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> Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. You can communicate with anything that supports ActivityPub

> Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. You can communicate with anything that supports ActivityPub. That means that you can get RSS-like feeds of blogs in your Mastodon timeline, or use Masto or any other AP-supporting platform to comment on a blog post (if it supports AP for that). I find that exciting: your self-hosted personal site can now be just as much a part of the social network as something that was posted natively. It's very much a work in progress but the promise of Mastodon is not so much replacing Twitter as it is a gateway to an internet-wide social graph with no walls.

twblalock 8y ago
Regular people do not self-host websites or know what RSS is. What does Mastodon offer that regular people care about?
- Barrin92 8y ago
  significantly less toxicity and content they don't want to see in the first place. Twitter is like standing in the centre of a crowded mall on a hot summer day. Mastodon is a small friendly pub. I guess what it offers them is social media that actually maintains your peace of mind to a degree.
  - teaneedz 8y ago
    Spot on. I left Twitter (well left an auto bot behind) and took my live posts to Mastodon. It's so much more relaxing with masto.
  - ivan_gammel 8y ago
    Open anarchic communities are not toxic only while they are young and fresh. Eventually they will grow and either establish a set of formal and legally binding ceremonies with unsatisfactory result (actually I don't know any really good decentralized example here - Wikipedia is the closest one) or become toxic and die (IRC).
    - Barrin92 8y ago
      the point of mastodon communities is that they are not anarchic. The fact that they're human scaled and moderated is what allows them to impose sets of rules that actually make spending a few hours there palatable. (The same advantage that say, the smaller hackernews community has over a 500k population subreddit) That's the advantage they have over twitter, they're able to set community rules that fit to the respective communities. It's twitter that suffers from the anarchy. When twitter users are setting up filters and mass blocks to remove all the nazis and trolls and conspiracy theorists from their feed, they're essentially just trying to painfully recreate what you get in a mastodon sized community by design.
      - ivan_gammel 8y ago
        Can you give an example of mastodon community with clearly defined and legally binding policy, that protects rights of regular users? I could not find any (doesn't mean that they don't or cannot exist, of course) and highly doubt that any admin there has motivation or resources to develop it and properly implement. Pure declarations like "we are good fellas and don't allow abuse" mean nothing - they are not enforceable and regular user cannot sue instance admin for violations.
        egypturnash 8y ago
        As a Mastodon instance admin, you just made an argument for me to never have a clearly-defined and legally-binding policy. Thanks. The main thrust of my user agreement is "hi I am queer lady who is out of patience with people being jerks and wants a nice place to talk, if you piss me off you can go find a new instance or start your own". It's not much more formal than that, either.
        twblalock 8y ago
        Sounds more arbitrary and a lot worse than Twitter’s policy.
        8y ago
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  Twitter has been banning people left and right. On Mastodon, you're in control. People care about that.
- teleclimber 8y ago
  Fine, that was technical. But regular people care about being threatened and hateful conduct. On twitter countless reports go unanswered, and it's pretty clear at this point that there is no intent to make the situation better. On Masto when you report someone or a post for being abusive you've got an actual human (your instance admin) who will look at it and actually do something about it (like blocking that user for the entire instance).
  - twblalock 8y ago
    If the instance admin becomes abusive, or treats the server like his own petty little fiefdom, what can be done about it? Why should I trust an instance admin?
    - boyce 8y ago
      I thought we were comparing Mastodon to Twitter where what you say is already the case Moving instances is not a big deal and yes, know your admin.
      - makomk 8y ago
        One of the ways in which admins often treat instances like their own petty fiefdom is cutting off communication with other instances that don't toe the line. So sure, you can move instances - just don't rely on being able to contact your friends anymore if you do. (Some instances even have a whitelist of instances that are allowed to follow and interact with their users, with everyone else blocked.)
        boyce 8y ago
        It's rare to outright block an instance (for not moderating child porn or something of course but not otherwise really) Instead most "blocks" are just muting from the federated timeline, precisely so that you're not cut off from contacts.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
- boyce 8y ago
  It's a nice place to be No one has to care about which pair of celebs are arguing No bloody advertising People are building interesting stuff with it Third party apps work It's not run by a guy seemingly at war with his own users edit: more Your parents aren't there The people who left twitter years ago because of all the harassment and you've been missing are probably already there If you've got a feature request or something, you can just toot Gargron and you will get a reply
elboru 8y ago
You're proving his point, count all the techie words you used in your comment, regular people don't know-care about all that.
- teleclimber 8y ago
  Yes, that was technical. That's the stage we're in right now because AP is quite new. It will take a while for it to develop and mature to the point where interesting new use cases emerge for non-technical people. Personally I'm excited by the potential, even though all the answers aren't there and you have to use your imagination a bit.

twblalock 8y ago

Regular people do not self-host websites or know what RSS is. What does Mastodon offer that regular people care about?

Barrin92 8y ago
significantly less toxicity and content they don't want to see in the first place. Twitter is like standing in the centre of a crowded mall on a hot summer day. Mastodon is a small friendly pub. I guess what it offers them is social media that actually maintains your peace of mind to a degree.
- teaneedz 8y ago
  Spot on. I left Twitter (well left an auto bot behind) and took my live posts to Mastodon. It's so much more relaxing with masto.
- ivan_gammel 8y ago
  Open anarchic communities are not toxic only while they are young and fresh. Eventually they will grow and either establish a set of formal and legally binding ceremonies with unsatisfactory result (actually I don't know any really good decentralized example here - Wikipedia is the closest one) or become toxic and die (IRC).
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    the point of mastodon communities is that they are not anarchic. The fact that they're human scaled and moderated is what allows them to impose sets of rules that actually make spending a few hours there palatable. (The same advantage that say, the smaller hackernews community has over a 500k population subreddit) That's the advantage they have over twitter, they're able to set community rules that fit to the respective communities. It's twitter that suffers from the anarchy. When twitter users are setting up filters and mass blocks to remove all the nazis and trolls and conspiracy theorists from their feed, they're essentially just trying to painfully recreate what you get in a mastodon sized community by design.
    - ivan_gammel 8y ago
      Can you give an example of mastodon community with clearly defined and legally binding policy, that protects rights of regular users? I could not find any (doesn't mean that they don't or cannot exist, of course) and highly doubt that any admin there has motivation or resources to develop it and properly implement. Pure declarations like "we are good fellas and don't allow abuse" mean nothing - they are not enforceable and regular user cannot sue instance admin for violations.
      - egypturnash 8y ago
        As a Mastodon instance admin, you just made an argument for me to never have a clearly-defined and legally-binding policy. Thanks. The main thrust of my user agreement is "hi I am queer lady who is out of patience with people being jerks and wants a nice place to talk, if you piss me off you can go find a new instance or start your own". It's not much more formal than that, either.
        twblalock 8y ago
        Sounds more arbitrary and a lot worse than Twitter’s policy.
        8y ago
AsyncAwait 8y ago
Twitter has been banning people left and right. On Mastodon, you're in control. People care about that.
teleclimber 8y ago
Fine, that was technical. But regular people care about being threatened and hateful conduct. On twitter countless reports go unanswered, and it's pretty clear at this point that there is no intent to make the situation better. On Masto when you report someone or a post for being abusive you've got an actual human (your instance admin) who will look at it and actually do something about it (like blocking that user for the entire instance).
- twblalock 8y ago
  If the instance admin becomes abusive, or treats the server like his own petty little fiefdom, what can be done about it? Why should I trust an instance admin?
  - boyce 8y ago
    I thought we were comparing Mastodon to Twitter where what you say is already the case Moving instances is not a big deal and yes, know your admin.
    - makomk 8y ago
      One of the ways in which admins often treat instances like their own petty fiefdom is cutting off communication with other instances that don't toe the line. So sure, you can move instances - just don't rely on being able to contact your friends anymore if you do. (Some instances even have a whitelist of instances that are allowed to follow and interact with their users, with everyone else blocked.)
      - boyce 8y ago
        It's rare to outright block an instance (for not moderating child porn or something of course but not otherwise really) Instead most "blocks" are just muting from the federated timeline, precisely so that you're not cut off from contacts.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
boyce 8y ago
It's a nice place to be No one has to care about which pair of celebs are arguing No bloody advertising People are building interesting stuff with it Third party apps work It's not run by a guy seemingly at war with his own users edit: more Your parents aren't there The people who left twitter years ago because of all the harassment and you've been missing are probably already there If you've got a feature request or something, you can just toot Gargron and you will get a reply

elboru 8y ago

You're proving his point, count all the techie words you used in your comment, regular people don't know-care about all that.

teleclimber 8y ago
Yes, that was technical. That's the stage we're in right now because AP is quite new. It will take a while for it to develop and mature to the point where interesting new use cases emerge for non-technical people. Personally I'm excited by the potential, even though all the answers aren't there and you have to use your imagination a bit.