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I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

blog.joinmastodon.org

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Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#441

Post by lynx97 »

LexiMax wrote: post #430
lynx97 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are exaggregating. Not everyone has per-se bad experiences with social media. Its a tool, and like with many tools, the user has responsibilities. Hammers are incredibly hurtful if you never learn to not hit your hands with 'em. I have a FB account since, what, 16 years or so. It has helped me to connect with people, it helped me to partially break out of my (disability-inflicted) social isolation. Heck, it even…

> Not everyone has per-se bad experiences with social media. Not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic. Not everyone who gambles is a gambling addict. > Yes, it also tiggered some rage at some times, but that does normal social interaction as well. Anywhere can be toxic. The difference is that social media is incentivized to drive engagement, and the way most social media is set up leads to the kinds of anti-so…

Ha, your first example already shows how lost your cause is. America once tried prohibition, and pretty much gave up on the idea. These days, even though it might be harmful to many, alcohol is pretty much legal in many places on the world. Trying to make it illegal to protect the few that can not deal with it sounds--and actually is--hilarious. Same with social media. So calm down, the train has left the station.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#442

Post by MarsIronPI »

rckt wrote: post #424
MarsIronPI wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostr doesn't have "a website". nostr.com is its own thing, nostr.org is another thing and nostr.how is yet another. None of these (AFAIK) is related to the Nostr project, whose only web presence is on GitHub.

Feels messed up already. But I’ll have a look at their GitHub. Thanks.

Yeah, Nostr is a bit of a free-for-all, and I think it's by design.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#444

Post by evolve2k »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #218
bhhaskin wrote: post #56

Mastodon has been great. The platform and generally most users aren't trying to constantly sell me something or influence me. It people sharing their lives, hobbies and passion. Influencers don't bother because it doesn't have the massive following and reach other platforms have, but that's part of what makes it special imo.

> Influencers don't bother because it doesn't have the massive following and reach other platforms have Mastodon doesn't have an "algorithm" (in the online recommendation sense). Every post is sorted by post date, which biases against virality. Influencers don't go on mastodon because they can't "go viral". They can't spew dramaslop or whatever other psychological trickery to gain a greater reach. Mastodon isn't buil…

Influencers get paid by social media platforms. What if private users sought to fund influencers to actively post on mastodon? Towards having more content and activity on instances.

Many influencers have patreon and are keen to attract more funding. Many could maintain mastodon in addition to other platforms.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#445

Post by berkes »

amiga386 wrote: post #371
latexr wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When there has to be a server that's being administrated by somebody And that somebody can be you. There are Mastodon servers operated by individuals for their friends or their small company. Anyone can host a server with their own rules.

Though that will then open you up to legal liability, including for things that other people say (if their messages reach your server, even if you haven't personally seen them): https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html Being a user on someone else's server is much less legal risk. Using E2E software where nobody runs a server is much less legal risk. Running a one-person instance of Mastodon is the worst case for leg…

But that's en entirely different discussion then the "mastodon is not fully decentralized".

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#446

Post by AbstractH24 »

lapcat wrote: post #437
AbstractH24 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that HN culture for example is horrendous. Why are you here there? Seriously curious. Promise not to criticize you or even respond to what you say.

> Why are you here I agree with, uh, assbuttbuttass: "there are still a lot of interesting articles posted here". As for commenting, it's just a matter of too much time on my hands, temptation, and bad habit. > Promise not to criticize you or even respond to what you say. You can respond, anyway. ;-)

> You can respond, anyway. ;-)

Well, since you asked ;-)

I'd agree with you, more or less. I don't find it horrendous necessarily. But I find the focus to be far more on the articles than the conversation. Most of my comments are just me screaming into the void.

Its a different business model though, HN isn't trying to increase your session time as much as possible. I find the UI to actually discourage conversation and interaction.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#447

Post by berkes »

Nextgrid wrote: post #419
bee_rider wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s impractical about that? It seems like a great idea. Well, I guess doing any big open source project is a bit impractical. I wonder if it would be possible to (as a hack) come up with a set of scripts to smoosh the general Mastodon server into this shape…

> What’s impractical about that? My understanding is that ActivityPub relies on the server having a stable domain name and be reachable from the internet so that other instances can talk to it. So your client must continuously run its server in the background (impossible on mobile) and be reachable from the internet at a static IP or dynamic DNS with low TTLs (very impractical on mobile unless you perpetually leave y…

Your understanding is right.

Though some downtime is usually handled by servers with "backoff retries" eventually you're server will be marked as offline and servers might never bother contacting it anymore.

Similar to email which - at least technically - has the idea built into its protocol that servers are going to be down.

But mastodon was built with more modern web in mind, so having a server that's offline more than online will be highly impractical.

I guess one could solve this with buffering proxies. Either hosted by others for you (as a service) defeating the entire premise of you being the full owner, or hosted on your nas or cheap hosting. Such a proxy would be far simpler than a full blown server, as all it needs to do is ingest messages and keep them for X time and forward them to your "actual server inside the client" once that connects online. The server-in-the client can handle outgoing messages and handle downloading linked media and such.

I am not aware of such proxy software. But currently gotosocial is the simplest and lightest server software I am aware of, so maybe stripping that could work.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#448

Post by rmoriz »

tcfhgj wrote: post #342
rmoriz wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great but wasn’t the case. I‘m a „green“ guy and cycling advocate but we failed to get traction on the Fediverse.

I instantly had to think about a cyclist activist on Mastodon who was all over the news after he got killed by a car: https://digitalcourage.social/@natenom

We followed each other and wrote before on Twitted. It‘s a tragedy. I‘ll be in Pforzheim again next year for the annual memorial ride. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WX7LVxzZem8

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#449

Post by berkes »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #29

Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.

I think one is the result of the other. It is a nice place because there are few people there.

Or, more cynical, reversed: I am convinced Mastodon will be a horrible platform if it grows to a size of e.g. twitter, reddit, and far, far worse if it grows to sizes of insta, tiktok, facebook etc.

The reason I am convinced the low number of people makes the place overall nice is that its a niche, like HN is a niche. That its not an interesting target for phishers, spammers, scammers or attackers: the ROI is too low. And that the low number of people keeps influencers and other commercial entities, like brands or news-agencies away: not much to make money off.

Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon

#450

Post by krapp »

berkes wrote: post #449
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #29

Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.

I think one is the result of the other. It is a nice place because there are few people there. Or, more cynical, reversed: I am convinced Mastodon will be a horrible platform if it grows to a size of e.g. twitter, reddit, and far, far worse if it grows to sizes of insta, tiktok, facebook etc. The reason I am convinced the low number of people makes the place overall nice is that its a niche, like HN is a niche. That…

>Or, more cynical, reversed: I am convinced Mastodon will be a horrible platform if it grows to a size of e.g. twitter, reddit, and far, far worse if it grows to sizes of insta, tiktok, facebook etc.

The thing is Mastodon isn't a platform like twitter, reddit, etc, it's a decentralized network of platforms. A few instances might become popular (like mastodon.social) and become a default for newcomers but there will always be smaller instances doing their own thing.

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