Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.
> It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.
You mean like HN?
I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
191–200 of 497 posts
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#192Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.
I wish it were better. I really want to move to it, but they’ve somehow managed to even make something as simple as liking a toot unintuitive. Boost and favorite don’t fit the bill.
Honest question: Why is it important to like a toot? What benefit does liking one provide?
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#193Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.
I wish it were better. I really want to move to it, but they’ve somehow managed to even make something as simple as liking a toot unintuitive. Boost and favorite don’t fit the bill.
how is clicking a heart or a star - depending on the UI - unintuitive?
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to that: With money you can always buy popularity easily, but converting popularity into money is hard work at least. I'd even say that turning fame into significant wealth is an art only few have truly mastered.
> With money you can always buy popularity easily I don’t know if Elon Musk is an example or a counter-example. Maybe both?
He’s an example. He has to burn massive amounts of money to counteract the fact that he wants to be the town asshole in public constantly.
If someone who had 5 dollars to their name acted like Elon Musk no one on this forum would question hating the fucker, but he’s got cash so some set of people think he might be right
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#195> I have so much passion for Mastodon and the fediverse. The fediverse is an island within an increasingly dystopian capitalist hellscape. And from my perspective, Mastodon is our best shot at bringing this vision of a better future to the masses. This is why I’m sticking around, albeit in a more advisory, and less public, role. Wait ’til the masses hear about this one.
You can claim the opposite of the fediverse. The fediverse became an ultra left-wing (in terms of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, not human rights). If you write one positive thing about AI/LLM based coding and you will be tarred and spring-loaded. People use Fediverse for venting, less for creating and sharing original content. Some creators on TikTok provide much more insightful content than most of the Fediv…
human rights and sustainability also
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that the non-profit in the US exists exclusively to handle fundraising from US donors who might not be able to give to non-US organizations for tax reasons.
Though if you are in the US odds are you don't need this tax deduction anyway. Few people understand how US taxes work and so give their accountant all their deductions because they know tax deductions exist. They don't realize that the standard deduction applies and they don't/can't deduct anything. (if you do apply deductions then this matters)
Before the SALT cap of $10K, it could easily matter. Prior to the cap, I itemized deductions every year - easy if you have a mortgage, live in a high income tax state, and both spouses work. In those days the standard deduction was $12K, and just our state taxes exceeded that amount - forget about mortgage + charity.
Even after the SALT cap, on some years itemizing was better.
And I believe as of next year (or the one after?), the SALT cap is going up significantly. Back to itemizing every year.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With money you can always buy popularity easily I don’t know if Elon Musk is an example or a counter-example. Maybe both?
Well he was doing a good job at buying popularity until he fired his PR team so..
Elon Musk has never had a PR team... Which is maybe the better point. (Or if he did, he hasn't had one in the 15+ years I've been watching him.)
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With money you can always buy popularity easily I don’t know if Elon Musk is an example or a counter-example. Maybe both?
Sadly, I suspect he's reasonably successful at being popular amongst the people he wants to be popular with. Taylor Swift is super popular in the demographic she plays to, while being unpopular with, say, techno or metal fans. Musk is super popular in the outspoken nazi demographic. (And has fallen way way out of popularity with huge parts of demographics that he used to be popular in, like electric car people, home…
> Musk is super popular in the outspoken nazi demographic.
It's sad seeing such poor misinformed takes like this on hacker news. I guess Marc Andreessen and the President/Co-Founder of Stripe, among many others, are nazis now. It's well known that among the group that I would call "pro-America technologists" that he's highly appreciated and many want to figure out how to replicate him.
> and spaceflight fans.
As a spaceflight fan who was a fan of Musk all the way back in ~2012, I'm still a fan of him today, even if I have more issues with him today than I did back then. I can confidently say that many spaceflight fans feel the same as I on this. People overstate his controversial opinions (and being a nazi is not one of them) and understate his past achievements (and continued achievements).
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#199> and transferring my ownership of the trademark and other assets to the Mastodon non-profit This is refreshing and exemplary; especially in the light of recent wordpress, rubygems, or similar power struggle dramas.
Here's hoping the Mastodon "non profit" is somewhat better set up than Matt's "WordPress Foundation" and that Mastodon is not now completely under control of one person (with two sock puppets) that also owns a company competing in the same space.
I just looked up the board of the Mastodon non-profit, I'm not super comfortable with Biz Stone being listed there, but at least the board is not just Jack Dorcey or Jay Graber and two names with zero googleable internet presence in the last decade...
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#200Mastodon has been great. The platform and generally most users aren't trying to constantly sell me something or influence me. It people sharing their lives, hobbies and passion. Influencers don't bother because it doesn't have the massive following and reach other platforms have, but that's part of what makes it special imo.
There are some tight groups, but number of active users is very low and getting lower, number of serves is also decreasing. I did some random sampling and it looks like large number of active users are talking to void and may not have realized it. They post regularly, have 100s of followers but no active followers. The most popular servers like mastodon.social are cesspools of snark, anger and grandstanding. Oh, and…
I walked away a long time ago when I realized how fragmented and prone to drama it was.