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Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

blog.joinmastodon.org

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Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#41

Post by glenstein »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #34
dgrin91 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hilarious dichotomy of HN - this post says UX is going wrong because of JS requirements and HTML only was better, while the one below (currently this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682927 ) says UX is getting better.

I know right, almost like an internet forum or something

It's a legitimate point - the criticism carries more weight if its part of a unified collective consensus (e.g. the Unity fees debacle) than if it's a bunch of all-over-the-map criticisms that all contradict each other (Gamergate). Seems straightforward enough to me.

The latter can be especially important to observe because sometimes people are just full of it and it's all just a bunch of vibes, where people agree something is wrong, but they can't settle on a coherent idea. In those cases that phenomenon is often the most important thing to understand. I would go so far as to say vibes based psuedo-consensus is one of the most common things manufactured by internet mobs.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#42

Post by sangnoir »

WorldMaker wrote: post #8
solarkraft wrote: post #3

Mastodon is on the right track. They’ve been doing so much right, the UX has improved considerably. I think there’s some mainstream appeal, but there are also ecosystem issues that aren’t solved easily, as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important.

> as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important. Twitter ran for enough of its early years without that and it still had "mainstream appeal". (Blogs and RSS for even more years.) I'm happier without algorithmic curation. I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them. Partly because algorithmic curation is a big business, tied in pretzel knots w…

> Partly because algorithmic curation is a big business, tied in pretzel knots with advertising, and is marketed by major companies as a huge "improvement" or "user need" (to sell more ads)

You might have inadvertently fallen for the fallacy of composition. What to describe is only one type of algorithm; one meant to maximize engagement/revenue.

Mastodon has the potential for a user-centric "Bring your own algorithm" which may work similar block lists. Users could subscribe to algorithms matching their preferences by boosting or penalizing posts based on topics I like or don't like. This would be very valuable to me, and will reduce the need for moderation - I won't even see the random ragebait or porn spam

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#43

Post by braiamp »

WorldMaker wrote: post #8
solarkraft wrote: post #3

Mastodon is on the right track. They’ve been doing so much right, the UX has improved considerably. I think there’s some mainstream appeal, but there are also ecosystem issues that aren’t solved easily, as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important.

> as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important. Twitter ran for enough of its early years without that and it still had "mainstream appeal". (Blogs and RSS for even more years.) I'm happier without algorithmic curation. I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them. Partly because algorithmic curation is a big business, tied in pretzel knots w…

> I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them

They don't. They are addicted to it. Imagine a world where you scroll in Instagram and you reach the end. What are you going to do?

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#44

Post by insane_dreamer »

solarkraft wrote: post #3

Mastodon is on the right track. They’ve been doing so much right, the UX has improved considerably. I think there’s some mainstream appeal, but there are also ecosystem issues that aren’t solved easily, as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important.

> lack of algorithmic curation,

in my view, this is a feature, not a bug

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#45

Post by BeetleB »

andypiper wrote: post #31
BeetleB wrote: post #20

Curious: Do they really need 5 million Euro?

As I posted elsewhere when this was asked yesterday: "there’s a big difference between running a service on volunteers, and having full-time folks to keep things running / answer the regulation discussions / keep maintaining / keep adding the features that folks are looking for. This is not primarily an infrastructure spend. There’s also an amount of legal work involved, unfortunately. So, those are some of the eleme…

Thanks for the 2023 breakdown. That's really what I was asking for (an unpopular question, apparently). Clearly, the amount being asked is a lot more than the 2023 expenses (by about 10x), but comparing with 2024 would give a better idea.

I guess a separate question I would have is what the Foundation actually does - I need to read up more on that. To me, because of the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon is mostly a client/server piece of SW. Using Mastodon, I can interact with folks on Lemmy, Pleroma, etc and vice versa. It's not a self contained system. Anyone who disagrees with the Foundation can simply fork and pretend the Foundation doesn't exist - while interoperating with Mastodon servers.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#46

Post by glenstein »

darthrupert wrote: post #10
solarkraft wrote: post #3

Mastodon is on the right track. They’ve been doing so much right, the UX has improved considerably. I think there’s some mainstream appeal, but there are also ecosystem issues that aren’t solved easily, as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important.

How has the UX improved? I just checked my Mastodon account and it's exactly as I remember it.

I had the same experience as you. But now, if you go to preferences, there's an option to disable "advanced web interface". If you uncheck that, you get the simpler view.

Of course, the thing now being called the advanced interface used to just be the default.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#47

Post by insane_dreamer »

braiamp wrote: post #43
WorldMaker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important. Twitter ran for enough of its early years without that and it still had "mainstream appeal". (Blogs and RSS for even more years.) I'm happier without algorithmic curation. I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them. Partly because algorithmic curation is a big business, tied in pretzel knots w…

> I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them They don't. They are addicted to it. Imagine a world where you scroll in Instagram and you reach the end. What are you going to do?

Not too long ago IG removed the notice that would appear that "you're all caught up" when you had scrolled down to the end of the posts of those you follow; now it just continues to show you "algorithmically suggested posts" so you can't even tell

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#49

Post by allenu »

runako wrote: post #36
WorldMaker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as well as a lack of algorithmic curation, which a lot of people deem very important. Twitter ran for enough of its early years without that and it still had "mainstream appeal". (Blogs and RSS for even more years.) I'm happier without algorithmic curation. I think a lot of people over-estimate what algorithmic curation is worth to them. Partly because algorithmic curation is a big business, tied in pretzel knots w…

I tried Mastodon before Threads & Bluesky, and I can say that the lack of algo was the part I liked the least. I tend to follow a lot of people, and like to see a mix of their posts. But on Mastodon, what I got instead was "who is posting right now?" I'm in EST, for example, which means that unless my Asian follows are up in the middle of the night, I will generally not see their posts on Mastodon. Also some people p…

> I tend to follow a lot of people, and like to see a mix of their posts. But on Mastodon, what I got instead was "who is posting right now?"

This was a big issue for me. Some people I followed would constantly post, so your feed, over time, simply becomes whatever those extremely online users post. It becomes less of a "balanced media diet" if it favors people who are always online. Of course, you can just stop following those people, but you really don't know how prolific someone is when you first follow them.

I remember seeing someone post a prototype of a view of the feed that instead treated it like a messaging app or RSS feed where you'd see a list of posters sorted by most recent post date first. That way, you could just click on a profile to see all their posts in chronological order instead of a mixed feed of everyone's posts. I thought might be a better way to go.

Re: Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

#50

Post by kps »

gargron wrote: post #29
kps wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the UX has improved considerably. Does the default web client respect `:prefers-color-scheme` yet?

Yeah.

Thanks; that does seem to be the case, and (as someone afflicted by astigmatic halation) I will no longer avoid following Mastodon links.
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