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Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

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Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#81

Post by suddenclarity »

rapnie wrote: post #19
suddenclarity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the right people such as experts and industry leaders. Those are on Twitter. If you want to hang with average Joes then you have a random Discord service, forums or anonymous people on Reddit. It's not the features that makes microblogs great.

> It's not the features that makes microblogs great. Agreed. It is organic interaction, which you get at the Fediverse. Much more so than on Twitter is my anecdotal observation. On Twitter you have to hone your messages in hope the algorithms make you 'go viral'. There are quite a few experts, academics, scientists and journalists migrating to the Fediverse. Increasingly some of the industry leaders too. I do not kno…

> On Twitter you have to hone your messages in hope the algorithms make you 'go viral'.

On the contrary, algorithms are to a large extent irrelevant. You see what the people you follow tweet and retweet. No algorithms involved. What made Twitter special is rather that you can interact with anyone. You can live in the middle of nowhere and still share knowledge and network with the best in your field. Making a copy of the platform but removing the people, also removes the whole point of Twitter.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#82

Post by msm_ »

prmoustache wrote: post #65
satvikpendem wrote: post #46

I created a Mastodon account, in some server that I can't remember now. I tried to follow people but couldn't figure out how to follow them if they were in different servers (back when the Twitter exodus happened, the main Mastodon server stopped new account creation). I gave up after a few more days of trying and went back to Twitter.

[flagged]

Why the unnecessary aggression (with "dumb" and "retards")? People use twitter for fun, maybe they don't want to struggle with complex UX when they have a perfectly valid alternative (Twitter) already.

Instead this should make you wonder - if smart and technical people (like NH visitors) have problems with Mastodon UI, what chance do "normal" non-technical people have? Toxic attitudes like yours are a problem in many tech-heavy communities.

Unless you want a walled-garden experience for hardcode tech people only. That's fine too. That's how IRC is nowadays and it's OK. Just be honest about this and don't call people outside of that bubble "retards".

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#83

Post by bronikowski »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #47
endorphine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. I (almost) only see content and topics from people I follow. Which means everything is specific to the interests of the people I choose to follow, and that list needs to be curated well Why "almost" though? Does Mastodon shows tweets from people you don't follow? Or is that a preference setting for this?

People retweet/boost posts, and if you add relays to your instance you’ll see “trends” and other topics in the federated timeline

My client (tut) has option of disabling boosts, I like my timeline like that.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#84

Post by em-bee »

gcthomas wrote: post #68
rvz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to join Mastodon? First you have to choose an instance... This is one of the essential problems that frustrates normal users from moving to another social network. We are yet to talk about the mediocre 'search' function, co-ordinated instance-level bans, rouge moderators, instances shutting down / falling over, etc. Techies love discussing about how complex something is, where as the majority of users do not c…

Want to join Email? First you have to choose a server ... No wonder email failed to thrive as an open protocol, distributed communication system. It's just too darned hard and unfamiliar to figure out how to join.

before gmail and the like people didn't choose a server. the majority of email addresses people got from the institutions they were affiliated with. their university, their job, their isp.

and when they switched their isp or their job, they also had to switch email addresses.

it wasn't until gmail and other independent email services that people actually got to choose.

the only exception were those people who got their own domain who either set up their own server or used the email service offered by their registrar.

email was already ubiquitous before people even had a choice, and when those choices came available there were only very few because the majority of servers were and still re restriced to the members of the institutions they belong to. so for email paralysis of choice never was a concern

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#85

Post by skissane »

gcthomas wrote: post #68
rvz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to join Mastodon? First you have to choose an instance... This is one of the essential problems that frustrates normal users from moving to another social network. We are yet to talk about the mediocre 'search' function, co-ordinated instance-level bans, rouge moderators, instances shutting down / falling over, etc. Techies love discussing about how complex something is, where as the majority of users do not c…

Want to join Email? First you have to choose a server ... No wonder email failed to thrive as an open protocol, distributed communication system. It's just too darned hard and unfamiliar to figure out how to join.

In the early days of email, most people got an email account automatically from their work or school. When it went mainstream in the 1990s, most people got an email automatically from their ISP-and a lot of older people (like my parents age, who are in their early-to-mid 70s) still rely on that for their personal email. Then along came independent free email services such as Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail, which either started out being owned by famous mega-corporations, or were taken over by them not long after they got started.

Mastodon isn’t really comparable-how many people get a Mastodon account from their work or school? From their ISP? From a major well-known corporation (whether paid or for free)? Unless the answer to any of those questions becomes “yes” (on average, not obscure exceptions)-onboarding Mastodon is going to remain a lot more difficult for the average non-technical person than onboarding email ever was

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#86

Post by gcthomas »

msm_ wrote: post #74
gcthomas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to join Email? First you have to choose a server ... No wonder email failed to thrive as an open protocol, distributed communication system. It's just too darned hard and unfamiliar to figure out how to join.

That's why Email is basically centralised now, with most of traffic to/from gmail (and microsoft).

It's more centralised now after several decades because monopolistic companies saw commercial value in squeezing out the competition. Plenty of technical folk have given up their own servers because the dominant providers ruined the system by blocking their emails.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#87

Post by prmoustache »

msm_ wrote: post #82
prmoustache wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why the unnecessary aggression (with "dumb" and "retards")? People use twitter for fun, maybe they don't want to struggle with complex UX when they have a perfectly valid alternative (Twitter) already. Instead this should make you wonder - if smart and technical people (like NH visitors) have problems with Mastodon UI, what chance do "normal" non-technical people have? Toxic attitudes like yours are a problem in many…

What makes you think that all hn visitors are "smart and technical".

And what makes you think that mastodon is walled by hardcore tech people only ot is a tech heavy community? My experience with mastodon is that it is used as much by non technical people as well. Your comparison with irc is not valid [1]

[1] although I would say irc used to be used by a lot of non technical people in the late 90's and early 2000's initially via web portals but many switching seamlessly to desktop clients such as mirc. While icq and then messenger were used for private communications with people already knowing each others well, IRC was the goto chat solution for people looking to meet other people with matching interest. Also acted as tinder before it was a thing.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#89

Post by [deleted] »

rvz wrote: post #77
gcthomas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to join Email? First you have to choose a server ... No wonder email failed to thrive as an open protocol, distributed communication system. It's just too darned hard and unfamiliar to figure out how to join.

> No wonder email failed to thrive as an open protocol, distributed communication system. Do you see normal users setting up their own email servers? I don't. It seems the are all joining centralized providers called Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and the like. [0] [0] https://mailchimp.com/resources/most-used-email-service-prov...

[deleted]

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#90

Post by Hamuko »

gcthomas wrote: post #78
Hamuko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter actually has a bunch of killer features when compared to Mastodon, to a degree where "toots can have a content warning" seems trivial. One massive one being "able to search tweets".

If a poster wants their posts searchable then they hash tag key words. Those who don't want randos searching for vulnerable people they can dogpile onto can have that relative anonymity by avoiding contentious hash tags. It's a feature, although some exTwitterati disagree.

I'm of the #opinion that this isn't a #great #way to #implement #search #inside a #product. #Hopefully #whenever a #service goes #down, #people will #remember to #add the #required #hashtags for #other #people to be able to #find them using #search. #Personally I've seen #very #few #posts on my #Mastodon #feed use #hashtags, so #searching is nigh on #impossible, and I don't #think that's #because they're #avoiding #dogpiling.

If #people don't want #other #people to #dogpile their #social #media #accounts, perhaps they should just #make their #accounts #private. #Mastodon has #private #account #support, right?

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