What happened last summer? (I couldn't find anything on it)
A thread with a user that devolved into name calling.
Or the Twitter fight where he encouraged people to DOS the rival.
Or the account takeover CVE and repercussions.
I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
91–100 of 497 posts
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#92Looks like the inmates won again: Without linking to the posts, Rochko also mentioned that “a particularly bad interaction with a user last summer” led him to realize it was time to “step back and find a healthier relationship with the project.” It also drove the decision to restructure Mastodon.
Look at some of the comments in this HN discussion, and you can see what Rochko means.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still enough to have a good lil nest egg that generates okay-ish passive income if invested correctly. @ 4% that's €40k/year more than what most regular people have
Does he not have to pay taxes on that 1m euros in the eu?
I guess top rate in Germany is 45%
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still enough to have a good lil nest egg that generates okay-ish passive income if invested correctly. @ 4% that's €40k/year more than what most regular people have
Does he not have to pay taxes on that 1m euros in the eu?
Some countries have 0 rate if sold after x years. Although many had it in the past, they’ve started eliminating it.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#95> I steer clear of showing vulnerability online, but there was a particularly bad interaction with a user last summer that made me realise that I need to take a step back and find a healthier relationship with the project, ultimately serving as the impetus to begin this restructuring process.
Many of these microblogging sites seem to be populated by people with extreme views. One of the pleasant things about old Internet forums is that they were like a local bar: there's some kind of community with some local code there. Reddit etc. function like forum aggregators and get halfway there, but the microblogging sites seem like a completely flat layer. There isn't really a community sense there.
Twitter used to have SimClusters[0] but either they decided against that or the tech as it was no longer functions to prevent context escape.
Personally, I've found that I end up being 'infected' by these angry people and I also post outrageous nonsense in response - so there's some sort of virality to this behaviour. I stopped using Twitter around the time of the Charlie Kirk killing because I figured that everything was going to get twice as inflamed as it already was and it was honestly worse than I actually wanted anyway.
The other day I went to the For You tab and I was struck by how insane it seemed to me. A few days away and suddenly everything looks ridiculous. I have noticed that I do have these interactions on Hacker News as well, so I wrote up a quick server and Chrome extension to filter out people who comment things that infuriate me and HN has gotten so much better (and consequently I am better too).
I do like microblogging. It scratches a different itch. But I haven't figured out whether I should run my own Mastodon server or my own ATProto PDS and, to be honest, when I browse those sites the front page makes me not feel like I want to be part of those communities.
Mastodon has [1][2][3] as the top few posts. Blue Sky is better but among the top five are these [4][5] and I really am not that interested in all this outrage-mongering.
0: https://blog.x.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2023...
1: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/115572086526058545
2: https://tech.lgbt/@Natasha_Jay/115572233358693165
3: https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/115572239317649349
4: https://bsky.app/profile/wendyjfox.bsky.social/post/3m5tz3fa...
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#96"I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job." -- Bill Murray
I've heard a similar maxim that being rich is fantastic, rich and famous is good, poor is bad, poor and famous is a nightmare.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#97Mastodon is great. It's just unfortunate that the number of people is on the low side.
I wish it were better. I really want to move to it, but they’ve somehow managed to even make something as simple as liking a toot unintuitive. Boost and favorite don’t fit the bill.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#98Fantastic! Now he's not there to block progress [0], can we remove Mastodon's intentional DDoS please and just include the link preview in the toot . Add a disclaimer on the UI saying "link preview comes from toot" if it makes you happy. Then Mastodon can be a good web citizen and not a force for evil. It's only been an open problem for 7 years. Nothing in the grand scheme of things. [0] https://github.com/mastodon/m…
This comment is a great illustration of the needlessly hostile interactions mentioned in the blog post. There's a nuanced technical discussion about the merits of adding this to Mastodon and whether the effort would really be worth it. Eugen made some reasonable points against it. But instead of engaging with the discussion in good faith, people like you automatically assume the worst intentions and claim Eugen perso…
> automatically assume the worst intentions
I don't know there's an assumption involved. I think for many people, it gives them the opportunity to act out on anger, shame, and other emotions they've internalized. They smell 'blood in the water' and know they can get away with it.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still enough to have a good lil nest egg that generates okay-ish passive income if invested correctly. @ 4% that's €40k/year more than what most regular people have
Does he not have to pay taxes on that 1m euros in the eu?
You pretty much pay taxes on everything in the EU. In Germany there are ways you can reduce the total tax you have to pay and as far as I know you wont have to pay social security contributions on that. It'll still be 6 digit tax amount.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#100Found it interesting they've lost status as a non-profit for tax exemption in Germany, and now establish a non-profit in the US for attracting investors while dev and ops remain in a German gGmbH.
My understanding is that the non-profit in the US exists exclusively to handle fundraising from US donors who might not be able to give to non-US organizations for tax reasons.
Though if you are in the US odds are you don't need this tax deduction anyway. Few people understand how US taxes work and so give their accountant all their deductions because they know tax deductions exist. They don't realize that the standard deduction applies and they don't/can't deduct anything.
(if you do apply deductions then this matters)