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Ask HN: Is Mastodon the best alternative to Twitter?

51 points by schnebbau 4y ago

I wanted to give Elon the benefit of the doubt and have stayed on Twitter through the recent turmoil because it has the momentum and it's still where most of the accounts I follow are. But I can only see it continuing to degrade as the hunt for a return on his investment continues. I'm ready to leave. Mastodon is leading as the top migration destination so far, but it seems to have issues of its own. And there's also nostr, which solves some of these issues but introduces others. What have you switched to and why?

LouDNL 4y ago
Aye. I moved from the bird to the elephant and will never go back The crowd on Masto is a lot less toxic and theres no Musk
- Freydis 4y ago
  The exodus definitely showcased who can exist in a society among people they support as well as people they object to and people who need to be in a selective group to be comfortable. Interesting stuff.
  - hazaskull 4y ago
    Not to say that I disagree with you in principle but I'd think there is a large difference between disagreeing with someone's opinions and disagreeing with someones values. You generally can't have a meaningful conversation in the latter case.
  - bannedbybros 4y ago
    [dead]
  - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
    No. Because Twitter and other online spaces are not society. They’re a bizarro world version of that. Case in point: nearly everyone is 5 clicks more obnoxious on Twitter than in real life. Confrontations happen that wouldn’t otherwise.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    There's a difference between "exists in a society with people they object to" and "wants to have people who are actively hostile to their existence constantly shoved into their timeline and conversations by an algorithm designed to keep you glued to Twitter for as long as possible, regardless of what it does to your mood and mental health".
underdeserver 4y ago
Unfortunately the quality of the apps and app ecosystem is not the dominating factor, for me and I believe for most people. It's the network. I'm on Mastodon, at this point just to be another follower of all the people I want to follow - who come to check it out, but Twitter is still where it's at for my network. Hopefully that'll change soon. Either way, if Twitter is out for you, there's nothing else that really looks like it'll gain traction aside from Mastodon.
johnday 4y ago
Mastodon trades one set of problems (centralised authority, terrible management, beholden to advertisers) for another set of problems (expensive n^2 bookkeeping of decentralised model, moderator fiefdoms, less polished UX). Whether you find one of those worlds easier to live with than another is up to you. So far, the people who've moved to Mastodon seem happy with that choice, myself included.
- yogthos 4y ago
  Personally, I find the UX on Mastodon is strictly superior to Twitter. The UI is more responsive, you have Tweetdeck style columns that let you track lists on the same page, you can mark content as sensitive, collapse long posts, and automatically caption images. I find all of these things are big quality of life improvements for me. I also really like the fact that you can turn off notifications for likes and boosts. I only care about replies, and this lets me avoid the noise in my notifications. Finally, another big UX feature is that you can follow people on other platforms that support ActivityPub. For example, I follow a few photographers on Pixelfed, and some streams on Lemmy in my feed.
Freydis 4y ago
I love that the Taliban is on Twitter along with drug cartels and all kinds of bad people, but everyone ran when a former elected President of the US had their account restored. Wild. I haven’t switched. I feel like the drama will blow over. Twitter is still best for diverse conversations and reach.
- hedora 4y ago
  I guess if you want to follow people like terrorists, Trump and criminals, then Twitter is the place for you. It is pretty wild that centralized automated content moderation amplifies their voices, but decentralized manual moderation shuts such lunacy down.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    I don't think Twitter amplifies the Taliban or drug cartels, in many years on Twitter I've never seen a tweet by them.
  - idlewords 4y ago
    I've been on Twitter for going on fifteen years and have yet to see a Taliban tweet. The advantage of having everything in one place is obvious, you can find the most obscure stuff. But by the same token, lots of bad stuff will be on there. The responsibility to choose what to look at wisely rests on the user much more than "the algorithm". I'm sure a 200 user Mastodon instance moderated by a vigilant hall monitor will not have a problem with Taliban content, but then it won't offer any of what makes Twitter an interesting site.
  - dazc 4y ago
    Trump doesn't post anything on twitter, if this helps?
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I don't think that's why most people left Twitter. N=1, but for me it was much more the rapid decline in "default" content: when I sign in now, my DMs are filled with spammers and my recommended feed is just the owner and a bunch of reactionary stuff.
sp332 4y ago
You can make accounts on any or all of those new apps. You can make multiple mastodon or other fediverse accounts. The networking can be very good, but it just takes more effort, which is why people consolidated to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in the first place.
yuppie_scum 4y ago
Mastodon is boring and confusing
- pavlov 4y ago
  Exactly how most people feel about Twitter then?
CM30 4y ago
At the moment? Yes. It's nowhere near as active as Twitter (or to be honest, many social media sites), but it's leagues ahead of the other Twitter alternatives online at the moment, and you often get the same people chat to you on a regular basis. It's got a community feel for sure, and my posts have done a lot better than they did on Twitter because of it. As for the others I've tried... Hive was promising once, but the months of non availability after the security issues came to the fore basically took a sledgehammer to whatever level of activity it had, and most people moved on. It also has an issue with self promoters basically having free reign, and said folks having no interest in actually holding a discussion. This is easy to see on the trending content pages, where about 3/4 of the posts are random folks posting selfies and advertising their Twitch streams. Post is okay... if you're interested in political content. If you want to discuss any sort of hobby, the activity just isn't there. This was probably made worse by the ridiculous waiting list that existed for signups prior, where your average (non referred) member had to wait weeks to get an account there. Other sites and services I've seen for this are dead as a doornail, and basically have zero people using them on a regular basis.
DelaneyM 4y ago
I didn't think I was going to switch to Mastodon - I try to stay apolitical and I mostly used Twitter for news and influencers/disseminators with large followings who weren't moving. And yet, here I am, primarily using Mastodon. Maybe it's just my server, but it's so much more _pleasant_ to be there. I don't need to wade through pages of insanity and irrelevant ads to get to the content I care about. It's as if an annoying ambient buzzing slowly built up in my favorite coffee shop over a decade, and I never really noticed it, but now there's a crunchy alternative cafe next-door with fewer options which is blissfully silent. I just can't bring myself to go back.
- rpastuszak 4y ago
  I'm thinking about setting up a private instance for myself and my friends, plus the people I meet online through different, more personal channels, like 1:1 calls and rants via my Calendly. Another reason is that not using hay@potato.horse as my handle feels like a missed opportunity.
asim 4y ago
The best alternative to twitter is no twitter. Let me explain. The feed and micro blogging format is a recipe for disaster. It's a combination of dopamine hits, crack addiction and rage inducing hyperbole. While there's merits to such a service, it's not clear they outweigh the costs of the format. When it's too easy for people to tweet their thoughts we end up in a disarray of thought leadership from mostly clueless people or those who elevate their significance based on number of followers. In all honesty the best alternative to twitter is no twitter, until we find a better format for community discussion. Maybe it's private community chat, or similar, not sure. Maybe it's the end of public social. I think a lot of us are just looking for quieter smaller groups to share with. A note on Mastodon. It's going closer in that direction of community specific servers but I think a better alternative would be if we could keep it private and cap group sizes. Right now it just feels like a replica of twitter segregated by topic or community. All the inherit bad behaviour still propagates because of the form factor.
- 3watts 4y ago
  This is the best reply.
  - sourcecodeplz 4y ago
    Yes and no. No because it is missing one popular use case: getting updates from projects that don't have mailing lists or RSS feeds.
    - tomku 4y ago
      Mailing lists and RSS feeds don't incentivize me to compulsively check them so that the important updates I care about aren't buried under a 47-post rant about why I should be angry about something in the news or hidden by an algorithm because it thinks I'm more likely to engage with a bunch of memes. Maybe it works if you only follow low-traffic announcement accounts, but when I was actively using Twitter I found that I regularly missed posts like that because they either didn't get engagement (algo timeline) or were posted when I wasn't paying attention (chrono timeline). I understand that a lot of projects have chosen to rely on social media for that kind of news for various reasons, but it's not a good situation.
yuvadam 4y ago
The ecosystem being built around nostr is incredible and like nothing I've seen before. No guarantees on any long term success of course, but the energy in the ecosystem is contagious.
- asim 4y ago
  Less likely to take something seriously named after Nostradamus. I'm sorry but until it gets renamed it's hard to buy into it. It has huge backing from Jack Dorsey staking his reputation on it by tweeting about it but in all seriousness like for like replacements aren't useful. If this thing goes mainstream it won't be for the reasons it started and it's going to take 5+ years before that happens. Along with a rename.
barathr 4y ago
The three main things people seem to need with Mastodon are: 1. A server to join. Try techhub.social or hachyderm.io or infosec.exchange or ioc.exchange or sfba.social or even one of the official servers like mastodon.online -- any of those will be fine 2. An app. I use the web interface and am happy with it, but I've also tried Ivory and it's a pretty good app 3. People to follow, to get started. That's going to depend on your interests. There was a HN post with a lot of good recommendations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413641
- akuchling 4y ago
  The web site https://fedi.tips/ https://fedi.tips/ collects a bunch of suggestions in this vein for improving your fediverse experience.
- timbit42 4y ago
  The best way to find interesting people to follow is to follow hashtags you are interested in and see who is using those hashtags.
mepian 4y ago
Mastodon is federated and thus more resistant to user-hostile takeovers, unlike other alternatives like post.news that are basically clones of Twitter that aren't owned by Musk yet. That's why I moved to a local Mastodon instance. nostr is tied to toxic Web3 bullshit so I didn't even consider it.
- cykros 4y ago
  The technology behind mastodon is all well and good. In practice, the instances have a lot of sysop drama that results in a very poorly federated network. Having a model like Usenet, where perhaps you could have some groups federated among a few instances, others that are global, and still others that are purely local, would likely improve upon the situation as it currently is. Basically, everything social on the Internet is trying to find its way back to Usenet, which was the high point of electronic socialization.
- binchillin 4y ago
  s/Web3/bitcoin maxis/g
rpastuszak 4y ago
For me Mastodon + my "Say Hi" calls every few days + groups Signal are a much more useful and less toxic combination. I miss forums. Now, more about Mastodon itself: In short, Mastodon is less toxic and the feed doesn't artificially amplify content made to generate engagement. People tend to mistake free speech and discourse artificially shaped to pump ads in your eyeballs and that shows. Your content IS moderated but more subtly, and your mod is an advertising company. On Mastodon, you'll _still_ see weird crap on the federated feed (including controversial stuff, like xenophobic content), but quickly you'll realise that the ratio of truly disturbing, aggressive or xenophobic content is much, much lower. This is partially due to: - the fact that algorithmic feeds rely on controversial, divisive, emotional responses as they turn into higher engagement. - the fact that people are still weird, but _way less_ evil and mean. You can think of Mastodon as a mix of an internet forum and a chat from 2005. For instance, the default client UX can be clunky (no sweet ad revenue $$), but it doesn't go in your way like the dark patterns on Twitter (e.g. the chronological feed resetting to the algorithmic one ever x days). Also, you can always change the default client. Elk is neat. Mastodon will perform worse in terms of reach, but better in terms of engagement (let's appreciate the irony here). One of the comments says: > The best alternative to twitter is no twitter And I 100% agree with that. Better go outside and touch grass, pet a dog. I wish internet forums were more utilised, because I use micro-blogging mostly for announcements regarding my projects and this format encourages shallow discourse. Edit: be more specific about the UX issues pertaining mostly to the default client. Thanks @wowfunhappy
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > For instance, the UX can be clunky (no sweet ad revenue $$) Once you've chosen an instance (which I realize is fundamentally a bit weird because of how we've been conditioned to use the internet), what exactly is wrong with Mastodon's UX? To my eyes, it's basically Twitter circa-2013 or so.
  - rpastuszak 4y ago
    Thanks, I meant the client, so made the comment more clear on that. Following across federated instances using the default client would be the first issue that comes to my mind. It should be a single click. Not a big deal and already fixed in alternative clients. What I wanted to highlight (poorly) is that because the UX isn’t adversarial (dark) it’s still much more of a pleasant experience to use.
Apreche 4y ago
IMHO ActivityPub the protocol is a a perfectly suitable alternative to other platforms. Not perfect, but good enough that I have no major objections. And the fact that it is currently in the lead makes it an easy choice. Mastodon is currently the most popular software that implements that protocol. However, I think Mastodon is very flawed. There are many design decisions that are just awful both in the realms of UX and also software architecture. Thankfully ActivityPub is an open protocol. Anyone can come up and make a competitor. And that's what I hope happens. Some other social platform(s) implement ActivityPub and replace Mastodon. It's similar to how back in the day Apache was absolutely the dominant web server, but nowadays nginx is on top. Anyone out there reading this, please make the nginx of ActivityPub.
- AJ007 4y ago
  I finally signed up for Mastodon after years of reading it just wasn't good enough, when Twitter had their "ban all Mastodon addresses" phase. I follow people I follow on Twitter and there is substantially less noise. Overall way above what my expectations were.
j1elo 4y ago
In a sense Mastodon reminds of the very early stages of Twitter, where there was mostly no toxicity and people were mostly kind and willing to participate in civilized discussions. Hopefully this will continue that way for longer time, given the get-popular-quick schemes that worked on Twitter don't tend to work in Mastodon. But be careful of the server you choose. I submitted this some days ago to see what people think, albeit it got no traction, so I'll put again here just in case: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mastodon2.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/mastodon2.html If switching servers is not made painless and straightforward, we'll end up having a single, mostly trusted, mostly centralized server (whatever that happens to end up being), because nobody wants to see themselves in the situation of losing their accounts on a server that seemed to be trustworthy. And also nobody wants to put on themselves the burden of having to make a full research on the viability of each and every potential server that they might want to use, that's something that shouldn't be a problem solved by individual users, but a problem solved by the service itself, somehow. A Covenant is far from enough.
sigmar 4y ago
I like mastodon. Not sure anyone here can accurately tell you whether it fits your needs (especially since ppl use twitter very differently). One difference that sticks out to me is that mastodon isn't designed to goad for more engagement. For example, 'likes' on mastodon are public but not the same thing as 'resharing' in terms of appearing in timelines. Twitter used to treat likes similarly, but over time it changed. I imagine they saw more engagement when 'likes' were treated more and more like 'retweets.' I appreciate that on mastodon I can show the author of a post I like the content without automatically putting it in the feed of my own followers (and it's easy to do both if I chose to).
faitswulff 4y ago
I'm on Mastodon and in agreement with most of the on-topic top-level comments that it's much more pleasant and less toxic. I've heard good things about Akkoma, though, so I've been meaning to check it out: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma/#differences-with-pleroma https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma/#differences-with-plero... Stuff like support for code blocks, different reactions are a draw for me, coming from Mastodon.
robswc 4y ago
I think this question will be answered better in a few months. I was finally able to make an account (when I tried most servers weren't allowing it) and I followed a ton of people that moved off twitter... but I came to realize they seem to have stopped posting all together or quietly migrated back. (our very own pg, for example)
- robswc 4y ago
  To add to this, I hopped to escape the politics on mastodon (more akin to 2000s style IRCs or forums) but visiting after a few months (mas.to instance) it seems even more polarizing than twitter. 8/10 posts on the explore tab are a "political dunk." Exhausting. That's why I use HN more than anything else these days, lol.
icapybara 4y ago
I don't understand why Reddit (or some other big name) didn't capitalize on the moment and put out a quick Twitter clone.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Twitter was never particularly profitable, so what's the incentive?
haunter 4y ago
The Hogwarts Legacy drama on mastodon.lol is a perfect example why it's not better or worse. Turns out the software doesn't really matter, it's the people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 There was also a very very good comment here on yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34934996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34934996 >... every federated network will be judged by the worst actor in that network, whether or not they are isolated from each other. As a result it doesn't matter (for public opinion) if there are strictly moderated mastodon instances because they will be associated with the free-for-all ones by the Mastodon name alone. This is different from how the internet as a whole is interpreted, where both HN and 4chan can exist without impacting each others reputation Personally I will keep using Twitter unless a critical mass (+50%) of my followings (37 accounts) will move permanently. But not even a single account I follow moved... Anyways I just use the linear timeline, no ads, no algorithmic tweets. Nothing really have changed so far.
nemoniac 4y ago
I'm getting good mileage out of Mastodon by being selective about who I follow and curating that well. Being able to choose who you read (and who you don't!) and when is a huge advantage over Twitter.
rcarmo 4y ago
I (and apparently most of the people I follow) moved to Mastodon and bridge some posts to Twitter, hopping over to keep tabs on stragglers and read the odd comic that is still Twitter only. I’ve no regrets other than now having two places to check daily.

badloginagain 4y ago

I'll take the other side of this. While there certainly are examples of click bait and inflammatory BS on Twitter, there is also an element of legitimate thought leadership that can go viral in a way you just don't have on any other social media platform. There are few other platforms I can think of where someone with deep expertise on any subject can publish interesting, informed takes on their field- On a platform where the barrier to entry to publish is near-zero, provided with a random chance to go viral. When I used Twitter, seeking out and following these kinds of experts actually made the experience of Twitter a rich and informative platform- albeit one where you constantly needed to "weed the garden". The problem of course is that was a thin layer of wheat in a big bucket of chaff- but there is a better answer to "best alternative to twitter is no twitter": The best alternative to Twitter is one that can maximize virality for expert opinions; incentivizing other users to write engaging, structured opinions. Try to build a system where the best way to engagement farm is to show real thought leadership.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
stubybubs 4y ago
Well, here we are seemingly near the end of the thing, and I'm not sure it's worth the risk. Twitter was really good at getting people to write, letting them know that others are interested in their area of research or expertise, and I hope they continue to do that. But the awfulness of the propaganda just doesn't seem like it's worth it. Aside from the format being the message (ideas devoid of nuance) I think the incentives are all wrong. Twitter is grade school. You don't "win" by being right, you get that be being funny, sarcastic, a little cruel, and getting lots of likes. I'd like to see a return to a platform at a slightly elevated level. Asking for it to be like a university discussion group is maybe a little bit too much, but how about like, the last year of high school, when all the drama has died down and you've all pretty much agreed to be friends? I feel like that's the time when people start listening to reasoned arguments over name calling. I don't know what that platform looks like, and it's almost sure to be less viral that Twitter. But if that last 3 years have taught me anything it's that fast-moving viruses are bad. I think we should slow down.

lapcat 4y ago
> What I'm saying is there's a group of very vocal people who have left twitter to go start their own Mastodon communities because they did not like their views being challenged on twitter. Do you have any evidence for this? The proximate cause of mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon was the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.
- asim 4y ago
  Elon is a catalyst because of the rise of hate speech and an inability to moderate it but it's created the opportunity to build these cult like communities elsewhere. I don't want to point to it because I'll receive a lot of backlash for that but it's happening.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > because they did not like their views being challenged on twitter > because of the rise of hate speech and an inability to moderate it You're already changing your story. > it's created the opportunity to build these cult like communities elsewhere That's your characterization, which I do not agree with. Some would say that Musk himself has a cult-like following. In any case, Twitter and Mastodon have naturally segregated into pro-Musk and anti-Musk communities through no particular design by either side but simply as a result of the acquisition. Those who enjoy Musk Twitter have no reason to leave and join Mastodon, so of course there would be less "challenge" from them on Mastodon, but whose fault is that?
    - asim 4y ago
      No I'm not changing my story. You mentioned Elon musk and I said it was a catalyst, not that it was the reason. There's a difference. A catalyst is an accelerant, it's not the source of a reaction. You're removing context by what's convenient for debate. The things you're saying are true but it's not the whole truth. People were unhappy on Twitter before Elon, for the reasons I mentioned. I'll leave it at that.
      - lapcat 4y ago
        > People were unhappy on Twitter before Elon, for the reasons I mentioned. Yet they didn't leave until the Musk acquisition. Huh.
        asim 4y ago
        Again, it's about needing a catalyst. People suffer through much worse. What Elon did and the subsequent behaviour from alt-right uprising was enough not to just cause some people to leave but gave the vocal people with large followers a reason to voice their concerns and use it as a means to pull their audience to Mastodon. People would otherwise not have followed them and they'd essentially lose the audience they built. The cult leaders still need their followers. Without them, what are they? Crazy ranting folk.
        lapcat 4y ago
        > use it as a means to pull their audience to Mastodon This is all a very nice conspiracy theory, thank you. > The cult leaders still need their followers. People who tweet are now "cult leaders". Ok. By the way, how many Twitter followers does it take to become cult leader? I'm curious because I had over 3500, so I'm not sure whether I qualify or not. > Crazy ranting folk. Or HN commenters.
        asim 4y ago
        lol I'm not actually calling them cult leaders but I'm giving you a point of reference. People in mainstream media can have a "cult following", a group of fans who are so enthusiastically devoted. We have that for brands, movies, comics and whatever else. Today people become personalities on twitter that end up with a similar cult following. Also I mean I'm not here to spin conspiracy theories. Pulling your audience to Mastodon isn't something villainous. It's an opportunity to remove a lot of the noise on twitter and focus people on your message and community. That could be anything. Your Mastodon server could be dedicated to die hard star wars fans or it would be liberal tech folk on the west coast who want a smaller space in which to voice their thoughts without the other side of the argument. It's just human dynamics. At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether people use Twitter or Mastodon or whatever else. We're transition between platforms every decade, some people stick it out for the relationships and other people move on to new things. That's life.
        4y ago
N1ckFG 4y ago
imo the "echo chamber" scenario would be if you only followed people from your local server, and also set your posts to only show there. If you set your posts to public and gather a couple hundred mutuals...I find the Mastodon 2023 experience turns out to be pleasantly similar to early '10s Twitter.