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Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

bbc.com

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

#371

Post by frereubu »

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.

Companies do care what their ads appear alongside, because of the outrage tweets and because, en masse, people / the media aren't mature enough to separate ad space and user-generated content.

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

#372

Post by pndy »

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…

> Has hacker culture truly changed this much since I came up into in the 90s? Or has the demographic just shifted here that much?

Demographic shift which did affect the hacker culture. It's not that hard to spot the image of an average hacker of today. But I'm not gonna go into details - it would be like setting fire to a dumpster.

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

#373

Post by qeternity »

frereubu wrote: post #228
ambrozk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hes lucky corporate brands and advertisers havent figured out they could start their own Mastodon instance for almost nothing, plug it until it becomes more popular than Twitter, and maintain all their existing brand safety controls in the process. This is a very funny way of thinking which gets reality backwards. Corporate brands go where user eyeballs are. In the past the eyeballs read newspapers, and advertisers…

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…

Ford cares what non-Parler users think. That’s it. And because there are many, many more non-Parler users than Parler users, they’ve done extremely basic cost benefit analysis.

There’s also an interesting prisoner’s dilemma to advertising, which cuts both ways. If your competitors advertise, then you need to as well. And if they don’t, then you don’t either.

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

#374

Post by slg »

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.

>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.

I don't understand what distinction you are making here? Aren't those the same things?

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

#375

Post by rchaud »

parineum wrote: post #136
onion2k wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is great but it isn't a replacement for Twitter. Too much friction. Too hard for the average journalist. Not enough reach. You seem to think Twitter is for journalists. It isn't. It's for anyone who wants to use it, including people who have the time and energy to figure it out and no need for "reach". And that's more than enough. What people fail to understand about Fediverse apps is that they aren't trying…

> You seem to think Twitter is for journalists. It isn't. Someone should tell the journalists.

Ever been to the replies section of a journalist's post?

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

#376

Post by toofy »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #236
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…

> Elon may not succeed, but I hope he does and what he's doing is a necessary prerequisite. Everything he's done so far reads like he's deliberately trying to destroy the company. The only reason I don't really think that's his intention is that I don't see how he could hope to benefit from it. But it doesn't make sense.

i have a suspicion that much of what he’s doing is just chest thumping for his new fan base, “look at how i do whatever i want. i behave how i want. they can’t stop me, i’m The Strongman!”

just red meat for that particular crowd who worship strongmen. tho if he’s even a fraction of the irrationality that he’s portraying, i completely agree, twitters in trouble.

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

#377

Post by rolenthedeep »

macjc wrote: post #313
encryptluks2 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon may very well kill Twitter. What make you think that a company with descent financial backing can't scale a Mastodon instance to Twitter-size levels?

In my view, its basic idea is wrong. Mastodon reduces the connection between communities and will have worse "free speech" problems when it reaches the twitter scale. If money could solve everything, google+ would still be a thing today.

I think you've got it a little backwards there.

Smaller communities are easier to moderate. Reduced interaction with other communities means that any one person can only have a limited effect before a remote moderator intervenes.

What happens when a toxic community starts causing problems in the wider network? Quite simply, they get cut off from the network. Every individual user can block an entire instance. Each server can also block another instance. There is also precedent for ALL servers to block one particularly bad instance.

You probably can't prevent toxic communities from forming. Since it's an open protocol, you also can't prevent certain political parties from setting up their "free speech" instance and doing what they do. But you can cut them off from everyone else just trying to have a good time.

The community structure should tend to gather like-minded people together. That would mean some instances becoming intensely toxic. Which is what we have seen happen. On the other hand the isolated structure makes it easy to just ban that entire community with one button.

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

#378

Post by jimmytidey »

I think there's a fair amount of 'status quo' bias here.

Mastodon isn't going to be a massively federated system that recreates every nuance of the Twitter UX.

It could still be a worthwhile alternative to Twitter. It would be nice if there were thousands of Mastodon servers, but perhaps a handful is ok. Mastodon has a slightly confusing user experience, but so was early Twitter - maybe that's ok too.

Whatever the downsides to Mastodon are they should be weighed against the benefits of moving away from Twitter, which are enormous. Irrespective of whether the Town Square metaphor fits exactly, Twitter hosts a massive amount of influential political discussion. Demonstrating that many users will stop using a venue for political speech if a billionaire gains unfettered control of it is an incredibly important precedent to set.

Mastodon doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be a bit better than Twitter. I think it probably clears that bar easily.

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

#379

Post by neetdeth »

dorfsmay wrote: post #296
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…

I would LOVE if there was a way to federate FB, instagram, twitter, etc... You post and read on your preferred platform but can see posts from your friends from other platforms, or even their own implementation on their own server!

You're describing a federation of platforms, and this can work, at least technically. XMPP worked wonderfully for a brief moment. Unfortunately, profit incentives are aligned against it.

The Fediverse, at least as I see it advocated here, is not a federation of platforms but a federation of social cliques, where your ability to communicate with someone else is determined by connectivity in the clique graph.

This is a great thing for the kinds of people who would have become deeply invested in a web forum or newsgroup back in the day, but it cannot (and arguably should not attempt to) address the mass market.

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

#380

Post by rolenthedeep »

zmmmmm wrote: post #369

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…

Mastodon isn't trying to replace Twitter.
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