2 ms·

Right, "bubble" is probably a loaded word to use here. I personally would prefer going back to the "old" internet where we had niche forums. Mastodon provides

by dmix 4y ago

Right, "bubble" is probably a loaded word to use here. I personally would prefer going back to the "old" internet where we had niche forums. Mastodon provides that while letting forums connect with a wider set of communities. I guess my only critique is that it's not often pitched this way. But it will become apparent to most people later on.

tptacek 4y ago
The "connected communities" thing doesn't resonate with me. To me, the promise of Mastodon is just integrated publishing and RSS-style aggregation, plus a set of conventions that captures most of what people did with Twitter. I think it's a weird quirk of the evolution of Mastodon/ActivityPub that I'm on someone else's server right now; it's a little bit like being on someone's huge group blog. Group blogs make sense, but not at the scale Mastodon communities operate at. I think that if Mastodon sustains the growth they've seen over the last few months, then a year from now, it's going to be less common for people to primarily publish on communities like journa.host and FediScience, and more common for them to publish from huge Blogger-style community services --- with very few weird norms, much more comparable to 2021-era Twitter than to Mastodon.social --- or their "own" instances, just like everyone does with blogs.
- dmix 4y ago
  > Group blogs make sense, but not at the scale Mastodon communities operate at. That's interesting. Like I said, this bit will become more apparent to users as it grows, since in the current form that's all it really is (a few sets of big networks). I think you just sold me on the general idea of Mastodon. Back to your earlier point, it might really come down to the UX issues around communicating on Mastodon itself, if it's going to pull this off. But that doesn't mean there won't be another service that can in the future. Otherwise that's the big thing that scared me away, since I'm a hyper-critical of UIs.

by dmix 4y ago

tptacek 4y ago

The "connected communities" thing doesn't resonate with me. To me, the promise of Mastodon is just integrated publishing and RSS-style aggregation, plus a set of conventions that captures most of what people did with Twitter. I think it's a weird quirk of the evolution of Mastodon/ActivityPub that I'm on someone else's server right now; it's a little bit like being on someone's huge group blog. Group blogs make sense, but not at the scale Mastodon communities operate at. I think that if Mastodon sustains the growth they've seen over the last few months, then a year from now, it's going to be less common for people to primarily publish on communities like journa.host and FediScience, and more common for them to publish from huge Blogger-style community services --- with very few weird norms, much more comparable to 2021-era Twitter than to Mastodon.social --- or their "own" instances, just like everyone does with blogs.

dmix 4y ago
> Group blogs make sense, but not at the scale Mastodon communities operate at. That's interesting. Like I said, this bit will become more apparent to users as it grows, since in the current form that's all it really is (a few sets of big networks). I think you just sold me on the general idea of Mastodon. Back to your earlier point, it might really come down to the UX issues around communicating on Mastodon itself, if it's going to pull this off. But that doesn't mean there won't be another service that can in the future. Otherwise that's the big thing that scared me away, since I'm a hyper-critical of UIs.