231–240 of 271 posts
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Technically speaking, the largest Mastodon instance is full of content that isn't exactly allowed on traditional social media (i.e. far-right extremism). See https://fediverse.network/
Which is going to be an anti-selling point for a lot of people.
I’ve learned to live a happy life without social media (mostly), I’d never go back to anything that resembled Facebook. I moved on and I’m happy for it. I enjoy some Instagram and Snap, that’s it. I’m bored with them too though.
Two of the largest social networks is not "a life without social media".
I guess what I was trying to say is that they're different formats and they encourage different types of engagement.
What I meant is, I don't miss the type of experience that Facebook provided at all.
Instagram feels more like entertainment and the engagement seems more "trivial" to me. I can passively consume or participate in if I have nothing better to do, else I don't miss it.
Facebook started to turn into a boring chore for me.
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To think in terms of there even being a next "incumbent in the space" implies a misunderstanding of what is driving Mastodon adoption. The differentiator behind Mastodon is federation via the ActivityPub protocol. And Mastodon is just one implementation of ActivityPub. More are being built every day. It's likely that a world with ubiquitous ActivityPub would look very different from the social media landscape of toda…
I love the idea of ActivityPub, but in practice, I think the very complex protocol, which is built on top of JSON-LD (I still don't understand why) of all things, and accepts variable structures for many, if not most fields, which makes it cumbersome to (de)serialize in languages with static typing, will hurt adoption by new projects. My main gripe with it is that potentially writing a spec-compliant server in an ent…
Thousands? This is 2019
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Absolutely agree. I hate this trend of measuring success by comparing small products to massive bloated giants of tech. You don't have to get to that level to be a success, and you're honestly probably better off if you don't. Big social media companies are now seen as responsible for the destruction and compromise of democracy and have many more problems which wouldn't exist if they weren't so universally adopted. I…
The usefulness of a general "social network" is how many people it has. If I can't find almost everyone I know on it, and they are on a different platform (Facebook) it's easier for me to just use the other platform. People feel like they need it to keep in touch with others they don't see often (or even just others in general). I personally don't have any major social media accounts, just small ones like HN - but I…
There was a clear, forum-inherited structure to most groups. It kept me coming back, day after day.
Google+ had a similar appeal - I dont know you, I dont care. I like what you have to offer, so I'm getting to know you.
Bridging that into meatspace relationships by frontloading them first? Was straining - I realized how little my peers cared for what they even do. Flooding that feed with game-spam? Negated the premise. And turning it into infinite-scroll of bad takes to drive engagement just turned me temporarily, but deeply misanthropic.
Turning online into afk relationships and friendships made all of this worthwhile. Facebook had that for a bit with their "events" features... But those got nerfed into being useless without an advertising firm's budget.
I, for one? Am happy to join somewhere that respects my time.
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Two of the largest social networks is not "a life without social media".
Fair point. I guess what I was trying to say is that they're different formats and they encourage different types of engagement. What I meant is, I don't miss the type of experience that Facebook provided at all. Instagram feels more like entertainment and the engagement seems more "trivial" to me. I can passively consume or participate in if I have nothing better to do, else I don't miss it. Facebook started to turn…
Usage of IG leaves that dynamic essentially intact.
To all the people poking fun at "thousands"... You have to start somewhere, and I'm sure you'd be tickled pink to see thousands of new users signing up for your app...
Good, but I think the "Facebook" model is dead by now. I've listened to a podcast recently about how the younger generation (00's onwards) don't even use social networks the way they're designed anymore. They keep multiple accounts/personas, they post ephemeral content, delete content, etc. It's a lot more about self-expression (Snapchat, TikTok) than having an online presence of your real-life self (Facebook, Linked…
https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
"The device’s address book is now the social network, so using phone numbers as an identifier has reduced switching costs by putting a user’s social network under their control. In a way, the notification center on a mobile device has become the federation point for all communication apps, similar to how older desktop IM clients unified communication across multiple IM networks."
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> I use Facebook to post pictures of my vacations for my family I use Facebook as a perpetually correct address book. People change address, phone number and sometimes email, but never their Facebook account. That single property of Facebook (which is something my generation attributed to Facebook, instead of it being directly coded as a feature) is why I could basically never leave. I've tried to get my family off o…
Are there any popular main-stream non-facebook or non-google owned chat properties? I've been looking for a family friendly alternative.