandable why giving up was this easy. honestly, if github and HN suffice for all your social needs, you probably dont need anything else. microblogging is not for everyone. but for others, since twitter is just no longer viable, people have been migrating to something that can't be just bought out by yet another rich asshole. plus privacy, extended control over your…

I really dont care that much. To be honest i just wanted to "try it out", and also i cant stand twitter, its just such a echo chamber, and is full of pro russia trolls and trumpists, so i gave that up too. Im sure the trolls will migrate to mastodon too, sooner or later.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#387

Post by devjab » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 7:02 AM UTC

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.

> to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the "correct worldview"

To me there are basically two sides to this, and I'll outline them with two examples.

One is when people decide to have a debate on whether or not trans women should be allowed in women sports. In this case, banning people who have the "wrong" opinion is sort of dystopian. At least with the decentralized social network, you can't really ban them, just silence them on your particular server, so in a sense it's less dystopian than centralized social media. But I frankly agree with you on this, because it makes having discussions on certain subjects impossible, which isn't great.

The other example is when someone posts pictures of Warhammer models they have painted, and someone starts commenting on their gender, race, religion or whatever that is completely unrelated to the original post. Or when someone is being plain hateful in any context. In those cases, the way I see it is that the hateful person is breaking the social contract in which we all agree to be respectful to each other. Once you break that contract, then it no longer applies to you. This is the way the real world functions, and it's how the internet used to function before the ability to moderate assholes was centralized and sort of removed.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#388

Post by rvz » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 7:26 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #11

rvz wrote: post #8

10 million 'registered users' not 'daily active users' in 7 years. Even in some of the comments in the post are skeptical about the usage of those registered accounts. In comparison to Twitter (Since Mastodon zealots often pitch it as a 'Twitter alternative' somehow) 7 years after it launched, it had well over 250M+ total users with well over 150M daily actives. [0] Even Nostr has 6M total users in less than 7 years.…

The years Mastodon operated before Musk chased millions of people off Twitter don't count. In the status quo ante of Musk's takeover, Mastodon may never have been viable, but Musk did take over Twitter.

> The years Mastodon operated before Musk chased millions of people off Twitter don't count.

I'm sure you know those previous years of operation does certainly count. Mastodon launched in 2016 (7 years ago). Not in November 2022.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#389

Post by emptysongglass » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 8:01 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #383

emptysongglass wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What forum are you talking about. All of Mastadon? Doesn't each instance have its own rules? It's one of the larger instances but the top heaviest constitute the majority by far and they all enshrine these policies. I don't think you're really answering my criticism. You're lumping my "retrograde" progressiveness in with the well-worn wheel of timely revolts against the corruption of the past. I'm saying that both…

> It's one of the larger instances but the top heaviest constitute the majority by far and they all enshrine these policies. So can you provide any evidence? Name this instance? > both sides of the political aisle have become hives of extremism It's laughable. Look at the people in power. What progressive is in any major office: Look at the President, the Minority Leader of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senat…

> So can you provide any evidence? Name this instance?

I've already shared the specifics I'm comfortable sharing. I have zero desire to start a witch hunt.

> What has the left controlled? The right wing has used governmet power to ban books, educational topics, political freedom for teachers, criminalized gender choices, protests, etc. etc. Even in colleges, the right has shut down dissent, including among faculty (e.g., at UNC, in Florida, Harvard, Yale, etc.). The right is trying to eliminate tenure and academic freedom.

You're perfectly demonstrating exactly the behavior I intended to point out. "Other-ing" the opposition into the Sith is not productive and the Left is as guilty of this as the Right.

> The left is trying to break the control of a few. Whether you like their tactics or not, they are trying to give power to minorities and other vulnerable people.

Through race essentialism? Or by what means are you specifically referring to? The common platform of the new left is that all white people are guilty of the original sin of their skin color. A platform based on enforced shame is not a platform for collaboration.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#390

Post by theshrike79 » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

gargron wrote: post #34

jghn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never log on to my Mastodon account. When I do, I always say I should do so more as the vast majority of the people I really enjoyed following on Twitter are on there. But the thing is, I just hate the Mastodon UI. It's so clunky. And the lack of things like centralized search are a big issue for me. I dislike the federated nature of it. In short, it's just not to me. Which sucks, as that's where a lot of th…

> But the thing is, I just hate the Mastodon UI. It's so clunky. I hope this situation improves once we finish hiring a product designer. Personally I don't think the web client is as bad as some people make it sound, but I know it can be improved. In the interim you can try the 3rd party web client Elk [1], some people seem to really like it. [1]: https://elk.zone

Mastodon has the same UI problem as Matrix (Element specifically). The UI/UX isn't _bad_, it's just a teeni tiny bit more worse and confusing in everything than the competition.

If someone would just make a 1:1 clone of Discord and slap it on Matrix, it'd be perfect. The underlying technology is fine, the interfaces are the clunky ones.

Mastodon has a bit of the same, just following someone from another instance is like 6 steps. Basically you need to copy their URL, go to your own instance, search for them using the same URL and click follow if it's the only search result. Compared to Twitter's one click that's a good 500% increase in complexity.