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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#101

Post by twblalock »

I went to the Mastodon website and clicked "Get Started" and was brought to a menu where I needed to choose a server. Many of them focus on niche interests, and it was not very clear what to do if I wanted to be a member of more than one of them.

I'm a techie; I could figure it out. But it is too much to ask of the general public to wade through many niche servers they won't understand, e.g. the one for BSD fans and multiple furry-themed servers. And there seem to be several overlapping Chinese-language servers -- which one should a Chinese newbie choose? And what prevents each server from devolving into a petty little fiefdom where the moderators abuse their power?

Compare that to getting started on Twitter: pick a username and password, boom, done!

The Mastodon project is clearly designed for a technical audience, whether or not that is what they actually intended. Outside of the techie bubble the usability is just not there.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#102

Post by dorfsmay »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #53
dorfsmay wrote: post #49

Isn't the concept of local servers making it easier to create a bunch of echo chambers? I haven't even tried Mastodon because my understanding of identify is tied to a server rather than an email or a gpg key... so outside of your control (unless you run your own server). My understanding is that when the server you are currently using disappear, your current identity, history, etc... disappear too.

You can export most of your data and move to another instance. It's not the most elegant process, but it seems to work out fine in the long run. You just tell people where you went.

It's well beyond not being elegant:

Exports are fine for when you want to move, but typically too late when the server you use and its data disappear. Do Mastodon evangelists advertise the fact that you need to do frequent export?

I follow a lot of people on twitter because I came across one of their tweet, check their history, and found them interesting. They have no idea who I am, they don't post often enough that I could remember their names. If their data and metadata were to disappear, how could they know how to contact me to let me know they have changed server, and therefore identity? Even if I remembered them and did noticed they had disappeared (two huge assumptions), how could I find them on their new server?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#103

Post by undoware »

dredmorbius wrote: post #90
undoware wrote: post #71

What I find amusing about all these "solutions" to "online outrage" is that they are invariably made by comfortable centrists, with a smattering of libertarians. I can say this with some authority as both of these terms would have aptly described myself, before I lost my career, my home, and everything else in gender transition, and ended up working three minimum wage jobs instead of coding for 2 years. Let me tell y…

Mastodon has a very large and thriving gender-nonbinary / non-normative population. There's a very large East Asian population (mostly Japan, though with Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and China represented). I've seen Indian, Indonesian, Arabic, and other voices. European representation is strongly weighted to France, though with numerous countries and languages represented. North-American usage tends to tech-early adopt…

I'm sure it does. I was not replying to Mastodon-the-platform, I was commenting on the cognitive bias present in the OP. Mastodon may well be the cat's pajamas, but not for the reasons given; namely, that centralized social media somehow synthesize outrage ex nihilo.

Which got downvoted, because pointing out that class and privilege are lens aberrations in the minds of technologists does not sit well with technologists.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#104

Post by AJ007 »

jeffbax wrote: post #58

I think that Mastodon has a lot going for it, and indeed It think an open source federated system is a great idea I hope to see succeed, but I don't think that RT is the main problem with Twitter. Maybe I'm lucky that few pay attention to me, but I haven't had a lot of trouble making Twitter incredibly, if not the most, useful social network. Its easy to find your interests and fairly simple to ignore/block things yo…

If you follow people on Twitter based on the quality of their activity then Twitter is incredibly valuable. My problem has never been about people tweeting things which were offensive, it was about them tweeting things about their dogs and cats all day long.

If you follow people because you like them, because you are friends with them, or because you hope they will follow you back, Twitter is a fucking disaster. There are people I really wanted to follow, but if I see 30 tweets/likes/retweets in my feed for every 1 incredibly useful tweet, they have to be unfollowed. Unsurprisingly, this approach pretty much cleans out all of the off-topic annoying non-sense, irregardless of your political views or lack there of.

The flip side to all of this is, if a lot of people follow you, the very open nature of Twitter can certainly be a problem. If you are a celebrity or a well known person and are not able to ignore what I imagine is basically a hate stream, then for your own well-being you probably should not use Twitter.

There are plenty of people who are addicted to the algorithm drip feed of content now. Snapchat and Instagram/Facebook have turned this in to a compulsive behavior and the ad revenue has followed. My guess is that as a "solution" to whatever is going on now, Twitter is going to move toward this model. When they do, I sincerely hope that Mastodon or some other open ActivityPub platform is good enough that all of the really smart people who post fantastic content to Twitter, like John Carmack and Tim Sweeney, will follow.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#105

Post by sillysaurus3 »

danShumway wrote: post #27

From the article: > Twitter Is in the Outrage Business; Mastodon Isn't a Business I need to spend way more time thinking about this, but I feel like in some scenarios there is a competitive advantage to not needing to care about stuff like stock prices or insane prices. If you can get a business or a project to the point where it's stable and competitive and it's funding you enough to keep going, then there's a whole…

Say you manage to create something the world wants to use. We’re talking 100k+ users.

If you don’t have funding, a team will get some and blow your bootstrapped app out of the water.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#106

Post by vageli »

jadbox wrote: post #26
kylnew wrote: post #12

I can’t quite get over this critiquing of Twitter’s Retweet system. I totally understand how it’s misused but all the benefits are overlooked too. I love retweeting with commentary for positive reasons. I find they are a great way to validate and engage people who reply. I never think of using them as a tool for shaming, so I would be sad to see the feature go.

There's two issues I'm concerned about. As you mentioned, one is yanking retweets because 'it can be used for ill'. I doubt that would make any real difference in toxic behavior, but would hurt positive commentary more. The other concern is the "block posts by tag" (e.g. ban all #politics). This could cause an even greater problem where it allow stronger social bubbles to form because one side could outright block th…

> There's two issues I'm concerned about. As you mentioned, one is yanking retweets because 'it can be used for ill'. I doubt that would make any real difference in toxic behavior, but would hurt positive commentary more.

> The other concern is the "block posts by tag" (e.g. ban all #politics). This could cause an even greater problem where it allow stronger social bubbles to form because one side could outright block the other (people blocking #dems or #gop). It could become like a Black Mirror episode where people literally do not know what's happening outside of their group/tribe because they've blocked entire groups/topics/nodes. We have this problem today to an extent, but I worry about new platforms that provide more tools for group isolation.

In that case, couldn't the opposing side just use the other tag? Who could enforce proper tagging in this case?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#107

Post by wavefunction »

quadrangle wrote: post #87
wool_gather wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that one of the supporting points here > And Twitter doesn't have any choice in the matter, either. [...] Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can is not, strictly speaking, true. This has been discussed a few times on HN recently. (And this book The Shareholder Value Myth is well worth reading: https://ne…

If investors feel that profit is not being maximized, they can sue or take other actions to punish those they see as not focusing on profit etc. I mean, the point is that "you aren't prioritizing profit" has legal standing for investors. And "we don't prioritize profit in cases that involve harming the world" does not is not a legal stance for the company unless the harm itself is illegal or the entity is a Benefit C…

In USAmerica (at least) you can sue anyone over anything. That doesn't imply a legal obligation per se with regard to whatever your claims might be.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#108

Post by twblalock »

esrauch wrote: post #20
thsealienbstrds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs could even provide the federated services like they provide e-mail. Another way it might work is companies that sell people federated service servers as products that they can deploy for example in their home or let the company host it. In any case maintenance must be included. I don't see how federated will take off without commercial support. The Smiths might be technically capable but I doubt the Jones's who…

Do people use ISPs email anymore?

Yes, and it keeps people locked in to their ISP because switching would involve updating the email address in all of their online accounts and notifying all of their contacts about the change.

I finally convinced my parents to bite the bullet and switch to Gmail so they can switch to a better ISP. It's a real problem.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#109

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

dorfsmay wrote: post #102
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can export most of your data and move to another instance. It's not the most elegant process, but it seems to work out fine in the long run. You just tell people where you went.

It's well beyond not being elegant: Exports are fine for when you want to move, but typically too late when the server you use and its data disappear. Do Mastodon evangelists advertise the fact that you need to do frequent export? I follow a lot of people on twitter because I came across one of their tweet, check their history, and found them interesting. They have no idea who I am, they don't post often enough that…

In practice I think most people just don't care if ancient posts are lost. They aren't exactly the cultural cornerstones of the internet. This isn't a problem often enough that your history is going to be empty most of the time. I think I only know of one occasion where an instance with ~20 users shut down with little warning.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#110

Post by asntbqjkwbucaa »

zazen wrote: post #98
quadrangle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If investors feel that profit is not being maximized, they can sue or take other actions to punish those they see as not focusing on profit etc. I mean, the point is that "you aren't prioritizing profit" has legal standing for investors. And "we don't prioritize profit in cases that involve harming the world" does not is not a legal stance for the company unless the harm itself is illegal or the entity is a Benefit C…

"Legal standing" isn't quite the right phrase. I think you're saying the board does in fact have a legal duty to prioritize profit above all else? If so, are you sure, and do you have sources? wool_gather said that "There's no categorical legal requirement for a company to make share value the absolute, #1 priority", despite a widespread belief to the contrary. And you seem to be just flatly contradicting him, withou…

I think the parent meant something closer to legal standing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)) than an obligation.

The investors have actions available to it than can punish executives for not pursuing profit opportunities sufficiently aggressively. Many of these don't involve the court, but some may.

Conversely, a founder that loses his/her business because investors punished them in this manner has no legal basis to fight to retain the business.

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