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Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO

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

#71

Post by jamesy0ung »

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…

> no good way to choose one as a new user.

I agree, lots of things I have just never gotten around to because I had do chose something, choice can sometimes be a bad thing.

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

#72

Post by ADeerAppeared »

seydor wrote: post #9

It's usually bad news when implementing control by commitee to a mass medium. Like what happens with publicly-owned TV

> Like what happens with publicly-owned TV

Which is bad ... why exactly? Public TV largely works.

Meanwhile, existing privately owned social media & news in the US falling into the hands of single billionaires is showing itself to have been a terrible idea. They're all kowtowing to the incoming president, and it's increasingly looking like we'll be seeing the death of the first amendment on the internet.

Sure. Committees suck sometimes. ActivityPub as a standard has been design-by-committee'd to uselessness.

But it's so much better than the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg, or Bezos having unilateral control over the entire platforms and (soon) gleefully clamping down on free speech because Der Führer decreed that LGBT content must be censored. (And yes, I am being facetious. But if you think that this attack on free speech won't be expanded and expanded, you're a fool.)

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

#73

Post by bigiain »

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 tried Mastodon before Threads & Bluesky, and I can say that the lack of algo was the part I liked the least.

It's probably the one big technical feature I like the best.

Not to say you're wrong, just that we use it differently.

I've never tried Threads (out for my disdain for Meta/FB/Zuck), but I can sort of understand why some people prefer Bluesky.

To me, Bluesy if a better alternative if you want to see (or become) "viral" things. If you secretly dream of having one of your hotcakes/zingers/memes/rants become viral and get millions of views/boosts/retweets/whatever, Mastodon isn't for you. Perhaps Bluesy is. And if you enjoy those occasional viral posts, you'll see them there and not on Mastodon (at last not without doing a lot more work curating the list of people and hashtags you follow).

I mute Mastodon posts linking to Bluesy, because I very explicitly do not want "viral content", at least not until it's been vetted and reposted by someone I've chosen to follow.

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

#74

Post by bigiain »

runako wrote: post #66
BeetleB wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I once had access to the Twitter Firehose.

It was, as you say, a mindbogglingly tremendous waste of resources.

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

#75

Post by spartanatreyu »

allenu wrote: post #49
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…

> 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 foll…

> 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.

I saw this as a feature of sorts.

If anyone starts spamming my feed: instant unfollow.

Now my feed is curated towards a slow but interesting ephemerality, and not a firehose of psychological manipulation designed to keep me hooked.

> Of course, you can just stop following those people, but you really don't know how prolific someone is when you first follow them.

Hard disagree.

Rather than following people willy-nilly, I've found I've become a lot more discerning who I allow on my feed. If I see an interesting comment / shared post / post on a hashtag I follow (e.g. #creativecoding), I'll always check their account and review their post history before choosing whether to follow them.

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

#76

Post by bigiain »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #70
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…

>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.

My gut feel is that it's true for a specific subset of single user instances.

Those run by people who launched them because they keep getting kicked off decently moderated instances...

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

#77

Post by knallfrosch »

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…

Twitter in its early years didn't compete against algorithmic curation.

It's like trying to sell Blackberrys in 2025.

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

#78

Post by sangnoir »

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…

> the abundance of blocking in the 'verse in lieu of adequate spam controls, which ActivityPub fundamentally lacks

Bring your own algorithm can tackle spam (like adblocks). ActivityPub is flexible enough for Mastodon to build up references to algo-providers.

I've been frustrated by Mastodons slow movement on this, I considered approaching the popular clients to implement this. After all, ad-blockers run entirely on the client. A basic standard to boost or penalize toots' visibility based on keywords, author or instance based on an updated list is viable today.

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

#79

Post by bigiain »

shafyy wrote: post #62

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.

I have for some time considered some of his decision making and community leadership skills a bit suspect. But like you, I am impressed by this move.

I wonder if he's been watching Mullenweg and WordPress's recent drama?

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

#80

Post by ekianjo »

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…

The solution was always: provide several algos on top of chronological order, and let people choose.

Client side Algo cannot be implemented because the API does not give you enough controls (I know, I have written Mastodon clients)

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