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I fear many of these alternatives are “backend is the appeal” and really, most people don’t care.
How does “elections not being controlled by whims of billionaire/s” sound? Or is this too radical for this site too?
Even the people who will tell me an how bad twitter is, are almost all still on there.
Talk and action just doesn’t go hand in hand, I can only assume they don’t care “that” much.
I'm not very optimistic about the technical direction of Mastodon. Mastodon had a minimal HTML-only interface before, you could read posts and replies of each profile. They removed it some time ago, now you just see a blank page if you don't have JS, and I think it's a huge mistake; it was a clear albeit small advantage over mainstream social networks.
A truly overwhelming majority of users browse with JS enabled. Designing or even considering those who don't is (in the most literal way possible) a waste of time.
> 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.
Of course not maliciously pushing people's buttons comes with a price and they are probably not as popular, but IMO they are as far as we can ethically go, and are well suited to the needs of the fedi dweller, i.e. 'I'm kinda bored let's see what other people in the community are talking about'
I fear many of these alternatives are “backend is the appeal” and really, most people don’t care.
How does “elections not being controlled by whims of billionaire/s” sound? Or is this too radical for this site too?
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…
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)
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…
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
Strangely, the story fails to mention Bluesky, which is already owned by a B Corp. (public benefit corporation) and is Mastodon's real competition.