29 ms·

Taking a Look at Mastodon

131 points by treve 4y ago

snapplebobapple 4y ago
I want mastodon to succeed but the deal breaker for me is that the conversation threading is basically non existent. It's worse than twitter, which is itself a total dumpsterfire if more than 2 people start commenting on anything.
krullin 4y ago
The first link contains a typo which directs you to a website asking you to install a sketchy browser addon.
- treve 4y ago
  Thank you! Fixed (should be live in a few mins)
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    FYI, there are at least two other cases of "Mastadon" in the article rather than "Mastodon", although the link is obviously the most important! I'd also like to note that having a difficult-to-spell name is not going to help improve take up of Mastodon.
kowlo 4y ago
This is an unfinished article with links leading nowhere... e.g. https://joinmast[a]don.org/ https://joinmast[a]don.org/ How is this on the front page with 37 points?
- treve 4y ago
  Typo should be fixed. Perhaps remove this link from your comment to not give them any more traffic (looks like a scammy site)
- schmichael 4y ago
  https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ is the correct link for anyone wondering.
- tonetheman 4y ago
  I would like to know my options. I have been on twitter for a long time and I have a lot of good people that I like to follow. And I imagine a good portion of them are also looking for options. No one wants to be on a platform where the CEO cannot tell the difference between truth and lies. The fact that he wants to sell the blue check mark is a good indication of how much he does not know about what he bought. It is a horrible plan and will generate so little revenue. He is a rich idiot.
Timja 4y ago
The problem with Mastodon is that it solves nothing. You are at the mercy of whoever runs the instance you join. What we need is a protocol. Maybe the upcoming NOSTR is a good approach: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/ https://github.com/nostr-protocol/
- schmichael 4y ago
  ActivityPub is the protocol Mastodon implements as stated in the article. You can run your own instance or pay someone to host an instance for you that you otherwise have full control over. You can pick exactly how much or little of your stack you want to own from the code to the followers.
  - Timja 4y ago
    Yes, if everybody would run their own instance, that would make it decentralized. But that is not going to happen. We need a protocol that allows ownership of your social graph without having to host your own server.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - schmichael 4y ago
      Your original post said you wanted a protocol, not a decentralized protocol. Mastodon/ActivityPub have chosen a federated model over a decentralized one. Federated has a lot of usability and scalability benefits over decentralized, but users sacrifice some privacy and ownership abilities. Everyone is free to choose their own tradeoffs.
    - jayknight 4y ago
      I'm interested to see where https://atproto.com/ https://atproto.com/ goes.
  - meowface 4y ago
    The README for that repo discusses Mastodon/ActivityPub: >The problem with Mastodon and similar programs >User identities are attached to domain names controlled by third-parties; >Server owners can ban you, just like Twitter; >Migration between servers is an afterthought and can only be accomplished if servers cooperate. >It doesn't work in an adversarial environment (all followers are lost); >There are no clear incentives to run servers, therefore they tend to be run by enthusiasts and people who want to have their name attached to a cool domain. Then, users are subject to the despotism of a single person, which is often worse than that of a big company like Twitter, and they can't migrate out; >Since servers tend to be run amateurishly, they are often abandoned after a while — which is effectively the same as banning everybody; >It doesn't make sense to have a ton of servers if updates from every server will have to be painfully pushed (and saved!) to a ton of other servers. This point is exacerbated by the fact that servers tend to exist in huge numbers, therefore more data has to be passed to more places more often;
schmichael 4y ago
I'm looking to leave Twitter these days as well and am very thankful for all of these Mastodon posts. Here are a couple others: 1. https://jacobian.org/til/my-mastodon-instance/ https://jacobian.org/til/my-mastodon-instance/ 2. https://aeracode.org/2022/11/01/fediverse-custom-domains/ https://aeracode.org/2022/11/01/fediverse-custom-domains/ If nothing else it's very exciting to see a lot of folks tinkering with web technologies that are fully under their control!
zzzeek 4y ago
I have hope for Mastodon but in the past week it's been hammered with way more load than it's ready for (the main mastodon.social site). so at the moment, they maybe can borrow Twitter's fail whale until they can get their scaling up accomplished.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  The nice thing about it is that since I'm on a different server it still works fine for me even when mastodon.social is falling over.
  - zzzeek 4y ago
    right, but are you having problems /delays seeing statuses from folks who come from mastodon.social?
    - gpm 4y ago
      Presumably? Short of coordinating with someone to check I'm not sure how I'd even notice. (I'm a different person than who you replied to, but have had the same experience, the instance I'm on is perfectly responsive)
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      As with sibling, it's possible but it hasn't happened in any way that bothers me. Seems like it's just CAP theory in action. I don't think consistency is the corner of that triangle to optimize for in this case.
    - OctopusLupid 4y ago
      I am on a smaller server but I'm seeing delays from the big servers, yeah. I'm trying to advocate for people to find smaller servers (e.g. < 10k users) but it's something that really needs improving in the UX (that is, encouraging people to use smaller servers instead of joining one big server. I try to recommend https://fediverse.party https://fediverse.party or https://joinfediverse.com https://joinfediverse.com).
- 4y ago
lxe 4y ago
The ergonomics of the fediverse just aren't fleshed out yet. Why do I need to join a server? What advantages/features do I get? At least with email, I get clear understanding of what I'm signing up for with individual email hosts, like spam filters, privacy, inbox size, attachments, app compatibilities, etc...
- baq 4y ago
  Everything old is new again. Usenet keeps getting reinvented.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Joining a server is fine. The friction between servers is not (why is this thread not showing every response from the whole fediverse, why is it so hard to browse what people said, jumping through different instances? Why are there two different UIs for viewing a message and only one of them uses your home instance etc)
haunter 4y ago
I still don't see how would you make people pay because as it stands most, if not all, big servers are purely run on donations. And as I was looking around the software itself doesn't support ads or promoted posts. I liked the idea of Mastodon but if it ever gets big (which is also a interesting considering 6 years in the biggest server still doesn't have 1m users [0]) then I can't see people paying for it, just like how most people don't pay for Twitter, Discord, or reddit or for email to give a federated example. 0, https://instances.social/mastodon.social https://instances.social/mastodon.social
- schmichael 4y ago
  I think there's a few options here: 1. Ad supported high scale instances like email has gmail, hotmail, etc. 2. Silo'd instances like if all of the NWS accounts, or even all of the US federal government accounts, moved to their own instance. I think ideally a little of both would happen with lots of folks still happy to use their own instance or a donation based one.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    The German government is already doing 2, they have their own Activitypub instance.
oldandboring 4y ago
I joined a Mastodon server yesterday ("mastodon.online") and I immediately started searching the 'fediverse' for people I already follow on Twitter, seeing if I could build myself a little feed to read. The first few people I searched all had multiple accounts, across multiple servers. So immediately this is a problem: - Which one is the one I should follow? I guess I'll click on each one and see which one they're actually using to post. - How do I stop someone from impersonating me by creating an account with my same username, on a different server? - What happens when the unpaid/volunteer mods on a server get overwhelmed with the content moderation task? What happens when they just start censoring stuff they disagree with (exactly what the wingnuts claim Twitter/FB have been doing to conservatives)? I don't get this whole "a protocol is the answer" thing either. Sounds like the same kind of nebulous thinking we hear when people start pontificating about blockchain. Twitter was (is?) successful because the model makes sense. A for-profit company whose motivation to fairly and competently moderate content and verify users is driven by their need to be a safe space for the advertisers upon whose money they rely.
- kstrauser 4y ago
  Note that those exact same questions exist for email. Which email addresses are your friends actually using? What stops me from registering "oldandboring@yahoo.com" if you haven't already claimed it?
- SLWW 4y ago
  I'm gonna try to answer your questions in order. - usually they have alts, you can send them a message to please update their twitter bio with the link to their main mastadon account. - You can not stop someone from impersonating you; however even the most infamous/famous characters on the fediverse have links to their channels, websites and blogs that link back to that account; so this doesn't happen often, it's very rare. - Even though i don't appreciate your dismissal of a very real problem; there is no protection, however it is very easy to set up your own instance if you feel your voice is being wrongfully censored. As a consequence, no one is ever truly "banned". - Ignore the hype, I love the fediverse but it has some severe issues; the protocol is never the issue as we are dealing with human beings here. Instead of advertising, we rely on donations and the good will of the community, advertisers are scum in the fedi world. If you know anyone thinking they can rep their product on it they will be in for one heck of a backlash.
SLWW 4y ago
Well, I will say that while you might think that Twitter has somehow taken a grim turn for the worst. Most people, outside of the most niche instances, will not find a "safe" harbor. I'm a long time user of the fediverse, I can't help but say that I love the freedom of having a bunch of independent nodes all communicating, all with our different standards and so forth. It's very freeing but it comes at a cost, most instances, however hard you try, will not censor half the things you would never see on Twitter. People like Twitter because of their draconian moderation efforts, I was banned from Twitter because I told someone that a death threat was not ok; apparently Twitter decided that I since i said "shut up" that i was somehow the aggressor. I'm tired of this idea that "Twitter's future is bleak" mentality, all because some rich guy bought it that would rather the platform be less strict when it comes to political thought. If it is the town square of the internet, it makes sense that people should be able to say what they want and be laughed at if they are being an idiot. Twitter was never a good platform in any sense of the word, it is probably now the best it's ever been, and it will be better once the active user count is under a thousand. People ruin things, don't be surprised when they ruin some mastadon instance you spend time on. As a side note, the people that run mastadon are a bit... off when it comes to ethics, so i would recommend pleroma which has had less, egregious, errors in the past.
- teeray 4y ago
  I'm not sure why blocklists aren't sufficient. Users with similar interests pool together to block content that they find disagreeable, so that others with similar views also aren't subjected to that content. It's basically an opt-in filter bubble. If your views change, so then can your filter bubble. All of the existing moderators at Twitter could do their exact same job--the difference is that users get to choose whether or not they subscribe to their filter or not (which even makes the filter more of an editorial product).
  - SLWW 4y ago
    It's not that straight forward. It's a moving target, if an instance is blocked enough it will move to a different domain and start federating again. It's just something to keep in mind.
tester756 4y ago
It feels like recently there's a lot of about Mastodon on HN is this some kind of ad?
- SLWW 4y ago
  You also have the options of pleroma, misskey, and a few other options. I prefer pleroma. I hold a great dislike for mastadon, though they are all compatible so feel free to do your research for what you are looking for in a software stack. It's hard to move when you establish yourself.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  I suspect it's related to the recent news that Elon Musk purchased Twitter (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twit...). I think some folks may be curious about alternatives to Twitter given the unknown nature of changes to come.
jeffbee 4y ago
Can Mastodon ever reach the scale of Twitter? Does their architecture answer the question of what happens when Obama tweets an image to 150 million followers? Hopefully the answer is not "the local Mastodon instance owner gets a $100k AWS bill next month." Currently Mastodon.social, which I understand to be the largest instance, has tragic performance with only ~125k users. Every page load takes multiple minutes. It leaves me wondering how Mastodon can replace Twitter in practice. Edit: and when I say "multiple minutes" that's an estimate ... it's been several minutes and there's no sign that it will ever render.
- kornhole 4y ago
  Many servers/communities exist in which you might find a good home, but you will need to live with their rules and moderation policies. If you are a politician, journalist, or other high profile person who wants full control to avoid censorship, trolling, and cancellation, get your own domain name. I recommend gandi.net, but other registrars are available. If you already have a domain name, we use a subdomain such as social.yourdomain.com. 1. Setup your own Mastodon instance that you fully control. You have several options here: a. If you already have your site hosted on a server, you can co-host it there. b. If you want someone to take care of all the install and maintenance, contact someone such as https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/. c. If you want to run it from hardware sitting in your office or home, you have many options to do that too. 2. Setup your server rules, logo, and users such as your staffers. 3. Go to https://twitodon.com/ https://twitodon.com/ and register your new account connected to your Twitter account. Also update your home page with this account if you have one. 4. Setup RSS for all the people still tweeting instead of tooting using https://rss-bridge.org/ https://rss-bridge.org/ or https://nitter.net/about https://nitter.net/about to get their RSS feeds.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    That did not really answer the question. Twitter allows me to disseminate a photo or video to the entire world, at no risk to myself, for free. How does mastodon address the use case?
    - 4y ago
10g1k 4y ago
Twitter has been a left wing extremist echo chamber for years. Ever since it became acceptable to silence and ban anyone and everyone who failed to comply with far left dogma. Now the sky is falling because they fear twitter might bring back something close to free speech. So they're panicking, fluttering around, squawking, etc, seeking another safe space. The funny part is that if they all migrate to Mastodon, they'll find it's where all the really weird extremists went before them. I mean Mastodon is packed with serious right wing and left wing extremists of every sort, along with probably dangerous p3rv3rts, and various other disgusting individuals such as politicians and reporters.
- xcrunner529 4y ago
  I mean all you have to do to not get banned is not act like a child and name-call, inflict/wish for violence or threats, and any other illegal things. It seems one political ideology can’t seem to post without those things. Interesting.
  - 10g1k 4y ago
    Twitter employees literally admitted to banning and suspending wrongthinkers/conservatives. Project Veritas. Learn.
goldforever 4y ago
jacooper 4y ago
Just take a look at Mastodon's twitter replies, The most common issue is finding other on other instances. Something people have been taking about since 2017!!! https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1589 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1589 And Gargon(Mastodons maintainer) just added relays support and called it a day. While the main issue still isn't fixed, none of the official Mastodon servers use relays, so discoverability is still crap. You can't browse other servers timelines https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1053 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1053 And can't even backfill toots from accounts(you can't view toots older than the server itself!!!!), This is absolutely ridiculous https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14017 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14017 These issues are unfortunately predictable, and it seems Gargon won't fix them any time soon. Its kind of funny that in Mastodon(basically Activitypub at this point) a federated platform, starting your own server is almost impossible unless people actually know you outside the platform, your chances of growing inside the platform are basically zero. You won't show up in other instances search unless someone from the other instance follows you. Even if you reply to users from that instance and its users liked your toots, you still won't show up in the instances search, its amazing. Heck, even Matrix, a chat protocol has better discoverability than Mastodon, user in rooms I'm in will show up immediately in my servers search. Its not a federation problem, its a Mastodon problem. - show up in search here is meant as in showing up by just typing your display name / username without the server address, because no one knows which server you are in.
- kornhole 4y ago
  Because Mastodon values anonymity, no real verification is built into the protocol. One way to establish your real ID account is get your own domain yourname.something and give that to people. Point the domain to a page such as yourname.neocities.com or even to your Mastodon page. Discovery is difficult, but you might try https://fedi.directory/ https://fedi.directory/.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    I host my own Matrix server, and as I said in the OC, matrix a chat protocol has better discoverability than Mastodon a social network
lapcat 4y ago
I tried Mastodon for 1 day recently, and then I gave up and deleted my account. The web interface wasn't good (worse than Twitter if you can believe it), the native client I tried wasn't good either, but the worst problem is that following accounts of a different instance was a major pain. In retrospect, I made the mistake of joining the smaller mastodon.online rather than mastodon.social, which they claimed wouldn't make a difference, but it did. I couldn't just follow someone on another instance from their profile page, because their profile page is on a different server from mine. It wanted me to copy a URL, paste it into a search field, find the account, and then follow, which is ridiculous and tiresome. The onboarding for new users on Mastodon seems terrible in every way. (I also couldn't disable "boosts" in my timeline, which is something I could do on Twitter.) I wanted to like Mastodon! But I just didn't, and I didn't feel like enough other people were going to like it either to make it worthwhile to use.
- MBCook 4y ago
  I’m trying it now. I have ALWAYS used Twitter through the 3rd party TweetBot app. That basically is Twitter for me. Unless someone sends me a link to a tweet, I don’t use the web. The Mastodon app is no comparison. It has hitches while scrolling my (tiny) timeline. I can’t figure out some of the buttons or why they’re highlighted. There are no gestures at all that I’ve found. I don’t expect the level of one of the best Twitter apps of all time, but it feels more like what a web developer would think an app is. Also, I did join Mastodon.social. And it’s currently dead from load (I assume). So my experience is going great. Normal people just don’t care about federation. They seem to actively dislike it, and I don’t blame them. The only federated thing most people will ever use is email, and that’s a relic from the 1980s. And centralizing on gmail/outlook/a few others. I can’t think of a single thing normal people use. Most people don’t make their own site anymore, and so many that do are really just on one of the big hosts. They view content from web sites, but that seems different somehow. I just have a hard time seeing Mastodon succeed. Between federation (yes, I know the benefits), resource issues, and simple UX issues I can’t imagine it taking off. The UX and apps can be fixed, but by then its one chance may have passed and it may be too late.
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
groffee 4y ago
I think the fundamental issue with Mastodon is the user experience is non-existent, it's actively painful to use. Everyone focuses on the 'tech stack', but when it comes to actually using a product no-one cares about that, not even other 'tech' users. People just want something that works so they don't have to. People can hate on Twitter but it's polished, and it works.
andreyk 4y ago
I think mass migration of people from Twitter to Mastodon is unlikely, but I do have some hope that specific communities will be able to make the switch. For instance, just yesterday I set up a new instance -- which was incredibly easy thanks to masto.host, literally two clicks and a config change on Namecheap -- that can hopefully become a space for people interested in AI to move to from Twitter (in case you are curious, it's https://sigmoid.social/ https://sigmoid.social/). Here's my rationale: Twitter is kind of invaluable if you are an academic working in AI (and in many other fields as far as I can tell), it's a great way to discover new work as well as promote your own (and yeah there is silly drama sometimes, but it's rare). Many academics genuinely love it, including myself. Those same academics generally loathe or at least dislike Musk, and worry about the future of the platform, and don't care that much about non AI stuff on there. So if just the part of Twitter you care about it migrates to a Mastodon instance, such academics would likely consider it. And if you are a person or entity with a decent following on Twitter, it does seem feasible to encourage the community to at least try to move over. Maybe, maybe not, but I figure it's worth a try (I am planning to announce it on Twitter later this week).
silverwasthere 4y ago
I'd just like to mention that if you are considering joining mastodon that you should join an instance with a specific topic and not one of the large generally known ones. You will find a community instead of just a platform, and this is where mastodon shines. There is a tool called joinmastodon which will help.
anderspitman 4y ago
Is there a way with Mastodon to have an account on a hosted server but use an ID from a domain you control? Like if I wanted to have my ID be @me@social.apitman.com but pay for an account on another server rather than have my own. Seems like it should be possible with Let's Encrypt.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  Some third-party fediverse hosts allow you to point your own custom (sub)domain at the instance they operate for you; you can also just set up your own instance. Not sure what Let's Encrypt would have to do with this, though.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    Without Let's Encrypt or something similar it would be a pain to get TLS certs for every user's domain.
- OctopusLupid 4y ago
  You can take a look at https://masto.host https://masto.host if you want your own managed server, but you'll have to do your own inter-server moderation in that case.
pwinnski 4y ago
People talk about email as the prime example of federation that we all use every day, but... gmail.com alone has a 30% market share, and 61% of 18-29 year olds[0]. The only reason that number isn't much higher is work emails, and a goodly number of work emails these days are actually Gmail behind the scenes as well! People don't want federation, people don't like federation, people are actively annoyed by federation. Of course, people also don't want to have an AI model decide they've broken unwritten rules and have their digital lives walled off, but if federation is the only solution to that (I'm not convinced) then people will take their chances. 0. https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/ https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/
- kodah 4y ago
  Federation didn't drive people to GMail. A modern interface and someone building on top of the protocol did.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    My point wasn't that people fled federated email to congregate at gmail. My point was that most people don't care one wet slap about federation, and will happily use whatever people point as easily usable (and free), whether Hotmail, or Yahoo, or Gmail.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    IIRC, what really drove people to Gmail was the huge storage space. Finally, no more having to manage your own quota, no more dealing with bounced email, etc. I think that's a far easier sell than 'modern interface', although I'm not sure what the equivalent for Mastodon users would be — maybe simply "it's free" if Twitter becomes a paid service.
    - sockaddr 4y ago
      Yup. I think the alternatives at the time were things like Hotmail offering a whopping 4MB.
    - 4y ago
owlbynight 4y ago
The idea of Mastodon is good but it's too annoying to use, and that will torpedo any hope for wide use.
- qball 4y ago
  >The idea of Mastodon is good but it's too annoying to use, and that will torpedo any hope for wide use. If by "the idea of Mastodon" you mean "you can connect to isolated versions of Twitter and view it with whatever client you want, but users maintain an account for every instance", then Mastodon is great. The majority of people who use Mastodon use it in this way, and it's reportedly excellent. The two largest instances are identical in purpose, to the point that their userbase doesn't see their sharing of identities to be a liability, and it's functionally irrelevant to their social graph- their "usernames" are a combination of their Twitter handles and their contributions don't vanish if banned. Novel content is widespread, because the posters are all artists. However, if by "the idea of Mastodon" you mean "you can have a unified identity, but server admins have the final say in which instances that identity is allowed to talk to and can fragment it at will", then Mastodon is over-complicated, unstable, and hostile. The majority of articles featuring Mastodon emphasize this as a feature (well, that and the custom client thing), but "small groups of people whose only common trait is that they like custom Twitter clients" is not predictive of post quality or quantity, and the fungibility of one's post means coming into conflict with an unstable platform is just that much worse (you can follow a timeline of usernames in art if/as they change simply due to style, something that's not true for hot takes or even semi-long-form text posts like this, so if your instance turns hostile the only thing you have is your username... which can trivially be taken from you. And I think it's this latter group for which Twitter will continue to have the edge simply because there, usernames are unique, and all notable people post there anyway simply due to audience size. You don't have to worry that your social graph is going to get split in half (and your posts effectively banned from half the network that can see them by default) overnight; stability like that is valuable.
  - elsjaako 4y ago
    Where are you getting that most users have an account on "every" instance? I've been on Mastodon for several years, and this isn't my experience at all. Right now Mastodon is a bit weird; all the servers are overloaded and everyone is talking about twitter. But in a few months I think it will go back to being a nice social network. I'm always a bit amused at these kinds of posts, as if twitter has to fail for Mastodon to be successful. For a lot of people Mastodon is already good, and has been for some years.
m3kw9 4y ago
Why should I try something that works like twitter but worse?
fleddr 4y ago
The idea that Twitter's future is "bleak" is really premature. For that you have to separate your possible dislike of Musk from the actual ideas, instead of jumping to hysterical conclusions. Musk won't turn it into 4chan because that would be fatal, his entire investment gone with no goals achieved. As he claimed, he seeks to amplify the current silent majority (80%) whilst pissing of the political extremes to the same degree equally. Surely a delicate balancing act, but I find it a noble goal. The tiny little rush of harmful slurs, fueled by people thinking they can now say whatever they want, was immediately stopped in its tracks. Next up, a moderation board will oversee moderation/censorship. We don't know yet what this will bring, so there's little point in drawing conclusions. It's about 2 days old. He's experimenting with alternative payment models. We always criticize the toxic ad model, so I think this is refreshing. He's looking to flatten the influencer curve by dampening the run-away status effects found in Twitter's algorithms. He claims to want to onboard longform content and video, and I would expect quite a few other product improvements/ideas. Judged by his reputation, I would expect them to be delivered rapidly. Quite a culture change from Twitter's product team producing close to nothing. I'm sure he'll continue to be an unhinged unpredictable character and asshole, but I consider Twitter to be so broken that the ideas at face-value do not come across as "bleak", promising instead.
- mandeepj 4y ago
  > Judged by his reputation, I would expect them to be delivered rapidly. Ha! He’s not known for his timing. I appreciate your positive tone and details though
  - fleddr 4y ago
    I'm sure that's a reference to Tesla delays? Fair enough. But my point is that Musk is the kind of person that can say "let's do video, you have 3 months". It doesn't really matter that it takes 4 or 5 months instead. That's still rapid in comparison to Twitter's reputation where despite having thousands of engineers and more than a decade of time, the app feels unchanged.
    - 4y ago
LightHugger 4y ago
I went on mastodon several months ago and the big servers for topics i was interested (They were non-political, technical topics) in had racism in the rules. The one i remember was that calling for the death of all white people is explicitly allowed. Might as well just stay on twitter if that's the standard being set there.
28304283409234 4y ago
"Unlike email, it appears that with Mastadon you can actually migrate to different instances if you don’t like your current one." So exactly like email then.
veidr 4y ago
The "normal people don't want federation" sentiment is really just a misstatement of "normal people don't want bad and/or complicated UIs". Easy to conflate, because (yes, email aside) there are essentially no good examples of good normal-people UIs for federated things. Partly because they tend to be volunteer, open-source efforts with the concomitant lack of budget/resources, I guess, but partly also because you need a better UI to deal with the added complexities that are introduced by federation in the first place. There are more choices to make. In theory, of course it is possible to make a good UI for federated chat, or micro-shitposting, or whatever. But in practice, Matrix has forty-five GUI clients and zero good ones. Mastodon likewise.

131 points by treve 4y ago

I want mastodon to succeed but the deal breaker for me is that the conversation threading is basically non existent. It's worse than twitter, which is itself a total dumpsterfire if more than 2 people start commenting on anything.

krullin 4y ago

The first link contains a typo which directs you to a website asking you to install a sketchy browser addon.

treve 4y ago
Thank you! Fixed (should be live in a few mins)
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  FYI, there are at least two other cases of "Mastadon" in the article rather than "Mastodon", although the link is obviously the most important! I'd also like to note that having a difficult-to-spell name is not going to help improve take up of Mastodon.

kowlo 4y ago

This is an unfinished article with links leading nowhere... e.g. https://joinmast[a]don.org/ https://joinmast[a]don.org/ How is this on the front page with 37 points?

treve 4y ago
Typo should be fixed. Perhaps remove this link from your comment to not give them any more traffic (looks like a scammy site)
schmichael 4y ago
https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ is the correct link for anyone wondering.
tonetheman 4y ago
I would like to know my options. I have been on twitter for a long time and I have a lot of good people that I like to follow. And I imagine a good portion of them are also looking for options. No one wants to be on a platform where the CEO cannot tell the difference between truth and lies. The fact that he wants to sell the blue check mark is a good indication of how much he does not know about what he bought. It is a horrible plan and will generate so little revenue. He is a rich idiot.

Timja 4y ago

The problem with Mastodon is that it solves nothing. You are at the mercy of whoever runs the instance you join. What we need is a protocol. Maybe the upcoming NOSTR is a good approach: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/ https://github.com/nostr-protocol/

schmichael 4y ago
ActivityPub is the protocol Mastodon implements as stated in the article. You can run your own instance or pay someone to host an instance for you that you otherwise have full control over. You can pick exactly how much or little of your stack you want to own from the code to the followers.
- Timja 4y ago
  Yes, if everybody would run their own instance, that would make it decentralized. But that is not going to happen. We need a protocol that allows ownership of your social graph without having to host your own server.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - schmichael 4y ago
    Your original post said you wanted a protocol, not a decentralized protocol. Mastodon/ActivityPub have chosen a federated model over a decentralized one. Federated has a lot of usability and scalability benefits over decentralized, but users sacrifice some privacy and ownership abilities. Everyone is free to choose their own tradeoffs.
  - jayknight 4y ago
    I'm interested to see where https://atproto.com/ https://atproto.com/ goes.
- meowface 4y ago
  The README for that repo discusses Mastodon/ActivityPub: >The problem with Mastodon and similar programs >User identities are attached to domain names controlled by third-parties; >Server owners can ban you, just like Twitter; >Migration between servers is an afterthought and can only be accomplished if servers cooperate. >It doesn't work in an adversarial environment (all followers are lost); >There are no clear incentives to run servers, therefore they tend to be run by enthusiasts and people who want to have their name attached to a cool domain. Then, users are subject to the despotism of a single person, which is often worse than that of a big company like Twitter, and they can't migrate out; >Since servers tend to be run amateurishly, they are often abandoned after a while — which is effectively the same as banning everybody; >It doesn't make sense to have a ton of servers if updates from every server will have to be painfully pushed (and saved!) to a ton of other servers. This point is exacerbated by the fact that servers tend to exist in huge numbers, therefore more data has to be passed to more places more often;

schmichael 4y ago

I'm looking to leave Twitter these days as well and am very thankful for all of these Mastodon posts. Here are a couple others: 1. https://jacobian.org/til/my-mastodon-instance/ https://jacobian.org/til/my-mastodon-instance/ 2. https://aeracode.org/2022/11/01/fediverse-custom-domains/ https://aeracode.org/2022/11/01/fediverse-custom-domains/ If nothing else it's very exciting to see a lot of folks tinkering with web technologies that are fully under their control!

zzzeek 4y ago

I have hope for Mastodon but in the past week it's been hammered with way more load than it's ready for (the main mastodon.social site). so at the moment, they maybe can borrow Twitter's fail whale until they can get their scaling up accomplished.

stormbrew 4y ago
The nice thing about it is that since I'm on a different server it still works fine for me even when mastodon.social is falling over.
- zzzeek 4y ago
  right, but are you having problems /delays seeing statuses from folks who come from mastodon.social?
  - gpm 4y ago
    Presumably? Short of coordinating with someone to check I'm not sure how I'd even notice. (I'm a different person than who you replied to, but have had the same experience, the instance I'm on is perfectly responsive)
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    As with sibling, it's possible but it hasn't happened in any way that bothers me. Seems like it's just CAP theory in action. I don't think consistency is the corner of that triangle to optimize for in this case.
  - OctopusLupid 4y ago
    I am on a smaller server but I'm seeing delays from the big servers, yeah. I'm trying to advocate for people to find smaller servers (e.g. < 10k users) but it's something that really needs improving in the UX (that is, encouraging people to use smaller servers instead of joining one big server. I try to recommend https://fediverse.party https://fediverse.party or https://joinfediverse.com https://joinfediverse.com).
4y ago

lxe 4y ago

The ergonomics of the fediverse just aren't fleshed out yet. Why do I need to join a server? What advantages/features do I get? At least with email, I get clear understanding of what I'm signing up for with individual email hosts, like spam filters, privacy, inbox size, attachments, app compatibilities, etc...

baq 4y ago
Everything old is new again. Usenet keeps getting reinvented.
kzrdude 4y ago
Joining a server is fine. The friction between servers is not (why is this thread not showing every response from the whole fediverse, why is it so hard to browse what people said, jumping through different instances? Why are there two different UIs for viewing a message and only one of them uses your home instance etc)

haunter 4y ago

I still don't see how would you make people pay because as it stands most, if not all, big servers are purely run on donations. And as I was looking around the software itself doesn't support ads or promoted posts. I liked the idea of Mastodon but if it ever gets big (which is also a interesting considering 6 years in the biggest server still doesn't have 1m users [0]) then I can't see people paying for it, just like how most people don't pay for Twitter, Discord, or reddit or for email to give a federated example. 0, https://instances.social/mastodon.social https://instances.social/mastodon.social

schmichael 4y ago
I think there's a few options here: 1. Ad supported high scale instances like email has gmail, hotmail, etc. 2. Silo'd instances like if all of the NWS accounts, or even all of the US federal government accounts, moved to their own instance. I think ideally a little of both would happen with lots of folks still happy to use their own instance or a donation based one.
- jacooper 4y ago
  The German government is already doing 2, they have their own Activitypub instance.

oldandboring 4y ago

I joined a Mastodon server yesterday ("mastodon.online") and I immediately started searching the 'fediverse' for people I already follow on Twitter, seeing if I could build myself a little feed to read. The first few people I searched all had multiple accounts, across multiple servers. So immediately this is a problem: - Which one is the one I should follow? I guess I'll click on each one and see which one they're actually using to post. - How do I stop someone from impersonating me by creating an account with my same username, on a different server? - What happens when the unpaid/volunteer mods on a server get overwhelmed with the content moderation task? What happens when they just start censoring stuff they disagree with (exactly what the wingnuts claim Twitter/FB have been doing to conservatives)? I don't get this whole "a protocol is the answer" thing either. Sounds like the same kind of nebulous thinking we hear when people start pontificating about blockchain. Twitter was (is?) successful because the model makes sense. A for-profit company whose motivation to fairly and competently moderate content and verify users is driven by their need to be a safe space for the advertisers upon whose money they rely.

kstrauser 4y ago
Note that those exact same questions exist for email. Which email addresses are your friends actually using? What stops me from registering "oldandboring@yahoo.com" if you haven't already claimed it?
SLWW 4y ago
I'm gonna try to answer your questions in order. - usually they have alts, you can send them a message to please update their twitter bio with the link to their main mastadon account. - You can not stop someone from impersonating you; however even the most infamous/famous characters on the fediverse have links to their channels, websites and blogs that link back to that account; so this doesn't happen often, it's very rare. - Even though i don't appreciate your dismissal of a very real problem; there is no protection, however it is very easy to set up your own instance if you feel your voice is being wrongfully censored. As a consequence, no one is ever truly "banned". - Ignore the hype, I love the fediverse but it has some severe issues; the protocol is never the issue as we are dealing with human beings here. Instead of advertising, we rely on donations and the good will of the community, advertisers are scum in the fedi world. If you know anyone thinking they can rep their product on it they will be in for one heck of a backlash.

SLWW 4y ago

Well, I will say that while you might think that Twitter has somehow taken a grim turn for the worst. Most people, outside of the most niche instances, will not find a "safe" harbor. I'm a long time user of the fediverse, I can't help but say that I love the freedom of having a bunch of independent nodes all communicating, all with our different standards and so forth. It's very freeing but it comes at a cost, most instances, however hard you try, will not censor half the things you would never see on Twitter. People like Twitter because of their draconian moderation efforts, I was banned from Twitter because I told someone that a death threat was not ok; apparently Twitter decided that I since i said "shut up" that i was somehow the aggressor. I'm tired of this idea that "Twitter's future is bleak" mentality, all because some rich guy bought it that would rather the platform be less strict when it comes to political thought. If it is the town square of the internet, it makes sense that people should be able to say what they want and be laughed at if they are being an idiot. Twitter was never a good platform in any sense of the word, it is probably now the best it's ever been, and it will be better once the active user count is under a thousand. People ruin things, don't be surprised when they ruin some mastadon instance you spend time on. As a side note, the people that run mastadon are a bit... off when it comes to ethics, so i would recommend pleroma which has had less, egregious, errors in the past.

teeray 4y ago
I'm not sure why blocklists aren't sufficient. Users with similar interests pool together to block content that they find disagreeable, so that others with similar views also aren't subjected to that content. It's basically an opt-in filter bubble. If your views change, so then can your filter bubble. All of the existing moderators at Twitter could do their exact same job--the difference is that users get to choose whether or not they subscribe to their filter or not (which even makes the filter more of an editorial product).
- SLWW 4y ago
  It's not that straight forward. It's a moving target, if an instance is blocked enough it will move to a different domain and start federating again. It's just something to keep in mind.

tester756 4y ago

It feels like recently there's a lot of about Mastodon on HN is this some kind of ad?

SLWW 4y ago
You also have the options of pleroma, misskey, and a few other options. I prefer pleroma. I hold a great dislike for mastadon, though they are all compatible so feel free to do your research for what you are looking for in a software stack. It's hard to move when you establish yourself.
mikkergp 4y ago
I suspect it's related to the recent news that Elon Musk purchased Twitter (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twit...). I think some folks may be curious about alternatives to Twitter given the unknown nature of changes to come.

jeffbee 4y ago

Can Mastodon ever reach the scale of Twitter? Does their architecture answer the question of what happens when Obama tweets an image to 150 million followers? Hopefully the answer is not "the local Mastodon instance owner gets a $100k AWS bill next month." Currently Mastodon.social, which I understand to be the largest instance, has tragic performance with only ~125k users. Every page load takes multiple minutes. It leaves me wondering how Mastodon can replace Twitter in practice. Edit: and when I say "multiple minutes" that's an estimate ... it's been several minutes and there's no sign that it will ever render.

kornhole 4y ago
Many servers/communities exist in which you might find a good home, but you will need to live with their rules and moderation policies. If you are a politician, journalist, or other high profile person who wants full control to avoid censorship, trolling, and cancellation, get your own domain name. I recommend gandi.net, but other registrars are available. If you already have a domain name, we use a subdomain such as social.yourdomain.com. 1. Setup your own Mastodon instance that you fully control. You have several options here: a. If you already have your site hosted on a server, you can co-host it there. b. If you want someone to take care of all the install and maintenance, contact someone such as https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/. c. If you want to run it from hardware sitting in your office or home, you have many options to do that too. 2. Setup your server rules, logo, and users such as your staffers. 3. Go to https://twitodon.com/ https://twitodon.com/ and register your new account connected to your Twitter account. Also update your home page with this account if you have one. 4. Setup RSS for all the people still tweeting instead of tooting using https://rss-bridge.org/ https://rss-bridge.org/ or https://nitter.net/about https://nitter.net/about to get their RSS feeds.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  That did not really answer the question. Twitter allows me to disseminate a photo or video to the entire world, at no risk to myself, for free. How does mastodon address the use case?
  - 4y ago

10g1k 4y ago

Twitter has been a left wing extremist echo chamber for years. Ever since it became acceptable to silence and ban anyone and everyone who failed to comply with far left dogma. Now the sky is falling because they fear twitter might bring back something close to free speech. So they're panicking, fluttering around, squawking, etc, seeking another safe space. The funny part is that if they all migrate to Mastodon, they'll find it's where all the really weird extremists went before them. I mean Mastodon is packed with serious right wing and left wing extremists of every sort, along with probably dangerous p3rv3rts, and various other disgusting individuals such as politicians and reporters.

xcrunner529 4y ago
I mean all you have to do to not get banned is not act like a child and name-call, inflict/wish for violence or threats, and any other illegal things. It seems one political ideology can’t seem to post without those things. Interesting.
- 10g1k 4y ago
  Twitter employees literally admitted to banning and suspending wrongthinkers/conservatives. Project Veritas. Learn.

goldforever 4y ago

jacooper 4y ago

Just take a look at Mastodon's twitter replies, The most common issue is finding other on other instances. Something people have been taking about since 2017!!! https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1589 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1589 And Gargon(Mastodons maintainer) just added relays support and called it a day. While the main issue still isn't fixed, none of the official Mastodon servers use relays, so discoverability is still crap. You can't browse other servers timelines https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1053 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1053 And can't even backfill toots from accounts(you can't view toots older than the server itself!!!!), This is absolutely ridiculous https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14017 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14017 These issues are unfortunately predictable, and it seems Gargon won't fix them any time soon. Its kind of funny that in Mastodon(basically Activitypub at this point) a federated platform, starting your own server is almost impossible unless people actually know you outside the platform, your chances of growing inside the platform are basically zero. You won't show up in other instances search unless someone from the other instance follows you. Even if you reply to users from that instance and its users liked your toots, you still won't show up in the instances search, its amazing. Heck, even Matrix, a chat protocol has better discoverability than Mastodon, user in rooms I'm in will show up immediately in my servers search. Its not a federation problem, its a Mastodon problem. - show up in search here is meant as in showing up by just typing your display name / username without the server address, because no one knows which server you are in.

kornhole 4y ago
Because Mastodon values anonymity, no real verification is built into the protocol. One way to establish your real ID account is get your own domain yourname.something and give that to people. Point the domain to a page such as yourname.neocities.com or even to your Mastodon page. Discovery is difficult, but you might try https://fedi.directory/ https://fedi.directory/.
- jacooper 4y ago
  I host my own Matrix server, and as I said in the OC, matrix a chat protocol has better discoverability than Mastodon a social network

lapcat 4y ago

I tried Mastodon for 1 day recently, and then I gave up and deleted my account. The web interface wasn't good (worse than Twitter if you can believe it), the native client I tried wasn't good either, but the worst problem is that following accounts of a different instance was a major pain. In retrospect, I made the mistake of joining the smaller mastodon.online rather than mastodon.social, which they claimed wouldn't make a difference, but it did. I couldn't just follow someone on another instance from their profile page, because their profile page is on a different server from mine. It wanted me to copy a URL, paste it into a search field, find the account, and then follow, which is ridiculous and tiresome. The onboarding for new users on Mastodon seems terrible in every way. (I also couldn't disable "boosts" in my timeline, which is something I could do on Twitter.) I wanted to like Mastodon! But I just didn't, and I didn't feel like enough other people were going to like it either to make it worthwhile to use.

MBCook 4y ago
I’m trying it now. I have ALWAYS used Twitter through the 3rd party TweetBot app. That basically is Twitter for me. Unless someone sends me a link to a tweet, I don’t use the web. The Mastodon app is no comparison. It has hitches while scrolling my (tiny) timeline. I can’t figure out some of the buttons or why they’re highlighted. There are no gestures at all that I’ve found. I don’t expect the level of one of the best Twitter apps of all time, but it feels more like what a web developer would think an app is. Also, I did join Mastodon.social. And it’s currently dead from load (I assume). So my experience is going great. Normal people just don’t care about federation. They seem to actively dislike it, and I don’t blame them. The only federated thing most people will ever use is email, and that’s a relic from the 1980s. And centralizing on gmail/outlook/a few others. I can’t think of a single thing normal people use. Most people don’t make their own site anymore, and so many that do are really just on one of the big hosts. They view content from web sites, but that seems different somehow. I just have a hard time seeing Mastodon succeed. Between federation (yes, I know the benefits), resource issues, and simple UX issues I can’t imagine it taking off. The UX and apps can be fixed, but by then its one chance may have passed and it may be too late.
- Cyberdog 4y ago

groffee 4y ago

I think the fundamental issue with Mastodon is the user experience is non-existent, it's actively painful to use. Everyone focuses on the 'tech stack', but when it comes to actually using a product no-one cares about that, not even other 'tech' users. People just want something that works so they don't have to. People can hate on Twitter but it's polished, and it works.

andreyk 4y ago

I think mass migration of people from Twitter to Mastodon is unlikely, but I do have some hope that specific communities will be able to make the switch. For instance, just yesterday I set up a new instance -- which was incredibly easy thanks to masto.host, literally two clicks and a config change on Namecheap -- that can hopefully become a space for people interested in AI to move to from Twitter (in case you are curious, it's https://sigmoid.social/ https://sigmoid.social/). Here's my rationale: Twitter is kind of invaluable if you are an academic working in AI (and in many other fields as far as I can tell), it's a great way to discover new work as well as promote your own (and yeah there is silly drama sometimes, but it's rare). Many academics genuinely love it, including myself. Those same academics generally loathe or at least dislike Musk, and worry about the future of the platform, and don't care that much about non AI stuff on there. So if just the part of Twitter you care about it migrates to a Mastodon instance, such academics would likely consider it. And if you are a person or entity with a decent following on Twitter, it does seem feasible to encourage the community to at least try to move over. Maybe, maybe not, but I figure it's worth a try (I am planning to announce it on Twitter later this week).

silverwasthere 4y ago

I'd just like to mention that if you are considering joining mastodon that you should join an instance with a specific topic and not one of the large generally known ones. You will find a community instead of just a platform, and this is where mastodon shines. There is a tool called joinmastodon which will help.

anderspitman 4y ago

Is there a way with Mastodon to have an account on a hosted server but use an ID from a domain you control? Like if I wanted to have my ID be @me@social.apitman.com but pay for an account on another server rather than have my own. Seems like it should be possible with Let's Encrypt.

Cyberdog 4y ago
Some third-party fediverse hosts allow you to point your own custom (sub)domain at the instance they operate for you; you can also just set up your own instance. Not sure what Let's Encrypt would have to do with this, though.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  Without Let's Encrypt or something similar it would be a pain to get TLS certs for every user's domain.
OctopusLupid 4y ago
You can take a look at https://masto.host https://masto.host if you want your own managed server, but you'll have to do your own inter-server moderation in that case.

pwinnski 4y ago

People talk about email as the prime example of federation that we all use every day, but... gmail.com alone has a 30% market share, and 61% of 18-29 year olds[0]. The only reason that number isn't much higher is work emails, and a goodly number of work emails these days are actually Gmail behind the scenes as well! People don't want federation, people don't like federation, people are actively annoyed by federation. Of course, people also don't want to have an AI model decide they've broken unwritten rules and have their digital lives walled off, but if federation is the only solution to that (I'm not convinced) then people will take their chances. 0. https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/ https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/

kodah 4y ago
Federation didn't drive people to GMail. A modern interface and someone building on top of the protocol did.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  My point wasn't that people fled federated email to congregate at gmail. My point was that most people don't care one wet slap about federation, and will happily use whatever people point as easily usable (and free), whether Hotmail, or Yahoo, or Gmail.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  IIRC, what really drove people to Gmail was the huge storage space. Finally, no more having to manage your own quota, no more dealing with bounced email, etc. I think that's a far easier sell than 'modern interface', although I'm not sure what the equivalent for Mastodon users would be — maybe simply "it's free" if Twitter becomes a paid service.
  - sockaddr 4y ago
    Yup. I think the alternatives at the time were things like Hotmail offering a whopping 4MB.
  - 4y ago

owlbynight 4y ago

The idea of Mastodon is good but it's too annoying to use, and that will torpedo any hope for wide use.

qball 4y ago
>The idea of Mastodon is good but it's too annoying to use, and that will torpedo any hope for wide use. If by "the idea of Mastodon" you mean "you can connect to isolated versions of Twitter and view it with whatever client you want, but users maintain an account for every instance", then Mastodon is great. The majority of people who use Mastodon use it in this way, and it's reportedly excellent. The two largest instances are identical in purpose, to the point that their userbase doesn't see their sharing of identities to be a liability, and it's functionally irrelevant to their social graph- their "usernames" are a combination of their Twitter handles and their contributions don't vanish if banned. Novel content is widespread, because the posters are all artists. However, if by "the idea of Mastodon" you mean "you can have a unified identity, but server admins have the final say in which instances that identity is allowed to talk to and can fragment it at will", then Mastodon is over-complicated, unstable, and hostile. The majority of articles featuring Mastodon emphasize this as a feature (well, that and the custom client thing), but "small groups of people whose only common trait is that they like custom Twitter clients" is not predictive of post quality or quantity, and the fungibility of one's post means coming into conflict with an unstable platform is just that much worse (you can follow a timeline of usernames in art if/as they change simply due to style, something that's not true for hot takes or even semi-long-form text posts like this, so if your instance turns hostile the only thing you have is your username... which can trivially be taken from you. And I think it's this latter group for which Twitter will continue to have the edge simply because there, usernames are unique, and all notable people post there anyway simply due to audience size. You don't have to worry that your social graph is going to get split in half (and your posts effectively banned from half the network that can see them by default) overnight; stability like that is valuable.
- elsjaako 4y ago
  Where are you getting that most users have an account on "every" instance? I've been on Mastodon for several years, and this isn't my experience at all. Right now Mastodon is a bit weird; all the servers are overloaded and everyone is talking about twitter. But in a few months I think it will go back to being a nice social network. I'm always a bit amused at these kinds of posts, as if twitter has to fail for Mastodon to be successful. For a lot of people Mastodon is already good, and has been for some years.

m3kw9 4y ago

Why should I try something that works like twitter but worse?

fleddr 4y ago

The idea that Twitter's future is "bleak" is really premature. For that you have to separate your possible dislike of Musk from the actual ideas, instead of jumping to hysterical conclusions. Musk won't turn it into 4chan because that would be fatal, his entire investment gone with no goals achieved. As he claimed, he seeks to amplify the current silent majority (80%) whilst pissing of the political extremes to the same degree equally. Surely a delicate balancing act, but I find it a noble goal. The tiny little rush of harmful slurs, fueled by people thinking they can now say whatever they want, was immediately stopped in its tracks. Next up, a moderation board will oversee moderation/censorship. We don't know yet what this will bring, so there's little point in drawing conclusions. It's about 2 days old. He's experimenting with alternative payment models. We always criticize the toxic ad model, so I think this is refreshing. He's looking to flatten the influencer curve by dampening the run-away status effects found in Twitter's algorithms. He claims to want to onboard longform content and video, and I would expect quite a few other product improvements/ideas. Judged by his reputation, I would expect them to be delivered rapidly. Quite a culture change from Twitter's product team producing close to nothing. I'm sure he'll continue to be an unhinged unpredictable character and asshole, but I consider Twitter to be so broken that the ideas at face-value do not come across as "bleak", promising instead.

mandeepj 4y ago
> Judged by his reputation, I would expect them to be delivered rapidly. Ha! He’s not known for his timing. I appreciate your positive tone and details though
- fleddr 4y ago
  I'm sure that's a reference to Tesla delays? Fair enough. But my point is that Musk is the kind of person that can say "let's do video, you have 3 months". It doesn't really matter that it takes 4 or 5 months instead. That's still rapid in comparison to Twitter's reputation where despite having thousands of engineers and more than a decade of time, the app feels unchanged.
  - 4y ago

LightHugger 4y ago

I went on mastodon several months ago and the big servers for topics i was interested (They were non-political, technical topics) in had racism in the rules. The one i remember was that calling for the death of all white people is explicitly allowed. Might as well just stay on twitter if that's the standard being set there.

28304283409234 4y ago

"Unlike email, it appears that with Mastadon you can actually migrate to different instances if you don’t like your current one." So exactly like email then.

veidr 4y ago

The "normal people don't want federation" sentiment is really just a misstatement of "normal people don't want bad and/or complicated UIs". Easy to conflate, because (yes, email aside) there are essentially no good examples of good normal-people UIs for federated things. Partly because they tend to be volunteer, open-source efforts with the concomitant lack of budget/resources, I guess, but partly also because you need a better UI to deal with the added complexities that are introduced by federation in the first place. There are more choices to make. In theory, of course it is possible to make a good UI for federated chat, or micro-shitposting, or whatever. But in practice, Matrix has forty-five GUI clients and zero good ones. Mastodon likewise.