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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#351

Post by ohtwenty »

xigma wrote: post #166
ohtwenty wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so join an instance with lax moderation. or set up your own. if you're thinking "that's expensive", look into Pleroma, it can run on a $1 a month server or a raspi. Set something up purely for you, then find some people on other instances you'd like to follow

That's not really answering my questions. I understand that different Mastodon instances have different moderation. I don't understand how that ties into the usage of the service as a Twitter clone. Who decides how content is relayed? Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one? Frankly, I don't even want to have all these questions, it's to…

>Who decides how content is relayed?

I mean things are relayed if you ask for them to be. Two cases, pretty much: (1) someone is following someone else, content is asked for by the one server and pushed to the other. (2) You look up a URL (someone's posts, a profile, etc) and it asks the other server for it. Of course you can block certain instances from asking for stuff, or block/mute specific people if you'd like to, so it's not just out there for anyone to grab (except of course that it's the internet, so realistically nothing is ephemeral).

>Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one?

Of course you can be on multiple instances. Just like you can make multiple emails. Same case though: why would you? some edge cases (being able to see multiple local/home timelines for example, even from people you're not following, via the 'local timeline' tab). So yeah, there's people that have multiple accounts, just like you can have a few reddit or HN accounts if you'd like to. There's definitely usecases, but most people just have the one account. Moving is being worked on, it's not 'seamless' by any means, but you can download a backup of followers etc and upload that to another instance, and have your old account forward to the new one (preventing people from using your old handle, and also meaning that if there's a link somewhere they'd know where you moved to).

>Frankly, I don't even want to have all these questions, it's too complicated. I'll just stick with Twitter.

Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these questions. If you introduced email or reddit to someone they wouldn't necessarily right away think of data portability, multiple accounts, etc. The onboarding needs a bunch of work, but for basic usage it's really not all that hard.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#352

Post by masklinn »

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…

> 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.

And that's supposed to be a good or even neutral thing… how?

> Is that even a real problem?

Very much so.

> Isn't it actually valuable information to know that people get really angry about this-and-that?

Not really, and that isn't even relevant to the issue of it actively harming people.

> Seems to me like people want to blame technology for something that's really amplified human nature. A rehashing the old story of the "basically good" human corrupted by some foreign evil.

You're the only one talking about "basically good human". The amplification of human nature is the very issue at hand, "human nature" has not evolved in that context and while it may work at small scales it demonstrably does not at the scales we're involved in. As a result it is ethically and functionally necessary for the tool to mitigate human nature since they're the ones amplifying it to downright and outright harmful levels.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#353

Post by ohtwenty »

phreack wrote: post #337
ohtwenty wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiiiind of, but there's quite some general instances. Most of them are more like a "here's some people interested in the same subjects as you". So yes, on my (politically motivated, I guess) instance I find quite some people with the same political slant (and some commentary on that), but many cats, daily stories, etc. Just like twitter or other platforms. It's worth a try seeing what joinmastodon.org tells you, and…

Now I see. I looked around and it seemed hard to choose 'the right instance' to begin, knowing nothing about the platform. Most had esoteric names, like clubs. It might be a nice idea for Mastodon advocates to create general topic instances, that may feel more approachable for newcomers. In any case, it does seem like a great platform and might blow up in time with few changes in the onboarding process

>It might be a nice idea for Mastodon advocates to create general topic instances, that may feel more approachable for newcomers.

Yeah, the instance names are often quite silly, but there's silly people on there. I mean 3000 variations of "mastodonUKsocial.com" or something wouldn't really tell you all that much more. If you don't want to go to mastodon.social, the biggest english language instance, octodon.social is a good, smaller (~11k users) general instance with a good vibe. Fwiw i think a lot of people use twitter to follow 'their kind of people' (lgbt groups, open source fans, music people) and this codifies those groups a bit more into proper instances/servers/communities, while of course allowing you to follow other people.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#354

Post by ohtwenty »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #158
ohtwenty wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>who in their right mind thinks about "servers" outside of tech circles? the way a lot of subreddits are used, for example, is intuitive enough to people who get used to the concept. 'servers' or 'instances' as a word might be too technical, but the concept of different groups you join, while still being able to talk to others? Of course my experience is 99% people who have persisted and joined, but they seem to enjo…

But you can only create your account on one server. It feels limiting compared to subreddits, which you use a centralized account to subscribe to several.

To combine what two sister comments said: you can create multiple, but you can follow people anywhere. So you don't _need_ to create multiple, but you could. Like subreddits. Some people have their "meme/funny stuff" account for reddit, and a nsfw one, and a 'news/serious stuff' account. Likewise you _could_ do that all from one account, but you don't need to.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#355

Post by jamesrcole »

yborg wrote: post #349
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an onomatopoeic term for briefly sounding a horn, but I almost never hear it used for that. In my experience, there are two primary uses of the word in American English: 1) In the expression toot [one's] own horn , which means to praise oneself. Often in the form "I don't want to toot my own horn, but [...]". 2) A cutesy word for a fart, used primarily when talking to young children. Notably, an elephant using i…

So I'm born and raised in the US Midwest, and in my entire life 'toot' was never used as euphemism for 'fart' except in the context of the elementary school rhyme. I can perfectly understand people not liking the sound of the word or even how it looks, but the fart connotation seems like a manufactured rationale to me. Actually, for the population that would possibly use the word that way, i.e. 8 year-olds, the usage…

It may not have that meaning for you, but it does for others. It's nothing manufactured.

And, for many people, it's the only meaning that naturally comes to mind in phrases like "I tooted" or "Joe tooted".

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#356

Post by dangom »

xigma wrote: post #150
dangom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Refuting bad ideas often takes longer than 240 characters. Not necessarily true. > Showing bad ideas to be bad is very important in civil discourse, not being able to point out bad ideas by "retweeting" them with commentary will likely make this social network an echo chamber devoid of intellectual curiosity Theoretically yes, but the problem with Twitter is not "properly" refuting ideas, because there is no such t…

> Not allowing awfulness to spread could be more efficient than helplessly trying to refute it. Didn't you just basically say that what is "awful" is subjective? You're basically saying "maybe echo chambers are better". I generally agree with "people will tend to believe whatever they want", but many people do change their minds, especially as they age. Pushing people into the underground just makes them more extreme…

> Didn't you just basically say that what is "awful" is subjective? You're basically saying "maybe echo chambers are better".

Yes, I did. Instead of retweeting, you let the awfulness die out instead of getting more attention, i.e., don't let opinions escalate. Awfulness here doesn't have to be what I consider to be awful. And I don't see what this has to do with "maybe echo chambers are better".

Now, I don't know whether that would be more efficient or not - it could, right?. Neither of us know, so perhaps the Mastodon experiment may teach us something.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#357

Post by danShumway »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #343
danShumway wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was not able to find any signs of a formal and legally binding policy Every single centralized service (Hacker News included) reserves the right to ban anyone for any reason. Twitter may have a policy, but in practice it's no different than anyone else's Code of Conduct. It's certainly not legally binding. Regular users don't care about whether someone could theoretically become abusive in the future - maybe they…

That's exactly the point: regular users don't care, so they won't consider Mastodon based on whether it can be trusted or not. For those who care Mastodon pretends to provide a trustworthy service, but in fact it's no better than Twitter or anything else. Even if current situation with moderation is better, it's the same as to advertise participating in some deadly stunt on the ground that "noone died yet". Where are…

But in practice small instances are better at this than large platforms, and in practice flexible moderation policies are pretty observably better at curbing abuse than ridged ones are. The point isn't that Mastadon is perfect, it's that it's better. In business, better is good enough.

A lot of people are OK with a middle ground where moderators remain, but are closely associated with their communities to reduce communication problems and increase their stake in doing a good job. Is it really crazy to believe that someone might want to trust other people, but also want to have more selection over who they trust?

You're here, so I would hazard a guess that you're OK with that middle ground too. HN admins could theoretically turn this site into 4Chan or Reddit if they wanted to. But we both trust them not to, and the fact that they theoretically have the power is not enough to make either of us throw up our hands and say, "well there's no difference, and nobody will care, and there's no reason for anybody post on HN instead of Reddit."

There are a lot of people here posting on a dedicated tech-community Reddit clone about why fringe Twitter is a bad idea.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#358

Post by xigma »

ohtwenty wrote: post #351
xigma wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really answering my questions. I understand that different Mastodon instances have different moderation. I don't understand how that ties into the usage of the service as a Twitter clone. Who decides how content is relayed? Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one? Frankly, I don't even want to have all these questions, it's to…

>Who decides how content is relayed? I mean things are relayed if you ask for them to be. Two cases, pretty much: (1) someone is following someone else, content is asked for by the one server and pushed to the other. (2) You look up a URL (someone's posts, a profile, etc) and it asks the other server for it. Of course you can block certain instances from asking for stuff, or block/mute specific people if you'd like t…

Thanks for the info, I'm still unclear on this (my original question):

If I'm on one instance, and some person is on another instance, if that person gets kicked out of that instance (for a poor joke, let's say), do I lose access to all their messages?

From what I gather by your answer, the answer is "Yes". They need to get another account and I need to follow them on a new one, which may imply I need a new account as well.

Further, if I go for a "free speech" instance, I will run the risk of getting blocked (by proxy) by other instances because of what other people do on that instance.

On Twitter, this isn't such a big problem because people don't get banned that easily, but with all these moderators and "codes of conduct" being emphasized for Mastodon, I think it will be a problem.

> Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these questions.

They will have the question of "why do I want this?". One answer to that is "no single corporate entity decides who gets to see what", but from what I understand the whole system is worse. All this complication to fight "outrage" and "harassment" which I don't think most people are bothered with in the first place.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#359

Post by tomohawk »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #331
tomohawk wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to get outside of your bubble a little instead of making accusations like that. Perhaps you could explain the case of Elizabeth Heng, a candidate in CA of the US Congress?

I think you might need to get out of your bubble, if you think that most of these people are just "disagreeing". As for your example, she violated the ToS. They then changed their minds. I'm not seeing the grave injustice you're claiming.

Take a step back and look at what you're justifying.

A candidate from a mainstream party for US Congress with mainstream views creates an ad about her past that is true and historical, and that gets banned.

Hiding behind vague TOS does not cut it.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#360

Post by cabalamat »

zimpenfish wrote: post #346
cabalamat wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think social media sites are removing people at .1% outlier belief system that most people deem disgusting enough to warrant taking action to not have associated with their brand. I don't think that's true. Tommy Robinson's beliefs about Muslims are held by a good deal more than 0.1% of the UK population, yet he was banned from Twitter.

> Tommy Robinson's beliefs about Muslims are held by a good deal more than 0.1% of the UK population Do you have a source for that number?

My main reason for that claim is simply that I live in Britain -- anyone who has done so for a significant amount of time would know that sentiment against Muslims is is a lot more widespread than 0.1% of the population, so I don't think the claim needs defending, any more than the claim "people like sex and money" does.

But I had a look at specific opinion poll results and this one https://yougov.co.uk/opi/browse/Tommy_Robinson suggests that 17.4% of people see Tommy Robinson favourably.

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