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This was what I got: "Mastodon is different. It has all of the same functionalities, but it's different. Also, following and contacts and everything are the sa

This was what I got: "Mastodon is different. It has all of the same functionalities, but it's different. Also, following and contacts and everything are the same, but you can export your info, and that's different. People don't understand, but it's different." I honestly can't tell if I'm reading a piece of satire. Having started with no knowledge of Mastodon, at the end of the read all I know about it is that it seems to have all the functionality of Twitter? At the risk of being crass, this sounds like a desperate founder or investor trying to self-validate and coming up woefully short on evidence.

msla 9y ago
From what I gather, Mastodon is to Twitter what Usenet is to Hacker News: Both provide a way to have text-based discussions in a threaded fashion, but Usenet is a protocol shared by many computers, whereas Hacker News is a specific piece of software run on (what is essentially, to all appearances, from the outside) a single, blessed computer. Upshot: Hacker News can go down and be erased forever, modulo archival efforts like the Wayback Machine. Usenet can't go down.
- eli 9y ago
  That's interesting, but doesn't seem super relevant to end users. I'm not particularly worried about Twitter disappearing, but if I was I'd use the export feature to run backups.
  - wongarsu 9y ago
    I think censorship resistance is the more interesting feature. Mastodon seems to be mostly used for content that isn't blessed by Twitter policies.
    - kstrauser 9y ago
      I've found it to be the exact opposite: Mastodon instances are a lot more likely to disconnect from others due to unwelcome content. That's by design, though! Suppose you and I host our own Mastodon servers (aka "instances") as part of a federation of 1,000 instances. I start posting lots of content you and your users dislike (where that could mean anything - porn, pro-Nazi, pro-Antifa, overly conservative, overly liberal - anything). With a checkbox in the web UI, you can start refusing traffic from my server. That would only affect you and your users, and I can still talk to anyone else as usual. Some of yours users might dislike that a flee for more tolerant pastures. That's fine! Some of my users might dislike that my rules are so loose that my server's getting banned, and they'd flee to more closely moderated servers. That's also fine! In either case, our spat only involves the connection between you and me, but the rest of the network chugs away as always. Basically, it's the federation model of email but with the functionality of Twitter. That's what makes it different.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        Let's go in the opposite direction for a second. I set up my shiny new Mastodon server. Do I instantly get the feed from all other instances? Or do I have to go find other instances to connect with?
        kstrauser 9y ago
        You don't really connect to other instances so much as other users. To further the email analogy, if you stand up your own mailserver, you can start sending email to someone at Gmail without deliberately configuring either of those servers to talk to each other. A good way to discover new users is to visit a popular instance - say, https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about - and look at its "A look inside..." pane (which is that instance's "federated timeline"). Find a user who said something interesting and click on their post to go to their profile. Click "Remote follow" to follow them on your own instance, and voila! You have a new friend. You could also visit the Mastodon instance list (https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org) which maps the current state of the network (aka the "fediverse") and search around to find themed instances that appeal to you. Want to follow a bunch of furries? Find an instance that caters to them, then start following all the interesting users you find there.
  - msla 9y ago
    One thing that's interesting for end users is full control over the UI. In principle, and in practice with Usenet, reader software can be completely distinct from server software, and everyone can use their own reader set up their own way, and not have to dumbly accept what the server's owners thought was the One Proper UI for their service. Another, deeper concept is that one group of yahoos can't unilaterally change the rules, because new software has to be compatible with old software. For example, imagine someone wanted to make email which deleted itself after a sender-specified period of time. They'd design the protocol and implement their server and client and then... nobody would care, because there are many email servers and clients, and nobody is compelled to use theirs. The people who really want that functionality would use it, and nobody else would be bothered.
- oldsj 9y ago
  Last I heard HN doesn't just appear to be a single, blessed computer. It IS a single, blessed computer
nailer 9y ago
Well people used to call Twitter microblogging. It was blogging, just limited to 140 characters, which a lot of people though wasn't a huge difference.
egypturnash 9y ago
Mastodon: Twitter, except with moderators who will kick Angry White Boy Assholes (Nazis, gamergaters, trolls, etc) off. Mastodon: Twitter, except with a 500-char limit and no "sponsored tweets". Mastodon: Twitter, except without a whole bunch of VC investment that it needs to try and pay back by monetizing your eyeballs and keeping you on the site as long as possible for as long as possible, regardless of whether that's by making you happy or enraging you. Mastodon: Twitter, except a bunch of technical bullshit you probably don't care about unless you'd like to run your own Mastodon server for you and your buddies.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  I mean, all they had to do was say that first one, and a lot of people would probably perk their ears up.
  - egypturnash 9y ago
    Seriously! This is the initial value proposition that got me and all my friends to check it out.
  - lokedhs 9y ago
    Well, to be fair if someone wanted to, they could set up a Mastodon instance specifically for people that would otherwise use Gab. It's likely that most other Mastodon instances would block them though.
- theseatoms 9y ago
  Oh. So Gab and Mastodon are pulling at Twitter from each side. I anticipate that the network effect is too strong. People seem to enjoy the conflict that occurs when swimming in the same pool as their political opponents, despite all the talk of echo chambers. The bubbles have to intersect on some platform eventually. This is why I don't think that the successor to Twitter will differentiate based on political ideology, on the first order, at least. You need the perception of a level discursive playing field in order to attract all the sorts of people who are looking to "have it out".

msla 9y ago

From what I gather, Mastodon is to Twitter what Usenet is to Hacker News: Both provide a way to have text-based discussions in a threaded fashion, but Usenet is a protocol shared by many computers, whereas Hacker News is a specific piece of software run on (what is essentially, to all appearances, from the outside) a single, blessed computer. Upshot: Hacker News can go down and be erased forever, modulo archival efforts like the Wayback Machine. Usenet can't go down.

eli 9y ago
That's interesting, but doesn't seem super relevant to end users. I'm not particularly worried about Twitter disappearing, but if I was I'd use the export feature to run backups.
- wongarsu 9y ago
  I think censorship resistance is the more interesting feature. Mastodon seems to be mostly used for content that isn't blessed by Twitter policies.
  - kstrauser 9y ago
    I've found it to be the exact opposite: Mastodon instances are a lot more likely to disconnect from others due to unwelcome content. That's by design, though! Suppose you and I host our own Mastodon servers (aka "instances") as part of a federation of 1,000 instances. I start posting lots of content you and your users dislike (where that could mean anything - porn, pro-Nazi, pro-Antifa, overly conservative, overly liberal - anything). With a checkbox in the web UI, you can start refusing traffic from my server. That would only affect you and your users, and I can still talk to anyone else as usual. Some of yours users might dislike that a flee for more tolerant pastures. That's fine! Some of my users might dislike that my rules are so loose that my server's getting banned, and they'd flee to more closely moderated servers. That's also fine! In either case, our spat only involves the connection between you and me, but the rest of the network chugs away as always. Basically, it's the federation model of email but with the functionality of Twitter. That's what makes it different.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      Let's go in the opposite direction for a second. I set up my shiny new Mastodon server. Do I instantly get the feed from all other instances? Or do I have to go find other instances to connect with?
      - kstrauser 9y ago
        You don't really connect to other instances so much as other users. To further the email analogy, if you stand up your own mailserver, you can start sending email to someone at Gmail without deliberately configuring either of those servers to talk to each other. A good way to discover new users is to visit a popular instance - say, https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about - and look at its "A look inside..." pane (which is that instance's "federated timeline"). Find a user who said something interesting and click on their post to go to their profile. Click "Remote follow" to follow them on your own instance, and voila! You have a new friend. You could also visit the Mastodon instance list (https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org) which maps the current state of the network (aka the "fediverse") and search around to find themed instances that appeal to you. Want to follow a bunch of furries? Find an instance that caters to them, then start following all the interesting users you find there.
- msla 9y ago
  One thing that's interesting for end users is full control over the UI. In principle, and in practice with Usenet, reader software can be completely distinct from server software, and everyone can use their own reader set up their own way, and not have to dumbly accept what the server's owners thought was the One Proper UI for their service. Another, deeper concept is that one group of yahoos can't unilaterally change the rules, because new software has to be compatible with old software. For example, imagine someone wanted to make email which deleted itself after a sender-specified period of time. They'd design the protocol and implement their server and client and then... nobody would care, because there are many email servers and clients, and nobody is compelled to use theirs. The people who really want that functionality would use it, and nobody else would be bothered.
oldsj 9y ago
Last I heard HN doesn't just appear to be a single, blessed computer. It IS a single, blessed computer

nailer 9y ago

Well people used to call Twitter microblogging. It was blogging, just limited to 140 characters, which a lot of people though wasn't a huge difference.

egypturnash 9y ago

Mastodon: Twitter, except with moderators who will kick Angry White Boy Assholes (Nazis, gamergaters, trolls, etc) off. Mastodon: Twitter, except with a 500-char limit and no "sponsored tweets". Mastodon: Twitter, except without a whole bunch of VC investment that it needs to try and pay back by monetizing your eyeballs and keeping you on the site as long as possible for as long as possible, regardless of whether that's by making you happy or enraging you. Mastodon: Twitter, except a bunch of technical bullshit you probably don't care about unless you'd like to run your own Mastodon server for you and your buddies.

s73ver_ 9y ago
I mean, all they had to do was say that first one, and a lot of people would probably perk their ears up.
- egypturnash 9y ago
  Seriously! This is the initial value proposition that got me and all my friends to check it out.
- lokedhs 9y ago
  Well, to be fair if someone wanted to, they could set up a Mastodon instance specifically for people that would otherwise use Gab. It's likely that most other Mastodon instances would block them though.
theseatoms 9y ago
Oh. So Gab and Mastodon are pulling at Twitter from each side. I anticipate that the network effect is too strong. People seem to enjoy the conflict that occurs when swimming in the same pool as their political opponents, despite all the talk of echo chambers. The bubbles have to intersect on some platform eventually. This is why I don't think that the successor to Twitter will differentiate based on political ideology, on the first order, at least. You need the perception of a level discursive playing field in order to attract all the sorts of people who are looking to "have it out".