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Twitter faces no real threat from Mastodon until they streamline their sign up process and mask the "decentralized server" nonsense. I understand that the peopl
by standardUser 4y ago
Twitter faces no real threat from Mastodon until they streamline their sign up process and mask the "decentralized server" nonsense. I understand that the people here don't see it as nonsense, but the millions of less tech savvy users needed to make it a true Twitter alternative do see it that way and it will prevent Mastodon from ever being more than a niche service. It's a baffling process to the everyday user who has signed up for dozens of different services over the years with a simple email and password (if not single sign on).
- mghk 4y ago
- someNameIG 4y agoYou can run your own server if you want to, or join one that has the same level of moderation as you'd like. As for defederation that's just freedom of association
- Sithwuth 4y agoI'm not sure I would describe them as "barely-working". Have you used any of them lately? They work very well in my experience. The improvement I think is you can jump to a different instance, and being all your followers and following with you. Whereas if you're the subject of an arbitrary decision by the Twitter overlord, all you can really do is post about it online and try to stir up enough bad PR for the company that they reverse their decision.
- Sithwuth 4y agoCurious as to how many people manage to sign up for email addresses across a variety of providers despite all that decentralised server nonsense.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pimlottc 4y agoAre you kidding? The vast majority just use Gmail now, or perhaps an institutional account they were enrolled in “automatically” and have a strong motive to check regularly for school/work purposes.
- lapcat 4y agoRight. Most people get their email from work, school, their ISP, or from their OS provider: Google, Microsoft, Apple. If you present people with a list of 30 email providers they've never heard of before, it's going to throw them for a loop.
- standardUser 4y agoUsers think of Mastodon as analogous to Twitter. You can tell them they are wrong. But telling new and eager users they are wrong, and then offering an elaborate explanation as to why they are wrong and then requiring them to make a confusing choice with unclear consequences before they can even use the service is not a great strategy for growth.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- none_to_remain 4y agoIn practice we don't see situations arising where Yahoo users can't send email to Gmail users because the boss of Gmail doesn't like that that the boss of Yahoo allows Fastmail users to send email to Yahoo users
- ruminator1 4y agoThis right here is my primary problem with Mastodon. Its ripe for drama like this. The amount of glee I saw in the older users their about defedrating felt really unsettling. "If X company comes we will defedarate them" "If X celebrity comes we will defedarate them".
- hoppoy 4y agoExactly this, it's like the most emotionally immature people on Twitter have been given an even more powerful blocklist to play with. Like thousands of mini-Musks with their own volatility problems.
- lapcat 4y agoThis isn't true. In fact we do see email providers getting blocked, mainly because of spam or other unwanted emails being sent from a provider. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+is+gmail+blocking+my+email%3F https://www.google.com/search?q=why+is+gmail+blocking+my+ema...
- davidgerard 4y agoyes we do. remember when Yahoo email to mailing lists went straight to GMail spam for a while because GMail didn't like how Yahoo managed its headers?
- emodendroket 4y agoWell, for the most part they don't, they use either their ISP e-mail, their work e-mail, or Gmail. iCloud might be a distant runner up. I rarely see anybody using even Yahoo or hotmail anymore.
- smoldesu 4y agoThat's fine. Mastodon's goal isn't to replace Twitter, but the way Twitter is heading I wouldn't blame people who use it as a replacement. Mastodon's real problem is that it doesn't have sex appeal. It's not a Game of Thrones celebrity throwdown like Twitter, and it lacks the marketing of successful viral platforms like TikTok or Instagram. It was a conscious decision too - calling posts toots and designing the entire network to be distributed - making it less social was part of making it more healthy. Even now, Mastodon maintainers waffle at the idea of making the platform more Twitter-like because it dilutes the balance the platform has cultivated over the past few years. It's like saying that Discord doesn't face any threat from IRC. You might be right from a financial perspective, but the communities around them are completely different things. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison.