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> What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation including I suppose Elon's experimental approach to management. I hope that in 10 years, we wi

> What has changed, however, is our approach to experimentation including I suppose Elon's experimental approach to management. I hope that in 10 years, we will look back at this twitter 2.0 (= musk's debacle) as the impetus that lead to more widespread adoption of social media 2.0 (= federation) I already see the snowball effect getting momentum with all this coverage (NPR, NYT...) and big name exits (Apple...)

janoc 4y ago
It won't. Federation doesn't solve any of the problems Twitter now has. That instead of one poorly managed understaffed silo full of trolls and abusers you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches to moderation and content doesn't make anything easier or fixed for people who use Twitter today. It is the same like we had federated chat with Jabber for 20 years now - and nobody uses it. The best implementations of it ended being the nonfederated ones - like Google Talk or I believe Whatsapp used that protocol. And apart from nerds and some engineers literally has no clue that something like XMPP even exists. People don't care about the technology, they care where they want to communicate with their friends and network. The Twitter issues are first and foremost human, business, management and social problems, not something you can throw some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved.
- lijogdfljk 4y ago
  /shrug, depends on how people view the problem. Smaller communities can be more focused and managed. Trying to get everyone in one place agreeing on one set of rules sounds impossible. At least federation has the potential to let groups exist differently as desired.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    That is the thing, people do not go to twitter to be in "Small Focused Community" They do it to interact with the globe, and the more people on that network the better it is. There are a million ways to create a niche site (like hacker news) that allows a Small Focused Community to interact, that is not a replacement for Twitter
    - lijogdfljk 4y ago
      Agreed, but that's kinda the point in my eyes. Maybe a global forum with no moderation everyone can agree with is a bad thing? Ie maybe it makes everyone unhappy? Everyone was on Facebook too. We're not all looking for Facebook 2.0 currently, are we? Yea, we have different form factors of social networks, definitely. But some (not all!) of the core features of Facebook were misguided or mismanaged. Some features of Facebook aren't looking to be replaced. I'm not saying Mastodon is a replacement for Twitter. I'm simply saying maybe some features of Twitter aren't worth being replaced for many people.
      - phpisthebest 4y ago
        >>Maybe a global forum with no moderation everyone can agree with is a bad thing? Ie maybe it makes everyone unhappy? I do not agree, and it does not make me unhappy at all. I am late 70's child, I experienced the Wild West of the internet, nothing posted to twitter (or the chan's for that matter) shock me, or makes me unhappy I think people need thicker skin, and maybe more anonymity not less... Censorship is not the solution, never has been in history and never will be in the future.
        lijogdfljk 4y ago
        > I do not agree, and it does not make me unhappy at all. I am late 70's child, I experienced the Wild West of the internet, nothing posted to twitter (or the chan's for that matter) shock me, or makes me unhappy Yea, i did say "everyone" but i didn't actually mean everyone. Lots of people enjoy Facebook in all it's glory, too. > Censorship is not the solution, never has been in history and never will be in the future. My comment wasn't about Censorship, though. It was about people and a possibility that they may prefer categorized focused communities like many of us grew up with. Which may or may not include moderation (aka "censorship") I certainly enjoyed the forums of old more than the modern day global scroll feed. But i prefer focused/categorized content, clearly. My point wasn't that you do or don't. Merely to pose a question. A question (among many) that could dictate whether or not the Forums of old have a place in the modern day. Whether or not the global attention draw that is Twitter is actually desired. edit: Desired enough to keep it alive and "successful", at least.
- CrypticShift 4y ago
  > doesn't solve any of the problems Twitter now has > you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches It is not about short-term problem solving. It is about long-term investment in more decentralized social networks. 2000 different approaches is exactly what is needed for "natural selection" to do it job. > are first and foremost human, business, management and social problems, not something you can throw some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved. Agreed. But the protocols should by designed to adress and resolve those problems the best they can. This will take a lot of iterations. The more (and sooner) people jump ship, the better chance we have to test and iterate.
  - eduction 4y ago
    >2000 different approaches is exactly what is needed for "natural selection" to do it job… The more (and sooner) people jump ship, the better chance we have to test and iterate. I don’t think users are going to participate in these sorts of experiments long term. People are signing up now out of fear and anger and hope but Mastodon still lacks the user base — people for you to follow and people to amplify your posts. (Partly because it’s still a fraction as popular as Twitter and partly because the hosts all seem to be blocking a different half of the other hosts so even if two people are both on Mastodon they may not be able to connect.) If, on top of all that, people are expected to tolerate “a lot of iterations” before things work right I see them leaving. Let’s not forget that the Twitter/Mastodon mode of interaction can be pretty toxic so there needs to be a big carrot for people. Mastodon doesn’t have it. Twitter barely did tbh.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      > but Mastodon still lacks the user base There are nearly 3M users across the fediverse. I can't keep up with my timeline. This genuinely sounds like the words of someone who hasn't actually looked at mastodon in the last month. > people are expected to tolerate “a lot of iterations” before things work right I see them leaving This is literally what Elon just said they're gonna do with Twitter. Look, don't get me wrong, I think it's very likely mastodon remains a bit niche. But not for these reasons. I'm much more concerned about issues of search/discoverability, general usability, and the downsides of a purely chronological timeline than I am about either of the issues you just focused on.
- jaredcwhite 4y ago
  Utterly disagree. I trust the people running a small/medium-sized instance I've personally vetted to host my account infinitely more than I trust some anonymous group of contractors in a content moderation farm somewhere…or Elon, lol. Twitter's current issues by and large are a result of trusting corporate media silos with our precious time, data, and safety online. It's wildly unacceptable.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  > That instead of one poorly managed understaffed silo full of trolls and abusers you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches to moderation and content doesn't make anything easier or fixed for people who use Twitter today. But it would effectively kill the various cat-and-mouse gaming of the entire system by spammers, scammers, and sub-nation-state adversaries.
fundad 4y ago
How much did any of us think about or notice social network ads for Apple products? I remember the #AppleEvent hashtag emoji campaigns that cost a pretty penny but that's not what's going on now.
mlindner 4y ago
Mastodon doesn't do any of the things I want out of social media, and has the most backwards thinking to moderation. The moderation system is based on witch hunting. Federation can't work when there are discrete sets of people that absolutely hate each other. Right now Mastodon is full of the most far-left people.
- knolax 4y ago
  First it's "The government can't stop me from saying anything I want", then it's "Corporations can't stop me from saying anything I want on their platform", and now you've progressed to "Private individuals running their own instances have to federate with me and listen to what I say or else they're witch hunting leftists". It's my own instance, I will federate with who I want. You have the right to run your instance, I have the right to tell you to fuck off.
  - lmm 4y ago
    The local HOA can be far more oppressive than the faraway president. IRC servers were often run by petty tyrants. Mastodon federates at the wrong level.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    It’s your own instance and I’ll never go there or any other instance that wants to control what people say publicly and to each other and spy on peoples private conversations.
ilyt 4y ago
I think calling Mastodon and friends "federation" is too generous, "fiefdoms" fits much better, each with king/admin (not actual users) deciding what's allowed and what is banned.
- torginus 4y ago
  Isn't that how regular internet forums work?
  - return_to_monke 4y ago
    internet forums don't really have a way to talk with each other natively.
torginus 4y ago
I don't understand why people put an equals sign between less moderation and the inevitable fall of the platform to trolls? I feel HN is not that moderated - bar - I don't feel like it happens that often that people's opinions get disappeared - Imo the main appeal of the site is that people of differing opinions are and worldviews are able to have informed debates about stuff here - even if limited to the world of technology.
- imiric 4y ago
  HN is still a very niche community where Eternal September hasn't happened yet. Moderation is largely enforced by the community itself thus far, and one(?) superhuman moderator. You can be sure that if a flood of new users happens, the current system won't scale, and we'd see a diminishing quality of content and comments posted. Some old timers would probably say that has already happened, but it's still largely under control. This site doesn't have the benefit of, say, Reddit, where niche communities can still exist in relative isolation and with their own moderation rules, even with the amount of users and low quality content on the rest of the site.

janoc 4y ago

It won't. Federation doesn't solve any of the problems Twitter now has. That instead of one poorly managed understaffed silo full of trolls and abusers you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches to moderation and content doesn't make anything easier or fixed for people who use Twitter today. It is the same like we had federated chat with Jabber for 20 years now - and nobody uses it. The best implementations of it ended being the nonfederated ones - like Google Talk or I believe Whatsapp used that protocol. And apart from nerds and some engineers literally has no clue that something like XMPP even exists. People don't care about the technology, they care where they want to communicate with their friends and network. The Twitter issues are first and foremost human, business, management and social problems, not something you can throw some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved.

lijogdfljk 4y ago
/shrug, depends on how people view the problem. Smaller communities can be more focused and managed. Trying to get everyone in one place agreeing on one set of rules sounds impossible. At least federation has the potential to let groups exist differently as desired.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  That is the thing, people do not go to twitter to be in "Small Focused Community" They do it to interact with the globe, and the more people on that network the better it is. There are a million ways to create a niche site (like hacker news) that allows a Small Focused Community to interact, that is not a replacement for Twitter
  - lijogdfljk 4y ago
    Agreed, but that's kinda the point in my eyes. Maybe a global forum with no moderation everyone can agree with is a bad thing? Ie maybe it makes everyone unhappy? Everyone was on Facebook too. We're not all looking for Facebook 2.0 currently, are we? Yea, we have different form factors of social networks, definitely. But some (not all!) of the core features of Facebook were misguided or mismanaged. Some features of Facebook aren't looking to be replaced. I'm not saying Mastodon is a replacement for Twitter. I'm simply saying maybe some features of Twitter aren't worth being replaced for many people.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      >>Maybe a global forum with no moderation everyone can agree with is a bad thing? Ie maybe it makes everyone unhappy? I do not agree, and it does not make me unhappy at all. I am late 70's child, I experienced the Wild West of the internet, nothing posted to twitter (or the chan's for that matter) shock me, or makes me unhappy I think people need thicker skin, and maybe more anonymity not less... Censorship is not the solution, never has been in history and never will be in the future.
      - lijogdfljk 4y ago
        > I do not agree, and it does not make me unhappy at all. I am late 70's child, I experienced the Wild West of the internet, nothing posted to twitter (or the chan's for that matter) shock me, or makes me unhappy Yea, i did say "everyone" but i didn't actually mean everyone. Lots of people enjoy Facebook in all it's glory, too. > Censorship is not the solution, never has been in history and never will be in the future. My comment wasn't about Censorship, though. It was about people and a possibility that they may prefer categorized focused communities like many of us grew up with. Which may or may not include moderation (aka "censorship") I certainly enjoyed the forums of old more than the modern day global scroll feed. But i prefer focused/categorized content, clearly. My point wasn't that you do or don't. Merely to pose a question. A question (among many) that could dictate whether or not the Forums of old have a place in the modern day. Whether or not the global attention draw that is Twitter is actually desired. edit: Desired enough to keep it alive and "successful", at least.
CrypticShift 4y ago
> doesn't solve any of the problems Twitter now has > you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches It is not about short-term problem solving. It is about long-term investment in more decentralized social networks. 2000 different approaches is exactly what is needed for "natural selection" to do it job. > are first and foremost human, business, management and social problems, not something you can throw some network protocols and technology at and declare it solved. Agreed. But the protocols should by designed to adress and resolve those problems the best they can. This will take a lot of iterations. The more (and sooner) people jump ship, the better chance we have to test and iterate.
- eduction 4y ago
  >2000 different approaches is exactly what is needed for "natural selection" to do it job… The more (and sooner) people jump ship, the better chance we have to test and iterate. I don’t think users are going to participate in these sorts of experiments long term. People are signing up now out of fear and anger and hope but Mastodon still lacks the user base — people for you to follow and people to amplify your posts. (Partly because it’s still a fraction as popular as Twitter and partly because the hosts all seem to be blocking a different half of the other hosts so even if two people are both on Mastodon they may not be able to connect.) If, on top of all that, people are expected to tolerate “a lot of iterations” before things work right I see them leaving. Let’s not forget that the Twitter/Mastodon mode of interaction can be pretty toxic so there needs to be a big carrot for people. Mastodon doesn’t have it. Twitter barely did tbh.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    > but Mastodon still lacks the user base There are nearly 3M users across the fediverse. I can't keep up with my timeline. This genuinely sounds like the words of someone who hasn't actually looked at mastodon in the last month. > people are expected to tolerate “a lot of iterations” before things work right I see them leaving This is literally what Elon just said they're gonna do with Twitter. Look, don't get me wrong, I think it's very likely mastodon remains a bit niche. But not for these reasons. I'm much more concerned about issues of search/discoverability, general usability, and the downsides of a purely chronological timeline than I am about either of the issues you just focused on.
jaredcwhite 4y ago
Utterly disagree. I trust the people running a small/medium-sized instance I've personally vetted to host my account infinitely more than I trust some anonymous group of contractors in a content moderation farm somewhere…or Elon, lol. Twitter's current issues by and large are a result of trusting corporate media silos with our precious time, data, and safety online. It's wildly unacceptable.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
> That instead of one poorly managed understaffed silo full of trolls and abusers you have 2000 poorly managed, even more understaffed systems with 2000 different approaches to moderation and content doesn't make anything easier or fixed for people who use Twitter today. But it would effectively kill the various cat-and-mouse gaming of the entire system by spammers, scammers, and sub-nation-state adversaries.

fundad 4y ago

How much did any of us think about or notice social network ads for Apple products? I remember the #AppleEvent hashtag emoji campaigns that cost a pretty penny but that's not what's going on now.

mlindner 4y ago

Mastodon doesn't do any of the things I want out of social media, and has the most backwards thinking to moderation. The moderation system is based on witch hunting. Federation can't work when there are discrete sets of people that absolutely hate each other. Right now Mastodon is full of the most far-left people.

knolax 4y ago
First it's "The government can't stop me from saying anything I want", then it's "Corporations can't stop me from saying anything I want on their platform", and now you've progressed to "Private individuals running their own instances have to federate with me and listen to what I say or else they're witch hunting leftists". It's my own instance, I will federate with who I want. You have the right to run your instance, I have the right to tell you to fuck off.
- lmm 4y ago
  The local HOA can be far more oppressive than the faraway president. IRC servers were often run by petty tyrants. Mastodon federates at the wrong level.
- mlindner 4y ago
  It’s your own instance and I’ll never go there or any other instance that wants to control what people say publicly and to each other and spy on peoples private conversations.

ilyt 4y ago

I think calling Mastodon and friends "federation" is too generous, "fiefdoms" fits much better, each with king/admin (not actual users) deciding what's allowed and what is banned.

torginus 4y ago
Isn't that how regular internet forums work?
- return_to_monke 4y ago
  internet forums don't really have a way to talk with each other natively.

torginus 4y ago

I don't understand why people put an equals sign between less moderation and the inevitable fall of the platform to trolls? I feel HN is not that moderated - bar - I don't feel like it happens that often that people's opinions get disappeared - Imo the main appeal of the site is that people of differing opinions are and worldviews are able to have informed debates about stuff here - even if limited to the world of technology.

imiric 4y ago
HN is still a very niche community where Eternal September hasn't happened yet. Moderation is largely enforced by the community itself thus far, and one(?) superhuman moderator. You can be sure that if a flood of new users happens, the current system won't scale, and we'd see a diminishing quality of content and comments posted. Some old timers would probably say that has already happened, but it's still largely under control. This site doesn't have the benefit of, say, Reddit, where niche communities can still exist in relative isolation and with their own moderation rules, even with the amount of users and low quality content on the rest of the site.