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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#301

Post by egypturnash »

twblalock wrote: post #298
egypturnash wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Mastodon instance admin, you just made an argument for me to never have a clearly-defined and legally-binding policy. Thanks. The main thrust of my user agreement is "hi I am queer lady who is out of patience with people being jerks and wants a nice place to talk, if you piss me off you can go find a new instance or start your own". It's not much more formal than that, either.

Sounds more arbitrary and a lot worse than Twitter’s policy.

shrug

You want a more lawyer-like policy with tons of explicit rules for people to try and work around, then run it yourself.

You trust your admin to not screw you over the same way you trust, say, the people who run that chill coffeehouse you’re a regular at.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#302

Post by duiker101 »

danShumway wrote: post #250
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…

> Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. Moderation and content quality. You know the reason why people prefer reading the New York Times instead of checkout-counter tabloids? The reason why people like buying from Amazon instead of Ebay? I mean, Ebay usually has better prices. Why would anyone buy from a store just because it's able to (or at least claims to…

> Moderation and content quality.

Those are pretty much guaranteed to go down the more people would use the service.

If you want to attract a lot of people, you will have to accept a lot of people, wether you consider their content crap or not.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#303

Post by h4b4n3r0 »

danShumway wrote: post #300
h4b4n3r0 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You know the reason why people prefer reading >> the New York Times instead of checkout-counter >> tabloids? I'm not actually sure that's true. Upon a cursory check, People Magazine has a slightly greater circulation than NYT. Heck, a non-trivial number people on YouTube have greater circulation than NYT or mainstream TV News channels and shows, while filming their stuff in the living room of their apartment.

McDonalds serves more customers than a five star restaurant, but that doesn't mean the restaurant is a bad investment or won't be able to turn a profit. You're talking about different target audiences. The question isn't whether or not Mastadon completely kills Twitter and literally everyone moves over - it's whether there's a compelling reason for a significant number of people to switch over. Is it viable to for Ma…

Sure, but you did not narrow down the audience. People as a whole, it would seem, slightly prefer checkout counter magazines as opposed to NYT. Likewise, I'm not sure bite-sized bullshit regurgitation services like Twitter/Mastodon are even useful in the first place, let alone benefit from refined moderation.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#304

Post by eahman00 »

interfixus wrote: post #131

At the joinmastodon.org site, in order to get me started and in touch with likeminded individuals, it is suggested I define myself as a heterosexual or a white European. No, wait, the terms are LGBTQ+ and Black American , whatever was I thinking?

The main website reeks of social justice, and take a look at the rules of mastodon.social (the primary instance) if you want something to laugh at: https://mastodon.social/about/more - All the big instances are exactly the same, and I guess if you make a more "free" instance, the big instances will completely ban your instance from theirs, so it won't be of much use. So federation doesn't really solve any censorship problems.

Mastodon is as politically aligned as Gab.ai. Someone should create a Twitter clone that isn't politically aligned, now that would be a step forward :P

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#305

Post by DoreenMichele »

I think it's a lousy article with a poor title. It's poorly written. It leads with the wrong info. It's framing sucks.

But just as I was thinking "The fact that Twitter is a business is a feature, not a bug" they mentioned they are funded by Patreon. So, they are a business, and one that possibly has a more sustainable business model than Twitter. They just don't call themselves a business for some reason.

I've done a lot of volunteer work over the years. Volunteers tend to be unreliable because they aren't being paid. They are often bitter people because they aren't being paid, so they want you to damn well be grateful as all hell that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Etc.

So, I'm less of a fan of open source than I used to be. If you want to do a thing sustainably, creating a business you are passionate about that can also pay your bills makes more sense than doing it for free. Getting the incentives right matters. Doing it for free means either you are independently wealthy, you are a bored homemaker or you actually do something full-time to pay your bills and this gets what little time and energy you have left over.

Maybe I need to look up the info on the guy who said he would answer my questions patiently if I had any and make "trying Mastodon" my new hobby for a bit.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#306

Post by adamrezich »

dang wrote: post #299
adamrezich wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did the other reply to this get killed after only having been posted for eight minutes? Seems inoffensive and like perfectly valid discussion from where I'm standing. Is drawing attention to the "attention economy" taboo here?

Users flagged it (I'm not sure why) and then the author reposted it using a different account. Normally we would unkill such a comment when we review the flags, since I didn't notice anything flaggable about it either, but we're not going to do that when there's a duplicate. Here's a tip: general explanations like 'is drawing attention to the "attention economy" taboo here' are basically never the answer. It's almost…

just thought it strange since I often read HN comments when an article is just posted and rarely see longish, wholly inoffensive comments such as the one in question here get downvoted to [dead] within eight minutes; usually that's reserved for politics etc.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#307

Post by hrktb »

ken wrote: post #269
hrktb wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

There’s actualy a fishing centered mastodon: https://hebinuma.com/2017/05/08/basstdnjp/

In japanese though, and I have the feeling mastodon is working better in japan than some other places.

About the lack of aggregation...well, it’s sure easier to be on facebook or twitter to get info from a lot of places.

The other side of the coin is it’s a PITA to manage, there is “contamination” between the groups and anonimity is pretty hard.

A way to strike the balance can be to have a dedicated network for things one really cares about, and twitter/facebook for the rest.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#308

Post by AgentME »

xigma wrote: post #141
masklinn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad ideas often takes longer than 240 characters. It's not even the right problem. The problem is not mocking people, disagreeing with them or whatever (incidentally the twitter character limit doesn't preclude external links or tweet chains, which are extremely common at…

Is this really such a big problem, especially for the average user, to make it a key feature of the platform? Sure, occasionally an otherwise obscure person might find themselves at the end of an unexpected shitstorm, but otherwise it generally affects more prominent users, who are well aware that anything mildly controversial can turn into lots of angry replies. Is that even a real problem? Isn't it actually valuabl…

It might be human nature and interesting from some perspective, but that doesn't mean it's good or fun to be a part of. It may be human nature for everyone in Thunderdome where a sign says "only one man leaves alive" to choose to fight brutally to death, but that doesn't mean we should continue or promote hanging out in Thunderdome over alternatives that encourage other parts of human nature instead.

>Sure, occasionally an otherwise obscure person might find themselves at the end of an unexpected shitstorm, but otherwise it generally affects more prominent users, who are well aware that anything mildly controversial can turn into lots of angry replies.

People often join social networks to follow, interact with, or become prominent people, so it is a problem for them if all of those prominent people are continually sacrificed.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#309

Post by AgentME »

dwaltrip wrote: post #138
simula67 wrote: post #52

> One of the most pernicious parts of Twitter is how people will retweet something dumb, offensive, or awful that an opponent said, along with a message mocking that opponent. Over time, this leads people on all sides of an issue to see only a distorted caricature of their opponents, comprised of an amalgam of all the worst features of that group. > How does Mastodon solve this issue? Well, Mastodon doesn't have retw…

CGPGrey has a great description of this problem with his video "This video will make you angry": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc The gist is that pithy, low-effort strawmans of an opposing tribe are highly attractive and contagious memes. I don't think it has anything specific to do with Twitter. You see similar issues everywhere: Facebook, Reddit, and of course meatspace. It's a human problem. Twitter and…

>But the actual problem can't be solved on Twitter or Mastodon. Each individual needs to be aware of this human problem and to constantly make an effort to notice and counteract it in their own brain (which is very difficult and error prone). Perhaps if enough people start doing that more, then cultural change will take place. I don't know.

Twitter has a profit incentive against people solving this problem. Places like Mastodon at least have the possibility of designing against the issue or somehow encouraging education about it.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#310

Post by mirimir »

teaneedz wrote: post #171
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 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.

That's so for me as well. I've never been able to stand Twitter. There are too many idiots, and even seemingly sane folk all too often act like idiots. But then, I can't stand Reddit, either.

Anyway, I've been tempted to try Mastodon. But I don't like the idea of joining a particular instance, and being unable to change later, without more-or-less starting over. If I or my instance got blacklisted, how would I be better off than being banned from Twitter? In either case, I could come back with an new identity, with new credentials.

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