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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

#61

Post by shafyy »

Aloisius wrote: post #35
dtagames wrote: post #11

Strangely, the story fails to mention Bluesky, which is already owned by a B Corp. (public benefit corporation) and is Mastodon's real competition.

Bluesky isn't a B Corp as far as I can tell (certified by B Lab). Rather they're incorporated as a Delaware public benefit corporation.

This is correct. But a public benefit corporation is still for profit. And the "benefit" is very vaguely defined. It might be defined in their charter, but the only people who can hold them responsible to it are the investors. And as we know, most of the investors are VCs... So...

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

#62

Post by shafyy »

I'm impressed by Eugen. Giving up full ownership is absolutely the right thing to do. But most people in this situation would become too greedy and start rationalizing why they should be in control (benevolent dictator). Hats off! Mastodon is heading in the right direction.

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

#63

Post by bachmeier »

> lack of algorithmic curation

They can get that elsewhere. Mastodon will never win that battle. It's not wrong to want algorithms feeding you content, it's just that Mastodon will always be like the tenth best option for those users, and they always will be. Mastodon's advantage is with users that don't want posts written for algorithms. (I used Twitter that way for many years, but when they killed off Tweetdeck I visited less and less, to the point that I just don't often go there any longer.)

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

#64

Post by lxgr »

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.

There are fundamental problems with their model resulting from their architecture that I don't see them tackle at all.

The most important one is that both your identity and your data are tied to whichever instance you pick (and picking is not easy). The latter is forgivable, but the former (i.e. the fact that you can't "port out" from an uncooperating server) really isn't, in my view.

Discoverability is another big one, and while I generally don't care much for algorithmically curated feeds myself, not being able to do a handle or keyword search is a dealbreaker for me.

Compared to Bluesky, which makes efforts to modularize/federate all essential components of a social network, Mastodon's approach is firmly stuck in a past where sysadmins completely rule their respective kingdoms, and that distinction runs deep to the core protocol level and is, I'd argue, not fixable.

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

#65

Post by wirrbel »

lutoma wrote: post #7
ekimekim wrote: post #5

> ownership moves to a new not-for-profit entity based somewhere in Europe, with the exact location still to be finalized. The organization is currently headquartered in Germany, where it was a nonprofit until its charitable status was stripped last year. So it sounds like Mastodon was run by a non-profit, but the non-profit ran afoul of some legal issues, and they're now creating a fixed version? This seems to be ad…

The difference is that the previous non-profit was a not-for-profit corporation (gGmbh). This legal form is roughly analogous to most US non-profits (501(c)3 Inc.) and meant that as founder, Eugen Rochko still had more or less full control over the organization. As I understand it, the new organization is supposed to be a non-profit association (e.V.), which is a distinct type of organization under German law that en…

It seems they lost the first game in the gGmbH (gemeinnützige GmbH, thus "charitable Ltd") leading to a normal GmbH (similar to a Ltd.).

In Germany only certain purposes qualify as "gemeinnützige" which makes the formation of non-profits at times difficult, especially in the computing space.

Maybe I didn't read careful enough. But it's actually not spelled out which form the new European non-profit is incorporated in.

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

#66

Post by runako »

BeetleB wrote: post #51
runako wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can make lists in Mastodon, and put the noisy people there and exclude them from your main feed. You can put all your Asian follows in a separate list as well if you want to quickly catch up with them. No algorithm has its down sides, but I doubt they'll put in an algorithm that I'll like more than "no algorithm". I'll add that I think algorithms should be the responsibility of the client, and not the server. The…

Bluesky also has a followers feed like Mastodon. I use that one sometimes, but it's easy to toggle over to one of the algorithmic feeds as well. Sort of best of both.

Worth noting that some algorithms can be done client-side, but it may not be feasible or desirable to do so. For example in the open protocol of email, some huge majority of all mail is supposedly spam. Filtering client-side would be a tremendous waste of resources. I suspect the same could become true of any open protocol like Mastodon or AT.

Either way, I think the proliferation of sites is good for the digital ecosystem.

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

#67

Post by meatmanek »

vidarh wrote: post #57
dingnuts wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon simply cannot be that user centric because the user can only control the subset of the Fediverse that your instance is able and allowed to see. Given that single user instances are largely nonviable due to the abundance of blocking in the 'verse in lieu of adequate spam controls, which ActivityPub fundamentally lacks, your choice of homeserver matters more than anything. And of course, there's no good way to…

I used a single user instance, and it's perfectly viable. If anything it's less hassle with respect to blocks. Relays can also easily mitigate the issue you describe, as can an algo provider that simply boost all entries it puts in your feed.

I also run a single-user instance, and it's fine. Maybe I'm not prolific enough or marginalized enough to attract much attention, but I've only had to block one person in 2 years.

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

#68

Post by jeffgreco »

bachmeier wrote: post #63

> lack of algorithmic curation They can get that elsewhere. Mastodon will never win that battle. It's not wrong to want algorithms feeding you content, it's just that Mastodon will always be like the tenth best option for those users, and they always will be. Mastodon's advantage is with users that don't want posts written for algorithms. (I used Twitter that way for many years, but when they killed off Tweetdeck I v…

Bluesky has the best of both worlds: reverse chronological primarily, and then rich alternatives for all sorts of content. Some are analogous to lists on Mastodon (though seem much more heavily used on Bluesky to me) and others more advanced.

Reverse chronological can suffice if you’re spending all day looking at the timeline but algorithms can be helpful! Not all algos are engagement muck.

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

#69

Post by wmf »

AlexandrB wrote: post #58
wmf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control of the Mastodon software isn't control of the Fediverse.

From the announcement: > Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we’re going to invest deeply in trust & safety. We want everyone, especially marginalized communities, to feel safe on our platform. We’re working on building a stronger trust & safety function—including hiring—which will contribute to new features, educate instance admins about best practices, assess community needs, and partner with organizations like…

Mastodon has a good track record so I'm going to give them some benefit of the doubt.

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

#70

Post by M2Ys4U »

dingnuts wrote: post #53
sangnoir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

Mastodon simply cannot be that user centric because the user can only control the subset of the Fediverse that your instance is able and allowed to see. Given that single user instances are largely nonviable due to the abundance of blocking in the 'verse in lieu of adequate spam controls, which ActivityPub fundamentally lacks, your choice of homeserver matters more than anything. And of course, there's no good way to…

>Given that single user instances are largely nonviable due to the abundance of blocking in the 'verse

Yeah, that's nonsense. I've been running my own single-user instance since 2018 and server blocks by other instance administrators have never caused any problems for my use of the Fediverse.

I also follow a bunch of other people who run their own and never see any comments suggesting it's a problem for them either.

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