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They should, but having a medium so naturally capable at relaying, resharing (@ or piblically) & following was a superpower. The loss here is immense. Mastadon

They should, but having a medium so naturally capable at relaying, resharing (@ or piblically) & following was a superpower. The loss here is immense. Mastadon retains a lot of this, but honestly, the lack of search and lack of algorithmic time lines both make it vastly less usable & less enjoyable as a product.

rsync 4y ago
The (shocking) inability to reply, and follow replies, in any kind of coherent form is what has kept me from using Twitter in any regular way - even as a reader. It is a crime that a generation of users believes that this is what online discussion looks like.
- rektide 4y ago
  I tried to find something vaguely insightful or interesting to say on threads I was interested in, & would revisit my own posting & scan threads afresh to see how things were developing. It was indeed a bit consuming.
flangola7 4y ago
Has anyone made a general search option for Mastodon? That's much of the value in Twitter, ability to search for events anywhere on the service, but for some reason Mastodon actively refuses to implement it.
- rektide 4y ago
  There's a bunch of people on Mastadon who swear search is the devil & will defederate & call you evil incarnate & curse your name if you so much as hint that you might be thinking about building search. I hope some day we can subvert them & make it happen & get on with life.
- TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
  People have made it, been shouted at, and turned it off. There is now one which searches only toots of people who have specifically opted in (which I've not yet got around to doing, but must).
  - TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
    (It's called Tootfinder, if you want to use it.)
- rchaud 4y ago
  I am using the Tusky Android client for Mastodon and can search by post, account or hash tag. Is there more to it?
version_five 4y ago
> The loss here is immense. I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. For the majority of the population who don't use or monitor Twitter, forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement.
- olliej 4y ago
  > I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. 100% agree, if that were the case. Except it isn't. NWS provides numerous different mechanisms by which you can get alerts. The issue is here is a medium that many people do use, and use fairly consistently, so the government rightly said: oh, we should provide that information through this medium as well as (not instead of) the other mechanisms, thus maximizing the ability for people to access this information. Most people don't have rss readers, and those that do clearly don't check as frequently as twitter or other social media. Most people don't have shortwave receivers. Most people don't use mastodon. Many (most?) people aren't listening to the radio during the day. > forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement. The government provides numerous other channels. This isn't a matter of the government finding alternatives. The goal of these alerts is to be accessible to as many people as possible. That means if there is a significant audience of any given communication channel, there is an immediate benefit to expanding publication to those channels. You're acting like the NWS using twitter is restricting access to the information, when the purpose of using twitter is to further expand functionally useful access to it. Saying "don't provide this information on closed/account driven services" just because they're "closed" is counter to the goal of these alerts, which is to inform as many people as possible.
- rektide 4y ago
  There's still some passable anonymous access still but not great. For many many years Twitter themselves had RSS feeds publicly available... that was the way I followed Twitter folks for a long time. It's hard to appreciate how much worse Twitter has gotten, and how much sense it made to be there when it was such a vibrant open platform. I also think another commenter is spot on, that this is/was one of the best most effective ways to get information out fast. If one of your friends notices the alert they'll probably message you even if they're in some other area to let you know. The ability of any random thing to quickly get visible & boosted is unparalleled, especially for a general purpose communication network. Cynicism is fine but it has to be willing to meet with truth to & this all used to make so so much sense, was so good. And again as another great commenter said, there were & ought to be many different ways this stuff was sent out; it's never just been Twitter.
xtracto 4y ago
In México by law TV and radio stations MUST provide certain amount of time to government programs or announcements. It's part of the agreement when the government leases them the airwaves. The USA Should adopt a similar law for certain communication platforms that force them to provide public announcements of general interest. Kind of like the amber alerts in cell phones.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > The USA Should adopt a similar law for certain communication platforms that force them to provide public announcements of general interest. Kind of like the amber alerts in cell phones. You mean, like the Emergency Alert System, the latest in a series of such requirements in the U.S. that have existed since 1951? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System

rsync 4y ago

The (shocking) inability to reply, and follow replies, in any kind of coherent form is what has kept me from using Twitter in any regular way - even as a reader. It is a crime that a generation of users believes that this is what online discussion looks like.

rektide 4y ago
I tried to find something vaguely insightful or interesting to say on threads I was interested in, & would revisit my own posting & scan threads afresh to see how things were developing. It was indeed a bit consuming.

flangola7 4y ago

Has anyone made a general search option for Mastodon? That's much of the value in Twitter, ability to search for events anywhere on the service, but for some reason Mastodon actively refuses to implement it.

rektide 4y ago
There's a bunch of people on Mastadon who swear search is the devil & will defederate & call you evil incarnate & curse your name if you so much as hint that you might be thinking about building search. I hope some day we can subvert them & make it happen & get on with life.
TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
People have made it, been shouted at, and turned it off. There is now one which searches only toots of people who have specifically opted in (which I've not yet got around to doing, but must).
- TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
  (It's called Tootfinder, if you want to use it.)
rchaud 4y ago
I am using the Tusky Android client for Mastodon and can search by post, account or hash tag. Is there more to it?

version_five 4y ago

> The loss here is immense. I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. For the majority of the population who don't use or monitor Twitter, forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement.

olliej 4y ago
> I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. 100% agree, if that were the case. Except it isn't. NWS provides numerous different mechanisms by which you can get alerts. The issue is here is a medium that many people do use, and use fairly consistently, so the government rightly said: oh, we should provide that information through this medium as well as (not instead of) the other mechanisms, thus maximizing the ability for people to access this information. Most people don't have rss readers, and those that do clearly don't check as frequently as twitter or other social media. Most people don't have shortwave receivers. Most people don't use mastodon. Many (most?) people aren't listening to the radio during the day. > forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement. The government provides numerous other channels. This isn't a matter of the government finding alternatives. The goal of these alerts is to be accessible to as many people as possible. That means if there is a significant audience of any given communication channel, there is an immediate benefit to expanding publication to those channels. You're acting like the NWS using twitter is restricting access to the information, when the purpose of using twitter is to further expand functionally useful access to it. Saying "don't provide this information on closed/account driven services" just because they're "closed" is counter to the goal of these alerts, which is to inform as many people as possible.
rektide 4y ago
There's still some passable anonymous access still but not great. For many many years Twitter themselves had RSS feeds publicly available... that was the way I followed Twitter folks for a long time. It's hard to appreciate how much worse Twitter has gotten, and how much sense it made to be there when it was such a vibrant open platform. I also think another commenter is spot on, that this is/was one of the best most effective ways to get information out fast. If one of your friends notices the alert they'll probably message you even if they're in some other area to let you know. The ability of any random thing to quickly get visible & boosted is unparalleled, especially for a general purpose communication network. Cynicism is fine but it has to be willing to meet with truth to & this all used to make so so much sense, was so good. And again as another great commenter said, there were & ought to be many different ways this stuff was sent out; it's never just been Twitter.

xtracto 4y ago

In México by law TV and radio stations MUST provide certain amount of time to government programs or announcements. It's part of the agreement when the government leases them the airwaves. The USA Should adopt a similar law for certain communication platforms that force them to provide public announcements of general interest. Kind of like the amber alerts in cell phones.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> The USA Should adopt a similar law for certain communication platforms that force them to provide public announcements of general interest. Kind of like the amber alerts in cell phones. You mean, like the Emergency Alert System, the latest in a series of such requirements in the U.S. that have existed since 1951? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System