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Look, I like open source federated ecosystems like Mastodon, but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable. I'm not sure I coul
by cmeacham98 4y ago
Look, I like open source federated ecosystems like Mastodon, but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable.
I'm not sure I could reliably predict whether Twitter or Mastodon will live longer.
- Taek 4y agoIn some sense of the word they are already shut down. Moderation is very heavy on both and certain topics just can't become widely shared. For example, a recent thread by a sex worker had something like 8/30 tweets censored off the platform (despite none of the content being graphic, offensive, or illegal). So sure, Twitter will run for a long time. But it doesn't have very strong guarantees to its users about how it will treat them or what content will be allowed.
- afavour 4y ago> In some sense of the word they are already shut down. C'mon. Let's call a spade as spade: you wanted to complain about moderation and you shoehorned it into conversation. In no way does it make Twitter "shut down".
- EarlKing 4y agoNeither does any point on the Fediverse. As long as operators think they can run their site any way they want instead of obeying a common protocol then they're federated in name only. To put it another way: If I can never trust that my email will make it to someone on gmail due to the opaqueness of their spam filters, with no way to be whitelisted by a recipient, then email has been thoroughly decommoditized and centralized... and so too a 'federated' system where operators set arbitrary rules that result in whatever server they don't like being unreachable.
- wizzwizz4 4y agoUnlike email, the Fediverse hasn't been captured by a few large organisations. So long as we take measures to ensure that this doesn't happen, "go somewhere else" will always be a viable solution to complaints about an instance's moderation. I disagree with moderation decisions made by many instances, but if they made no moderation decisions, I would not be able to use the Fediverse. So I'm glad of it, even if it's a pain sometimes.
- tekknik 4y ago> Unlike email, the Fediverse hasn't been captured by a few large organisations. So long as we take measures to ensure that this doesn't happen, "go somewhere else" will always be a viable solution to complaints about an instance's moderation. Wait, where have we heard this before? Oh right, Bitcoin and mining. It won’t be run by small time users if it catches traction. Not techies goofing around on the weekend, but when your Grandma creates an account because her friend is on there.
- EarlKing 4y ago"Go somewhere else" isn't a solution when a plurality of servers agree to tolerate racist, sexist, or just plain obscene conduct. I'm also amazed that giving users control over what they see isn't an option. That solves the problem completely by making it the user's problem. That, however, somehow never seems to be an option.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 4y ago> "Go somewhere else" isn't a solution when a plurality of servers agree to tolerate racist, sexist, or just plain obscene conduct. You've said this, but didn't bother to give a reason. Can't you go to church even when the plurality of people tolerate porn?
- Jon_Lowtek 4y ago> I'm also amazed that giving users control over what they see isn't an option. so... you never actually used Mastodon? Its users do have the ability to filter content based on keywords, accounts or domains.
- pessimizer 4y ago> so too a 'federated' system where operators set arbitrary rules that result in whatever server they don't like being unreachable. Nah. If you can pick your king, he's not really a king. The intended recipient of your communication decided to join a server that censors your type of message. The problem is when the federation becomes a trust, and members collude. Like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, for example. The more division, the more federation, the harder it is to collude.
- EarlKing 4y agoI'll just butt in at this point to note that 'federated' systems are more or less FidoNet and Usenet warmed over, neither of which managed to overtake commercial systems, and in the latter case was rendered useless by spam... much like Mastodon and friends which are rendered useless by racism and porn. Speaking of which... there's supposed to be a Mastodon Server Covenant(tm)(c)(pat. pending) in regards to such matters, but the https://joinmastodon.org/covenant https://joinmastodon.org/covenant where it's supposed to be documented is 404. Looks like it was quietly removed sometime after August of this year. In any case I'll make a prediction: Mastodon will remain a haven for people too racist and/or porn-obsessed for even Twitter and Reddit to tolerate and adoption will be hampered accordingly.
- thrown_22 4y ago>racism and porn. That's what got reddit to be the biggest forum on the planet. So I guess Mastodon is worth another look then.
- remram 4y agoAnd let's not act like Twitter isn't full of those to this day...
- thrown_22 4y agoThey're getting rid of the porn ... so people are leaving.
- pessimizer 4y agoNow that Reddit is very respectable, we're supposed to pretend that it wasn't started as normie 4chan, even ripping off naming subsections like naked directories, just like every imageboard. A normie 4chan that got lucky by existing when digg decided to commit suicide.
- paganel 4y agoNot sure about the intentions of the reddit founders, to be honest, but at the beginning there were no subsections and the like. When they did show up they were implemented as sub-domains, for example http://programming.reddit.com http://programming.reddit.com . I can't exactly remember how much that lasted, but it was for more than a couple of months (I'd say for at least half a year) before the directory-thing was implemented.
- thrown_22 4y agoWhere is your myspace page?
- qznc 4y agoLet’s use Google+ as an example. It did shut down and still not all wounds have healed yet. For example, the indie RPG scene laments its demise. Edit: A Reddit thread as citation https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/udegsl/does_anyone_have_experience_with_google_or_the/.compact https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/udegsl/does_anyone_hav...
- loceng 4y ago"... the indie RPG scene laments its demise." Where did they move?
- noasaservice 4y agoSometimes when communities die or are killed, they don't come back. Nobody knows where to go to re-convene.
- voakbasda 4y agoThis should part of a plan for online organizational continuity. Any community that uses big tech’s services should probably have one.
- remram 4y agoThis is different because mastodon.technology will keep operating until December 1st. This leaves them plenty of time to organize a move by discussing it on the platform like they always have. They might move to different Mastodon instances (via the built-in migration system) or find a new network, but they are not getting killed with no way to find each other afterwards.
- dredmorbius 4y agoOne of the huge problems with on-platform discussions is ... that the discussion itself dies with the platform, and any decisions or announcements disappear with it. At the same time, based on my own personal experience, it is absolutely impossible to get people to move to another platform or service even for the purpose of discussing future plans. My exceedingly strong advice is to have multiple points of presence defined as a matter of course, one of which should be a simple email list (which provides persistent contact information), regardless of any awareness of an impending platform shutdown.
- j_k_eter 4y agoI find the idea that X won't / can't happen on a 3 month timeline, in this political climate, silly. Is there such a thing as stability bias? Because folks had best recalibrate their expectations for rate of change, starting a few months ago. I won't be taking any bets on Facebook, but the thing I'm replying to sounds like 6-months ago thinking.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoDepends if X is a tool/cause/symptom of the political climate you are talking about. Because Twitter is, so I think I side with the guy that said it’s silly to think it’ll shut down soon.
- mynameisvlad 4y agoI mean if you’re saying human existence can’t be guaranteed 3 months into the future, then that’s one thing, but what does Facebook and Twitter’s stability have to do with the current political climate? And if you are saying the former, then Twitter and Facebook’s longetivity should be the least of your concerns.
- m3kw9 4y agoFunny you say that, the chance of nuclear war is the highest since the Cuban missile crisis.
- mynameisvlad 4y agoWhich is why I said what I said. If the “political climate” were to affect the longetivity of Facebook, Twitter et al, then their longetivity is the least of our concerns because it would imply something much more disastrous has happened. I personally couldn’t care less that there’s no Facebook around when I’m living in a post-apocalyptic hellscape due to the “political climate”.
- banku_brougham 4y agoGreat point. Not long ago, it was not commonly imagined that large nuclear reactors anywhere in the world would be on the border of moving front lines between warring armored forces. People aren't great at imagining how things can change.
- proactivesvcs 4y agof*c*book has been floundering for some years now and is lurching from trying to follow one trend to the next, pouring money into each attempt and everything twitter seems to do causes another exodus. They'll be brought out and then hollowed out, or attempt a major pivot which will be fatal for their global relevance. This is without the spectre of data protection laws offering us more and more protection from the abuse of these sorts of platforms, having themselves broken up by monopolies, their revenue stream being cut off wholesale by the likes of Apple, investors and big customers finally realising they're paying for bots and I'm sure several other bear traps just waiting for them to stumble into.
- philippejara 4y agowhy are you censoring facebook?
- freedomben 4y agoI was wondering that too, and I think my brain may have figured it out. on a quick glance at the way it's written, my brain read "fuckbook" rather than "facebook" since f*c*book aligns with both. If that's right, it's kind of silly IMHO
- proactivesvcs 4y agoIt's both silly and a sign of my absolute contempt for them ;-)
- CRConrad 4y agoBoth funny and fitting, which makes it a net plus IMO.
- barkingcat 4y agotry opening any myspace/google+/orkut/and so on links and you can see this in action.
- ccn0p 4y agoOP didn't say anything about timing. Everything comes to an end. The point is that the timing in one case is decided by the users, the other by shareholders.
- dangus 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
- ccn0p 4y agogreat list thanks for sharing. I'm just not sure making grain alcohol in the 15th century applies to a modern day Internet company listed on a public stock exchanges. But time will tell for sure.. it always does!
- SkyMarshal 4y ago>but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable. He didn't say "anytime soon", you added that part.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- burntwater 4y ago> How will your argument hold up when fcbook finishes dying? We'll find out soon enough. Sounds close enough to "anytime soon" for me.
- Chris2048 4y ago"soon enough" could be a decade relative to the assumption that they'll be around forever.
- lovich 4y agoIf you’re going to stretch definitions like that “anytime soon” can go as far. It was a reasonable paraphrase
- Chris2048 4y agoIf by "stretch" you mean "consider the context", then no, it's an unreasoned paraphrase.
- lovich 4y agoGiven the context interpreted the original post as implying that the end of those services was in short term timeframe. And apparently so did the poster im defending. That may not have been what the original poster intended but if that’s the case then they should use less ambiguous language.
- 4y ago
- petesergeant 4y agoThat’s true of Facebook, but I can see Twitter receiving a fatal blow if the Musk acquisition goes through.
- vinaypai 4y agoThere's a lot to dislike about Elon Musk (mostly related to his lack of filter) but he has founded multiple successful companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars each. It's possible he'll somehow make twitter worse than it is and starts hemorrhaging users, but if I had to choose I'd bet on Twitter ending up in a better place than it is now.
- petesergeant 4y agoMr Musk is unambiguously both brilliant and a complete ass, and I think people who underestimate him or lionise him are both wrong. That said, I think he is buying Twitter for the lulz / weird libertarian reasons, rather than making a real business out of it, and I have serious concerns it will injure what is currently a public utility absolutely beyond repair.
- guelo 4y agoHe's buying it for the same reason all other billionaires buy media outlets, to be able to push their narrative onto the public consciousness. Social media isn't what users post, it's which user posts the algorithm decides to show. For someone with a conglomerate with many interests and huge ambition, owning popular media can be very profitable even if the media outlet itself isn't.
- twobitshifter 4y agoRumors are that he plans to WeChatify twitter under X.com, so there’s more of a chance that twitter gets put under something larger and becomes neighbors with Square.
- numpad0 4y ago
- ekianjo 4y ago> but claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable. where is soon? And also, do you have a crystal ball to predict the future?
- rakoo 4y agoMastodon will probably die first because it's just a software but that's not a problem: ActivityPub, the protocol, and the Fediverse, the network, will most certainly outlast Twitter. Unless Twitter chooses to get compatible with the Fediverse. A protocol can't die. People are still using IRC, XMPP, good ol' email, decades after they were created. They are still useful, they still work, so there is no reason for them to "die"
- matthewdgreen 4y agoHey even gopher has 333 unique servers according to a recent census. But for all practical purposes it's pretty much dead.
- danuker 4y ago> for all practical purposes it's pretty much dead. It has a very small community. That is very different from being dead - in fact, that community is probably much more passionate about what makes it specific than a large community. For example, you'd find that sysadmins are much more prevalent on Gopher than Twitter.
- xani_ 4y ago> For example, you'd find that sysadmins are much more prevalent on Gopher than Twitter. I'd say ratio of sysadmins to actual users of the service is good indication that something is dead
- isaacremuant 4y agoYou don't know when they will simply decide not to give you access to certain data. Look at email providers who suddenly decided "If you don't use it for X months, you're inactive and I'm deleting everything". It's not about the service existing but people being able to extract and use what they've put in, in 10/20 years.
- otikik 4y agoGoogle Reader T_T
- barkingcat 4y agoOnce the twitter sale is completed, the new owner of twitter can chose whatever they want to do with it, including shutting it down - which in this milleu would be something that the buyer of twitter will consider doing just for LOL's. imagine the trolling potential of a rolling outage of twitter or ooops "new owner" deleted the database as a joke. Or replace all twitter profiles with sayings from Doge. before you say "this person can't possibly do this" ... think again.
- systemvoltage 4y agoCurious though, mastadadon owners can potentially be like that too, no? And stakes are too low to do mischief with mastadon vs. Twitter.
- barkingcat 4y agoof course! but my reply was to answer "claiming Twitter or Facebook will be shut down any time soon is laughable." which is ... truly laughable if you like doge?
- gnull 4y agoWho are mastodon owners?
- barkingcat 4y agothe individual owners/operators of each mastodon instance. there is the mastodon project, but you can fork the code and make your own community if you want more control over your own codebase when it comes to your own mastodon instance
- warkdarrior 4y agoThe owners of the Mastodon instances one connects to.
- 3371 4y agoYes, but why did you ask? I suppose that's exactly one of the reasons why fediverse users want to choose who they trust, isn't it?
- gnull 4y agoI wouldn't claim Twitter will shut down soon, but one could argue that mastodon is more robust because it's divirsified. There's no single person on earth who can shut down Mastodon, so Mastodon dies only if this decision is made massively by many people (or if development stops, but then still nothing will stop the server I run on raspberry pi in my bedroom). Twitter otoh can be shut down by one person for a whole multitude of reasons without any concern for the opinion of users.
- EvilMole 4y agoI don't think he was saying either Facebook or Twitter is going to close soon. Heck, MySpace is still around. But sooner or later, centralised systems either shut down or become something completely different: think about Tumblr as a good example of that.
- ElevenLathe 4y agoThese services may not "shut down" but they might change (or have already changed) so much that many would not have signed up knowing what they know now. This is kind of a danger of an open protocol too (for example, IRC users who signed up in 1998 to talk about Britney Spears gossip are probably not well-served by most current IRC networks), but not to the same extent.
- romeros 4y agoOrkut was super successful and was eventually shutdown.. Meta will live on forever but facebook might well be a relic of the past. Most people don't even log into facebook anymore than a few times a year.