24 ms·

Mastodon’s eternal September begins?

242 points by robin_reala 4y ago

dools 4y ago
Perhaps Hugh can draw on the timeless wisdom of Snoop Dogg in these trying times: Now that I got me some Seagram's gin Everybody's got their cup but they ain't chipped in Now this types of shit happens all the time You gotta get yours before I gotta get mine
rapsey 4y ago
These exoduses 9 times out of 10 only create some insular single topic community. For people who want to participate in an echo chamber. Anyone who thinks Mastodon has any hope of being the next Twitter is delusional. It is the next Parler/Rumble.
- ggm 4y ago
  Maybe the best next twitter is not to BE the next twitter? I mean seriously, what if twitter turned out to be a bad idea? We haven't had "the next 8 track" or "the next Zoetrope" or "the next cutlass" -We do other things instead. Maybe a hyperfocal single issue social construct, is what trainspotters actually WANT?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rapsey 4y ago
    That is what I said. It is for people who want an echo chamber. > I mean seriously, what if twitter turned out to be a bad idea? Twitter fills a void where there is no real alternative. How can it be a bad idea? If you are morally opposed to it or something don't use it.
    - ggm 4y ago
      > Twitter fills a void where there is no real alternative. How can it be a bad idea? If you are morally opposed to it or something don't use it. It's bad because of its 2nd order effects. On mental health. On conspiracy theory. On attacks on the integrity of the polity, on social cohesion. Freedom to communicate in the wide, semi-pseudonomously turns out to be something exploitable to undermine the fabric of society at times. I don't think we can put that genie back in the bottle, but "the revolution will not be televised" maybe turns out to be .. wrong?
      - rapsey 4y ago
        Yeah sounds like the comic books and video games are going to turn children into psychopaths argument.
        ggm 4y ago
        It does, except it's about what led to pizzagate. So.. also not about LSD being sold in sweets to small children, its lies being told to psychotic adults. And about what persisting supportive dements do to each other, once the fever hits. We're very probably poles apart on this one. I won't convince you of the risks and you won't convince me of the lack of them.
        sinity 4y ago
        > It does, except it's about what led to pizzagate. In the times before The Internets, we had that too. OG Nazis were based on nebulous conspiracy theories about Jews. "Internationalists"*. And they certainly weren't original in that either. * I think "Globalists" we have today are synonymous to that.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Parler/Rumble were very clearly designed for exactly one single topic, MAGA. The interesting thing about Mastodon is that it has the potential to host countless single topic communities, similar to Reddit.
  - mrlatinos 4y ago
    The problem is I have no idea how to find them, so it seems more like IRC.
    - abnercoimbre 4y ago
      Oh there's a discoverability issue between Mastodon instances?
    - _chu1 4y ago
      No, the issue with IRC is that it's dead as hell most the time despite like 200 people idling in the room.
- paulgb 4y ago
  Mastadon doesn’t ever need to become the twitter of 2022, and most people would rather it didn’t. It does remind me of Twitter in ~2008, which is arguably more fun anyway. (Anybody who thought 2008 twitter would become what it is now would also have been called delusional)
- rakoo 4y ago
  Mastodon absolutely doesn't want to be the next twitter. It is antithetical with the spirit of the creator and the community. If an actor wants to hyper centralize its users, bets are other platforms won't federate with it
ilyt 4y ago
I think they're being overly optimistic here. This will only keep up if musky boi truly sinks twitter, but if all he does is kicks out the "trendsetting"(lmao) "moderation" and actually enforce their own TOS I think twitter will be just fine
- blitzar 4y ago
  What happened to absolute free speech?
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Elon got made fun of (impersonated), and decided that was his limit on what constitutes "free speech".
  - sinity 4y ago
    He seemingly backtracked on the claims it will be "letter of the law". He confirmed that he will keep moderation of "hate speech" and so on. But then, his enemies also flip their position all the time, synchronized to always be against what he's doing lol. Ofc _somehow_ moderating "hate speech" and so on is still not enough. Unclear why.
- mikro2nd 4y ago
  I think what will sink Twitter will be if Mr Musk goes ahead with his plan (as he's stated) to have "blue tick" tweets all float to the top while deprecating tweets from non-paying users. In my world $8/month seems an outrageous amount for the privilege of bloviating into the void, yet if I don't see my own comments and those of my other non-paying friends, what the hell is the point of even being on the platform?
  - cbeach 4y ago
    I think the $8/month charge will put spam and bots out of business. That’s why Musk is doing it. I’ve just subscribed to Twitter Blue and aside from the extra features, I have a lot of confidence that if others do this, we’ll have a more robust and civil platform.
bhoops 4y ago
Mastodon could go either way, but i think as an experiment its sufficiently differentiated to warrant a rethink on how social media should be. Only a couple of years back Mastodon UX was too poor to be usable, but it has grown leaps and bounds now. Mastodon might not be the next twitter, but maybe it has already succeeded as a refuge for people not wanting to be on twitter. The bigger problem mastodon has is that its servers are running full to take on new people. We have been running a few instances of mastodon which now have more space for new users. Link in my bio if anyone wants to use them, but might run out anytime.
- robin_reala 4y ago
  It’s worth checking if your instance accepts donations to defray running costs. E.g. mastodon.social gets funding from the Mastodon Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon https://www.patreon.com/mastodon
  - Shoue 4y ago
    There are also interesting instances like social.coop that are run like a cooperative – you join and are expected to donate monthly, as little as $1, and in return you get democratic control over the instance. It can be a cool incentive to "donate"/invest in the instance.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Only a couple of years back Mastodon UX was too poor to be usable, but it has grown leaps and bounds now. I see strong parallels between this and blender when I was active in the community around a decade ago. Everyone nowadays takes blender seriously as a contender in that market now so keep the faith, peeps.
blowski 4y ago
Twitter’s model is between an individual and their followers, which is bad for organisations because the individual leaves and takes the followers with them. Mastodon allows companies to own those relationships on their server. For example, I can have the BBC Mastodon server, and all the accounts are @bbc. If the employee leaves, they lose the account. The BBC can do their own moderation, but still be connected. Smaller organisations can do to the same for customer support. They can own the advertising and the UI. And if Mastodon goes weird, they can take their URL with them. They can add their own plugins rather than being dependent on the API. I think this is a big reason why Mastodon is getting attention, rather than simply being an alternative place for cool kids to hang out.
- paulgb 4y ago
  I agree that this is an eventuality, but is anyone actually doing it yet? Everyone I’ve known who has migrated has either been to community-run or self-hosted instances, and I haven’t encountered any corporate or university domains when lurking around.
  - blowski 4y ago
    No, I haven't seen anyone doing it yet. I might just be voicing some wishful thoughts.
  - tpm 4y ago
    One often mentioned example is the EU. https://social.network.europa.eu/about/more https://social.network.europa.eu/about/more One swallow does not make the summer though, as we say in our country, so we'll se if there will be more. Edit: there is also on for the German Federal Government. https://social.bund.de/about https://social.bund.de/about
    - xg15 4y ago
      > One often mentioned example is the EU. From one toot in the timeline: > Our Director and Head of Translation Department paid a visit to @EMSA_EU@twitter.com ...wait a minute, which instance is that? :) But seriously, it's amazing to see institutions and official account getting on the Fediverse!
elliotpage 4y ago
This post is fascinating- it uses "I" and "We" so interchangeably that it is almost dizzying. I want to ask them: what do you want? If you run your own Mastodon server you have a large degree of control over how that is run and federates, so can customise your experience. To continue the analogy, you can stop people invading your house party. Then there is the cultural lamentation and the "no-one asked if I wanted that" line, which is wild because cross-posting has been around for as long as there have been platforms. It just happens.
- mangecoeur 4y ago
  I felt this as well - ok so this person feels a bit 'assaulted' by the sudden surge on incoming people... but it seems bit silly to create open instances and then be shocked when people actually want to join them, especially when mastodon (AFAIU) makes it relatively easy to create private spaces if that's what you prefer. As for cross posting - re posting and re-mixing other people's content has been pretty much the basis of the internet since forever. Again, if this is something you're not happy with you should better create private forums for just your friends, that's a totally fine thing to do. Much like if you want an intimate house party you only invite your friends and eject any gatecrashers who try to sneak in. Perhaps the clue is in the 'anarchism' bit - in anarchist circles when you have a smallish and relatively close group you can manage a very positive and supportive atmosphere without rules and protocols. But as things grow you lose that, inevitably, as having more people means needing more formalized ways of handling issues. I can see how it feels like losing something but on the other hand you have to question the wisdom of an approach that is basically guaranteed to fall apart as soon as it becomes a bit popular.
  - pmw 4y ago
    > in anarchist circles when you have a smallish and relatively close group you can manage a very positive and supportive atmosphere without rules and protocols. But as things grow you lose that, inevitably, as having more people means needing more formalized ways of handling issues. This is eloquently explained in The Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...
ignaloidas 4y ago
The amount of users joining the network daily already started to drop. I see no Eternal September actually happening if the trend continues. I'd give a week for that.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
the people fleeing twitter over Musk's dedication to the freedom of speech will find themselves at home at mastadon, where problematic instances are defederated from - sometimes for as little as refusing to ban a particular problematic individual, and where developers are bullied into blacklisting those in their apps. even late pre-Musk twitter was far more tolerant than mastadon. for example, any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network, I guarantee you that.
- mike_d 4y ago
  > any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network If you are getting defederated by 90% of the network, isn't that maybe a strong indication that 90% don't want to hear what you have to say? Freedom of speech is a protection against the government censoring you. It doesn't mean you get to spread hate and toxicity freely without consequence.
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    yea, that's what I'm saying - mastodon is the perfect fit for those people, so this is not an Eternal September kind of event.
  - paul_funyun 4y ago
    No, it indicates only that the administrators of 90% of the network don't want others to hear what you have to say. If the admins don't want to hear you they'd use the block function.
    - blowski 4y ago
      In which case, somebody will set up an alternative server which doesn't block them, and people will move there. People who love the free market should _love_ Mastodon.
      - paul_funyun 4y ago
amadeuspagel 4y ago
People whining about some Eternal September always remind me of people who moved to a city last year whining about newcomers. The internet is not usenet. You can have your own website (or mastodon server) and make it invite only. But a lot of us prefer "cities", not "villages"—or gated communities. And it seems to me that a lot of people like the city at some point and then want it to remain static and closed. When the fact that it is open is the only reason they were able to move there in the first place.
- repler 4y ago
  It’s like when my toddler tells me I’m not playing with his toys right. “You’re using it differently than I like to use it!”
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    Now imagine the toddler is part of a collective that has carefully built planes, mills, lathes, sanders and lumber-handling machinery to produce wooden toys and has been giving them away for free and sometimes accepting donations. Oh, and they aren't a toddler, they're adults. Oh, and they aren't your kids, either. Not related to you at all. Now your analogy is much more useful.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Now imagine the toddler is part of a collective that has carefully built planes, mills, lathes, sanders and lumber-handling machinery to produce wooden toys and has been giving them away for free This just makes the toddler's position that much more stupid. As the owner of the toys, he's free to set the rules for how they can be played with. But not if he's giving them away.
      - ArekDymalski 4y ago
        Those toys have been given under certain (More or less precisely/adequately defined and communicated) conditions that are constantly violated now. I still remember when ppl cared about little thing called netiquetteamd now even written terms aren't enforced :)
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Unpopular, there will be that "one" server, offering the same services twitter does, where everyone flocks to, breaking the concept of the federated servers, because the audience wants one public plaza.
- blowski 4y ago
  Are you telling me that's an unpopular opinion? If so, I'm downvoting because I always downvote people who "predict" the popularity of their comment.
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Its unpopular in the "going against the narrative of dezentralisation that spawned the platform" way, as its human nature to have social places to gossip like a village plaza, church or in this case, many servers. Likely outcome is thus, one official battlefield of opinion, and some smaller echo chamber servers depending on political leanings.
    - blowski 4y ago
      I'm not interested in your assertion of the popularity of that opinion, though. If you have data to _show_ it's unpopular, that would be interesting. Otherwise, let your opinion stand by itself, allowing other people comment and vote on it.
  - Karsteski 4y ago
    Honestly same, I do not understand why people start their comments like that... Just say what you have to say
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
      Because it filters out a large part of the federation concept defending noise, if you state this. It prevents decentralization vs centralization discussions, which always results in developers missunderstanding "centralization of a social organism" like the state or society, as a externally forced upon evil instead of a choice by the majority. If that concept were really even contemplated, it would be discussed constructively, as in "how can we integrate moderation and distribution of costs and labour for a service provided by the public for the public".
perlgeek 4y ago
y'know, this would be the opportunity for Google to gain some clout in the social network world. Start up a hosted mastodon instance, make a bit of fuzz and PR around it, and then over time invest some resources into making it more awesome. All for relatively little effort, compared to starting a new social network from scratch. The largest effort would likely go into moderation on that instance. Who else could do that? Maybe New York Times? Apple? It needs to be someone with an established brand, and the engineering skills to run it at scale. (Disclaimer: not my own idea, heard it somewhere else -- maybe on risky.biz?)
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Google bought Orkut. Shut it down Google had Google Wave. Shut it down Google had Google Plus. Shut it down. ... If Google unveiled a Mastodon instance tomorrow, why would people believe that Google had any interest in developing and maintaining a social network
  - blowski 4y ago
    Indeed, this sounds like the very definition of "out of the frying pan into the fire".
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  I remember what Google did to XMPP with Google Talk.
- jefftk 4y ago
  It wouldn't be anywhere near that simple: * If there are security vulnerabilities in Mastodon and Google is hosting an instance then Google would be blamed, which means they would need to do a very thorough security review before hosting one. * If they announced it and lots of people wanted to join it would probably have far more members than the biggest Mastodon instances do today, so they would want to make sure they had something that could scale horizontally. I don't think the current codebase can do that? * There are various places where the current design of Mastodon doesn't match user expectations around privacy and control over their content. For example, if you delete something it looks to you like it's deleted but that delete may not fully propagate. By hosting a server Google would be taking responsibility for this, and would have people mad at them (likely with lawsuits) when it didn't do what they expected. This isn't to say that Google would never get into the federated social network space, but it would be after building their own activity pub implementation. (Disclosure: I used to work at Google)
NoboruWataya 4y ago
The author is very quick to call Eternal September. It is entirely possible that a few months from now this will have turned out to be a flash in the pan. More broadly though, I thought the main USP of Mastodon was that, if you don't like the toxic behaviour of a group of users, you don't have to endure it? Why then would this influx be an issue for anyone? The post also seems very dramatic, bordering on hysterical, in the way it describes how "upsetting" it is that other people are joining Mastodon and the "grief" that has apparently struck the extant community there. Which, ironically, strikes me as very "Twitter" behaviour.
- fleddr 4y ago
  It's an escalation of Twitter's micro aggressions into Mastodon nano aggressions. When I hear the word "trauma", I'm thinking of veterans, people that lost loved ones, victims of violence. On Mastodon, trauma refers to getting too many follow requests.
poulpy123 4y ago
I'm ready to bet you that most new people will not stay on mastodon because it lacks all what made twitter successful
aaron695 4y ago
philliphaydon 4y ago
Honestly I don’t think mastodon will ever grow. The vast majority of Twitter users don’t even know what it is. And those moving will eventually begin to fall behind and miss out on what’s happening and ever silly end up on both platforms or just gravitate back to Twitter. 95% of those I follow are tech and prob about 10 are on mastodon and Twitter and no ones really talking about it. The average user who is following a bunch of celebrities isn’t going to move because 1 celebrity moved. They prob won’t even notice the celeb moved.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  This depends on several factors. First of all, whether there is a Twitter in a few months. Elon might have fired too many people responsible for critical parts of the system, there might be a technical collapse. Even if not, we will have to see how the dynamics of Twitter evolve. Yes, if Twitter can survive on people following celebrities, then it might survive anyway. But currently, Twitter is seen as a reputable place to be for all kind of organizations. Media, the government, sports teams. Everyone is on Twitter. I am trying not to judge Elons ideas at the current state of things, but trust is difficult to obtain, but easy to lose. Currently, we do see quite a trend for "tech" people to at least also use Mastodon if not outright to migrate. This is quite an important user group. We will see, how many others might follow.
- berkes 4y ago
  It has grown beyond six million users. How is that "will [not] ever grow"? Mastodon doesn't need to follow the "rules" of big tech, or corporations. Mastodon is a success the moment two people can successfully communicate with it. Or six million. Nothing else matters. There's no difference. There are no shareholders that want to see increasing MAUs. There are no investors that want to exit and therefore insist on ballooning the numbers. There are no employees that will loose their jobs when growth lags, nor advertisers that want to get ever more eyeballs else they leave for [other corp]. It really doesn't matter what any of those fictional "average users" does: whether they follow, stay, go back, whatever: as long as the people using mastodon now have a good time, and get value today, its a huge success. There honestly isn't anything else needed.
redshark03 4y ago
I dont think it will catch on, I have seen this exact mass exodus on bitcoin twitter to bitcoinhackers.org, it never stays active, after a few weeks/months everyone is back on twitter.
xurukefi 4y ago
It's absolutely beyond me how people believed (or still believe) that Mastodon will be a replacement for Twitter. That's a level of delusion I will never get behind.
- pimterry 4y ago
  For me, it's largely replaced Twitter already. I mainly used Twitter to see what was going on in tech & open-source and discuss development topics, and comfortably 50% of the tech people I followed on Twitter have now set up on Mastodon, either additionally (cross-posting to both) or in quite a few cases as a full replacement. I post the same thing to both and I get far more responses & engagement on Mastodon now. For me personally it _has_ replaced Twitter. Depends which circles you move in and what you use Twitter for (it's certainly not useful in the politics & journalism scene yet, for starters) but there's already significant movement here in some areas.
  - previnder 4y ago
    You are like 1% of the 1% of the 1% of internet users. Most people have never heard of Mastodon, and even if they had, they'd find it hella confusing because there's no mastodon.com that they can go and sign up. This is the single greatest barrier to entry that's not going to go away without compromising the ideals of federation.
  - xurukefi 4y ago
    I'm talking about mainstream adoption. Mastodon is never going to be anything more than a niche phenomenon. Similar to how odysee is never going to be the next YouTube, which is even more ridiculous that people believed that. If you want the masses you need a "classic" setup: big commercial company, lots of money and a centralized infrastructure.
    - berkes 4y ago
      But why does that "mainstream adoption" matter? Why do people only consider Mastodon (or many Open Source Software) a success when Joe Average wants to use it?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
foul 4y ago
Eternal september is a problem if you depend from someone else for your fediverse instance. If you rely on your own server, you have an atom button for blocking traffic from selected instances at least at firewall level. It is not usenet or "social network du jour" anymore if you put some effort or cash. A decentralized cyber environment is hard for building stardom status and for making money, if you have both of those probably it has no effect be it positive or negative.
jefftk 4y ago
I don't really understand the author's sharing preferences. They're upset that people didn't ask them for their consent before sharing a link to their post, but I'm having trouble telling what the norm is. Should people be asking before boosting (retweeting) posts? Writing blog posts replying to our referring to them? The internet norms I'm used to have public posts as available for that sort of response: if you shared it to the general world and it has a URL that anyone can load then it's fine to link to and discuss. If Mastodon has a different norm here then (a) that's going to be a hard lift because it is so different from the rest of the internet and (b) I wish people would make it clearer what the norm they're going for is!
- stoppingby 4y ago
  - JanneVee 4y ago
    That is blatantly just missing the point of the complaint. Mastodon is not "social media" and a bunch of "social media users" showed up triggering a change in culture of Mastodon to be more like the thing the author opted out of by using Mastodon!
    - rndmio 4y ago
      How is it not social media? Looking at joinmastodon.org tells me it is. How are people still having to rediscover the fact that posting something publicly means you lose control of it? If you don't want your posts to be publicised, don't post them publicly.
      - JanneVee 4y ago
        It is a quick comment by me that I didn't spend much effort on. So I'll rephrase it: Mastodon is not "Twitter" and a bunch of "Twitter users" showed up triggering a change in culture of Mastodon to be more like the thing the author opted out of by using Mastodon! Hope it brings the point across better!
duxup 4y ago
I don’t think “ corporate publishing systems steer people's behaviour” to …. share things they find interesting. I think that’s just a human thing. A lot of what is described here just seems like human behavior, and I do not understand the authors description of it as “a violation, an assault”. There’s a weird glorification of the current participants of the fediverse in that article and yet outright rejection of anyone new, and by the description of the article no interest in welcoming them.
xg15 4y ago
I think the real danger for the Mastodon/greater Fediverse community is that, should Mastodon really become the "next Twitter", it will catch the attention of the other FAANGs. And the way the Fediverse is structured currently, it appears highly vulnerable to the old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish playbook: 1) Establish a corporate Mastodon server and deeply embed it into your existing platform. ("We love the Fediverse! We love it so much that we've built native support for it into Google mail. That's right! Starting tomorrow, every @gmail address is also a valid Mastodon user! No need to sign up anywhere, you can just follow and toot and boost right from your Gmail app!") 1a) Think influx of a few 1000s of users is bad? How about a billion? [1] 2) Bombard the community with proprietary extensions and attempt to take control of the technical standards. ("We love ActivityPub too! That's why we're planning to add YouTube integration to it! And Google Calendar invites! And Maps locations and advanced emotes and and and... Developers of servers and third-party clients are encouraged to follow our new ActivityPub Extensions living standard. Feedback is encouraged!") 2a) Non-FAANG server admins or client devs now have the choice between continuously playing catch-up on technical features they have to implement or tolerate that a large part of messages become incomprehensible to non-FAANG users. 3) Pull up the drawbridges. ("While ActivityPub is great, we feel that ultimately it limits the platform's potential and does not meet our standards for privacy and security. Therefore, ActivityPub will be sunset at the end of the year for @gmail.com. Third-party clients and servers are invited to implement our web API instead. Just register your server as an app in the API console and apply for a key...") I think the Fediverse community would do good to think up strategies how to counter EEE takeovers right now, because if at some point Mastodon becomes big enough that there is money or influence to be made by controlling the platform, then someone will try a takeover, sooner or later. [1] https://financesonline.com/number-of-active-gmail-users/ https://financesonline.com/number-of-active-gmail-users/
- andridk 4y ago
  XMPP :'(
  - lupire 4y ago
    The kids today don't know that their futurology is actually history.
coldacid 4y ago
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  Oh great, the whole GNU/Linux argument all over again.
  - coldacid 4y ago
    Sorry not sorry. I felt that it was just too funny to not make this joke.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Okay, but hasn't Mastodon (users) actually been wanting it to grow? I see people on HN, reddit, etc. all the time promoting the use of Mastodon. You cannot have it both ways. You either want your favorite platform to be popular and used or you don't.
tinalumfoil 4y ago
> Twitter encourages a very extractive attitude from everyone it touches. Twitter gives people the means to express the attitude they already have. "Influencer Culture" didn't start or end on Twitter. I've been on Mastadon for about a year now, on a small instance that's not accepting new users, and my experience has been great and hasn't changed. If you want to be inclusive and accepting of new users that's great, but that also means accepting their ideas and who they are.
djha-skin 4y ago
> The people re-publishing my Mastodon posts on Twitter didn't think to ask whether I was ok with them doing that. The OP lost me here. You posted your opinion to the public internet. Whether or not you didn't think your audience would reshare using the platform, they could have shared it in a myriad of ways, including posting it to sites like this one. It's even harder to moderate how your opinion gets spread around on the fediverse than on Twitter, where blocking and takedowns are possible. That's sort of the point of the fediverse.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  In the footer of the site: >> All content © Hugh Rundle except as noted in Acknowledgements. Text licensed CC-BY 4.0. >> Please ensure any redistribution adheres to the Creative Commons Best Practices for Attribution.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    That seems completely compatible with sharing a link, which was one of the things the author objected to? (I agree with them in not liking screenshot-sharing culture)
    - dreamling 4y ago
      I think their biggest issue was suddenly being viral, while also dealing with server incursion/tons of new accounts, which meant that lots and lots of people are suddenly clamoring specifically for their attention/making requests for said lists/asking what the rules are/responding directly to the post that went viral but without being vetted beforehand or understanding the previous implicit social rules. While they started with a small discussion with people informed about the differences and server stress became instead a tornado of a much larger discussion while also dumping more stress on the servers, as well as emotional stress of having to deal with all the incoming attention. So. They are overwhelmed, and everything seems like it needs to be solved with the highest priority, but they aren't set up with enough help desk/sub-admin people to filter/protect themselves. Basically all mastodon server admins have a need, at least temporarily, for some business style structure. They need a Janine Melnitz (Ghostbusters Secretary) to prioritize server is burning down messages, organize non-server is burning down contact requests, and direct help/press requests to appropriate people. And perhaps someone else available to work on social onboarding. All personal blog/toot/tweets posted by said overwhelmed server admins should also be taken with a grain (or more) of salt. They may feel differently when things are calmer, or might be able to be more diplomatic in general. Overall though, it was good to hear about how the Author is feeling, and how self-aware they are about how it was similar to when their cohort joined and had to adapt and how the previous fediverse admins might have dealt with similar things. "..there are names for the sort of person who makes lists of people so others can monitor their communications. They’re not nice names.”
fleddr 4y ago
Mastodon will not be the next Twitter, for many reasons. It doesn't scale. A influx of some tens of thousands of users already breaks half the fediverse. Absorbing this relatively small growth means an instance owner has to reach deeply into their pocket to pay for extra hardware capacity. And sees their manual moderation workload explode. In between this scaling, the system will simply be dysfunctional or locked down. It all runs on donations and volunteer work. This is much different from Twitter where as a user you're never confronted with scaling or funding problems. Nor would you easily face the situation that all your content is wiped out because the instance owner retired. Or because a mod doesn't like you. Because moderation is completely arbitrary, Reddit-style. An instance owner may also decide to not federate with specific other servers that you liked, destroying your cross-instance posting and following. You could scale by making lots of instances, but people need to actually fund and run them. And it makes all of the above issues even worse. The culture clash is perhaps most interesting to see, as the author correctly lays out. The author uses the word "traumatic" when confronted with an abundance of follow requests. That sentence succinctly summarizes the typical culture. The fact that it's a request, requiring permission. And a type of extreme fragility that is opposite to Twitter's culture. Although policies vary between instances, most are designed for safety to the point that conversation becomes dysfunctional. One large instance stated to not post food, insects, and a whole list of highly generic items without a content warning (CW). Because apparently, somebody might be triggered by those. A user questioning this policy was soon circled and explained that it only takes seconds to do, whilst the "trauma" lasts for days. Extreme safety leading to unsafety in expressing the simplest of sentences. It's a clash of two extremes. Extreme toxicity and extreme fragility. The other limiting factor is the rejection of America's culture war. Don't be political or overly political, and especially not regarding the topics dominating US politics. Here the mismatch cannot be larger. Twitter basically IS the US culture war as of 2016 when Trumpism brought Twitter back from a coma. Twitter users have been exposed to this extreme polarization for 6 years, they've internalized and normalized it. And now they're asked to shut up about it and to not cause any stirs. The result, a perfectly happy and peaceful place is disturbingly unsatisfactory, I care to admit. Nothing happens. There's no enemy to bash, no drama, nothing to be outraged about. It's like watching the news where the reporter says: all is good today, carry on. Or watching a movie where nothing happens to any character. How many online "friendships" and communities survive without a common enemy? And if it survives, why use Mastodon, when you might as well open a Reddit community or Discord server?
DoItToMe81 4y ago
Mastodon has been mostly filled with either people too disruptive for larger platforms, or obsessives looking to slice off a corner of something greater solely for themselves and people who fit in to their image. I don't see how more people could possibly make it worse at this point.
BonoboIO 4y ago
A „ traumatic „ experience, that some people posted a screenshot of his post on twitter. I think you lost me there. Best part was on the end: „All content © Hugh Rundle except as noted in Acknowledgements. Text licensed CC-BY 4.0.“ That made me laugh.
janmarsal 4y ago
wishful thinking
asdff 4y ago
Eternal september only becomes bad when corporations start hiring positions to advertise on these new platforms. Otherwise, its an idyllic period of sharing information and cultural development, right up until media sinks their teeth into such a large market of consumer's eyeballs and attempts to shift the point of focus from interesting things that are genuinely interesting to profitable things that are often genuinely harmful, because its infinitely easier and far more profitable to engineer something that is harmful to a degree than to account for all the potential harmful externalities (In biology we see this as well; among symbiotic relationships, parasitic interactions are far more likely to evolve than mutually beneficial interactions that could take millions of years of evolutionary change to emerge in a steady state).
nineteen999 4y ago
I don't see Mastodon becoming the next Twitter. It has a marketing problem. Whereas on Twitter one "tweets", what does one do on Mastodon, "masticate"? I predict a temporary influx of new users, which will leave once they realise that Mastodon is full of shrill geeks. In the interim the shrill geeks will moan that their beloved platform has become overrun with "normies". I don't use either so have no skin in this game, happy to be proven wrong. Sitting back with a very small bag of popcorn until all the noise blows over.
- Crespyl 4y ago
  > what does one do on Mastodon toot
- barbazoo 4y ago
  https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/ You "toot".
not2b 4y ago
It will work out. There's been an initial bad reaction to a few things, like content warnings, but I think most of the new people will adjust. There will be some conflicts, but some features of Mastodon will prevent some of the worst problems with Twitter: the equivalent of "likes" doesn't cause things to spread, there's no quote tweets, and no algorithm trying to pump up the most outrageous content. If the desired of different people are too incompatible, then some servers may wind up blocking other servers. So be it.
rcarr 4y ago
Mastodon is not going to become the next twitter. Based on what I’m seeing it’s going to be substack. They’re gunning hard for twitter atm, they’ve dropped lots of twitter like functionality in the last few days. The authors, thought leaders and journos all love it already because they get more interaction with the audience, they actually get to earn money, it’s easy to use, and everything is centered around longform ideas rather than cheap throwaway comments.
subjectsigma 4y ago
> Nobody asked me if I wanted to be popular, boo hoo Holy Lord this kind of stuff is so obnoxious. This is a problem that is fixable with a single button. Make your account private, done. And yet here we are with this absolute yarn about how it's a moral issue that people are using a social network to socially network.

242 points by robin_reala 4y ago

Perhaps Hugh can draw on the timeless wisdom of Snoop Dogg in these trying times: Now that I got me some Seagram's gin Everybody's got their cup but they ain't chipped in Now this types of shit happens all the time You gotta get yours before I gotta get mine

rapsey 4y ago

These exoduses 9 times out of 10 only create some insular single topic community. For people who want to participate in an echo chamber. Anyone who thinks Mastodon has any hope of being the next Twitter is delusional. It is the next Parler/Rumble.

ggm 4y ago
Maybe the best next twitter is not to BE the next twitter? I mean seriously, what if twitter turned out to be a bad idea? We haven't had "the next 8 track" or "the next Zoetrope" or "the next cutlass" -We do other things instead. Maybe a hyperfocal single issue social construct, is what trainspotters actually WANT?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rapsey 4y ago
  That is what I said. It is for people who want an echo chamber. > I mean seriously, what if twitter turned out to be a bad idea? Twitter fills a void where there is no real alternative. How can it be a bad idea? If you are morally opposed to it or something don't use it.
  - ggm 4y ago
    > Twitter fills a void where there is no real alternative. How can it be a bad idea? If you are morally opposed to it or something don't use it. It's bad because of its 2nd order effects. On mental health. On conspiracy theory. On attacks on the integrity of the polity, on social cohesion. Freedom to communicate in the wide, semi-pseudonomously turns out to be something exploitable to undermine the fabric of society at times. I don't think we can put that genie back in the bottle, but "the revolution will not be televised" maybe turns out to be .. wrong?
    - rapsey 4y ago
      Yeah sounds like the comic books and video games are going to turn children into psychopaths argument.
      - ggm 4y ago
        It does, except it's about what led to pizzagate. So.. also not about LSD being sold in sweets to small children, its lies being told to psychotic adults. And about what persisting supportive dements do to each other, once the fever hits. We're very probably poles apart on this one. I won't convince you of the risks and you won't convince me of the lack of them.
        sinity 4y ago
        > It does, except it's about what led to pizzagate. In the times before The Internets, we had that too. OG Nazis were based on nebulous conspiracy theories about Jews. "Internationalists"*. And they certainly weren't original in that either. * I think "Globalists" we have today are synonymous to that.
rippercushions 4y ago
Parler/Rumble were very clearly designed for exactly one single topic, MAGA. The interesting thing about Mastodon is that it has the potential to host countless single topic communities, similar to Reddit.
- mrlatinos 4y ago
  The problem is I have no idea how to find them, so it seems more like IRC.
  - abnercoimbre 4y ago
    Oh there's a discoverability issue between Mastodon instances?
  - _chu1 4y ago
    No, the issue with IRC is that it's dead as hell most the time despite like 200 people idling in the room.
paulgb 4y ago
Mastadon doesn’t ever need to become the twitter of 2022, and most people would rather it didn’t. It does remind me of Twitter in ~2008, which is arguably more fun anyway. (Anybody who thought 2008 twitter would become what it is now would also have been called delusional)
rakoo 4y ago
Mastodon absolutely doesn't want to be the next twitter. It is antithetical with the spirit of the creator and the community. If an actor wants to hyper centralize its users, bets are other platforms won't federate with it

ilyt 4y ago

I think they're being overly optimistic here. This will only keep up if musky boi truly sinks twitter, but if all he does is kicks out the "trendsetting"(lmao) "moderation" and actually enforce their own TOS I think twitter will be just fine

blitzar 4y ago
What happened to absolute free speech?
- fragmede 4y ago
  Elon got made fun of (impersonated), and decided that was his limit on what constitutes "free speech".
- sinity 4y ago
  He seemingly backtracked on the claims it will be "letter of the law". He confirmed that he will keep moderation of "hate speech" and so on. But then, his enemies also flip their position all the time, synchronized to always be against what he's doing lol. Ofc _somehow_ moderating "hate speech" and so on is still not enough. Unclear why.
mikro2nd 4y ago
I think what will sink Twitter will be if Mr Musk goes ahead with his plan (as he's stated) to have "blue tick" tweets all float to the top while deprecating tweets from non-paying users. In my world $8/month seems an outrageous amount for the privilege of bloviating into the void, yet if I don't see my own comments and those of my other non-paying friends, what the hell is the point of even being on the platform?
- cbeach 4y ago
  I think the $8/month charge will put spam and bots out of business. That’s why Musk is doing it. I’ve just subscribed to Twitter Blue and aside from the extra features, I have a lot of confidence that if others do this, we’ll have a more robust and civil platform.

bhoops 4y ago

Mastodon could go either way, but i think as an experiment its sufficiently differentiated to warrant a rethink on how social media should be. Only a couple of years back Mastodon UX was too poor to be usable, but it has grown leaps and bounds now. Mastodon might not be the next twitter, but maybe it has already succeeded as a refuge for people not wanting to be on twitter. The bigger problem mastodon has is that its servers are running full to take on new people. We have been running a few instances of mastodon which now have more space for new users. Link in my bio if anyone wants to use them, but might run out anytime.

robin_reala 4y ago
It’s worth checking if your instance accepts donations to defray running costs. E.g. mastodon.social gets funding from the Mastodon Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon https://www.patreon.com/mastodon
- Shoue 4y ago
  There are also interesting instances like social.coop that are run like a cooperative – you join and are expected to donate monthly, as little as $1, and in return you get democratic control over the instance. It can be a cool incentive to "donate"/invest in the instance.
UncleEntity 4y ago
> Only a couple of years back Mastodon UX was too poor to be usable, but it has grown leaps and bounds now. I see strong parallels between this and blender when I was active in the community around a decade ago. Everyone nowadays takes blender seriously as a contender in that market now so keep the faith, peeps.

blowski 4y ago

Twitter’s model is between an individual and their followers, which is bad for organisations because the individual leaves and takes the followers with them. Mastodon allows companies to own those relationships on their server. For example, I can have the BBC Mastodon server, and all the accounts are @bbc. If the employee leaves, they lose the account. The BBC can do their own moderation, but still be connected. Smaller organisations can do to the same for customer support. They can own the advertising and the UI. And if Mastodon goes weird, they can take their URL with them. They can add their own plugins rather than being dependent on the API. I think this is a big reason why Mastodon is getting attention, rather than simply being an alternative place for cool kids to hang out.

paulgb 4y ago
I agree that this is an eventuality, but is anyone actually doing it yet? Everyone I’ve known who has migrated has either been to community-run or self-hosted instances, and I haven’t encountered any corporate or university domains when lurking around.
- blowski 4y ago
  No, I haven't seen anyone doing it yet. I might just be voicing some wishful thoughts.
- tpm 4y ago
  One often mentioned example is the EU. https://social.network.europa.eu/about/more https://social.network.europa.eu/about/more One swallow does not make the summer though, as we say in our country, so we'll se if there will be more. Edit: there is also on for the German Federal Government. https://social.bund.de/about https://social.bund.de/about
  - xg15 4y ago
    > One often mentioned example is the EU. From one toot in the timeline: > Our Director and Head of Translation Department paid a visit to @EMSA_EU@twitter.com ...wait a minute, which instance is that? :) But seriously, it's amazing to see institutions and official account getting on the Fediverse!

elliotpage 4y ago

This post is fascinating- it uses "I" and "We" so interchangeably that it is almost dizzying. I want to ask them: what do you want? If you run your own Mastodon server you have a large degree of control over how that is run and federates, so can customise your experience. To continue the analogy, you can stop people invading your house party. Then there is the cultural lamentation and the "no-one asked if I wanted that" line, which is wild because cross-posting has been around for as long as there have been platforms. It just happens.

mangecoeur 4y ago
I felt this as well - ok so this person feels a bit 'assaulted' by the sudden surge on incoming people... but it seems bit silly to create open instances and then be shocked when people actually want to join them, especially when mastodon (AFAIU) makes it relatively easy to create private spaces if that's what you prefer. As for cross posting - re posting and re-mixing other people's content has been pretty much the basis of the internet since forever. Again, if this is something you're not happy with you should better create private forums for just your friends, that's a totally fine thing to do. Much like if you want an intimate house party you only invite your friends and eject any gatecrashers who try to sneak in. Perhaps the clue is in the 'anarchism' bit - in anarchist circles when you have a smallish and relatively close group you can manage a very positive and supportive atmosphere without rules and protocols. But as things grow you lose that, inevitably, as having more people means needing more formalized ways of handling issues. I can see how it feels like losing something but on the other hand you have to question the wisdom of an approach that is basically guaranteed to fall apart as soon as it becomes a bit popular.
- pmw 4y ago
  > in anarchist circles when you have a smallish and relatively close group you can manage a very positive and supportive atmosphere without rules and protocols. But as things grow you lose that, inevitably, as having more people means needing more formalized ways of handling issues. This is eloquently explained in The Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

ignaloidas 4y ago

The amount of users joining the network daily already started to drop. I see no Eternal September actually happening if the trend continues. I'd give a week for that.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

the people fleeing twitter over Musk's dedication to the freedom of speech will find themselves at home at mastadon, where problematic instances are defederated from - sometimes for as little as refusing to ban a particular problematic individual, and where developers are bullied into blacklisting those in their apps. even late pre-Musk twitter was far more tolerant than mastadon. for example, any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network, I guarantee you that.

mike_d 4y ago
> any instance hosting the harry potter lady would get defederated from by 90% of the network If you are getting defederated by 90% of the network, isn't that maybe a strong indication that 90% don't want to hear what you have to say? Freedom of speech is a protection against the government censoring you. It doesn't mean you get to spread hate and toxicity freely without consequence.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  yea, that's what I'm saying - mastodon is the perfect fit for those people, so this is not an Eternal September kind of event.
- paul_funyun 4y ago
  No, it indicates only that the administrators of 90% of the network don't want others to hear what you have to say. If the admins don't want to hear you they'd use the block function.
  - blowski 4y ago
    In which case, somebody will set up an alternative server which doesn't block them, and people will move there. People who love the free market should _love_ Mastodon.
    - paul_funyun 4y ago

amadeuspagel 4y ago

People whining about some Eternal September always remind me of people who moved to a city last year whining about newcomers. The internet is not usenet. You can have your own website (or mastodon server) and make it invite only. But a lot of us prefer "cities", not "villages"—or gated communities. And it seems to me that a lot of people like the city at some point and then want it to remain static and closed. When the fact that it is open is the only reason they were able to move there in the first place.

repler 4y ago
It’s like when my toddler tells me I’m not playing with his toys right. “You’re using it differently than I like to use it!”
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Now imagine the toddler is part of a collective that has carefully built planes, mills, lathes, sanders and lumber-handling machinery to produce wooden toys and has been giving them away for free and sometimes accepting donations. Oh, and they aren't a toddler, they're adults. Oh, and they aren't your kids, either. Not related to you at all. Now your analogy is much more useful.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Now imagine the toddler is part of a collective that has carefully built planes, mills, lathes, sanders and lumber-handling machinery to produce wooden toys and has been giving them away for free This just makes the toddler's position that much more stupid. As the owner of the toys, he's free to set the rules for how they can be played with. But not if he's giving them away.
    - ArekDymalski 4y ago
      Those toys have been given under certain (More or less precisely/adequately defined and communicated) conditions that are constantly violated now. I still remember when ppl cared about little thing called netiquetteamd now even written terms aren't enforced :)

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Unpopular, there will be that "one" server, offering the same services twitter does, where everyone flocks to, breaking the concept of the federated servers, because the audience wants one public plaza.

blowski 4y ago
Are you telling me that's an unpopular opinion? If so, I'm downvoting because I always downvote people who "predict" the popularity of their comment.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Its unpopular in the "going against the narrative of dezentralisation that spawned the platform" way, as its human nature to have social places to gossip like a village plaza, church or in this case, many servers. Likely outcome is thus, one official battlefield of opinion, and some smaller echo chamber servers depending on political leanings.
  - blowski 4y ago
    I'm not interested in your assertion of the popularity of that opinion, though. If you have data to _show_ it's unpopular, that would be interesting. Otherwise, let your opinion stand by itself, allowing other people comment and vote on it.
- Karsteski 4y ago
  Honestly same, I do not understand why people start their comments like that... Just say what you have to say
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Because it filters out a large part of the federation concept defending noise, if you state this. It prevents decentralization vs centralization discussions, which always results in developers missunderstanding "centralization of a social organism" like the state or society, as a externally forced upon evil instead of a choice by the majority. If that concept were really even contemplated, it would be discussed constructively, as in "how can we integrate moderation and distribution of costs and labour for a service provided by the public for the public".

perlgeek 4y ago

y'know, this would be the opportunity for Google to gain some clout in the social network world. Start up a hosted mastodon instance, make a bit of fuzz and PR around it, and then over time invest some resources into making it more awesome. All for relatively little effort, compared to starting a new social network from scratch. The largest effort would likely go into moderation on that instance. Who else could do that? Maybe New York Times? Apple? It needs to be someone with an established brand, and the engineering skills to run it at scale. (Disclaimer: not my own idea, heard it somewhere else -- maybe on risky.biz?)

dmitriid 4y ago
Google bought Orkut. Shut it down Google had Google Wave. Shut it down Google had Google Plus. Shut it down. ... If Google unveiled a Mastodon instance tomorrow, why would people believe that Google had any interest in developing and maintaining a social network
- blowski 4y ago
  Indeed, this sounds like the very definition of "out of the frying pan into the fire".
emptyparadise 4y ago
I remember what Google did to XMPP with Google Talk.
jefftk 4y ago
It wouldn't be anywhere near that simple: * If there are security vulnerabilities in Mastodon and Google is hosting an instance then Google would be blamed, which means they would need to do a very thorough security review before hosting one. * If they announced it and lots of people wanted to join it would probably have far more members than the biggest Mastodon instances do today, so they would want to make sure they had something that could scale horizontally. I don't think the current codebase can do that? * There are various places where the current design of Mastodon doesn't match user expectations around privacy and control over their content. For example, if you delete something it looks to you like it's deleted but that delete may not fully propagate. By hosting a server Google would be taking responsibility for this, and would have people mad at them (likely with lawsuits) when it didn't do what they expected. This isn't to say that Google would never get into the federated social network space, but it would be after building their own activity pub implementation. (Disclosure: I used to work at Google)

NoboruWataya 4y ago

The author is very quick to call Eternal September. It is entirely possible that a few months from now this will have turned out to be a flash in the pan. More broadly though, I thought the main USP of Mastodon was that, if you don't like the toxic behaviour of a group of users, you don't have to endure it? Why then would this influx be an issue for anyone? The post also seems very dramatic, bordering on hysterical, in the way it describes how "upsetting" it is that other people are joining Mastodon and the "grief" that has apparently struck the extant community there. Which, ironically, strikes me as very "Twitter" behaviour.

fleddr 4y ago
It's an escalation of Twitter's micro aggressions into Mastodon nano aggressions. When I hear the word "trauma", I'm thinking of veterans, people that lost loved ones, victims of violence. On Mastodon, trauma refers to getting too many follow requests.

poulpy123 4y ago

I'm ready to bet you that most new people will not stay on mastodon because it lacks all what made twitter successful

aaron695 4y ago

philliphaydon 4y ago

Honestly I don’t think mastodon will ever grow. The vast majority of Twitter users don’t even know what it is. And those moving will eventually begin to fall behind and miss out on what’s happening and ever silly end up on both platforms or just gravitate back to Twitter. 95% of those I follow are tech and prob about 10 are on mastodon and Twitter and no ones really talking about it. The average user who is following a bunch of celebrities isn’t going to move because 1 celebrity moved. They prob won’t even notice the celeb moved.

_ph_ 4y ago
This depends on several factors. First of all, whether there is a Twitter in a few months. Elon might have fired too many people responsible for critical parts of the system, there might be a technical collapse. Even if not, we will have to see how the dynamics of Twitter evolve. Yes, if Twitter can survive on people following celebrities, then it might survive anyway. But currently, Twitter is seen as a reputable place to be for all kind of organizations. Media, the government, sports teams. Everyone is on Twitter. I am trying not to judge Elons ideas at the current state of things, but trust is difficult to obtain, but easy to lose. Currently, we do see quite a trend for "tech" people to at least also use Mastodon if not outright to migrate. This is quite an important user group. We will see, how many others might follow.
berkes 4y ago
It has grown beyond six million users. How is that "will [not] ever grow"? Mastodon doesn't need to follow the "rules" of big tech, or corporations. Mastodon is a success the moment two people can successfully communicate with it. Or six million. Nothing else matters. There's no difference. There are no shareholders that want to see increasing MAUs. There are no investors that want to exit and therefore insist on ballooning the numbers. There are no employees that will loose their jobs when growth lags, nor advertisers that want to get ever more eyeballs else they leave for [other corp]. It really doesn't matter what any of those fictional "average users" does: whether they follow, stay, go back, whatever: as long as the people using mastodon now have a good time, and get value today, its a huge success. There honestly isn't anything else needed.

redshark03 4y ago

I dont think it will catch on, I have seen this exact mass exodus on bitcoin twitter to bitcoinhackers.org, it never stays active, after a few weeks/months everyone is back on twitter.

xurukefi 4y ago

It's absolutely beyond me how people believed (or still believe) that Mastodon will be a replacement for Twitter. That's a level of delusion I will never get behind.

pimterry 4y ago
For me, it's largely replaced Twitter already. I mainly used Twitter to see what was going on in tech & open-source and discuss development topics, and comfortably 50% of the tech people I followed on Twitter have now set up on Mastodon, either additionally (cross-posting to both) or in quite a few cases as a full replacement. I post the same thing to both and I get far more responses & engagement on Mastodon now. For me personally it _has_ replaced Twitter. Depends which circles you move in and what you use Twitter for (it's certainly not useful in the politics & journalism scene yet, for starters) but there's already significant movement here in some areas.
- previnder 4y ago
  You are like 1% of the 1% of the 1% of internet users. Most people have never heard of Mastodon, and even if they had, they'd find it hella confusing because there's no mastodon.com that they can go and sign up. This is the single greatest barrier to entry that's not going to go away without compromising the ideals of federation.
- xurukefi 4y ago
  I'm talking about mainstream adoption. Mastodon is never going to be anything more than a niche phenomenon. Similar to how odysee is never going to be the next YouTube, which is even more ridiculous that people believed that. If you want the masses you need a "classic" setup: big commercial company, lots of money and a centralized infrastructure.
  - berkes 4y ago
    But why does that "mainstream adoption" matter? Why do people only consider Mastodon (or many Open Source Software) a success when Joe Average wants to use it?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

foul 4y ago

Eternal september is a problem if you depend from someone else for your fediverse instance. If you rely on your own server, you have an atom button for blocking traffic from selected instances at least at firewall level. It is not usenet or "social network du jour" anymore if you put some effort or cash. A decentralized cyber environment is hard for building stardom status and for making money, if you have both of those probably it has no effect be it positive or negative.

jefftk 4y ago

I don't really understand the author's sharing preferences. They're upset that people didn't ask them for their consent before sharing a link to their post, but I'm having trouble telling what the norm is. Should people be asking before boosting (retweeting) posts? Writing blog posts replying to our referring to them? The internet norms I'm used to have public posts as available for that sort of response: if you shared it to the general world and it has a URL that anyone can load then it's fine to link to and discuss. If Mastodon has a different norm here then (a) that's going to be a hard lift because it is so different from the rest of the internet and (b) I wish people would make it clearer what the norm they're going for is!

stoppingby 4y ago
- JanneVee 4y ago
  That is blatantly just missing the point of the complaint. Mastodon is not "social media" and a bunch of "social media users" showed up triggering a change in culture of Mastodon to be more like the thing the author opted out of by using Mastodon!
  - rndmio 4y ago
    How is it not social media? Looking at joinmastodon.org tells me it is. How are people still having to rediscover the fact that posting something publicly means you lose control of it? If you don't want your posts to be publicised, don't post them publicly.
    - JanneVee 4y ago
      It is a quick comment by me that I didn't spend much effort on. So I'll rephrase it: Mastodon is not "Twitter" and a bunch of "Twitter users" showed up triggering a change in culture of Mastodon to be more like the thing the author opted out of by using Mastodon! Hope it brings the point across better!

duxup 4y ago

I don’t think “ corporate publishing systems steer people's behaviour” to …. share things they find interesting. I think that’s just a human thing. A lot of what is described here just seems like human behavior, and I do not understand the authors description of it as “a violation, an assault”. There’s a weird glorification of the current participants of the fediverse in that article and yet outright rejection of anyone new, and by the description of the article no interest in welcoming them.

xg15 4y ago

I think the real danger for the Mastodon/greater Fediverse community is that, should Mastodon really become the "next Twitter", it will catch the attention of the other FAANGs. And the way the Fediverse is structured currently, it appears highly vulnerable to the old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish playbook: 1) Establish a corporate Mastodon server and deeply embed it into your existing platform. ("We love the Fediverse! We love it so much that we've built native support for it into Google mail. That's right! Starting tomorrow, every @gmail address is also a valid Mastodon user! No need to sign up anywhere, you can just follow and toot and boost right from your Gmail app!") 1a) Think influx of a few 1000s of users is bad? How about a billion? [1] 2) Bombard the community with proprietary extensions and attempt to take control of the technical standards. ("We love ActivityPub too! That's why we're planning to add YouTube integration to it! And Google Calendar invites! And Maps locations and advanced emotes and and and... Developers of servers and third-party clients are encouraged to follow our new ActivityPub Extensions living standard. Feedback is encouraged!") 2a) Non-FAANG server admins or client devs now have the choice between continuously playing catch-up on technical features they have to implement or tolerate that a large part of messages become incomprehensible to non-FAANG users. 3) Pull up the drawbridges. ("While ActivityPub is great, we feel that ultimately it limits the platform's potential and does not meet our standards for privacy and security. Therefore, ActivityPub will be sunset at the end of the year for @gmail.com. Third-party clients and servers are invited to implement our web API instead. Just register your server as an app in the API console and apply for a key...") I think the Fediverse community would do good to think up strategies how to counter EEE takeovers right now, because if at some point Mastodon becomes big enough that there is money or influence to be made by controlling the platform, then someone will try a takeover, sooner or later. [1] https://financesonline.com/number-of-active-gmail-users/ https://financesonline.com/number-of-active-gmail-users/

andridk 4y ago
XMPP :'(
- lupire 4y ago
  The kids today don't know that their futurology is actually history.

coldacid 4y ago

JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Oh great, the whole GNU/Linux argument all over again.
- coldacid 4y ago
  Sorry not sorry. I felt that it was just too funny to not make this joke.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

Okay, but hasn't Mastodon (users) actually been wanting it to grow? I see people on HN, reddit, etc. all the time promoting the use of Mastodon. You cannot have it both ways. You either want your favorite platform to be popular and used or you don't.

tinalumfoil 4y ago

> Twitter encourages a very extractive attitude from everyone it touches. Twitter gives people the means to express the attitude they already have. "Influencer Culture" didn't start or end on Twitter. I've been on Mastadon for about a year now, on a small instance that's not accepting new users, and my experience has been great and hasn't changed. If you want to be inclusive and accepting of new users that's great, but that also means accepting their ideas and who they are.

djha-skin 4y ago

> The people re-publishing my Mastodon posts on Twitter didn't think to ask whether I was ok with them doing that. The OP lost me here. You posted your opinion to the public internet. Whether or not you didn't think your audience would reshare using the platform, they could have shared it in a myriad of ways, including posting it to sites like this one. It's even harder to moderate how your opinion gets spread around on the fediverse than on Twitter, where blocking and takedowns are possible. That's sort of the point of the fediverse.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
In the footer of the site: >> All content © Hugh Rundle except as noted in Acknowledgements. Text licensed CC-BY 4.0. >> Please ensure any redistribution adheres to the Creative Commons Best Practices for Attribution.
- jefftk 4y ago
  That seems completely compatible with sharing a link, which was one of the things the author objected to? (I agree with them in not liking screenshot-sharing culture)
  - dreamling 4y ago
    I think their biggest issue was suddenly being viral, while also dealing with server incursion/tons of new accounts, which meant that lots and lots of people are suddenly clamoring specifically for their attention/making requests for said lists/asking what the rules are/responding directly to the post that went viral but without being vetted beforehand or understanding the previous implicit social rules. While they started with a small discussion with people informed about the differences and server stress became instead a tornado of a much larger discussion while also dumping more stress on the servers, as well as emotional stress of having to deal with all the incoming attention. So. They are overwhelmed, and everything seems like it needs to be solved with the highest priority, but they aren't set up with enough help desk/sub-admin people to filter/protect themselves. Basically all mastodon server admins have a need, at least temporarily, for some business style structure. They need a Janine Melnitz (Ghostbusters Secretary) to prioritize server is burning down messages, organize non-server is burning down contact requests, and direct help/press requests to appropriate people. And perhaps someone else available to work on social onboarding. All personal blog/toot/tweets posted by said overwhelmed server admins should also be taken with a grain (or more) of salt. They may feel differently when things are calmer, or might be able to be more diplomatic in general. Overall though, it was good to hear about how the Author is feeling, and how self-aware they are about how it was similar to when their cohort joined and had to adapt and how the previous fediverse admins might have dealt with similar things. "..there are names for the sort of person who makes lists of people so others can monitor their communications. They’re not nice names.”

fleddr 4y ago

Mastodon will not be the next Twitter, for many reasons. It doesn't scale. A influx of some tens of thousands of users already breaks half the fediverse. Absorbing this relatively small growth means an instance owner has to reach deeply into their pocket to pay for extra hardware capacity. And sees their manual moderation workload explode. In between this scaling, the system will simply be dysfunctional or locked down. It all runs on donations and volunteer work. This is much different from Twitter where as a user you're never confronted with scaling or funding problems. Nor would you easily face the situation that all your content is wiped out because the instance owner retired. Or because a mod doesn't like you. Because moderation is completely arbitrary, Reddit-style. An instance owner may also decide to not federate with specific other servers that you liked, destroying your cross-instance posting and following. You could scale by making lots of instances, but people need to actually fund and run them. And it makes all of the above issues even worse. The culture clash is perhaps most interesting to see, as the author correctly lays out. The author uses the word "traumatic" when confronted with an abundance of follow requests. That sentence succinctly summarizes the typical culture. The fact that it's a request, requiring permission. And a type of extreme fragility that is opposite to Twitter's culture. Although policies vary between instances, most are designed for safety to the point that conversation becomes dysfunctional. One large instance stated to not post food, insects, and a whole list of highly generic items without a content warning (CW). Because apparently, somebody might be triggered by those. A user questioning this policy was soon circled and explained that it only takes seconds to do, whilst the "trauma" lasts for days. Extreme safety leading to unsafety in expressing the simplest of sentences. It's a clash of two extremes. Extreme toxicity and extreme fragility. The other limiting factor is the rejection of America's culture war. Don't be political or overly political, and especially not regarding the topics dominating US politics. Here the mismatch cannot be larger. Twitter basically IS the US culture war as of 2016 when Trumpism brought Twitter back from a coma. Twitter users have been exposed to this extreme polarization for 6 years, they've internalized and normalized it. And now they're asked to shut up about it and to not cause any stirs. The result, a perfectly happy and peaceful place is disturbingly unsatisfactory, I care to admit. Nothing happens. There's no enemy to bash, no drama, nothing to be outraged about. It's like watching the news where the reporter says: all is good today, carry on. Or watching a movie where nothing happens to any character. How many online "friendships" and communities survive without a common enemy? And if it survives, why use Mastodon, when you might as well open a Reddit community or Discord server?

DoItToMe81 4y ago

Mastodon has been mostly filled with either people too disruptive for larger platforms, or obsessives looking to slice off a corner of something greater solely for themselves and people who fit in to their image. I don't see how more people could possibly make it worse at this point.

BonoboIO 4y ago

A „ traumatic „ experience, that some people posted a screenshot of his post on twitter. I think you lost me there. Best part was on the end: „All content © Hugh Rundle except as noted in Acknowledgements. Text licensed CC-BY 4.0.“ That made me laugh.

janmarsal 4y ago

wishful thinking

asdff 4y ago

Eternal september only becomes bad when corporations start hiring positions to advertise on these new platforms. Otherwise, its an idyllic period of sharing information and cultural development, right up until media sinks their teeth into such a large market of consumer's eyeballs and attempts to shift the point of focus from interesting things that are genuinely interesting to profitable things that are often genuinely harmful, because its infinitely easier and far more profitable to engineer something that is harmful to a degree than to account for all the potential harmful externalities (In biology we see this as well; among symbiotic relationships, parasitic interactions are far more likely to evolve than mutually beneficial interactions that could take millions of years of evolutionary change to emerge in a steady state).

nineteen999 4y ago

I don't see Mastodon becoming the next Twitter. It has a marketing problem. Whereas on Twitter one "tweets", what does one do on Mastodon, "masticate"? I predict a temporary influx of new users, which will leave once they realise that Mastodon is full of shrill geeks. In the interim the shrill geeks will moan that their beloved platform has become overrun with "normies". I don't use either so have no skin in this game, happy to be proven wrong. Sitting back with a very small bag of popcorn until all the noise blows over.

Crespyl 4y ago
> what does one do on Mastodon toot
barbazoo 4y ago
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/ You "toot".

not2b 4y ago

It will work out. There's been an initial bad reaction to a few things, like content warnings, but I think most of the new people will adjust. There will be some conflicts, but some features of Mastodon will prevent some of the worst problems with Twitter: the equivalent of "likes" doesn't cause things to spread, there's no quote tweets, and no algorithm trying to pump up the most outrageous content. If the desired of different people are too incompatible, then some servers may wind up blocking other servers. So be it.

rcarr 4y ago

Mastodon is not going to become the next twitter. Based on what I’m seeing it’s going to be substack. They’re gunning hard for twitter atm, they’ve dropped lots of twitter like functionality in the last few days. The authors, thought leaders and journos all love it already because they get more interaction with the audience, they actually get to earn money, it’s easy to use, and everything is centered around longform ideas rather than cheap throwaway comments.

subjectsigma 4y ago

> Nobody asked me if I wanted to be popular, boo hoo Holy Lord this kind of stuff is so obnoxious. This is a problem that is fixable with a single button. Make your account private, done. And yet here we are with this absolute yarn about how it's a moral issue that people are using a social network to socially network.