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Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

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Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#371

Post by Grue3 »

undoware wrote: post #71

What I find amusing about all these "solutions" to "online outrage" is that they are invariably made by comfortable centrists, with a smattering of libertarians. I can say this with some authority as both of these terms would have aptly described myself, before I lost my career, my home, and everything else in gender transition, and ended up working three minimum wage jobs instead of coding for 2 years. Let me tell y…

>Let me tell you where the outrage is coming from. It's not coming from UX decisions. It's coming from mind boggling suffering.

Oh please. It's like you don't even recognize how privileged you have to be to spend all day on Twitter whining about stuff.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#373

Post by smsm42 »

Being "better than Twitter" is not hard - Twitter is awful on almost any metric you can find. The only redeeming feature is has is that sometimes interesting people post interesting things there. Do they do it on Mastodon? I honestly have no idea - I've never once encountered anybody linking to a post on Mastodon, and I am a voracious consumer of content.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#374

Post by komali2 »

cabalamat wrote: post #360
zimpenfish wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/To…

Thanks for finding numbers, but I worry about this one confirming bias against Muslims. For example, one could assume that a 60% approval rate among Republicans of Trump means that 60% of Republicans don't like Muslims, but oftentimes in conversations in my home town in Texas I'll hear something like "oh, he's definitely a jerk about the Muslim thing" or "even if he's racist, he's at least doing something about the economy." So I hesitate to assume that "support" means "wholly support."

In any case, I feel this is splitting hairs over numbers. If 30% of the UK hated Muslims, Facebook still wouldn't be requiring "100% silicon valley values" to use the platform. You just can't post racist stuff on it. I.e. those racists have other aspects of their worldview they'd be welcome to bring to the table.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#375

Post by smsm42 »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #210
jamesrcole wrote: post #25

I think the term "toots" is spectacularly bad, and could majorly hinder broader uptake of their service. Word of mouth (or 'word of text') is a major way services like this spread. Imagine discussions of Twitter in the media but where the words "tweet" and "tweeted" are replaced with "toot" and "tooted".

The main dev of Mastodon is not American. Toot just means the noise that is made with a trunk, like tweet is supposed to be the same for birds. It's only in the U.S. that 'toot' is some kind of synonym of 'fart' or whatever and I'm honestly tired of Americans imposing their own cultural thinking on everything, instead of trying to actually understand it. The majority of people do not live in the U.S.

Nobody is imposing anything, but I don't think publishing something that about half a billion people would read as "I just farted about history of labor relations in 19th century UK" is a very bright idea. The majority of people indeed do not live in the US, but a lot of people do, and even more people share enough of cultural context to know what the meanings of "toot" are to completely overshadow any original intent. If the word has several meanings and one of them is bad, that's the one people would remember.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#376

Post by smsm42 »

yborg wrote: post #348
jamesrcole wrote: post #25

I think the term "toots" is spectacularly bad, and could majorly hinder broader uptake of their service. Word of mouth (or 'word of text') is a major way services like this spread. Imagine discussions of Twitter in the media but where the words "tweet" and "tweeted" are replaced with "toot" and "tooted".

People thought precisely the same thing about "tweet" when Twitter first came out.

I never heard "tweet" being a word for a bodily function largely considered indecent and/or hilarious. Is it?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#377

Post by s73v3r_ »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #333
s73v3r_ wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my job, and that dismissive, terrible attitude is exactly why open source has such a bad reputation. When the people you're trying to recruit to use your service are saying there's a problem, saying, "Then you go do something about it!" is not going to endear you to users.

I don't feel the need to endear myself to users. It's not my job, either, nor is it anyone else's but yours. If you want something, you need to make it happen. What arrogance of yours to think that someone else should volunteer their time to accomodate for your whims! If Mastodon doesn't suit your needs, then fix it or don't use it. Either way that doesn't make it "embarassing" or otherwise bad. It works great for mi…

Yeah, no. If you're not going to put in the effort, then why should anyone else?

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#378

Post by zimpenfish »

cabalamat wrote: post #360
zimpenfish wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/To…

> My main reason for that claim is simply that I live in Britain

Me too, currently coming up to 50 years.

> https://yougov.co.uk/opi/browse/Tommy_Robinson

That's favourability of Mr Robinson, not his beliefs though.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#379

Post by AsyncAwait »

jamesrcole wrote: post #323
AsyncAwait wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main dev of Mastodon is not American. Toot just means the noise that is made with a trunk, like tweet is supposed to be the same for birds. It's only in the U.S. that 'toot' is some kind of synonym of 'fart' or whatever and I'm honestly tired of Americans imposing their own cultural thinking on everything, instead of trying to actually understand it. The majority of people do not live in the U.S.

It's not just the U.S. I'm from Australia and it's the same here. I would imagine it's also like that in other countries. In any case, even just considering the US market, it's clearly a very large and important one for any software system. And, what a word means there has nothing to do with Americans imposing things on others.

Why is nicknaming Richard as Dick ok, but toot isn't? Seems way more offensive to me.

I hate cockroaches and yet have deployed CockroachDB in production. The insistence on being puritan seems shallow to me, considering the real problems this world is facing, but to each their own.

Re: Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch

#380

Post by zrobotics »

zimpenfish wrote: post #342
bitbckt wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using “tweet” infringes on Twitter’s trademark. (IANAL, but former tweep)

You'd have to think that the trademark would be sufficiently diluted by common usage by now that it was heading rapidly towards invalidation (cf hoover, xerox, etc.)

You go ahead and start selling copiers branded Xerox and tell us how diluted that trademark is. It may be a common term, same as 'googling', but the test here is whether the company is willing to actively defend the trademark. I can assure you that all of the companies you mentioned would certainly have lawyers ready to prove they hold a valid trademark.
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