Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

codesections.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 395 posts

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#261

Post by quadrangle »

undoware wrote: post #71

What I find amusing about all these "solutions" to "online outrage" is that they are invariably made by comfortable centrists, with a smattering of libertarians. I can say this with some authority as both of these terms would have aptly described myself, before I lost my career, my home, and everything else in gender transition, and ended up working three minimum wage jobs instead of coding for 2 years. Let me tell y…

I can get behind or at least validate the concerns of everything here except "…bodies who…"

If this language aims to show the blunt physical way that others dehumanize the people in question… well, that's not clear. Maybe exploitive actors see others as just "bodies", but that's not a good way to see people.

The concept of a "person" is bigger than just their physical body, in the same way that this sentence is bigger than just a bunch of binary numbers.

If you want to highlight the dehumanizing, objectifying way that power sees people, it would be "…bodies that…"

Using "who" makes it seem like you think you can refer to people as "bodies" in a way that is non-objectifying…

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#262

Post by bitbckt »

irq-1 wrote: post #238
codesections wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look, you want me to get excited about Mastodon? Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter I don't think the advantage for Mastodon is being able to do anything that Twitter can't. Instead, it's being able to do everything that Twitter can without a lot of the negatives that come with Twitter. My view is that, fundamentally, Twitter is a good platform, but it suffers from a number of…

Ideas for killer features: Feeds. Creators collect and filter on subject, importance and volume. Follow a Feed instead of a person. Locality. Connect people in an area, like Facebook starting in schools. Use age and membership (church, work, school) for getting people onto a server where they know people. Events and Calendar. Instead of posts with date/time information, make a different type. Let people view aggregat…

Using “tweet” infringes on Twitter’s trademark.

(IANAL, but former tweep)

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#263

Post by s73v3r_ »

papaf wrote: post #223
that_jojo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And right at this moment , no one gives a shit about Mastodon.

I remember when the www was the same and the CompuServe users said the same thing. Mastodon has a similar feel in that the content is amateurish and free. As an anecdote, I use chaos.social and they are throttling signups because there are too many new signups. Maybe you will be surprised.

Yeah, but I remember when the same thing was said about Diaspora. I remember when the same thing was said about various indie game consoles. I remember when the same thing was said about a whole bunch of social network alternatives that never went anywhere.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#264

Post by s73v3r_ »

teleclimber wrote: post #190
twblalock wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular people do not self-host websites or know what RSS is. What does Mastodon offer that regular people care about?

Fine, that was technical. But regular people care about being threatened and hateful conduct. On twitter countless reports go unanswered, and it's pretty clear at this point that there is no intent to make the situation better. On Masto when you report someone or a post for being abusive you've got an actual human (your instance admin) who will look at it and actually do something about it (like blocking that user fo…

Mastodon has literally no moderation tools. There is absolutely nothing to prevent impersonation or harassment.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#265

Post by s73v3r_ »

boyce wrote: post #252
twblalock wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the instance admin becomes abusive, or treats the server like his own petty little fiefdom, what can be done about it? Why should I trust an instance admin?

I thought we were comparing Mastodon to Twitter where what you say is already the case Moving instances is not a big deal and yes, know your admin.

How do my followers know to follow me to the new instance? How do they know it’s actually me?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#266

Post by quadrangle »

wool_gather wrote: post #219
quadrangle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If investors feel that profit is not being maximized, they can sue or take other actions to punish those they see as not focusing on profit etc. I mean, the point is that "you aren't prioritizing profit" has legal standing for investors. And "we don't prioritize profit in cases that involve harming the world" does not is not a legal stance for the company unless the harm itself is illegal or the entity is a Benefit C…

Profit is not the same thing as share value. > they can sue Not, as far as I know, with any likelihood of success, no. There's a doctrine called the "Business Judgement Rule", which says that -- generally speaking -- boards/officers are not liable for bad stuff happening to the company as long as they act in good faith, without conflict of interest, and using their honest judgement of what is best for the company --…

If they sacrifice what is "best for the company" in order to do better for the world, they can be accused by investors as not acting in good faith on the premise of pursuing business success etc.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#267

Post by ivan_gammel »

Barrin92 wrote: post #235
ivan_gammel wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open anarchic communities are not toxic only while they are young and fresh. Eventually they will grow and either establish a set of formal and legally binding ceremonies with unsatisfactory result (actually I don't know any really good decentralized example here - Wikipedia is the closest one) or become toxic and die (IRC).

the point of mastodon communities is that they are not anarchic. The fact that they're human scaled and moderated is what allows them to impose sets of rules that actually make spending a few hours there palatable. (The same advantage that say, the smaller hackernews community has over a 500k population subreddit) That's the advantage they have over twitter, they're able to set community rules that fit to the respect…

Can you give an example of mastodon community with clearly defined and legally binding policy, that protects rights of regular users? I could not find any (doesn't mean that they don't or cannot exist, of course) and highly doubt that any admin there has motivation or resources to develop it and properly implement. Pure declarations like "we are good fellas and don't allow abuse" mean nothing - they are not enforceable and regular user cannot sue instance admin for violations.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#268

Post by robertwiblin »

This is a good article. I just wanted to take issue with this claim: "Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can."

This is a common misconception. While public companies have some duties to shareholders they are not required to maximise profits as such: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

It's important to be aware of this so that corporations cannot use this excuse to get off the hook for otherwise immoral behaviour.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#269

Post by ken »

hrktb wrote: post #192
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…

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

That sounds great in theory, but (1) I have a dozen different niche interests, and there's not going to be one instance with even half of them, and (2) AFAICT there is no "fishing centric server", and even the "Mastodon instances wizard" doesn't provide a way to search for them -- it's only about whether I want to allow porn/spam/ads.

Are my grandparents supposed to start their own Mastodon instance, just so they can hang with their fishing buddies online? Am I supposed to get accounts on 10 different instances, one for each of my interests?

I just don't see how this is supposed to work. Everything I read about Mastodon in the abstract is great, and then as soon as it gets into any specifics it falls down.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#270

Post by boyce »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #265
boyce wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we were comparing Mastodon to Twitter where what you say is already the case Moving instances is not a big deal and yes, know your admin.

How do my followers know to follow me to the new instance? How do they know it’s actually me?

You can mark an account as having moved and specify to where.
Post reply on HN