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I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

blog.joinmastodon.org

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Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#211

Post by groundzeros2015 »

wmeredith wrote: post #96
jonathaneunice wrote: post #28

"I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job." -- Bill Murray

I've heard a similar maxim that being rich is fantastic, rich and famous is good, poor is bad, poor and famous is a nightmare.

The quote from the “jackass” crew is the opposite. If you’re famous you don’t need money. You just walk up and ask.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#212

Post by glenstein »

This is an indescribably devastating loss for a project that, whatever its imperfections, can fairly lay claim to the most intellectually consistent and sincere adherence to FOSS, privacy, and decentralization of any major social media project. Eugene has proven a spectacular and indispensable developer, and I don't know that Mastodon has the ability to move on without him. I want to praise Eugen but the uncomfortable truth is I think Mastodon as a project may not recover from losing him. Though I hope to be proven wrong.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#213

Post by holysoles »

tpurves wrote: post #207

It seems like strixhalo is a pipe-cleaner part of sorts and the real deal may have to be Medusa Halo. That one could be a monster. The bad news is that it sounds like it's a long way off (2027 sometime) so who knows what Apple M5 or M6 Max could look like by then for competition.

i think this is on the wrong thread

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#214

Post by arjie »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #188
arjie wrote: post #95

> I steer clear of showing vulnerability online, but there was a particularly bad interaction with a user last summer that made me realise that I need to take a step back and find a healthier relationship with the project, ultimately serving as the impetus to begin this restructuring process. Many of these microblogging sites seem to be populated by people with extreme views. One of the pleasant things about old Inte…

Even networks like HN and Reddit are filled with outrage and groupthink these days. I think the kind of person that spends all their time on social media gets stuck in a weird epistemic bubble which consists of ragebait posts and opinions that fish for community approval (likes, retweets, upvotes, etc.) Sitting in that soup for too long probably warps your sense of what's actually happening in the world around you. T…

YouTube is an incredible story. It used to be memed as the worst comment community of all time. But then whatever they did to it made it the mildest thing on Earth, and it has really improved that site. As you point out, that works only because no one really goes there for the comments. Except perhaps for the famous slag one:

> Great video clip. I had a job once at the US Steel Pipe Works, Geneva Plant, Utah...

> The sea-gulls around dusk, would often ride the intense thermals created by the super-heated air, drawing cooler air up from below the slag pits, combining with the hot air whoosh it would go, rushing up the precipitous cliffs, man-made mini-mountains of slag, there they would fly along the thermals updraft about 100 feet up and nearly parallel to the rail car dump line. Their white underbelly's "glowing" brilliantly orange, phoenix like they hovered there almost motionless reflecting the bright yellow-orange and red hues of the cooling slag. It was like they were on fire it was so bright in the fading light of the day. It was the only beautiful sight to see in an otherwise desolate and foreboding wasteland of glassy rock-like congealed blast furnace slag.

- mrc109 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhJF_hTJ2Rw

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#215

Post by bigiain »

duxup wrote: post #49
billy99k wrote: post #14

This is the problem with a stressful role, with little compensation. Most people wouldn't want to be in this position. It sounds like anyone that runs a moderately sized open source project. More money would solve most of these issues.

I used to volunteer moderate a very busy forum. Our rule was that anyone who wanted to moderate “too much” was effectively not allowed to do so. The catch being finding those who would help out and moderate effectively was not easy. And even then you were cycling through them regularly as inevitably if they cared enough they also cared enough that they stepped down. I do wonder though if you have people doing it for…

One fairly busy forum I cofounded and "moderated" on, we intentionally call the moderators "Janitors" in an attempt to dissuade the sort of people who wanted "a powerful role" from even wanting to ask. It sorta mostly worked, largely because there were 7 very like minded cofounders of that forum who stared it as an escape route when a previous version was sold to a forum-monetising company (Vertical Scope, from memory).

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#216

Post by plorkyeran »

mlindner wrote: post #197
Tool_of_Society wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

After the taking Tesla private tweet that got him in trouble with the SEC he hired some people, but that didn't last long. Tesla had a PR team until a few years ago but he probably did not listen to them very much.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#217

Post by BeetleB »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #208
BeetleB wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Why is it important to like a toot? What benefit does liking one provide?

It indicates to the poster that someone (you) liked their post. Perhaps that encourages them to make other similar posts.

In which case either favorite or bookmark will do the trick, correct? Why worry whether you're clicking the "wrong" one?

Boost will also do it, but it has more side effects.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#218

Post by spartanatreyu »

bhhaskin wrote: post #56

Mastodon 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.

> Influencers don't bother because it doesn't have the massive following and reach other platforms have

Mastodon doesn't have an "algorithm" (in the online recommendation sense).

Every post is sorted by post date, which biases against virality.

Influencers don't go on mastodon because they can't "go viral". They can't spew dramaslop or whatever other psychological trickery to gain a greater reach.

Mastodon isn't built for influencers, it's built against them.

---

It's also not growth-hacking to a reach critical mass usage before rug-pulling its users into a pit of every expanding service enshitification.

That's what makes it feel so much more authentic compared to other social networks.

It's the social media network from a parallel universe where the non-profit Wikipedia/Wikimedia purchased Twitter and Discord, merged them together then got rid of the mic rooms.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#219

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

rmoriz wrote: post #160
jeromegv wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? That's the beauty of it, i'm sure there's more to it to your story, but if truly you were banned for something silly, you can join another server (or even create your own!), there's a lot of alternatives.

You can't move a banned account, you lose all followers.

What a revolution in social media

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#220

Post by tcfhgj »

verdverm wrote: post #210
tcfhgj wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you measure "too complicted"?

Didn't measure what complicated means, these are the words people who churned use Generally the first point is server selection. That's too complicated for most users

Somehow I doubt it is.

People are capable of selecting phones, phone network providers, e-mail providers, Internet providers, but selecting a server for mastodon is too complicated?

Don't buy it

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