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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

#301

Post by [deleted] »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #218
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 buil…

[deleted]

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#302

Post by krapp »

nullhole wrote: post #299
krapp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't ruin RMS at all. He was momentarily cancelled then welcomed back to the FSF. He was blogging passionately about his pro-pedophilia views for years. His supporters literally couldn't have cared less, and rather swore a blood oath of vengeance against the people who called him out. I'm actually struggling to think of anyone who has suffered negative consequences over Epstein, besides Epstein himself. Even Ghi…

He's blogged for years, writing a number of short 1 or 2 sentence notes daily, on a very wide range of topics, taking positions on each of them from a lefty and analytical point of view, generally covering various political/environmental/economic/legal topics. And, for what it's worth, he recanted the statement he made that was posted above.

>taking positions on each of them from a lefty and analytical point of view, generally covering various political/environmental/economic/legal topics.

He didn't take a lofty and analytical view on sex with children. Read his other posts, he was upset that there were societal norms and laws against it. He cared about this.

>And, for what it's worth, he recanted the statement he made that was posted above.

As far as I'm aware only once, almost as an afterthought, in a brief statement when the Minsky stuff was blowing up, likely under duress from someone at MIT desperate for him to put out the fire his at best awkward comments on Minsky set alight. He's probably put more effort into ordering a meal than he did recanting his views on pedophilia. Which again he held for years, in public view, without consequence.

So he didn't even need to go that far because none of it even touched him.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#303

Post by al_borland »

kstrauser wrote: post #156
rmoriz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mastodon.social is operated by the Mastodon gGmbH, the core body behind the project.

Correct, but there’s nothing special or privileged about it. The others aren’t knock-offs or imitations. They’re all peers.

It seemed like the point was to say they aren’t going to donate money to a project that doesn’t respect their right to free speech.

Sure, an account could be made on a other instance, but that doesn’t change the mindset behind how the instance run by the maintainers is handled, which we can only assume will influence the project as a whole.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#304

Post by sam345 »

krapp wrote: post #302
nullhole wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's blogged for years, writing a number of short 1 or 2 sentence notes daily, on a very wide range of topics, taking positions on each of them from a lefty and analytical point of view, generally covering various political/environmental/economic/legal topics. And, for what it's worth, he recanted the statement he made that was posted above.

>taking positions on each of them from a lefty and analytical point of view, generally covering various political/environmental/economic/legal topics. He didn't take a lofty and analytical view on sex with children. Read his other posts, he was upset that there were societal norms and laws against it. He cared about this. >And, for what it's worth, he recanted the statement he made that was posted above. As far as I'…

I suppose you are not arguing in favor of pedophilia but just pointing out that RMs was actually a pretty big advocate?

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#305

Post by amiga386 »

Aeolun wrote: post #288
amiga386 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt 7 years ago. But it has been 7 years and the number of Mastodon instances just grows and grows, causing more and more useless traffic every time someone links to a site. 7 years of "limited dev time"? How much money have the world's webmasters had to pay out of their own pockets, so that nobody developing Mastodon has to spend their precious dev time on being a good netizen and n…

It sounds like you have a personal kind of beef with Mastodon?

It's not personal, but Mastodon has DDoSed my website and many others, e.g.:

https://itsfoss.com/news/mastodon-link-problem/

https://kevquirk.com/blog/mastodon-is-ddosing-me/

https://chris.partridge.tech/2022/request-amplification-in-m...

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/mastodon-stampede/

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/06/mastodon_delays_fix_d...

Mastodon servers' collective behaviour DDoSes the sites its users link to. They just do. They don't have to, they've never had to, but they do. And they've been in no hurry to fix it.

I've never used Mastodon and I'm not part of its community. But it irks me that its community has completely failed to remediate its collective bad behaviour, for years.

Having read the relevant discussions in Mastodon's issue tracker, my view is that it's Eugen Rochko's ideological belief that you can't just include the link preview details along with the post (which you totally could do, and it would solve the problem)... and that has led to years more DDoS than there ever needed to be.

[Admittedly, we now also have the problem of completely amoral "AI" scraping companies, who have zero qualms about pumping millions of requests into webservers, knocking them offline, completely eschewing all common indexing behaviour... but that doesn't make Mastodon's behaviour acceptable because it's no longer the worst source of callous DDoSing]

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#306

Post by lenkite »

krapp wrote: post #259
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That sounds like exactly the kind of addiction-reinforcing Skinner box nonsense that leads to influencers, parasocial relationships and a content economy, and all of the dark patterns of social media that the fediverse is designed to avoid. People shouldn't be posting to get the endorphine rush from clicks or to satisfy metrics. They should post whatever they want, whenever they want. If you like what someone posts,…

> That sounds like exactly the kind of addiction-reinforcing Skinner box nonsense that leads to influencers, parasocial relationships and a content economy,

No, this is the digital analogue of a non-verbal expression. Basic table stakes - unless you categorize human behavior as "addiction-reinforcing".

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#307

Post by Karrot_Kream »

LexiMax wrote: post #243
byryan wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was more 'social media for people that don't like normal social media'. It's not being advertised too on a social media platform and seeing things/interactions that you actually care about and/or are interested in (generally speaking at least).

Social media optimizes for engagement. Maybe some folks are into that...or addicted to it...but I remember a time before engagement was hyper-incentivized, where hanging out someplace on the internet was because you liked the people or the community surrounding it. Mastodon reminds me a lot more of those old-school internet hangout spaces, like IRC channels and web forums, than it does Twitter, despite wearing its ar…

I think trying to divide social media into "incentivized" and "non-incentivized" places either takes a lot more rigor than anyone here is doing or is just futile altogether. Even Mastodon is filled with ragebait. I also don't think trying to build an identity around the style of social media you use, the way you're trying to do in your posting, is conducive to good social habits. Do you think creating an us vs them even if it's your your own sense of self is helpful?

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#308

Post by tb_technical »

deadbabe wrote: post #267
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the other poster said, there's nothing worth losing sleep over in the comments here. Some people trying to start flame wars about politics, and a guy who thinks it's funny to drop racial slurs. None of those is good (and they are all flagged to death which is good), but neither do they make this comment section some kind of cesspool that would show why one is correct to distance oneself from Mastodon.

Sometimes I really wonder what the crowd I interact with here on HN is really like. Are they true tech intellectuals, or are they people who wouldn't hesitate to hurl racial slurs if there wasn't the threat of being banned or flagged.

They're normal people - some of them good and some of them bad - some bright and some dim.

I'm not trying to be mean when I say this: don't kid yourself into thinking you're in a club with the cream of the crop, anywhere - you're just setting yourself up for disappointment in the best case and horror in the worst case.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#309

Post by kstrauser »

al_borland wrote: post #303
kstrauser wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but there’s nothing special or privileged about it. The others aren’t knock-offs or imitations. They’re all peers.

It seemed like the point was to say they aren’t going to donate money to a project that doesn’t respect their right to free speech. Sure, an account could be made on a other instance, but that doesn’t change the mindset behind how the instance run by the maintainers is handled, which we can only assume will influence the project as a whole.

Sure, I could see that. I just wanted to clarify that mastodon.social is an instance, not the instance. It’s not a special blessed server. If you turn on your own new server tomorrow, other servers will treat it identically to that one.

Also, moderation policies vary wildly. The instance I run moderates much differently than mastodon.social, which tends to get a lot of criticism for being seen as chronically under-moderated, if anything.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#310

Post by almosthere »

krapp wrote: post #292
mothballed wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't beleive Epstein debacle ruined even rms. That guy's tentacles were everywhere.

It didn't ruin RMS at all. He was momentarily cancelled then welcomed back to the FSF. He was blogging passionately about his pro-pedophilia views for years. His supporters literally couldn't have cared less, and rather swore a blood oath of vengeance against the people who called him out. I'm actually struggling to think of anyone who has suffered negative consequences over Epstein, besides Epstein himself. Even Ghi…

Well there's Virginia Giuffre and whether she was murdered or the story of suicide is true (I personally doubt it) - either way, she suffered.
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