5 ms·

I really hope they're just getting to the "embrace" part, and not planning on reaching "extinguish"

by ellieh 4y ago

levesque 4y ago
If they become involved in mastodon it's going to be riddled with banners and impossible to browse without logging in. Can't wait.
BaseballPhysics 4y ago
Given Mastodon is an open source, federated platform built atop an open protocol, I'm not sure how that'd even be possible. I can understand the tendency towards cynicism, but in this case it's probably misplaced.
- krapp 4y ago
  All it takes is for a single well-funded corporate player to offer up a centralized version of "Mastodon" that, oh let's say, just happens to automatically work with all of your Google or Facebook/Meta services, and capture all of the network effects and mindshare. It won't matter what anyone else does with the code or protocol after that, any more than attempts to compete against Google, Twitter or any of the browser makers matter now. The big players will simply take what they want and make it theirs, or else destroy it at their leisure, the way they did with the web, javascript and any number of ostensibly free and open platforms and protocols.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    Eh, I dunno. Back when that particular phrase was coined, everyone was afraid Microsoft was gonna somehow destroy Linux, and yet that never happened, either. Open platforms and protocols are incredibly powerful and resistance to balkanization. Heck, I find it really ironic you mention "the web, javascript and any number of ostensibly free and open platforms and protocols" as examples of things that companies supposedly made theirs or destroyed, given the web itself is more open and standardized than it every was. If anything, Microsoft's failure to push proprietary solutions/extensions into the web (HTML extensions, JScript, ActiveX, Silverlight, etc) is a great example of how resilient the web truly is. Yes, they're used as a substrate for building walled garden services, but how do you interact with those services? Using open protocols implemented by interoperable clients and servers.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      Have you tried running your own mail server and not having Microsoft or Google mishandle your email (an open protocol)?
      - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        I've not. I know plenty of people who do, and do so successfully. Regardless, I'm not sure what your point is. Email is still very much an open ecosystem with plenty of interoperability and competition. I myself use a custom domain with a hosted email service that isn't being run by Google or Microsoft (I opted for mailbox.org). The spam problem means that it can be tough to ensure your server is being treated as a member in good standing--you need to implement things like SPF/DKIM, you need to ensure you don't land on any blackhole lists, etc--but so long as you do those things, you system will absolutely interoperate with any others.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        Well, I've been running my own mail servers for years, and I can tell you that getting Google and MS to handle your mail fairly is very challenging. There is more involved than what you mention, and many posts here on HN have discussed that. There may be open standards, but Google and MS only want to interoperate with other big players. They don't want to bother with small fry.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I really wish people would try to disprove your assertion rather than outright downvote. In a practical sense, centralization of mastodon is kinda already happening in the form of 'like-minded verses' that have to comply with specific code of conduct. It is not nearly as far fetched as some would like it to believe it to be.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      That isn't centralization. That's the essence of federation. It's literally how Mastodon is intended to work. And the whole point is that if you don't agree with how an instance is being run or moderated, you can migrate to a different instance or stand up your own. Now, it is notable that a lot of the fediverse is concentrated in certain large instances (e.g. mastodon.social). Bu that kind of concentration is not itself an evil so long as people have the freedom to move around. Closed off, walled gardens are the problem.
      - saurik 4y ago
        I want to agree with you, but then I hear about the concept of "defederating" and how small instances are subject to a ton of scrutiny and might even be blocked by some large instances by default, and I see this as a concentration of power--akin to "Google and Microsoft get to decide who can send e-mail and you are an idiot to run your own mail server"--more than as a mere happenstance of decentralized systems being (of course) made up of centralized endpoints.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        First, I've never heard of "small instances [being] subject to a ton of scrutiny [or being] blocked by some large instances by default", so I'm not sure where that's coming from. Regardless, which is better: A federation where, yeah, there might be a bit of drama over who blocks whom, but each instance can set its own policy? Or a single private entity controlling the entire platform? You cannot solve the problem you're highlighting with technology. What you're describing is the human consequences of people exercising their freedom of association. But what you can do is place that freedom in the hands of the community, and I struggle to see how that is anything but a definite improvement over the current status quo.
oaiey 4y ago
And Medium with all respect is a not in the position of doing so. Facebook, Twitter ... these are candidates.
- SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
  Anyone is in a position to "extinguish" Mastodon, as it is a uniquely terrible service trying desperately to solve a problem almost nobody actually has.
  - unshavedyak 4y ago
    Well if what you said is true does it even need to be extinguished? I disagree of course, but your comment seems at odds with itself. A uniquely terrible product that no one has a use for is not something i would expect big money to rush to get rid of.
    - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
      Hence the quotations. Usage has plummeted since the initial Twitter migration, because people are realizing that the tradeoffs Mastodon presumes they care enough about to have a worse UX aren’t accurate. For example, people generally don’t care about data ownership, and that’s one of the main reasons Mastodon is designed the way it is, and causes to problems it does.
      - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        > Usage has plummeted since the initial Twitter migration No, it hasn't. Where did you get this misinformation? That flawed Guardian article that only covered a small period in December when the entire web was less active? Even if you believe their flawed numbers, Mastodon has over a 70% retention rate, which is fantastic (2M MAU down from 2.8M, though, again, their analysis is deeply flawed for a number of reasons). Way back in the early days of Twitter, the media was claiming their retention rate was a mere 15%. > people generally don’t care about data ownership, and that’s one of the main reasons Mastodon is designed the way it is No, it isn't. The main reason Mastodon is designed the way it is is to ensure no one entity controls the platform, therefore preventing any one single person from censoring or promoting a specific agenda. That's a huge problem for many people, in particular the many journalists Elon banned from Twitter and never reinstated.
tonystubblebine 4y ago
Yes, we (Medium) think federation is a feature and so we have to find our niche. That makes sense to me as a business: just find something valuable to do and do it well. I'd guess that there will end up being a GMail sized instance, but we are committed to a bundled subscription. So if we move beyond just getting authors online we'd be aiming to be more like the hey.com of instances.

I really hope they're just getting to the "embrace" part, and not planning on reaching "extinguish"

by ellieh 4y ago

I really hope they're just getting to the "embrace" part, and not planning on reaching "extinguish"

If they become involved in mastodon it's going to be riddled with banners and impossible to browse without logging in. Can't wait.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago

Given Mastodon is an open source, federated platform built atop an open protocol, I'm not sure how that'd even be possible. I can understand the tendency towards cynicism, but in this case it's probably misplaced.

krapp 4y ago
All it takes is for a single well-funded corporate player to offer up a centralized version of "Mastodon" that, oh let's say, just happens to automatically work with all of your Google or Facebook/Meta services, and capture all of the network effects and mindshare. It won't matter what anyone else does with the code or protocol after that, any more than attempts to compete against Google, Twitter or any of the browser makers matter now. The big players will simply take what they want and make it theirs, or else destroy it at their leisure, the way they did with the web, javascript and any number of ostensibly free and open platforms and protocols.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  Eh, I dunno. Back when that particular phrase was coined, everyone was afraid Microsoft was gonna somehow destroy Linux, and yet that never happened, either. Open platforms and protocols are incredibly powerful and resistance to balkanization. Heck, I find it really ironic you mention "the web, javascript and any number of ostensibly free and open platforms and protocols" as examples of things that companies supposedly made theirs or destroyed, given the web itself is more open and standardized than it every was. If anything, Microsoft's failure to push proprietary solutions/extensions into the web (HTML extensions, JScript, ActiveX, Silverlight, etc) is a great example of how resilient the web truly is. Yes, they're used as a substrate for building walled garden services, but how do you interact with those services? Using open protocols implemented by interoperable clients and servers.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    Have you tried running your own mail server and not having Microsoft or Google mishandle your email (an open protocol)?
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      I've not. I know plenty of people who do, and do so successfully. Regardless, I'm not sure what your point is. Email is still very much an open ecosystem with plenty of interoperability and competition. I myself use a custom domain with a hosted email service that isn't being run by Google or Microsoft (I opted for mailbox.org). The spam problem means that it can be tough to ensure your server is being treated as a member in good standing--you need to implement things like SPF/DKIM, you need to ensure you don't land on any blackhole lists, etc--but so long as you do those things, you system will absolutely interoperate with any others.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        Well, I've been running my own mail servers for years, and I can tell you that getting Google and MS to handle your mail fairly is very challenging. There is more involved than what you mention, and many posts here on HN have discussed that. There may be open standards, but Google and MS only want to interoperate with other big players. They don't want to bother with small fry.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I really wish people would try to disprove your assertion rather than outright downvote. In a practical sense, centralization of mastodon is kinda already happening in the form of 'like-minded verses' that have to comply with specific code of conduct. It is not nearly as far fetched as some would like it to believe it to be.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    That isn't centralization. That's the essence of federation. It's literally how Mastodon is intended to work. And the whole point is that if you don't agree with how an instance is being run or moderated, you can migrate to a different instance or stand up your own. Now, it is notable that a lot of the fediverse is concentrated in certain large instances (e.g. mastodon.social). Bu that kind of concentration is not itself an evil so long as people have the freedom to move around. Closed off, walled gardens are the problem.
    - saurik 4y ago
      I want to agree with you, but then I hear about the concept of "defederating" and how small instances are subject to a ton of scrutiny and might even be blocked by some large instances by default, and I see this as a concentration of power--akin to "Google and Microsoft get to decide who can send e-mail and you are an idiot to run your own mail server"--more than as a mere happenstance of decentralized systems being (of course) made up of centralized endpoints.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        First, I've never heard of "small instances [being] subject to a ton of scrutiny [or being] blocked by some large instances by default", so I'm not sure where that's coming from. Regardless, which is better: A federation where, yeah, there might be a bit of drama over who blocks whom, but each instance can set its own policy? Or a single private entity controlling the entire platform? You cannot solve the problem you're highlighting with technology. What you're describing is the human consequences of people exercising their freedom of association. But what you can do is place that freedom in the hands of the community, and I struggle to see how that is anything but a definite improvement over the current status quo.

oaiey 4y ago

And Medium with all respect is a not in the position of doing so. Facebook, Twitter ... these are candidates.

SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
Anyone is in a position to "extinguish" Mastodon, as it is a uniquely terrible service trying desperately to solve a problem almost nobody actually has.
- unshavedyak 4y ago
  Well if what you said is true does it even need to be extinguished? I disagree of course, but your comment seems at odds with itself. A uniquely terrible product that no one has a use for is not something i would expect big money to rush to get rid of.
  - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
    Hence the quotations. Usage has plummeted since the initial Twitter migration, because people are realizing that the tradeoffs Mastodon presumes they care enough about to have a worse UX aren’t accurate. For example, people generally don’t care about data ownership, and that’s one of the main reasons Mastodon is designed the way it is, and causes to problems it does.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      > Usage has plummeted since the initial Twitter migration No, it hasn't. Where did you get this misinformation? That flawed Guardian article that only covered a small period in December when the entire web was less active? Even if you believe their flawed numbers, Mastodon has over a 70% retention rate, which is fantastic (2M MAU down from 2.8M, though, again, their analysis is deeply flawed for a number of reasons). Way back in the early days of Twitter, the media was claiming their retention rate was a mere 15%. > people generally don’t care about data ownership, and that’s one of the main reasons Mastodon is designed the way it is No, it isn't. The main reason Mastodon is designed the way it is is to ensure no one entity controls the platform, therefore preventing any one single person from censoring or promoting a specific agenda. That's a huge problem for many people, in particular the many journalists Elon banned from Twitter and never reinstated.

tonystubblebine 4y ago

Yes, we (Medium) think federation is a feature and so we have to find our niche. That makes sense to me as a business: just find something valuable to do and do it well. I'd guess that there will end up being a GMail sized instance, but we are committed to a bundled subscription. So if we move beyond just getting authors online we'd be aiming to be more like the hey.com of instances.