9 ms·

Mastodon Is Awesome

108 points by idonov 4y ago

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
I finally gave Mastodon a try because many interesting Twitter accounts I follow moved there, or at least got active on it and broadcasted the fact. I have to admit I am positively surprised so far. Very much so. Now everything depends on how much activity remains once the current dust settles. Will Mastodon overtake Twitter? I still doubt it, but honestly I really can't imagine why I would care about that as long as Mastodon manages to establish, nurture, and retain a healthy userbase. Which is all I would need to keep using it.
- teekert 4y ago
  I fear it will go the way of Signal, every time Meta forces a uela change, some people switch, most switch back... Let's hope there will at some point be a critical mass. For Signal it's too late, in my country WA is the standard sadly.
  - thelittleone 4y ago
    5+ years ago Whatsapp was pretty much the standard for all my network (apart from my US colleagues still using SMS a lot). But over the last 5 years its fragmented a LOT. I often have conversations with same friends across >1 messaging app.
angrycontrarian 4y ago
I am still struggling to understand how migrating to a censorship-resistant platform will mitigate concerns about a lack of strict content moderation at twitter.
- viraptor 4y ago
  It's only censorship-resistant as in, nobody apart from LE can force you to take your instance down. Otherwise the network is still highly moderated. Both at the local instance level (people get banned) and at the federation level (whole instances are either silenced or disconnected from others).
- cies 4y ago
  Mastodon is, IMHO, more tightly moderated than Twitter, depending which side of the split-fediverse you are on. See my other comment in this thread for my story.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Mastodon as a whole is "censorship-resistant". Individual servers very much have rules. My home is on FOSStodon, and it's very, very far from an anarchy: https://fosstodon.org/about/more#rules https://fosstodon.org/about/more#rules It's also selective about which other servers it will interoperate with and how much: https://fosstodon.org/about/more#unavailable-content https://fosstodon.org/about/more#unavailable-content
  - Timshel 4y ago
    Nice to see the granularity of moderating servers; had not look at the subject and was kind of afraid that if it was only on/off then you might end up with a disconnected fediverse.
- FortiDude 4y ago
  But now your post won't be taken down by a paid employee of a corporation with actual contractual obligations and custom made moderation tools to limit collateral damage, instead a 17yo Discord friend of the admin will have complete access to your account!
  - kibwen 4y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but Elon Musk himself and all of his friends have full access to your Twitter account, with no protections whatsoever. You don't own your account, Musk does.
    - FortiDude 4y ago
      I hate to break it to you, but Elon Musk and Twitter at large have more to lose from a reputational damage caused by blatant moderation misuse than an anonymous kid with an anime profile picture has
      - dale_glass 4y ago
        Looking at the last events, Musk sure seems unaware of that. First he whined about advertisers leaving. Then he threatened to publicly shame them. Then he asked for feedback, got some constructive feedback from some huge ad exec, and promptly blocked him. He appears to have messed with AOC's account because he didn't like her arguing with him. He already seems to be reversing on his free speech ideals and is instituting permanent bans that he said he was opposed to. I don't know what's up with him, but it's hardly a shining example of reputation management that's for sure. And it's been what, a week?
      - littlestymaar 4y ago
        As if Musk had any reputation left to save. We're talking about somebody who has canceled the Tesla order of a blogger who criticized him…
- vidarh 4y ago
  You can see censorship as about being able to control what people is allowed to say. The fediverse is highly resistant to that. You can also see censorship as about being able to control what people will be able to say to you. The fediverse is not at all resistant to that. That is, nobody can stop you from setting up your own instance, or write your own ActivityPub implementation, or find one that tolerates whatever thing you want to say. But we can band together and prevent you from making us party to your conversations against our will, and we can prevent you from being part of our conversations against our will. The structure of the fediverse supports that by letting groups pick instances whose moderation fits what they want, and different groups with different moderation requirements or even contradictory moderation requirements can co-exist without all being beholden to the vagaries of policies set by a third party we have no control over.
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    > But we can band together and prevent you from making us party to your conversations against our will, and we can prevent you from being part of our conversations against our will. This is Robber's Cave experiment [1] all over again: A society that does no longer talk with each other and is segregated (e.g. along political lines) will at first become hostile between different factions within it, and eventually break. Filter bubbles ultimately destroy civil society and democracy. [1] https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html
    - pjc50 4y ago
      I guess we've got to include some flat earthers in our space programme or we'll never get to Mars. Can't be in a filter bubble, after all.
      - DocTomoe 4y ago
        No one questions that segregated groups with tight information and communication control can result in more efficiently reached results. History has shown us several examples of such highly efficient societies where what can and cannot be said where tightly enforced. But history also has shown us how such societies eventually break from unresolved conflicts within it. Talking to someone with another viewpoint, even if that viewpoint is a stupid or hateful one, does not mean endorsing. This is not about "fair and balanced", it is about communication and providing ideas outside of their peer group. Now, if you decide to just block flat earthers individually, or as a group (even for non-flat-earth-related communication), you will just create a filter bubble for them in which they can strengthen their now-unchallenged beliefs in.
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  I think Scott Alexander's recent post about this made a good point. (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-differen...) He draws the distinction between censorship (stopping people from getting messages they want to recieve) and moderation (stopping people from getting messages they don't want to recieve). With those definitons censorship is bad and moderation is good. Mastodon isn't as simple as the model he imagines (simple click-boxes to select what kind of messages you want) but it does give you moderation (on your local instance) while still letting you avoid censorship (by moving instances if necessary).
  - msravi 4y ago
    The only correct answer to that should be that you let people maintain their own filters (blocklists and allowlists) so they can see messages they want to receive and not see what they don't want to. Also, you might let people apply such community created lists, that they can subscribe to. Unfortunately, Mastodon rather than doing that, gives complete control to the server administrator to "moderate" their instance. The result is that you end up having isolated echo-chambers, with each server blocking all other servers that don't agree with their viewpoint.
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago
      That solves almost no problem. Libel and slander will continue to affect you, there will continue to be toxic communities who instigate violence and violate local laws, and the feature encourages echo chambers and fragmentation. The worst system is when other people can see comments to your posts that you cannot see when you've blocked the commenter. It's the best system for smear campaigns and targeted character assassination. You'll never get a job and everybody hates you, and you'll have have no idea why.
  - jorgesborges 4y ago
    It’s ironic that the top comment to that post was removed.
cies 4y ago
[flagged]
- pjc50 4y ago
  "I came to the bar, picked a bunch of fights, and they had the audacity to ban me!" -- zero star Yelp review
  - cies 4y ago
    Came to a freedom respecting alternative to Twitter. Voiced an opinion that is not racist: just not agreeing with govt policy. Got kicked out for having an opinion. Mainly I'm interested in the two fediverses, as a reflection of society. On Twitter it seems Musk is trying to cater for both on one platform. Interesting.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      > Got kicked out for having an opinion. Like a Nigerian Prince email, certain opinions have been seen often enough to know that no good is going to come of engaging in it.
      - audessuscest 4y ago
        the one you don't like ?
    - fsloth 4y ago
      I agree that triggerhappy moderation is not something I would agree with. However, in this case I kind of understand the moderators response. You might consider yourself a "critical thinker" but these examples of opinion are coming straight out of Kremlin troll factory. If I were you, I would give a good, long consideration to the sources you follow. For example, raising Iraq, Libya, Afganistan or Vietnam of examples of "inconsistent EU foreign policy" in regards to arming Ukraine displays an extremely skewed and uninformed view of politics and history, and the sole reason for a such a muddled argument can only to be to undermine the western support for Ukraine. Forceful banning in general is not nice but if your actions are perceived to be those of a paid troll I understand why some moderators might confuse you for one.
b112 4y ago
[flagged]
jonathanstrange 4y ago
I've tried Mastodon for several months, using three different servers (or how these are called), and for me personally the experience ranged from useless to unpleasant. I got a horrible mixture of open source programming and pedophile manga culture in one home feed, and tons of Nazi posts with Pepe the frog memes in another. I never saw anything interesting in months, even after changing home feeds several times. Most of the discussions were about topics or memes I didn't even know. It was boring and I opened my client less and less often. To be fair, Twitter offers essentially the same experience to me. Although you can see a glimpse of reason from time to time in between, because there are some experts on it, it's mostly about vitriol and passive aggressive trolling. I've heard you can adopt it by blocking and subscribing strategically but this never worked for me in the three months I've tried it. I've deactivated my Twitter account, too.
- lokedhs 4y ago
  May I ask what instance you were on? A lot of guides don't talk about it, but there is a dark version of Fediverse, often references as the "freeze peach" instances. They are generally blocked by most mainstream instances, but enough are open so that you can't still follow a majority of the mainstream content from these instances. However, when you are on them, the content is very much like how you describe it. That's why I'm curious as to whether you (possibly accidentally) joined the one if those. If you you di, and you're not actively looking for such content, the experience can be quite terrible.
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    That's what must have happened to me. I think one of them was called "stereophonic" (or similar) and the other one some weird Belgian with German like "absturztau.be", both were boring but the latter was worse. The third one I don't remember. They had nice descriptions, though, which didn't really match the content. I might give it another try with the biggest US main server, though it's probably not for me anyway since I can't stand Twitter's format either.
  - baxuz 4y ago
    > May I ask what instance you were on? That's the problem with all decentralized and/or forked products. "Oh, you're using the wrong Linux distro, that one sucks." "You're on the wrong WoW server, that one sucks."
audessuscest 4y ago
All these posts regarding Mastodon start to feel like spam (or at least forced promotion), nothing really interesting in that post...
bluesign 4y ago
Unfortunately with its current design it will end up being "echo chambers". There are two main problems needs to be solved. - Identity ( it shouldn't be tied to a single server ) - Federating with selective servers ( more importantly "not federating" with some servers ) Only solution now is to keep your own server ( and federate with other servers that interests you ) but I don't think it is scalable.
- cykros 4y ago
  This is 100% the issue. When Mastodon started, it was like when IRC started -- one big server you could talk to just about everyone on. These days, it's like IRC was in 2000 or so -- many different servers you could talk to your small group on, but you'd end up joining a whole bunch of different servers to get your reach across, and unlike IRC, that really gets in the way of things like re-tooting and other broadcast issues. It's not so much that it's a problem so much as that it makes it a poor choice for a Twitter replacement. Is Statusnet (a la identi.ca) still a thing?
- angio 4y ago
  If you run your own server, aren't you risking being banned from some instances if you don't ban instances they don't like? So there is no real upside compared to joining existing instances (other than having a better identity).
  - bluesign 4y ago
    I think doesn't work like that, but I am not 100% sure.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  > it will end up being "echo chambers". The more I use social media in its various forms, the more I think that for most people this would be feature. As much as people claim to want to be shown diverse viewpoints, what really makes them happy is constant confirmation of their own existing views. So for most (not all) people, this effect will eventually put them into an echo chamber like environment cause that's where they feel most comfortable. Therefore, platforms that cater to this tendency will be more successful than ones that don't (provided they hit critical mass, which is a pre-requirement, otherwise there is not enough content/interactions one way or another).
savolai 4y ago
I bumped into this in safari on ios. Okay, I could try to follow this. I have the mastodon app. https://social.network.europa.eu/public https://social.network.europa.eu/public Copied and pasted the first handle I could find. It was cumbersome since it is also a link so long pressing on it initiates link actions, I have to start in a location elsewhere and manually narrow down the selection afterwards. But oh, this is a server with many users, how do I follow them all? Copy paste all the handles by hand? These are the kinds of UX use cases that need to be solved at a bare minimum.
baxuz 4y ago
As far as I see it's no better than subreddits. If anything, the barrier to entry is a lot higher.
poulpy123 4y ago
Twitter puts you in contact with everyone, and you depend on a centralized and scrutinized organisation. Mastodon put you in contact with little people and you depend on a very decentralized and autonomous organisations. I really can't see the second one having the same success than the first one
- szszrk 4y ago
  Either one has different criteria of success. Also such "alternative" projects tend to attract whole communities, so users may actually feel like "all they need is here", because their beloved communities are present.
greg7582947 4y ago
How long until these shill posts end? I can't help but wonder why people who supposedly want to protect democracy are fleeing Twitter because it was taken over by someone who wants to bring back freedom of speech. Mastodon seems to make sense for these people though. Breaking up the service into different moderated servers makes it more difficult to regulate with pesky laws like the First Amendment. If one server gets too much freedom, users can easily flee to another warm, fuzzy, safe server where opposing views are censored as "conspiracy theories".
- sgu999 4y ago
  Your point works in the exact opposite way too... if users feel their Mastodon server isn't free enough, they can move somewhere else with less "censorship". Not sure what you're ranting about here.
- pupppet 4y ago
  >taken over by someone who wants to bring back freedom of speech. Taken over by someone who wants freedom of his own speech, not yours.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
https://hub.fosstodon.org/why-is-fosstodon-down/ https://hub.fosstodon.org/why-is-fosstodon-down/ Seems like a lot of tech savvy folks are checking it out.
goldforever 4y ago

108 points by idonov 4y ago

I finally gave Mastodon a try because many interesting Twitter accounts I follow moved there, or at least got active on it and broadcasted the fact. I have to admit I am positively surprised so far. Very much so. Now everything depends on how much activity remains once the current dust settles. Will Mastodon overtake Twitter? I still doubt it, but honestly I really can't imagine why I would care about that as long as Mastodon manages to establish, nurture, and retain a healthy userbase. Which is all I would need to keep using it.

teekert 4y ago
I fear it will go the way of Signal, every time Meta forces a uela change, some people switch, most switch back... Let's hope there will at some point be a critical mass. For Signal it's too late, in my country WA is the standard sadly.
- thelittleone 4y ago
  5+ years ago Whatsapp was pretty much the standard for all my network (apart from my US colleagues still using SMS a lot). But over the last 5 years its fragmented a LOT. I often have conversations with same friends across >1 messaging app.

angrycontrarian 4y ago

I am still struggling to understand how migrating to a censorship-resistant platform will mitigate concerns about a lack of strict content moderation at twitter.

viraptor 4y ago
It's only censorship-resistant as in, nobody apart from LE can force you to take your instance down. Otherwise the network is still highly moderated. Both at the local instance level (people get banned) and at the federation level (whole instances are either silenced or disconnected from others).
cies 4y ago
Mastodon is, IMHO, more tightly moderated than Twitter, depending which side of the split-fediverse you are on. See my other comment in this thread for my story.
dale_glass 4y ago
Mastodon as a whole is "censorship-resistant". Individual servers very much have rules. My home is on FOSStodon, and it's very, very far from an anarchy: https://fosstodon.org/about/more#rules https://fosstodon.org/about/more#rules It's also selective about which other servers it will interoperate with and how much: https://fosstodon.org/about/more#unavailable-content https://fosstodon.org/about/more#unavailable-content
- Timshel 4y ago
  Nice to see the granularity of moderating servers; had not look at the subject and was kind of afraid that if it was only on/off then you might end up with a disconnected fediverse.
FortiDude 4y ago
But now your post won't be taken down by a paid employee of a corporation with actual contractual obligations and custom made moderation tools to limit collateral damage, instead a 17yo Discord friend of the admin will have complete access to your account!
- kibwen 4y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but Elon Musk himself and all of his friends have full access to your Twitter account, with no protections whatsoever. You don't own your account, Musk does.
  - FortiDude 4y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but Elon Musk and Twitter at large have more to lose from a reputational damage caused by blatant moderation misuse than an anonymous kid with an anime profile picture has
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      Looking at the last events, Musk sure seems unaware of that. First he whined about advertisers leaving. Then he threatened to publicly shame them. Then he asked for feedback, got some constructive feedback from some huge ad exec, and promptly blocked him. He appears to have messed with AOC's account because he didn't like her arguing with him. He already seems to be reversing on his free speech ideals and is instituting permanent bans that he said he was opposed to. I don't know what's up with him, but it's hardly a shining example of reputation management that's for sure. And it's been what, a week?
    - littlestymaar 4y ago
      As if Musk had any reputation left to save. We're talking about somebody who has canceled the Tesla order of a blogger who criticized him…
vidarh 4y ago
You can see censorship as about being able to control what people is allowed to say. The fediverse is highly resistant to that. You can also see censorship as about being able to control what people will be able to say to you. The fediverse is not at all resistant to that. That is, nobody can stop you from setting up your own instance, or write your own ActivityPub implementation, or find one that tolerates whatever thing you want to say. But we can band together and prevent you from making us party to your conversations against our will, and we can prevent you from being part of our conversations against our will. The structure of the fediverse supports that by letting groups pick instances whose moderation fits what they want, and different groups with different moderation requirements or even contradictory moderation requirements can co-exist without all being beholden to the vagaries of policies set by a third party we have no control over.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  > But we can band together and prevent you from making us party to your conversations against our will, and we can prevent you from being part of our conversations against our will. This is Robber's Cave experiment [1] all over again: A society that does no longer talk with each other and is segregated (e.g. along political lines) will at first become hostile between different factions within it, and eventually break. Filter bubbles ultimately destroy civil society and democracy. [1] https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html
  - pjc50 4y ago
    I guess we've got to include some flat earthers in our space programme or we'll never get to Mars. Can't be in a filter bubble, after all.
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      No one questions that segregated groups with tight information and communication control can result in more efficiently reached results. History has shown us several examples of such highly efficient societies where what can and cannot be said where tightly enforced. But history also has shown us how such societies eventually break from unresolved conflicts within it. Talking to someone with another viewpoint, even if that viewpoint is a stupid or hateful one, does not mean endorsing. This is not about "fair and balanced", it is about communication and providing ideas outside of their peer group. Now, if you decide to just block flat earthers individually, or as a group (even for non-flat-earth-related communication), you will just create a filter bubble for them in which they can strengthen their now-unchallenged beliefs in.
OscarCunningham 4y ago
I think Scott Alexander's recent post about this made a good point. (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-differen...) He draws the distinction between censorship (stopping people from getting messages they want to recieve) and moderation (stopping people from getting messages they don't want to recieve). With those definitons censorship is bad and moderation is good. Mastodon isn't as simple as the model he imagines (simple click-boxes to select what kind of messages you want) but it does give you moderation (on your local instance) while still letting you avoid censorship (by moving instances if necessary).
- msravi 4y ago
  The only correct answer to that should be that you let people maintain their own filters (blocklists and allowlists) so they can see messages they want to receive and not see what they don't want to. Also, you might let people apply such community created lists, that they can subscribe to. Unfortunately, Mastodon rather than doing that, gives complete control to the server administrator to "moderate" their instance. The result is that you end up having isolated echo-chambers, with each server blocking all other servers that don't agree with their viewpoint.
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    That solves almost no problem. Libel and slander will continue to affect you, there will continue to be toxic communities who instigate violence and violate local laws, and the feature encourages echo chambers and fragmentation. The worst system is when other people can see comments to your posts that you cannot see when you've blocked the commenter. It's the best system for smear campaigns and targeted character assassination. You'll never get a job and everybody hates you, and you'll have have no idea why.
- jorgesborges 4y ago
  It’s ironic that the top comment to that post was removed.

cies 4y ago

[flagged]

pjc50 4y ago
"I came to the bar, picked a bunch of fights, and they had the audacity to ban me!" -- zero star Yelp review
- cies 4y ago
  Came to a freedom respecting alternative to Twitter. Voiced an opinion that is not racist: just not agreeing with govt policy. Got kicked out for having an opinion. Mainly I'm interested in the two fediverses, as a reflection of society. On Twitter it seems Musk is trying to cater for both on one platform. Interesting.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > Got kicked out for having an opinion. Like a Nigerian Prince email, certain opinions have been seen often enough to know that no good is going to come of engaging in it.
    - audessuscest 4y ago
      the one you don't like ?
  - fsloth 4y ago
    I agree that triggerhappy moderation is not something I would agree with. However, in this case I kind of understand the moderators response. You might consider yourself a "critical thinker" but these examples of opinion are coming straight out of Kremlin troll factory. If I were you, I would give a good, long consideration to the sources you follow. For example, raising Iraq, Libya, Afganistan or Vietnam of examples of "inconsistent EU foreign policy" in regards to arming Ukraine displays an extremely skewed and uninformed view of politics and history, and the sole reason for a such a muddled argument can only to be to undermine the western support for Ukraine. Forceful banning in general is not nice but if your actions are perceived to be those of a paid troll I understand why some moderators might confuse you for one.

b112 4y ago

[flagged]

jonathanstrange 4y ago

I've tried Mastodon for several months, using three different servers (or how these are called), and for me personally the experience ranged from useless to unpleasant. I got a horrible mixture of open source programming and pedophile manga culture in one home feed, and tons of Nazi posts with Pepe the frog memes in another. I never saw anything interesting in months, even after changing home feeds several times. Most of the discussions were about topics or memes I didn't even know. It was boring and I opened my client less and less often. To be fair, Twitter offers essentially the same experience to me. Although you can see a glimpse of reason from time to time in between, because there are some experts on it, it's mostly about vitriol and passive aggressive trolling. I've heard you can adopt it by blocking and subscribing strategically but this never worked for me in the three months I've tried it. I've deactivated my Twitter account, too.

lokedhs 4y ago
May I ask what instance you were on? A lot of guides don't talk about it, but there is a dark version of Fediverse, often references as the "freeze peach" instances. They are generally blocked by most mainstream instances, but enough are open so that you can't still follow a majority of the mainstream content from these instances. However, when you are on them, the content is very much like how you describe it. That's why I'm curious as to whether you (possibly accidentally) joined the one if those. If you you di, and you're not actively looking for such content, the experience can be quite terrible.
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  That's what must have happened to me. I think one of them was called "stereophonic" (or similar) and the other one some weird Belgian with German like "absturztau.be", both were boring but the latter was worse. The third one I don't remember. They had nice descriptions, though, which didn't really match the content. I might give it another try with the biggest US main server, though it's probably not for me anyway since I can't stand Twitter's format either.
- baxuz 4y ago
  > May I ask what instance you were on? That's the problem with all decentralized and/or forked products. "Oh, you're using the wrong Linux distro, that one sucks." "You're on the wrong WoW server, that one sucks."

audessuscest 4y ago

All these posts regarding Mastodon start to feel like spam (or at least forced promotion), nothing really interesting in that post...

bluesign 4y ago

Unfortunately with its current design it will end up being "echo chambers". There are two main problems needs to be solved. - Identity ( it shouldn't be tied to a single server ) - Federating with selective servers ( more importantly "not federating" with some servers ) Only solution now is to keep your own server ( and federate with other servers that interests you ) but I don't think it is scalable.

cykros 4y ago
This is 100% the issue. When Mastodon started, it was like when IRC started -- one big server you could talk to just about everyone on. These days, it's like IRC was in 2000 or so -- many different servers you could talk to your small group on, but you'd end up joining a whole bunch of different servers to get your reach across, and unlike IRC, that really gets in the way of things like re-tooting and other broadcast issues. It's not so much that it's a problem so much as that it makes it a poor choice for a Twitter replacement. Is Statusnet (a la identi.ca) still a thing?
angio 4y ago
If you run your own server, aren't you risking being banned from some instances if you don't ban instances they don't like? So there is no real upside compared to joining existing instances (other than having a better identity).
- bluesign 4y ago
  I think doesn't work like that, but I am not 100% sure.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
> it will end up being "echo chambers". The more I use social media in its various forms, the more I think that for most people this would be feature. As much as people claim to want to be shown diverse viewpoints, what really makes them happy is constant confirmation of their own existing views. So for most (not all) people, this effect will eventually put them into an echo chamber like environment cause that's where they feel most comfortable. Therefore, platforms that cater to this tendency will be more successful than ones that don't (provided they hit critical mass, which is a pre-requirement, otherwise there is not enough content/interactions one way or another).

savolai 4y ago

I bumped into this in safari on ios. Okay, I could try to follow this. I have the mastodon app. https://social.network.europa.eu/public https://social.network.europa.eu/public Copied and pasted the first handle I could find. It was cumbersome since it is also a link so long pressing on it initiates link actions, I have to start in a location elsewhere and manually narrow down the selection afterwards. But oh, this is a server with many users, how do I follow them all? Copy paste all the handles by hand? These are the kinds of UX use cases that need to be solved at a bare minimum.

baxuz 4y ago

As far as I see it's no better than subreddits. If anything, the barrier to entry is a lot higher.

poulpy123 4y ago

Twitter puts you in contact with everyone, and you depend on a centralized and scrutinized organisation. Mastodon put you in contact with little people and you depend on a very decentralized and autonomous organisations. I really can't see the second one having the same success than the first one

szszrk 4y ago
Either one has different criteria of success. Also such "alternative" projects tend to attract whole communities, so users may actually feel like "all they need is here", because their beloved communities are present.

greg7582947 4y ago

How long until these shill posts end? I can't help but wonder why people who supposedly want to protect democracy are fleeing Twitter because it was taken over by someone who wants to bring back freedom of speech. Mastodon seems to make sense for these people though. Breaking up the service into different moderated servers makes it more difficult to regulate with pesky laws like the First Amendment. If one server gets too much freedom, users can easily flee to another warm, fuzzy, safe server where opposing views are censored as "conspiracy theories".

sgu999 4y ago
Your point works in the exact opposite way too... if users feel their Mastodon server isn't free enough, they can move somewhere else with less "censorship". Not sure what you're ranting about here.
pupppet 4y ago
>taken over by someone who wants to bring back freedom of speech. Taken over by someone who wants freedom of his own speech, not yours.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

https://hub.fosstodon.org/why-is-fosstodon-down/ https://hub.fosstodon.org/why-is-fosstodon-down/ Seems like a lot of tech savvy folks are checking it out.

goldforever 4y ago