Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#191

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #51

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…

Exactly correct. The federated model is what makes this possible. A centralized service like Twitter has huge operational costs to serve their audience. But by distributing the load on thousands of independent operators like Mastodon does, each instance keeps their costs low and can easily be funded by their users. It has a local community feel, not a corporate mass-appeal feel.

[deleted]

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#192

Post by hrktb » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #101

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…

> 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

What is the general public though ?

Most people have niche interests. Grand parents can go fishing, and registering to a fishing centric server could be great for them.

The network I like the most is a place for people to show their drawings. It’s as niche as you can get, I don’t know if these people fit your “general public” label, but they’re not “techies”, they just like to draw.

In that sense I think it doesn’t need to be an ocean of content, small ponds are fine as long as they are discoverable, and most niche communities are good at sharing these kind of technical resources.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#193

Post by antidesitter » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #188

tomohawk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big social media sites are in the process of evicting everyone who doesn't 100% agree with them. We've seen this kind of thing in history before, and the one thing we know about it is that it is a process without end. Once one group gets removed, another group becomes the outlier, and they become the next target, and so on. Heck, they're already banning political ads from mainstream candidates for US Congress. Th…

>In 10 years, noone will care about twitter. If they won’t care about Twitter, why should they care about an open source clone with no users? It’s also not true of all tech platforms. It’s not true of desktop operating systems for example. Today the desktop is dominated by Apple and Microsoft. Who dominated it 30 years ago? So there’s nothing inevitable about these things.

> If they won’t care about Twitter, why should they care about an open source clone with no users? That’s the worst argument ever.

You’re just assuming the alternatives will have no users. That’s the worst argument ever.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#194

Post by asntbqjkwbucaa » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #127

asntbqjkwbucaa wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that investors can sell if profit isn't being maximized, but how often does that happen in privately held companies? E.g. if startup X has the tech to take over a market, but is insufficiently pursuing a profit opportunity because of moral squeamishness, chances are relatively good that investors in X will simply replace the executives with somebody that will pursue those opportunities since that's vastly c…

Similarly with publicly traded companies, not pursuing profit opportunities can result in large sell offs of a stock. That isn't obviously true. Eg, Amazon spent years actively doing everything possible to avoid making profits. If investors don't like a company's strategy then they can try to get management changes or they can sell. But company strategy goes way beyond the blind pursuit of profit. E.g. if startup X h…

With early stage companies, often what happens is investors subsidize an investment precisely because they know what the profit strategy is and because they think it's strong.

With Uber, Travis was attempting to undercut competition. Investors subsidize rides because when there is no competition they are in a better place to profit. Amazon (I believe?) was reinvesting the money in the business while subsidizing prices and package delivery to gain loyal customers. Many times an investor will subsidize a no-advertisement experience to gain an audience, and then switch on ads when the network effects are strong enough to retain the audience.

This is basically Machiavelli's advice that new princes should give favors to the masses when they rise to power, so that their positions are stronger later. But the real goal is always to turn profit aggressively, even if investors are patient for a few years while they maneuver into the right position.

Also just to be clear, no investor wants a business to pursue every profit opportunity. They want the business to focus on a strategy that will maximize profit given their strengths, and that always involves focus rather than being distracted by every possible opportunity.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#195

Post by bastijn » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #117

bilbo0s wrote: post #112

OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among regular people cares. You guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you. None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people, your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for mastodon that indicates any features at…

You say problem, I say advantage. Not everything has to be a massive public square! It's okay to be niche. Until the mid/late 2000s, the internet was far more decentralized and often much the better for it. In other words: https://mastodon.social/@helldude/100572161034726032

Sidestep. That profile Pic (gif) made me have to read that post three times.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#196

Post by extradego » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

thevardanian wrote: post #181

teaneedz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you nailed the USP of Mastodon. Keeping out the marketers, advertisers, vanity metric chasing or fandom makes Mastodon that peaceful scenic beach where your fellow beach goers say hello and share some of their food with you. I'll take Mastodon fringe over obnoxious Twitter or Facebook anytime.

People often forget that at the beginning none of the current giants were "mainstream", in fact what made them attractive was the fact that they had a unique audience that formed a strong community amongst each other. The idea of "mainstream" is dying, and will continue to do so. What we're seeing is a deep cultural fracture where communities, ideas, and people do not form the kind of stardom or centralized propagati…

You read it here.

It's hard to see how this is the future without experiencing it in some way personally.

Facebook Groups connected me with fans of a particular kind of fringe art about 4 years ago and made leaving Facebook really difficult. This might seem exceedingly anecdotal, and I get that, but you have to realize that, before Facebook, it would have been impossible for any of us to even know this interest existed; much less that there were others also into it. Nothing in the cultural canon quite sufficed, although some trends in music and literature had come close, none of them quite articulated the thing. Finding the thing was a necessary part of a certain stage of my life, and gave me a psychological grounding that something mainstream might never could have. I think admitting so actually devalues the spectacle in question, but I can't deny it. There was a value in the fact that this small group of people spoke this unique language. We became something like a tribe.

Attention economics are strange and only beginning to define our lives. Younger people will depend on fringe engagements to achieve a sense of self-identity that used to be a given. Life experience is going to take a new shape accordingly.

I think early evidence of this is in music scenes, which is haphazardly often the case with forms of sociocultural influence. No conventional wisdom can explain the proliferation of indie music and things like tape labels but these things are massive forces. They just genuinely don't care what you think. They have an audience and it's up to you to be a part.

Mastadon is strangely ahead of the curve and probably doing a poor job of meeting in the middle. I think it would benefit from shoving everyone into Mastadon.social at signup and letting them learn about instances from there. Finding a home is too difficult as it is. But, eventually, it does look like the future.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#197

Post by Zaivei4y » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #112

OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among regular people cares. You guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you. None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people, your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for mastodon that indicates any features at…

> I mean, it might work? But I think Las Vegas hit on a much better method of populating empty area by just saying, "HEY! We've got gambling and naked women!"

That's a bit the selling point of pixiv's mastodon instance. Artists post their art there, including NSFW material and it is more aligned with local moral standards.

Now if you just want discover art it's a terrible tool (just like twitter is) compared to dedicate art hubs like pixiv or dA, but for following individual artists it seems to work.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#198

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #105

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.

In the case of Mastodon, not really, it's main advantage is federation and investors are not going to want to give many to any app that people can host themselves. They want centralization for ad tracking etc. so at most said team would end up with a Twitter clone.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#199

Post by asntbqjkwbucaa » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

zazen wrote: post #122

asntbqjkwbucaa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, your wikipedia link seems to confirm my layman's understanding of the term "standing", which is that it is about a party's right to participate in a court case. I am no closer to seeing how the English phrase "you aren't prioritizing profit" could "have standing". I think quadrangle is confused in his phrasing, if not in his underlying ideas. Of course investors may do various things. But we're particularly int…

To have standing you need to show that you are an injured party. I believe the original commenter was saying that not attempting to maximize shareholder value is in some cases an injury that is sufficient for an investor to bring a suit. I don't know whether this is true or not, but I believe that's what they were thinking when they referred to standing. In the case of a fiduciary, investors do have recourse to legal action if the fiduciary fails to put your financial interests first.

In general, I agree that a company is not legally obligated to make a profit. For example, there are many little shell companies whose main goal is not to turn a profit but to do something else. There are also B Corporations that have special legal protections for investors pursuing goals that are not strictly financial.

So in that sense, wool_gather is correct. A company is not legally obligated to maximize profit. But as a practical matter, if you raise money from professional investors, the strength of agency theory and the norms of ordinary business suggest that you can get into legal or financial trouble if you don't put the financial interests of the investors over nearly all other interests.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#200

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #101

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…

To be fair, it's very similar to email, you select a provider like Gmail or Yahoo and go, it's not like you can't talk about music on a car-oriented instance.