3 ms·

I think it'd be great for more decentralized platforms to supplant centralized ones, but they usually seem to struggle to acquire more mainstream users. Even if

I think it'd be great for more decentralized platforms to supplant centralized ones, but they usually seem to struggle to acquire more mainstream users. Even if Twitter collapses under Musk's leadership, my hunch is that a (new?) centralized competitor is more likely to take most of their market share, rather than Mastodon. I know, I know, there's some obvious exceptions like email, or just the web in general, but it seems like usually decentralized platforms are at a disadvantage in terms of marketing to new users, explaining how they work, and the whole onboarding experience. The very fact that they can work in different ways to different people seems like a minus in terms of getting into the public consciousness.

Isinlor 4y ago
Even email is not really that decentralized - it's mostly Google + Microsoft.
- ErikCorry 4y ago
  The reason why this happened is instructive. Fighting spam is really hard and the best way to do it is to be good at machine learning and to have access to a good percentage of worldwide mail, unencrypted. Since there's no reason to think that Mastodon is immune to the spam issue, this strongly suggests that whatever replaces Twitter will quickly consolidate to a single dominant player, or perhaps a handful. Or it could collapse under the spam issue like Usenet did.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Not everywhere is America. Most institutions in European countries run their own e-mail servers and deliverability is OK.
  - ErikCorry 4y ago
    I guess if you count on-prem Outlook as running your own servers.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      From the point of view of domain reputation etc., it surely counts, no?
  - Kye 4y ago
    The EU even has its own Mastodon server.
gonehome 4y ago
Email isn’t really an exception - it’s largely another federated system failure with most users on one centralized system (gmail). You can’t even run an email server yourself without getting blacklisted these days. I doubt Twitter is going anywhere, I’m not even sure it can be replaced, it’s an unusual niche product of its time and network. Mastodon doesn’t solve the underlying problems that lead to centralization either so most users end up on one server. Back to the same issues, except the experience is also worse than a competent centralized system. To solve this for real you have to solve spam (need IDs), there can’t be a distinction between a user account and a server, and the server needs to be trivial to run and manage with automatic updates.
- Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
  > Mastodon doesn’t solve the underlying problems Mastodon doesn't but standalone activitypub compatible blog does.

Isinlor 4y ago

Even email is not really that decentralized - it's mostly Google + Microsoft.

ErikCorry 4y ago
The reason why this happened is instructive. Fighting spam is really hard and the best way to do it is to be good at machine learning and to have access to a good percentage of worldwide mail, unencrypted. Since there's no reason to think that Mastodon is immune to the spam issue, this strongly suggests that whatever replaces Twitter will quickly consolidate to a single dominant player, or perhaps a handful. Or it could collapse under the spam issue like Usenet did.
inglor_cz 4y ago
Not everywhere is America. Most institutions in European countries run their own e-mail servers and deliverability is OK.
- ErikCorry 4y ago
  I guess if you count on-prem Outlook as running your own servers.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    From the point of view of domain reputation etc., it surely counts, no?
- Kye 4y ago
  The EU even has its own Mastodon server.

gonehome 4y ago

Email isn’t really an exception - it’s largely another federated system failure with most users on one centralized system (gmail). You can’t even run an email server yourself without getting blacklisted these days. I doubt Twitter is going anywhere, I’m not even sure it can be replaced, it’s an unusual niche product of its time and network. Mastodon doesn’t solve the underlying problems that lead to centralization either so most users end up on one server. Back to the same issues, except the experience is also worse than a competent centralized system. To solve this for real you have to solve spam (need IDs), there can’t be a distinction between a user account and a server, and the server needs to be trivial to run and manage with automatic updates.

Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
> Mastodon doesn’t solve the underlying problems Mastodon doesn't but standalone activitypub compatible blog does.