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You really have no interest in the concept of a non-corporate / non–billionaire-controlled Twitter? Not trying to bait you, but genuinely curious on your stance

You really have no interest in the concept of a non-corporate / non–billionaire-controlled Twitter? Not trying to bait you, but genuinely curious on your stance.

f1refly 4y ago
I believe the issue for many people is not the "non-corporate / non-billionaire-control" part, and more the "twitter" part. It may sound weird to people who use twitter, but much of the world don't have the slightest interest in the concept.
philliphaydon 4y ago
It makes no difference if the person controlling it is a billionaire good guy or bad guy. The result is the same. If you go down the route of mastodon then all you’re doing is segregation. In scenario A you pool people together into 1 big void and everyone gets angry and both sides consider each other wrong. In scenario B you segregate people into groups of opinions where the moment your opinion differs you’re kicked from that group. Either way we are long past the time when you could have an educated conversation and debate. I have no desire to join a void with single opinions and nothing to discuss.
- dpatterbee 4y ago
  The whole point of federated activitypub servers is the opposite of segregation - everyone gets to use whatever server they want and they can still interact with anyone else. Servers blacklisting each other (or defederating) is possible of course, but nothing's stopping you from just joining another server, and twitter at this point is just a large defederated mastodon instance anyway.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Server black listing can be copied so servers can get blocked before they are even listed. If an admin doesn’t like you and you get banned then you have to rebuild your social circle. You could host your own but really who wants to do that?
- rb666 4y ago
  You're misunderstanding the concept of Mastodon.
neoberg 4y ago
Not parent commenter but; I personally don't have any interest in what you described. Especially when it's something like mastodon, which is inferior in almost every aspect. - All clients are straight up bad but this is mostly personal opinion. - I don't want to maintain and pay for a personal instance - On public instances there is always the risk of the admins deciding not to run it anymore without notice. In that case you lose all your followers. - Due to how it's designed; some things are very inconvenient. For example; when I click a link to someone's profile on the internet, I can't see if I follow them or not unless they are on my server. Then I have to copy their url, go to my instance, search and follow. Too much friction for a simple and one of the most important actions of the platform. - With these inconveniences (that are not easy to solve without centralization), it's imho impossible for it to go mainstream. It requires a certain level of tech-saviness. Even the concept of "choosing an instance" is confusing for most people. I don't want to just follow or be followed by techbros and edgy artists. I like having normal converstaions with regular people. I would be interested in an alternative to Twitter but in its current state, Mastodon isn't that.
- x98asfd 4y ago
  >when I click a link to someone's profile on the internet, I can't see if I follow them or not unless they are on my server. Then I have to copy their url, go to my instance, search and follow. Too much friction for a simple and one of the most important actions of the platform. I get that is quite a UX/UI problem. However, given what is now known about FAANG and big tech corp, I would rather have my data unreliable and use bad UX/UI for online exchange then to use the mainstream big corp platforms. Personally I don't want to be a product.
  - _heimdall 4y ago
    What recent information about FAANG (and presumably Twitter) pushed you over the edge? Genuine question in case it comes across sharp, for all those except Netflix I haven't respected their business practices or ethics for at least a decade. The UI/UX problems of Mastodon really are due to the federation model, they aren't inevitable when moving away from a corporate walled garden. Bit of a dead horse on HN, but RSS really does most of what Mastodon does better, throw in WebMentions and you have all the social features too. To the original thread here, it's be very cool to see indieweb support on omg.lol since everyone gets a subdomain and webpage already!
huimang 4y ago
Not the parent commenter, but mastodon is not appealing if you want a large audience.
conductr 4y ago
This assumes "I" had interest in Twitter at some point.

You really have no interest in the concept of a non-corporate / non–billionaire-controlled Twitter? Not trying to bait you, but genuinely curious on your stance.

f1refly 4y ago

I believe the issue for many people is not the "non-corporate / non-billionaire-control" part, and more the "twitter" part. It may sound weird to people who use twitter, but much of the world don't have the slightest interest in the concept.

philliphaydon 4y ago

It makes no difference if the person controlling it is a billionaire good guy or bad guy. The result is the same. If you go down the route of mastodon then all you’re doing is segregation. In scenario A you pool people together into 1 big void and everyone gets angry and both sides consider each other wrong. In scenario B you segregate people into groups of opinions where the moment your opinion differs you’re kicked from that group. Either way we are long past the time when you could have an educated conversation and debate. I have no desire to join a void with single opinions and nothing to discuss.

dpatterbee 4y ago
The whole point of federated activitypub servers is the opposite of segregation - everyone gets to use whatever server they want and they can still interact with anyone else. Servers blacklisting each other (or defederating) is possible of course, but nothing's stopping you from just joining another server, and twitter at this point is just a large defederated mastodon instance anyway.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Server black listing can be copied so servers can get blocked before they are even listed. If an admin doesn’t like you and you get banned then you have to rebuild your social circle. You could host your own but really who wants to do that?
rb666 4y ago
You're misunderstanding the concept of Mastodon.

neoberg 4y ago

Not parent commenter but; I personally don't have any interest in what you described. Especially when it's something like mastodon, which is inferior in almost every aspect. - All clients are straight up bad but this is mostly personal opinion. - I don't want to maintain and pay for a personal instance - On public instances there is always the risk of the admins deciding not to run it anymore without notice. In that case you lose all your followers. - Due to how it's designed; some things are very inconvenient. For example; when I click a link to someone's profile on the internet, I can't see if I follow them or not unless they are on my server. Then I have to copy their url, go to my instance, search and follow. Too much friction for a simple and one of the most important actions of the platform. - With these inconveniences (that are not easy to solve without centralization), it's imho impossible for it to go mainstream. It requires a certain level of tech-saviness. Even the concept of "choosing an instance" is confusing for most people. I don't want to just follow or be followed by techbros and edgy artists. I like having normal converstaions with regular people. I would be interested in an alternative to Twitter but in its current state, Mastodon isn't that.

x98asfd 4y ago
>when I click a link to someone's profile on the internet, I can't see if I follow them or not unless they are on my server. Then I have to copy their url, go to my instance, search and follow. Too much friction for a simple and one of the most important actions of the platform. I get that is quite a UX/UI problem. However, given what is now known about FAANG and big tech corp, I would rather have my data unreliable and use bad UX/UI for online exchange then to use the mainstream big corp platforms. Personally I don't want to be a product.
- _heimdall 4y ago
  What recent information about FAANG (and presumably Twitter) pushed you over the edge? Genuine question in case it comes across sharp, for all those except Netflix I haven't respected their business practices or ethics for at least a decade. The UI/UX problems of Mastodon really are due to the federation model, they aren't inevitable when moving away from a corporate walled garden. Bit of a dead horse on HN, but RSS really does most of what Mastodon does better, throw in WebMentions and you have all the social features too. To the original thread here, it's be very cool to see indieweb support on omg.lol since everyone gets a subdomain and webpage already!

huimang 4y ago

Not the parent commenter, but mastodon is not appealing if you want a large audience.

conductr 4y ago

This assumes "I" had interest in Twitter at some point.