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Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

bbc.com

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Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#161

Post by darawk »

code_runner wrote: post #132
gonehome wrote: post #102

Mastodon and federated systems like it will not succeed beyond a tiny niche, will not replace twitter, and don't even solve most of the problems they try to solve. They don't fix the upstream issues that lead to centralization. Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience. It's the worst of both worlds. As designed the UX is bad and cannot be fixed because of these iss…

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

How many rich people and fund managers around the world have been throwing money at engineers they thought were smart for the past several decades?

How many have succeeded on the scale Elon has? "Throwing money at smart engineers" is not a novel idea. Executing it well is extremely hard, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#162

Post by [deleted] »

code_runner wrote: post #132
gonehome wrote: post #102

Mastodon and federated systems like it will not succeed beyond a tiny niche, will not replace twitter, and don't even solve most of the problems they try to solve. They don't fix the upstream issues that lead to centralization. Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience. It's the worst of both worlds. As designed the UX is bad and cannot be fixed because of these iss…

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#163

Post by p1necone »

torginus wrote: post #149
code_runner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

If that's all he is doing - paying smart people and expecting them to work hard - why isn't literally everyone else doing the same?

It might have something to do with the paying bit.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#164

Post by arcturus17 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #45

Just got this in my email because I signed up in Patreon as a supporter of a Mastodon node: "So our IndieWeb server has seen a 4,333% spike in users, and every day is a new record in daily new users sign ups .... In that same time we have done one major server upgrade, and have had zero down time, and as we screen all new users before joining, so far have had zero cases of spammers or scammers from inside the instanc…

> 300,000 users in the last week

Let's speak in a month or two, see how many remain active, and then see whether this is an overreaction, and whether the experience design of Mastodon can really acommodate them?

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#165

Post by dislikedtom2 »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #50
addajones wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter how much he’s worth? Never understood why people are so concerned about him cutting jobs? He bought the company and took it private. It’s his right to restructure it and try to make it generate profit as he’d wish. The board of directors of public Twitter approved of this. What do people think, the USA is FOSS?

Because there is something distasteful about a man that rich firing loads of people. There is something almost medieval about it. He's basically a modern day king. I've never understood the complete lack of empathy displayed by so many people on HN. It's worse than Reddit. "He bought the man, it is his property now. He can do with him as he wishes" - legal ownership can still be wrong.

System is broken and hating or getting rid of the winner does not help since there is a line of people ready to take his spot and that spot is only open for people who are not afraid of a fight. Don't hate the player, hate the game as they say.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#166

Post by bombcar »

raytube wrote: post #15
jmann99999 wrote: post #5

If this BBC story doesn't indicate that there is an overreaction to new Twitter management, I don't know what will. It reminded me of when I was considering trying to move all of our customers to receive PGP encrypted mail in 2005. An intelligent employee brought up that an average business person would never do that. Luckily we never implemented it. Mastodon is great but it isn't a replacement for Twitter. Too much…

Why can't it get enough reach? What if each news outlet ran their own server? Or would this feel like bondage with people wishing for multiple personas/autonomy?

News outlets all canned their comments sections - I see absolutely no reason why they'd want to bring back something even worse.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#167

Post by Timshel »

gonehome wrote: post #115
Reventlov wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, federated systems like the web or email won't succeed ?

Correct - email is a failure as a federated system, people are centralized on a handful of providers and you can't even run your own server these days without getting blacklisted. The promise of the decentralized web of the 90s is a failure. The majority of users are centralized on handful of megacorporation apps despite the ad business making this pretty awful. We're trapped in a local maximum because of the underly…

Well a handful is still way better than only one. If tomorrow someone want to leave Gmail they have quite the list of alternatives and can forward their mail to their new address. Compared to leaving Twitter or Facebook this is so much better.

It's like if Twitter was an ActivityPub instance even if it had 99.9% marked share at least you could leave without leaving everything behind

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#168

Post by parineum »

__alexs wrote: post #152
parineum wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nowadays billionaires remind me of those barons, some even buy out land I'm pretty sure you missed the important point of that history you've been reading. The bad part is the indentured servitude, not the land ownership. > On the surface that made a lot of sense To whom? > So people mentioning someone’s net worth states their class and this is important for the context. As for Musk being entitled to fire anyone, s…

> The bad part is the indentured servitude, not the land ownership. I guess you're not familiar with the Inclosure Acts? (To name but one of the grossly amoral uses of land ownership in the past few centuries.)

Using land amorally isn't the same thing as owning land unless you think land ownership is amoral.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#169

Post by hutzlibu »

code_runner wrote: post #132
gonehome wrote: post #102

Mastodon and federated systems like it will not succeed beyond a tiny niche, will not replace twitter, and don't even solve most of the problems they try to solve. They don't fix the upstream issues that lead to centralization. Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience. It's the worst of both worlds. As designed the UX is bad and cannot be fixed because of these iss…

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

"I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. "

To me it seems, his success comes from being an engineer himself and wanting to get shit done and kick people until shit gets done in a working way. And yes that includes throwing money at smart engineers, but to do this, you have to be smart and have domain knowledge to do so.

The problem started, when he got too much success and lost touch with the ground of reality.

The twitter chat logs are quite interesting.

https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#3

In general they show that it was indeed a bit more than a high idea, to which it was reduced around many places.

Still, a funny quote from Elon:

"Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don't think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems."

I think he means it. But of course it is BS, when he is in fact the boss of so many people and making them burn out for productivity in various ways.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#170

Post by code_runner »

torginus wrote: post #149
code_runner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

If that's all he is doing - paying smart people and expecting them to work hard - why isn't literally everyone else doing the same?

My theory is that getting smart people to make twitter vs landing reusable rocket boosters… will yield VERY different levels of passion/interest.

Which again is FINE. Personally, I just wanna do cool stuff and have a great work/life balance. I don’t want to (and don’t have the expertise to) land a rocket booster.

I guess… not everyone’s problem domains are interesting enough to lure a team like space-x etc. again, I don’t like him, but credit to Elon for at least trying to solve these tough problems. Just admit FSD isn’t a year away!

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