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Twitter buyout puts Mastodon into spotlight
- systemvoltage 4y agoMastodon reminds me of Woznaik's vision of what Apple should be and could be (in contrast to Steve's). It's totally awesome but lacks key insights of branding, marketing, and understanding users. This thing is built by geeks for other geeks.
- ryukafalz 4y agoI see comments like this all the time, but rarely do they include which key insights, or how you would do it better. How would you do it better?
- smt88 4y agoCentralization is the main thing. Geeks like us hate it, but mainstream users love the benefits it brings them. Federated services are confusing and create a lot of UX friction, and the average user doesn't understand what the benefits are.
- ryukafalz 4y agoEmail is federated and people manage to use that just fine. Why are other federated services different?
- Pxtl 4y agoImho mastodon's got an onboarding problem since before you even start you have to decide where to make an account, a decision with unclear ramifications. That'll scare a lot of people off at step 1.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoIs is practical or useful to self-host your own instance? Not for public use, but just for you? Has anyone done this? Does linking to other servers work OK? Any upsides/downsides?
- ajayyy 4y agoYes, but it's easier to selfhost Pleroma, which is fully compatible with Mastodon, but lighter weight for small instances
- xvilka 4y agoCheckout the more lightweight Pleroma [1][2]. [1] https://pleroma.social/ https://pleroma.social/ [2] https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma
- tekromancr 4y agoYes to all of those. The only issue is some smaller instances with limited admin bandwidth might only federate automatically with larger, well moderated instances to help reduce their own moderation burden. If you want to be well federated even with the smaller instances, you need to hang around for a while; build connections within the larger communities; then ask to federate with any smaller instances you want to connect directly with.
- ineedasername 4y agoIt seems like there's a lot of friction involved with connecting to the wider ecosystem. You can sign up to a smaller instance but then federating with others may be problematic. Or you can sign up to a larger one, but it seems like network effects might eventually have things evolve to just a few massive instances, somewhat defeating the purpose of decentralization. Or you can host your own, which would be a technical hurdle for many and come with its own burdens.
- fknorangesite 4y agoIt's not unusual for instances to whitelist who can connect to them, in which case you're out of luck.
- sas1ni69 4y ago...says Mastadon
- radicalriddler 4y agoAnyone who actually uses Mastodon has seen an explosion in new users come onto the site, especially mastodon.social.
- Proven 4y ago
- mlindner 4y agoIsn't the entire point of Mastodon to do exactly what Elon Musk is buying Twitter to do? Like how does the buy out of Twitter push people to Mastodon, if anything it'd bring people back from Mastodon to Twitter.
- saagarjha 4y ago> The news of Elon Musk buying Twitter has put Mastodon into the public spotlight as an alternative social network, rapidly exploding our growth with over 30,000 new users in just a single day. How many users does Mastodon have in total? I don't want to sound dismissive, but based on that number it seems like they probably have like a million or so, which is kind of disappointing compared to the size of Twitter…
- toomuchtodo 4y agoFeels like this could be a bit of Whatsapp/Signal moment, when FB/Meta was changing Whatsapp's privacy policy. Don't let a crisis go to waste? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-signal-users/signal-sees-unprecedented-growth-after-whatsapp-controversy-idUSKBN29I27U https://www.reuters.com/article/us-signal-users/signal-sees-... > Signal was downloaded by 17.8 million users over the past seven days, a 62-fold rise from the prior week, according to data from Sensor Tower. WhatsApp was downloaded by 10.6 million users during the same period, a 17% decline. (January 13, 2021) (the irony is not lost on me that @elonmusk contributed to the above frenzy: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153 ["Use Signal"])
- foolfoolz 4y agono chance. signal performs the same function as whatsapp. it’s nearly 1:1. mastodon and twitter are not interchangeable. there is nothing sticky about a free chat app
- tekromancr 4y agoIts the same thing. Rises on the network effect, falls on the network effect.
- rr808 4y agoDid Signal get any momentum though? I used Signal for a week before giving up.
- rubyist5eva 4y agonot really
- Always42 4y agoIMO - Mastodon does not quite roll of the tongue
- bombcar 4y agoDidn’t they have “toots” for awhile there?
- ineedasername 4y agoIn the US "toot" is sometimes used to mean "fart" so I can see why that might not get wide adoption. (Though it might be regional, and definitely more of a word to use with kids)
- artificial 4y agoSupertoots would be a great way to connect with the audience and ease supporting producers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mc32 4y agoToot is one of those words where context matters. No one confuses "toot your horn" to have anything to do with farts. It's like the words black and the word white --they can refer to color perception (though technically not colors) and they can also convey other associations, a few positive a few negative but have no relationship to the color itself. So it is with "toot". Toot may be used as a polite word substitute for fart in a specific context, but generally does not mean fart. Also see punctuational period and menstrual period. I haven’t heard of any native speakers confusing that given context.
- charcircuit 4y agoNo, it's gross and cringe. I'll never use that word.
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- ilaksh 4y agoIs there something like this but p2p?
- mgarfias 4y agomatrix
- 3np 4y agoWhile there is a research-stage P2P effort for it[0], Matrix is federated in a conceptually similar way to ActivityPub (the federation protocol of Mastodon et al). [0]: https://fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/matrix_p2p_pinecone/ https://fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/matrix_p2p_pinecone/
- jeremyt 4y agoUrbit
- NavinF 4y agoIn case anyone takes this seriously, check out their code: https://github.com/urbit/archaeology-factor/blob/master/urb/zod/arvo/ames.hoon https://github.com/urbit/archaeology-factor/blob/master/urb/... It’d be a hilarious art project if they weren’t scamming people who doing know any better.
- jeremyt 4y agoLol. They’re building out an api. You can write apps in whatever language you want.
- fabianhjr 4y agoSecure Scuttlebutt which has been discussed before here. The protocol guide: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/
- PradeetPatel 4y agoHow do we prevent radical, alt-right, hate groups from abusing Mastodon? Which is an existing issues with the current Twitter ecosystem.
- johnny22 4y agomany mastadon instances don't federate with those other instances. Each instance is free to have their own rules
- daenz 4y agoThey're free to have their own rules and do what they want? That's going to make a lot of people very angry.
- nameisname 4y agoWhat does your comment even mean? A lot of people get angry about a lot of things but the solution is what exactly? Based on your statement I would assume your suggestion is "they shouldn't be free to have their own rules and do what they want" because...?
- daenz 4y ago>Based on your statement I would assume your suggestion is "they shouldn't be free to have their own rules and do what they want" because...? That question is better asked of PradeetPatel, the person who wants to figure out how to stop people from using a decentralized system.
- approxim8ion 4y agoThey are free to do so even now, like Gab and Truth social or whatever.
- boltzmann_brain 4y ago
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- pkrumins 4y agoThis is a joke platform for joke people.
- DaltonCoffee 4y agoThat'd actually be sweet. I'm a joke person and I'd love a platform to learn new jokes.
- coffeefirst 4y agoSeconded, as a fellow joke person I would love to see platforms that were really good at jokes and less good at destabilizing civilization.
- pkrumins 4y agoYou guys should get a coffee together!
- the_common_man 4y agoA platform that doesn't take itself too seriously? Sign me up
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- andrewmcwatters 4y agoWhy is Mastodon so uncool? Is it the name? Is it the lack of cool people on Mastodon? Was it because of things like "toots?" I love open source software as much as the next HN reader, but there's something so unappealing about not just Mastodon, but Matrix, and all the other social software out there today.
- ryukafalz 4y agoSpeak for yourself. Both Mastodon and Matrix have thriving communities.
- dangom 4y agoThey come after the incumbent and feel like a copycat. They also solve problems most people don't know they have, and thus are unattractive (at large scale).
- andrewmcwatters 4y agoThis is probably a large part of it. Derivative products are decidedly not cool.
- ineedasername 4y ago>something so unappealing... I thought Twitter was unappealing and pointless when it started. I guess I'm still not sure why it actually hit mainstream.
- pmoriarty 4y agoIt hit the mainstream because news outlets started reporting "Celebrity-so-and-so said such-and-such on Twitter", and the constant barrage of this free advertising eventually resulted in brand name penetration. Meanwhile, celebrities used Twitter because they read on the news of other celebrities using it. And so the cycle continues.
- ineedasername 4y ago
- izzydata 4y agoHow does one find the bigger Mastadon instances? They aren't even listed on this joinmastodon website. I know it is intentionally decentralized, but it seems like it can never catch on because it feels like 100s of separate websites. You have to make logins for every single one.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoThere are directories. One: https://joinmastodon.org/communities https://joinmastodon.org/communities Another: https://instances.social https://instances.social
- ineedasername 4y agoIt seems like that method would break down if Mastadon gained massive adoption.
- Groxx 4y agoThat's a good problem to have. And one with multiple ways to tackle. Mastodon is a ways away from that currently though.
- ineedasername 4y agoThat depends on the nature of the problem. Solutions we've seen so far to problems of discoverability in massive amounts of content have been to use an algorithm of some sort to provide results either through searching, recommendations or both. It seems like Mastadon or a 3rd party would have to come up with a novel, effective solution to the issue of content discover that no one else has found yet. It's not just about providing search results, but in general showing users what they might be interested. Right now that can be done via lists and directories that are still relatively small enough to browse a lot of it and get a general sense of a lot of what is there to choose from. But maybe it doesn't have to solve that problem better than others have to avoid their pitfalls. The second link up in this thread is at least an open source search engine so the algorithm can be scrutinized. Even if they converge on similar content discovery solutions, as long as the search engines that pop up are open source then people can at least know how the results are weighted.
- flappyeagle 4y agoI hope Elon opens up the Twitter API and lets fully-powered 3rd party clients flourish. Ideally, moderation policies and enforcement actions can be client-specific to some degree. Ultra woke or righty twitter can implement their own policies without losing out on the network effect of the greater network. Ben Thompson has been crusading for this direction and it’s gain traction in free-speech circles
- stanislavb 4y ago#hopes I don’t believe Musk put those billions for the greater good… I won’t be surprised at all if Trump is welcomed sooner than later on Twitter again.
- pmoriarty 4y agoDoes it really matter if Trump is on Twitter? It's mainstream news outlets which amplified his every word. They'll be doing the same thing if he runs for office again, no matter where he speaks.
- kcplate 4y ago> It's mainstream news outlets which amplified his every word They do more than that…they intentionally feed him to keep him in the spotlight . I have seen certain “left leaning” news outlets actually try and prompt commentary out of him on topics he hasn’t really fixated on yet just to try and manufacture news and more controversy. If you keep saying his name he’ll never go away. Maybe that’s what they want.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoMusk saw how Russia got its way by trolling social media websites. Then Facebook and Twitter shut them out. Now Musk sees an opportunity to control the narrative. It's that simple. https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1487168671269203968?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/14871686712692039...
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- caiob 4y ago
- aceazzameen 4y agoI've been trying out Mastodon for the past 2 days. I like it, but it honestly has some problems that will prevent it from growing outside of niches. The main one being discoverability. There's simply no easy way to discover other users on the platform. And from what I understand, this is by design. You can search hashtags, but not everyone uses hashtags. And the results that appear seem to be most recent, and not most liked or most boosted. It requires a lot of "work" to find interesting people and/or friends on the platform. And most people don't have time for that extra "work." I'd like it more if I could see what's trending, but only if I specifically seek out what's trending. Also on my Galaxy Tab S7 in portrait mode, a breakpoint is preventing the search field from appearing. I have to shrink Firefox a bit for the search field to appear. Took me a day before I figured that one out. Outside of those issues, it has potential. I love everyone having a chronological feed.
- movedx 4y ago> There's simply no easy way to discover other users on the platform. And from what I understand, this is by design. It also feels fragmented. An account can be on any servers, anywhere, controlled by... someone? Users can move around. Communities can just shutdown or lock people out. Etc. It's a weird solution to a problem that I agree exists.
- aceazzameen 4y agoIt's definitely fragmented. Something like mastodon.social is probably perfectly fine for the general population though. And as users become more comfortable with the platform, they can transfer to other instances if they want. I just don't see it growing because of lack of discoverability. I'm betting most new users will hop on, not know who to follow or what to do, and never sign in again.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoA federated/decentralized social network...feels fragmented? Good!(?)
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- prvc 4y agoThere certainly is a role to be played by federated open-protocol communication in the future, but why limit your app to being a mere Twitter-clone? It will then always be worse than Twitter in terms of the quality of its network.
- fluctor 4y agoThere are a ton of different application types in the Fediverse. See https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/.
- the_common_man 4y agoIt seems some people find this federation aspect "complicated" . To explain it simply, just think of it like email account. I might have a zoho account, you might have gmail, we can still talk to each other. A federated system is sort of like that. We all can get account(s) on various servers/service providers. We can talk to each other by using each other's "handle" (like email address). It's really that simply for a user. If you want to selfhost, cloudron and yunohost have 1-click apps. Could not get any simpler with either of them.
- dangom 4y agothis should be written on the top of mastodon.social. Also, it's a shame they don't own mastodon.com . Reminded me of http://paulgraham.com/name.html http://paulgraham.com/name.html
- dotnet00 4y agoAfter having been reminded of Mastodon and the fediverse's existence, I decided to try setting up a server to go along with the rest of my self-hosted services. But kind of turned off from it all now, first tried using the Mastodon implementation, then Pleroma. Former was a complete non-starter behind a reverse proxy, way too heavy and not too useful documentation wise, latter at least worked enough to log in, but ran into some strange federation issue. In the end just nuked it all out of frustration. I used to think that setting up matrix-synapse was unfriendly to users, but it's way friendlier than either of these.
- Gigachad 4y agoThis happens every time a company is acquired. I remember the “mass migration” when GitHub was acquired. In the end Gitlab did see some new users but GitHub remained on top.
- bombcar 4y agoCanada, Gitlab, and Mastodon are packed to the gills full of all the people who threatened to migrate there.
- virtuabhi 4y agoNo it doesn't.
- tonfreed 4y agoIt's the same problem as every alternative social media platform, no one's on it. I'm active on Minds and have a niche following there, but it's still very insular on there
- Nextgrid 4y agoThis comment on an older Mastodon thread is just as relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789302 I've also commented before as to why I don't believe decentralization is a solution to the problems of current social media and instead introduces problems of its own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317513
- jdrc 4y ago> Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. This is correct. Communities grow around "something". Create an utility, a game, or anything, and you have a community form around it. It's impossible to replace facebook with a new facebook because people are already in facebook. Mastodon , Matrix etc are missing this key feature: Make it dead-simple to integrate with an existing community. Let every wordpress site easily integrate their users with mastodon or matrix, and you will see adoption. As it stands right now, people don't have a real incentive to run a server, maintain a community, and possibly be legally liable for that community. So only the typical ideologues of OSS will run instances, and they will be extra cautious because for them it is only a hobby.
- fluctor 4y agoThere's already a Wordpress plugin that lets your content federate. People can follow your blog from Mastodon or elsewhere in the Fediverse.
- headsoup 4y agoIf that 30,000 is mostly the kind of people that like to be shouty about their worldview being so correct while gloating at the removal of voices they don't like or won't tolerate, then I'm sorry for your gain. Curious to see if this holds or if there's a deficit of ~30,000 in three months time...
- POPOSYS 4y agoIt would be great to read about the differences to matrix.org - does anybody know a good explanation / comparison? I can not decide which alternative to use because there are so many differences and I lost interest in researching all the details, so it would be great if somebody with knowledge would like to write about that and provide an overview. As a user I would like to see a tool without censorship, but where I can ignore posters I do not like, where I still can find everybody, but also have private encrypted conversations with my peer groups and nobody is trying to profile me based on my interests. Ads would be ok, but no tracking (use tags for targeting, not user data).
- thewojo 4y agoUnpopular opinion but here goes 1. UX is hopeless (menu on the right, post on the left? ) and different to be different (use common design patterns, don't re-invent the wheel to be different. User have expectations from other sites they use, don't violate them) 2. Onboarding unclear 3. Non-existent discoverability 4. Tons of different domains joinmastodon.org, mastodon.social, mstdn.social doesn't work nicely with password managers and difficult to remember which to go to login... Sadly, it will enjoy a bump for a few weeks...and then float back into obscurity. In my eyes this is DOA in its current state.
- POPOSYS 4y agoDo exist some kind of blocklist services so all the bad mastodon postings and instances can be blocked easily? Mastodon is compared to email here, so it would be great to have blacklists, too. Of course all kind of automated tools or services that helps to keep an instance clean would be very useful. Imagine "Fediverse Cleanup Service" where you can subscribe to "NSFW", "CP", "Right", "Left", "Spam", "Whatever" block lists. Also big social networks could share their blacklists (as a service?) - selling ads and cleanup services will give them a good position in a world of decentralized platforms. Does exist already a YC startup that does all this work?
- CraftingLinks 4y agoMastodon's onboarding UX is an absolute fail... I just didn't have the patience for it do I doubt the casual users won't either. Once I had an account it got even worse, so it's very unlikely I'll login ever again. If that's supposed to be a twitter alternative I now understand there's no competition
- ptman 4y agoBluesky, the federated social media started by twitter is looking very carefully at matrix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)
- imtemplain 4y ago[dead]
- shantnutiwari 4y ago"Twitter buyout puts Mastodon into spotlight" says Mastadon in a PR piece I dont use Twitter- quit 6-7 years ago due to the toxicity-- but I never understood the charm of "federated"-- I now have to join 22 different Mastadons, each with their own logins and rules, just to keep up with people, many of whom arent even on Mastadon?
- fluctor 4y agoYou just need to join one, and then you can interact with everyone.
- jdrc 4y agoI think we need something simpler than mastodon. Something like an extension of email, without instances acting as gatekeepers (don't they suffer the same problems as twitter when they block other instances?). There will be a lot of spam, sure, but there are creative ideas how to handle it, in fact the follower model reduces the capability to spam.
- dethos 4y ago> Something like an extension of email, without instances acting as gatekeepers Email has "instances" that act as gatekeepers. Gmail is one, Outlook is another, Fastmail is... They are both federated systems and on these systems (email, fediverse, matrix, xmpp...) end users have accounts on servers that then connect between themselves to create the whole network. The only difference is the underlying protocol and/or the main purpose.
- jdrc 4y agoand yet we rarely hear of gmail blocking accounts for political reasons , which happens all the time in mastodon. And, people switch to substack and newsletters to avoid being locked in twitter. I think the problem with mastodon is that instances want to be communities, while they should simply be a content-agnostic utility. I think we need to treat social networking as part of messaging
- jssfr 4y agoPossibly not for "political" reasons, but it gets increasingly harder to be an independent mail operator. I've been running my own email cluster for over a decade, privately. Some mail providers require you to contact them to get on an allowlist to even be able to deliver email at all. Others do not formally require that, but you may have to enroll in a postmaster programme in order to track your deliverability. Yet others there's no hope at all, except running after the most recent fad in spam fighting (like DKIM/DMARC/SPF etc.), only to find that even fully and correctly configured DKIM (which I don't like on my private email for many reasons) is by far no guarantee for not getting your email marked as spam (and thus, on some providers, hidden by default), even from IPs and domains which have had no spam emitted from them for many years. So... Yeah. It's not heard of in the public media because those affected most by this don't have any leverage. The big mail service providers (MSPs) presumably have their agreements among one another to protect their business, but if you're just doing friends&family, good luck getting anything except an autoresponder when you run into troubles. (To offset some of the criticism here, I have had very positive experiences with contacting postmasters of some large German email providers when issues happened, so there's that.)
- incomingpain 4y agoTwitter's censorship created the problem of echo chambers. Twitter was never full on hostile toward conservatives, it was more to do with specific issues/narratives. Conservatives looked at mastodon. Mastodon was worse than twitter, conservatives never made it to mastodon. Mastodon was hostile toward conservatives and this was an unfortunate large mistake. Conservatives built alternatives like parler or gab. But they failed because they were echo chambers. >We’ve been steadily working towards the ultimate goal of providing a viable alternative to Twitter since 2016, and have proven the scalability and resilience of the platform through organic growth over the years. Ironically many of these alternatives like gab stole Mastodon code to operate. Which is very interesting because why couldn't conservatives simply join the mastodon network? As an up and comer you would not only be best suited to invite anyone to your platform. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork... White supremacists? >listing only such servers that commit to standing up against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Mastodon will never be in the spotlight because they have fallen into the same echo chamber problems. Gab supports free speech? That must make them racist transphobes!
- DoItToMe81 4y agoYeah, Mastodon and most of it's clones are run by some of the worst sewage runoff from Twitter, who rampantly defederate and block any 'other' who encroaches on their echo chamber. I wish it wasn't the case, but sadly it is.
- incomingpain 4y ago> Yeah, Mastodon and most of it's clones are run by some of the worst sewage runoff from Twitter, who rampantly defederate and block any 'other' who encroaches on their echo chamber. I wish it wasn't the case, but sadly it is. I too wish it wasn't the case. They were uniquely capable of taking the position that Elon is now taking. They could have become a top player and decentralized social media. It could have been fantastic. How unfortunate that Mastodon was so hostile and basically eliminated their chance of being a top contender.
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- jdrc 4y ago> We only list communities that are committed to active moderation against racism, sexism and transphobia That is dumb. Not because racism is cool, but actively policing is a looooooot of work to pledge. How many instances are not listed here? Many? I m considering to make a directory
- qudat 4y agoI've been using mastodon over the last few days and the difference between tech twitter and mastodon tech instances are dramatic. People engaging with my content has gone way up compared to twitter. I feel like unless you have a ton of followers on twitter, you get completely lost in the shuffle. Joining smaller instances increases the chances that your post will get noticed. Also, joining tech focused instances means the content you are reading is almost exclusively about tech. Twitter has mechanisms to filter the content you want, but it feels totally different and a little forced. For example, my sidebar has entertainment news articles on Twitter. I don't want to see that crap on my page.
- rchaud 4y ago"Tech Twitter" has been heading towards lowest-common-denominator content targeted at beginners and wantrepreneurs, for a few years now. Those audiences engage a lot more. And it's easier to throw in click bait content or low-density information threads, because the audience cannot yet tell the difference.
- qudat 4y agoI totally agree. I’ve been having a blast on mastodon.
- raydev 4y agoSo a new wave of people can see how unusuable it is. I guess I'm not shocked that Mastodon has improved so little since I joined 6 years ago. - The very first instance I joined within a few weeks of launch stopped existing within a year - Maintainers of instances got into weird internet fights and started banning entire instances - DMs can be read by practically anyone - in 2022, still zero discovery - in 2022, fairly poor UX on a variety of web UIs, terrible UX on mobile clients Mastodon really isn't worth your time unless you prioritize true decentralization. Unfortunately that appears to work against the concept of "community" and good software design.
- hackerbeat 4y agoThe name alone is reason enough for it to fail.