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

I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

blog.joinmastodon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 497 posts

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#321

Post by rmoriz »

mikem170 wrote: post #281
rmoriz wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great but wasn’t the case. I‘m a „green“ guy and cycling advocate but we failed to get traction on the Fediverse.

I was curious if by "traction" you mean growth? Can people into cycling find each other? Or are there not enough of those people on Mastodon? In your earlier up-thread comment you mentioned being tarred over certain things, like AI/LLM posts. Are situations like that avoidable in any fashion, like with twit-filters or finding friendlier groups? Disclaimer: I'm tempted, but have never tried Mastadon, and wondered how…

People want to get entertained and informed. Very few original content is available and sharing of content from other platforms will lead to harsh reactions from self-claimed activists. I got insulted from completely random people who don’t follow because I didn’t remove an UTM key from an URL I shared.

In general the tone went super harsh and cult like. While neo nazis dominate X, the authoritarian left dominates on Mastodon. People call to dispossess „the rich“, „fight capitalism, support my gofundme“, antisemitism and open support of Hamas and other BS.

If you dare to reply and ask for rationality, you will get attacked personally. It‘s a toxic service like Twitter but just the other way around, and way too few insightful or funny content to lure new users. „Run your own server“ is also BS because discoverabilty is very poor.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#322

Post by rmoriz »

kstrauser wrote: post #309
al_borland wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-mo…

Just to clarify, my account was banned without a reasons mentioned. The „reason“/cause field is empty. I didn’t insult anyone, I didn’t break any laws, I didn’t call to unalive people. I didn’t violate TOS. I just dared to criticize the praise of the former East German regime, called it an „Unrechtsstaat“ which is not a controversial opinion and even part of the school curriculum. They shot their own people ar the border.

I think at least one of their moderators was insulted by that personally.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#323

Post by mlindner »

undeveloper wrote: post #277
mlindner wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk is super popular in the outspoken nazi demographic. It's sad seeing such poor misinformed takes like this on hacker news. I guess Marc Andreessen and the President/Co-Founder of Stripe, among many others, are nazis now. It's well known that among the group that I would call "pro-America technologists" that he's highly appreciated and many want to figure out how to replicate him. > and spaceflight fans. As a sp…

[flagged]

Yes this is what people like you do, go around calling everyone nazis and making up hitler salutes.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#324

Post by jillesvangurp »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #29

Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.

Mastodon is alright; it could be much better. And I find that disappointing. Mastodon is where some of my techie friends live (the less sociable types generally, which is ironic IMHO). Bluesky seems to have a much broader appeal. They both aspire to federation. So why not federate them together? I'm sure there are technical challenges but those aren't the reason this is not happening.

The Mastodon community actively pushes back against federating with other networks, discoverability features (having content indexed for search), or sane security mechanisms (like signing your content). This is IMHO what is holding back Mastodon. It could be better but people push back against improving it and therefore it stays a bit niche and meh.

It's basically open source twitter but minus all the loud mouths using that to self promote, spam, troll, attack each other, etc. Twitter was really nice too before the masses showed up.

Bluesky basically adds content signing, discoverability, and a few other things a to the mix. It's similarly free from all the nasty things on Twitter.

It's less federated than it could be (it was designed as a federated protocol but effectively is centralized) because big company reflexes seem to be taking over there. That's an interesting dynamic. But there's enough open source stuff there that a mastodon bridge would be feasible. And IMHO stronger crypto would be good for Mastodon. I don't see the logic of defaulting to publishing content unsigned. How is that a thing in 2025?

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#325

Post by xigoi »

mig39 wrote: post #201
michaelt wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With money you can always buy popularity easily I don’t know if Elon Musk is an example or a counter-example. Maybe both?

[flagged]

It’s certainly a good way to get people like you to talk about him.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#326

Post by krapp »

sam345 wrote: post #304
krapp wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Of course I'm not arguing in favor of pedophilia JFC.

Yes I'm pointing out that RMS was, judging from his own words, an advocate. He advocated for adults to have sexual relationships with children. It's gross. It's gross that he's still the face of free software.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#327

Post by mk89 »

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.

Mastodon is a bubble worse than when you enable all the activity/history/etc on Google and get always "things related to what you search".

The community is so "conforming" on certain topics that you will rarely find different opinions and those get flagged etc. I was in one of the main instances, and I noticed a change at the end (like when a tiny 1% becomes 1.1% and then 1.2%, or let's say more outspoken, but it wasn't enough) before I decided not to be there anymore.

About the influencers: They are there too, it's just different how it works. But one way or another I always stumbled upon their posts, although I really disliked them because they basically foster that bubble. They are just there to be the first in a less saturated market, like the first influencers of YouTube or so. And while you believe they are not there to influence you, watching the same crap every day passively influences you, even if you don't feel it.

This made me go "back" to X, whose main issue is for me the huge amount of bots or repetitive content, which you cannot just fight with manual tooling.

And X made me go back to no social media, except for time to time to see fun stuff or (very likely) unrealistic videos. Which is ok sometimes to decompress a bit.

So in a way I have to thank Mastodon for making me see that I am just not cut out for social media.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#328

Post by juliushuijnk »

vasco wrote: post #313
jrm4 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels very analogous to my experience with the place. As a Black person (who absolutely loves the idea and model), it's weird. Feels very much like a "you become what you hate situation," in my case, interacting with Black folks with whom I share probably like 97% similar views on just about everything -- and yet, (it's mild, no worries, but) I have been on the receiving end of the literal worst behavior I've ev…

> interacting with Black folks with whom I share probably like 97% similar views on just about everything Maybe because you say things like that? In what world is people's skin color related to their views?

Of the group of black people, he found a group where he shared 97% of views.

I think in the US there is 'black culture' and having a black skin, and I understand your point that skin color should not be assumed to be related to a view. But I don't think that's implied here.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#329

Post by mlindner »

plorkyeran wrote: post #216
mlindner wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His companies have certainly had PR teams a various points in time. Tesla even does advertising now. But the topic is specifically about the man himself which is independent of his companies. Most very rich but (un)popular people have personal PR teams.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#330

Post by globular-toast »

edoceo wrote: post #293
almosthere wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's possible for a person to be an absolute stupid asshole about one topic (children's well being) but right about other things (software). Should have just stayed in his lane. I admired this dude but those words are, kinda, punchable offense. TF with "voluntary" in there?!?

""

-- you, probably

Also, if you're not sceptical about it, you should be able to explain to someone like Stallman (as someone apparently later did) why it's still bad for children. If you can't then you're just as "stupid", the only difference is you happen to conform to the current accepted belief on this particular matter.

Post reply on HN