Mastodon Is Doomed
justingarrison.com
Mastodon Is Doomed
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#2There's one of these posts every month, and predictably the author dunks on Mastodon for not having a monetisation strategy.
That is a good thing. Keep your VC-powered enshittification[0] away from us, please.
> All of the 3rd party integrations are happening with ActivityPub, not Mastodon
That's like saying the web is doomed because all of the integrations are happening with HTTP and not Google Chrome. Yeah, that's the point. That's where integrations are supposed to happen, using the standardised protocol.
[0] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#3There's one of these posts every month, and predictably the author dunks on Mastodon for not having a monetisation strategy. That is a good thing. Keep your VC-powered enshittification[0] away from us, please. > All of the 3rd party integrations are happening with ActivityPub, not Mastodon That's like saying the web is doomed because all of the integrations are happening with HTTP and not Google Chrome. Yeah, that's…
[OP] I wrote the article because putting the time and financial burden of operating large distributed networks on individuals is not maintainable. The fact that the parent company has no plans to change that except to make it more expensive and complicated for individuals (switching to Kubernetes) is why I think it will fail to reach its intended goals.
The example I gave was email. Lots of things integrate with email at a protocol level but Gmail won because 1) it had better features 2) lots of things integrated with it directly
Would you build an IMAP/SMTP/POP3 product today? ActivityPub support will end up being a checkbox or buried setting.
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#4Perhaps the solution is to let go of the idea that Mastodon should be free of charge? Communities that have created organizations with budgets could use those to provide Mastodon as a service to their users. Other instances could charge a few bucks a year and solve all of their financial issues. Perhaps sponsorship could also cover costs.
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#5There's one of these posts every month, and predictably the author dunks on Mastodon for not having a monetisation strategy. That is a good thing. Keep your VC-powered enshittification[0] away from us, please. > All of the 3rd party integrations are happening with ActivityPub, not Mastodon That's like saying the web is doomed because all of the integrations are happening with HTTP and not Google Chrome. Yeah, that's…
[OP] I wrote the article because putting the time and financial burden of operating large distributed networks on individuals is not maintainable. The fact that the parent company has no plans to change that except to make it more expensive and complicated for individuals (switching to Kubernetes) is why I think it will fail to reach its intended goals. The example I gave was email. Lots of things integrate with emai…
Strange that you use a still-popular, decentralized, open-standard global service with a myriad of paid and free providers, for which there exists dozens of open-source clients and servers across the planet, all of which integrate with each other... as a model for why Mastodon won't work.
Why do you say "gmail won"? Did gmail switch to a proprietary, closed protocol? Did they lose compatibility with even the smallest, independent email servers? (That was rhetorical-- provided those smaller servers adopt appropriate open, non-proprietary anti-spam measures (DMARC, SPF, DKIM, etc), they work fine.)
Meanwhile, no one uses AOL's old proprietary mail system, if it exists any more.
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#6The my ideal fediverse product is one that is simple and runs on RSS.
Is there such a project?
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#7The my ideal fediverse product is one that is simple and runs on RSS. Is there such a project?
There were a few posts in the past that were focused on RSS based social media.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33975082
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28645871
Most of them focus heavily on consumption and redistribution. It still requires you to own a source of truth (eg blog) but none of them solve the interaction problems (eg how to leave a comment or have a conversation)
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#8Perhaps the solution is to let go of the idea that Mastodon should be free of charge? Communities that have created organizations with budgets could use those to provide Mastodon as a service to their users. Other instances could charge a few bucks a year and solve all of their financial issues. Perhaps sponsorship could also cover costs.
The decoder interview touched on that and he said they have no plans for that model. Right now all of the larger instances have a variety of ways to get donations. I agree it would be better if it were integrated into the app to make it easier to find for users and track for admins.
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#9There's one of these posts every month, and predictably the author dunks on Mastodon for not having a monetisation strategy. That is a good thing. Keep your VC-powered enshittification[0] away from us, please. > All of the 3rd party integrations are happening with ActivityPub, not Mastodon That's like saying the web is doomed because all of the integrations are happening with HTTP and not Google Chrome. Yeah, that's…
[OP] I wrote the article because putting the time and financial burden of operating large distributed networks on individuals is not maintainable. The fact that the parent company has no plans to change that except to make it more expensive and complicated for individuals (switching to Kubernetes) is why I think it will fail to reach its intended goals. The example I gave was email. Lots of things integrate with emai…
Bittorrent, multiple file sharing protocols, and other distributed peer-to-peer systems and are doing very well.
Email lost because spam is an extremely difficult problem and because large email providers decided to become an oligopoly and shut off smaller providers.
Re: Mastodon Is Doomed
#10Forums have existed for decades and are doing fine.
None of the problems this post mentions are fundamentally insurmountable, as evidenced by the fact that large peer-to-peer online communities have existed since the beginning of the internet.