Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#361

Post by _2d30 » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #244

So, getting a little meta and just a little frustrated: I am amazed at the continued downward trend of the quality of the commentary on this site in regards to news relating to hacker culture, when topics like this come up. A pointy haired narcissist with a track record of taking credit for other people's work takes over a tech company and fires half of its employees based on a metric of the number of lines of code t…

> A pointy haired narcissist with a track record of taking credit for other people's work

Thankfully you're here to dramatically increase the quality of commentary.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#362

Post by georgeg23 » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

voxl wrote: post #231

darawk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many rich people and fund managers around the world have been throwing money at engineers they thought were smart for the past several decades? How many have succeeded on the scale Elon has? "Throwing money at smart engineers" is not a novel idea. Executing it well is extremely hard, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades.

They typically just purchase the company instead. See: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple. Let's not forget that Elon Musk's real success has been in marketing. He has created a cult of personality, claimed his efforts are for the good of humanity (yet to be seen, especially with the way he treats his labor force, i.e. horribly). It's not a shock that Tesla stock is a _meme stock_. It is because of Elon's marketing. Le…

Elon internaly calls it "merchandizing" -- a Space Balls joke.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#363

Post by googlryas » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

georgeg23 wrote: post #209

darawk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many rich people and fund managers around the world have been throwing money at engineers they thought were smart for the past several decades? How many have succeeded on the scale Elon has? "Throwing money at smart engineers" is not a novel idea. Executing it well is extremely hard, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades.

The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X

Why was Elon selected to become the richest person in the world and not one of the any thousands of other billionaires out there?

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#364

Post by slg » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #283

BryantD wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know the NFL betting scam? It's awesome. Here's how it works. You choose 1024 people, and you send all of them a prediction about one upcoming sports game, free of charge. 50% get one prediction, 50% get the other. Next week, you have 512 people who think you can guess pretty good. You pick another game. 256 people get one prediction, 256 get the other. The following week, 256 people think you got two in a row…

So, what are the 1024 companies Musk poured lots of money in to get 2 or 3 massive hits since it's all just a game of numbers and chance?

It might not be 1024, but he probably has more failures than successes: Solar City, Neuralink, Boring Company, Hyperloop (he decided not to turn this into a company, but he wasted his and his other companies' resources on this so I think it is fair to consider it a Musk failure).

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#365

Post by googlryas » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:35 PM UTC

devmor wrote: post #263

fsdjkflsjfsoij wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?

There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.

What was he running his mouth about? Crazy stuff like landing boosters back at the pad, or on barges in the middle of the Atlantic?

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#366

Post by keithnz » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

coffeeblack wrote: post #337

Surprising that mastodon has only half a million users?! Way below what I expected after so many years. I am looking forward to new Twitter. So many cool changes coming: Vine coming back. Maybe even Periscope coming back. Birdwatch getting more love. And over all more diversity and openness. Pretty sweet.

think they missed a zero, more like 6 million... https://bolha.us/@gutocarvalho/109298885964017612

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#367

Post by googlryas » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #264

baby wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really a recurring thread here, or elsewhere, which is that elon doesn't do shit, and deserve much credit for his success. To me he seems like a hard worker, and deserves credit

For someone who claims to work extremely hard he seems to spend a lot of time antagonising people on Twitter.

Do you think he's crafting his tweets with hours of deliberation? Honest question, how much time do you think he spends trying to antagonize people on Twitter per week?

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#368

Post by pjc50 » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #350

frereubu wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that simple is it? Companies like Ford don't advertise on sites like Parler not just because there aren't many people there, but because of the content that their adverts would be presented alongside. What seems to concern companies about the new direction of Twitter is that more extremists may be allowed back on Twitter if the content rules are loosened, and the companies' advertising may be prese…

I really don't think companies care what their ads appear alongside. They care about a Twitter user posting an outrage tweet with a screenshot of an ad for a Burger appearing next to the N word. As if we aren't mature enough yet to separate ad space and user generated content.

The ads pay for the content that appears next to them to appear in the first place. There can be no separation at ad funded companies.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#369

Post by zmmmmm » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

Seems to me the biggest challenge for Mastodon is that the most high profile Twitter users explicitly want the centralisation it provides. They are going there literally to get on a sandbox and propagate their messages to as many millions of followers as they can. They will not understand the theoretical possibility of federation - they will see anything that introduces any kind of barrier or complexity in the way of them reaching their audience as an antifeature.

I think Mastodon, or whatever else tries to follow it, needs to bury the federation aspect as a technical detail and design from the ground up something that emphasises a unified system. It's not that easy when probably a large fraction of the people building it are introverted engineers who have difficulty even comprehending how someone can want to interact with hundreds let alone thousands or millions of other people. But as long as the fundamental concept of the system is in contention with what the core user base wants, it's hard to think how it will be very successful, at least at replacing a service like Twitter.

EDIT: speling

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#370

Post by rchaud » Sun, Nov 06, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #102

Mastodon and federated systems like it will not succeed beyond a tiny niche, will not replace twitter, and don't even solve most of the problems they try to solve. They don't fix the upstream issues that lead to centralization. Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience. It's the worst of both worlds. As designed the UX is bad and cannot be fixed because of these iss…

This is all-or-nothing thinking that's endemic to Silicon Valley's subsidies-as-a-service business model.

Mastodon does not have to monopolize microblogging the way Twitter has, because it isn't competing with Twitter's cursed ad-based revenue model. Similarly, the tiny niches that do migrate are likely more valuable to have than the hordes of Twitter users who never post anything, and just juice the algorithm by liking and retweeting.