4 ms·

Isn't Mastodon pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter? And it has the advantage of being distributed and it supports Fediverse cross-platform sharing (wi

by mcv 4y ago

Isn't Mastodon pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter? And it has the advantage of being distributed and it supports Fediverse cross-platform sharing (with Friendica, GnuSocial, etc). I'm on Friendica so I can follow people on both Mastodon and Diaspora (which would be the drop-in replacement for Facebook). Still, I think we need something better. I'd like to see a social network with all of that, and support for email, but with sender-authentication (to stop spam), builtin encryption, but also Whatsapp/Signal style chat. And easily shift to whatever mode you're most comfortable with. And maybe also integrate blogging a bit more. I don't like having to choose between commenting on the blog itself or on the social share of the blog post; those two should be integrated. I see the current flock of distributed social networks as basically the testing bed that should lead to something like that. We're not there yet.

jules 4y ago
What's the advantage of being distributed?
- tiarafawn 4y ago
  Content moderation (which seems to be the biggest point of contention with Twitter right now) is decentralized. By choosing your hoster, you delegate content moderation capabilities for your feed to them. If you don't agree with their policies, you can switch to a different hoster without having to leave the ecosystem. I am not sure to which degree this is practiced/convenient in Mastodon currently, but its distributed nature enables this as an elegant solution to the content moderation problem IMO
  - sneak 4y ago
    > If you don't agree with their policies, you can switch to a different hoster without having to leave the ecosystem. But you lose all of your followers, so in practice this is never done. You’re stuck with the censorship imposed by your chosen instance operator. Most are more strict and less transparent than Twitter.
    - dmolinac 4y ago
      Actually it is not true, you can migrate from instances. You lost all messages but the followers are informed of the change: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-one-server-to-another/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-on...
    - mcv 4y ago
      I know Hubzilla supports migrating profiles. I'm not sure if any of the others do. I know Diaspora doesn't, but I keep seeing comments in this discussion that suggest Mastodon does.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
wruza 4y ago
I don't like having to choose between commenting on the blog itself or on the social share of the blog post; those two should be integrated. Wouldn’t that be something of quality between usual youtube and facebook comments? If all comments here on HN were from all over the internet, would you even sign up? (If you perceive HN as “social shares” of course).
- mcv 4y ago
  I think it needs to be in the control of the user. What do you want to see and how do you want to see it? Of course I don't want the pile of shit that the YouTube comment section often is (Google Plus' YT integration was probably their worst idea), but when someone shares a blog post, so I comment on the share and discuss it with my contacts on the social network, or do I comment on the blog itself so the blogger knows about it and can respond? I want to be able to do both.
  - theGnuMe 4y ago
    At that point you basically have Facebook I.e. your wall. What it was before the feed. It’s a good idea still.
    - mcv 4y ago
      It's certainly not an easy thing to solve. I want that stuff in my feed and share it with my friends, but the blogger will want it on their blog. And blogs could be using any of hundreds of different comment systems, which no social network is going to support. So there would have to be a standard for communication between the social network and the blog that enables them to share comments, while still letting the blogger keep control over their blog (the social network shouldn't be a backdoor to force spam or abuse on his blog), but the social network user should remain in control over their feed.
      - theGnuMe 4y ago
        There was a YC company awhile back doing something like this App.net. Maybe it could work now.. I could see YC funding a set of companies that build on a platform together, Dalton is a big part of YC now. That might be the way to bootstrap something like this. Discord seems to have something kind of going this way. If you think of the IRC and usenet model but I guess modernize it?
jstx1 4y ago
Mastodon/Friendica/Diaspora look way too weird to normal people. Their branding doesn't have mass appeal (it's like they coordinated to deliberately pick bad names) and most people don't care about decentralisation at all. People want a cool app that has other people on it (their friends, other people they know about and celebrities).
- mariusor 4y ago
  I'm surprised that people don't remember how silly twitter, twitting, twit were considered by serious people when the service launched back at the end of the naughties.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Yeah, not exactly a good name, and yet it works. There's no reason these other networks can't work. But again, it's all federated and all open source. You can make a better name and start your own site that's more attractive to the larger public and still connect them to people on Diaspora, Friendica and Mastodon.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Sure. But on some level a bird tweeting makes sense.
    - manfre 4y ago
      If the quality of content for mastadon is on par with Twitter than farting (tooting) out content makes sense too.
      - Jcowell 4y ago
        I can see members of Twitter being okay with tweeting but not with tooting. Black Twitter for instance has a lot of cultural slang that works and Interlopes with the “Bird App”. I can personally only seeing “tooting” and the whale being nothing but flame material that will further hurt it’s brand and this adoption.
Aldipower 4y ago
To be successful in Germany, Mastodon needs to change his name first. It just sounds disgusting to my ears. Similar like the German word "Mastdarm". SCNR
- mcv 4y ago
  I think it was originally created by a German and is reasonably big in Germany.
- wccrawford 4y ago
  As an American, "Mastodon" brings to mind an image of huge, lumbering animal with no a lot of brain power. It just trudges along, mindlessly. That is not a great mental image for your product unless you're selling a bulldozer.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  Mastodon was in fact created by a German developer (named Eugen Rochko), though on the fediverse he goes by Gargron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) As to whether Mastodon has been successful in Germany (or any other specific country), there could be online sites that track rough estimates regionally. I do recall Japan really embracing things...but not sure if they embraced any stack on the fediverse, or if it was mastodon specifically. But, yeah, Japan is an example of at least one country that dove deep in early on. The main "signup" website has such a tracker of servers (the term "instances" is more often used), but these stats should only be thought of as rough estimates...because, you know, federation: https://joinmastodon.org/servers https://joinmastodon.org/servers

by mcv 4y ago

jules 4y ago

What's the advantage of being distributed?

tiarafawn 4y ago
Content moderation (which seems to be the biggest point of contention with Twitter right now) is decentralized. By choosing your hoster, you delegate content moderation capabilities for your feed to them. If you don't agree with their policies, you can switch to a different hoster without having to leave the ecosystem. I am not sure to which degree this is practiced/convenient in Mastodon currently, but its distributed nature enables this as an elegant solution to the content moderation problem IMO
- sneak 4y ago
  > If you don't agree with their policies, you can switch to a different hoster without having to leave the ecosystem. But you lose all of your followers, so in practice this is never done. You’re stuck with the censorship imposed by your chosen instance operator. Most are more strict and less transparent than Twitter.
  - dmolinac 4y ago
    Actually it is not true, you can migrate from instances. You lost all messages but the followers are informed of the change: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-one-server-to-another/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-on...
  - mcv 4y ago
    I know Hubzilla supports migrating profiles. I'm not sure if any of the others do. I know Diaspora doesn't, but I keep seeing comments in this discussion that suggest Mastodon does.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

wruza 4y ago

I don't like having to choose between commenting on the blog itself or on the social share of the blog post; those two should be integrated. Wouldn’t that be something of quality between usual youtube and facebook comments? If all comments here on HN were from all over the internet, would you even sign up? (If you perceive HN as “social shares” of course).

mcv 4y ago
I think it needs to be in the control of the user. What do you want to see and how do you want to see it? Of course I don't want the pile of shit that the YouTube comment section often is (Google Plus' YT integration was probably their worst idea), but when someone shares a blog post, so I comment on the share and discuss it with my contacts on the social network, or do I comment on the blog itself so the blogger knows about it and can respond? I want to be able to do both.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  At that point you basically have Facebook I.e. your wall. What it was before the feed. It’s a good idea still.
  - mcv 4y ago
    It's certainly not an easy thing to solve. I want that stuff in my feed and share it with my friends, but the blogger will want it on their blog. And blogs could be using any of hundreds of different comment systems, which no social network is going to support. So there would have to be a standard for communication between the social network and the blog that enables them to share comments, while still letting the blogger keep control over their blog (the social network shouldn't be a backdoor to force spam or abuse on his blog), but the social network user should remain in control over their feed.
    - theGnuMe 4y ago
      There was a YC company awhile back doing something like this App.net. Maybe it could work now.. I could see YC funding a set of companies that build on a platform together, Dalton is a big part of YC now. That might be the way to bootstrap something like this. Discord seems to have something kind of going this way. If you think of the IRC and usenet model but I guess modernize it?

jstx1 4y ago

Mastodon/Friendica/Diaspora look way too weird to normal people. Their branding doesn't have mass appeal (it's like they coordinated to deliberately pick bad names) and most people don't care about decentralisation at all. People want a cool app that has other people on it (their friends, other people they know about and celebrities).

mariusor 4y ago
I'm surprised that people don't remember how silly twitter, twitting, twit were considered by serious people when the service launched back at the end of the naughties.
- mcv 4y ago
  Yeah, not exactly a good name, and yet it works. There's no reason these other networks can't work. But again, it's all federated and all open source. You can make a better name and start your own site that's more attractive to the larger public and still connect them to people on Diaspora, Friendica and Mastodon.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Sure. But on some level a bird tweeting makes sense.
  - manfre 4y ago
    If the quality of content for mastadon is on par with Twitter than farting (tooting) out content makes sense too.
    - Jcowell 4y ago
      I can see members of Twitter being okay with tweeting but not with tooting. Black Twitter for instance has a lot of cultural slang that works and Interlopes with the “Bird App”. I can personally only seeing “tooting” and the whale being nothing but flame material that will further hurt it’s brand and this adoption.

Aldipower 4y ago

To be successful in Germany, Mastodon needs to change his name first. It just sounds disgusting to my ears. Similar like the German word "Mastdarm". SCNR

mcv 4y ago
I think it was originally created by a German and is reasonably big in Germany.
wccrawford 4y ago
As an American, "Mastodon" brings to mind an image of huge, lumbering animal with no a lot of brain power. It just trudges along, mindlessly. That is not a great mental image for your product unless you're selling a bulldozer.
mxuribe 4y ago
Mastodon was in fact created by a German developer (named Eugen Rochko), though on the fediverse he goes by Gargron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) As to whether Mastodon has been successful in Germany (or any other specific country), there could be online sites that track rough estimates regionally. I do recall Japan really embracing things...but not sure if they embraced any stack on the fediverse, or if it was mastodon specifically. But, yeah, Japan is an example of at least one country that dove deep in early on. The main "signup" website has such a tracker of servers (the term "instances" is more often used), but these stats should only be thought of as rough estimates...because, you know, federation: https://joinmastodon.org/servers https://joinmastodon.org/servers