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I think I have about 200 tweets on my Twitter timeline per one Mastodon toot. And the usability of Mastodon is so confusing that it's hard to see people moving.

by Hamuko 4y ago

I think I have about 200 tweets on my Twitter timeline per one Mastodon toot. And the usability of Mastodon is so confusing that it's hard to see people moving. And brands have even less of a chance of moving, so I'm probably not going to get BBC Breaking News or the official Steam Deck account there anytime soon.

L3viathan 4y ago
>brands have even less of a chance of moving Good >I'm probably not going to get BBC Breaking https://mastodon.cloud/@BBCBreaking_bot https://mastodon.cloud/@BBCBreaking_bot Not official, but why does it matter?
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >Not official, but why does it matter? Given that it hasn't posted since 2021, I'd say that it matters. There's obviously the issue of trust when it comes to unofficial sources masquerading as official.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    Not much has happened since 2021 really.
hnbad 4y ago
I think that 200 tweets per toot metric may be accurate tho in my case it's closer to 20 (tools like Movetodon can help get you started). The difference for me is that those 200 tweets are mostly about the same drama and the replies to every one of them are always full of trolls and genuinely shitty opinions havers (e.g. sports fan bunch of numbers insisting that the police should just shoot protestors) and somehow this stays the same even if I spend ten minutes every now and then just blocking those reply guys. You can shout "echo chamber" all you want but the lower overall population and stricter crackdowns on trolls and defederation of dodgy instances certainly leads to less noise and more respectful interactions. I'll take one 1000 character reply I disagree with over 200 low-effort trolls and parroted culture war slogans. Turns out the "public town square" is a much more pleasant space when it's not full of a billion people and their sock puppets shouting slurs at each other all day.
rsynnott 4y ago
I mean, I’m not sure about that; a number of newspapers have mastodon accounts (one or two have instances), and BBC’s always been pretty tech forward.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  Isn't it concerning if the BBC is tech-forward and is not on Mastodon? And the situation is even worse for companies that are less tech-foward.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    shrug Not particularly, no. It's tech-forward, but it's not _fast_. I'd be surprised if they're not at least looking at it internally, but things take time.
sangnoir 4y ago
> [...]And the usability of Mastodon is so confusing that it's hard to see people moving ... multiple former-Twitter-app-developers are working on this problem right now. If the apps are user-friendly, it won't matter how esoteric the protocol or web interfaces are. This might be one of those occasions that we'll look back and wonder why Elon chose to intentionally stepped on this particular rake. Filed under "unintentional first-order consequences". I have a feeling these individually small rebellions will snowball into something fierce.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >If the apps are user-friendly, it won't matter how esoteric the protocol or web interfaces are. Considering how bad Mastodon itself is to use, I don't have a ton of belief. And I personally have a hard time figuring out how you can make Mastodon user-friendly. Like, what server is Ivory going to default new users to?
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    > Like, what server is Ivory going to default new users to? The instance you're on really generally doesn't matter as much as people on HN seem to think, and you can always move.
  - foogazi 4y ago
    Since every is a paid user they should start their own instance

by Hamuko 4y ago

L3viathan 4y ago

>brands have even less of a chance of moving Good >I'm probably not going to get BBC Breaking https://mastodon.cloud/@BBCBreaking_bot https://mastodon.cloud/@BBCBreaking_bot Not official, but why does it matter?

Hamuko 4y ago
>Not official, but why does it matter? Given that it hasn't posted since 2021, I'd say that it matters. There's obviously the issue of trust when it comes to unofficial sources masquerading as official.
- drcongo 4y ago
  Not much has happened since 2021 really.

hnbad 4y ago

I think that 200 tweets per toot metric may be accurate tho in my case it's closer to 20 (tools like Movetodon can help get you started). The difference for me is that those 200 tweets are mostly about the same drama and the replies to every one of them are always full of trolls and genuinely shitty opinions havers (e.g. sports fan bunch of numbers insisting that the police should just shoot protestors) and somehow this stays the same even if I spend ten minutes every now and then just blocking those reply guys. You can shout "echo chamber" all you want but the lower overall population and stricter crackdowns on trolls and defederation of dodgy instances certainly leads to less noise and more respectful interactions. I'll take one 1000 character reply I disagree with over 200 low-effort trolls and parroted culture war slogans. Turns out the "public town square" is a much more pleasant space when it's not full of a billion people and their sock puppets shouting slurs at each other all day.

rsynnott 4y ago

I mean, I’m not sure about that; a number of newspapers have mastodon accounts (one or two have instances), and BBC’s always been pretty tech forward.

Hamuko 4y ago
Isn't it concerning if the BBC is tech-forward and is not on Mastodon? And the situation is even worse for companies that are less tech-foward.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  shrug Not particularly, no. It's tech-forward, but it's not _fast_. I'd be surprised if they're not at least looking at it internally, but things take time.

sangnoir 4y ago

> [...]And the usability of Mastodon is so confusing that it's hard to see people moving ... multiple former-Twitter-app-developers are working on this problem right now. If the apps are user-friendly, it won't matter how esoteric the protocol or web interfaces are. This might be one of those occasions that we'll look back and wonder why Elon chose to intentionally stepped on this particular rake. Filed under "unintentional first-order consequences". I have a feeling these individually small rebellions will snowball into something fierce.

Hamuko 4y ago
>If the apps are user-friendly, it won't matter how esoteric the protocol or web interfaces are. Considering how bad Mastodon itself is to use, I don't have a ton of belief. And I personally have a hard time figuring out how you can make Mastodon user-friendly. Like, what server is Ivory going to default new users to?
- rsynnott 4y ago
  > Like, what server is Ivory going to default new users to? The instance you're on really generally doesn't matter as much as people on HN seem to think, and you can always move.
- foogazi 4y ago
  Since every is a paid user they should start their own instance