8 ms·

Tbf, Mastodon has about 7 million users, not a few ten thousands: https://mastodon-analytics.com/ https://mastodon-analytics.com/

rvz 3y ago
7 million 'created' accounts throughout its entire existence in 8 years is hardly interesting or early days. The point of the OP still stands that "Nobody but a few geeks use Mastodon, Mastodon could never even handle all Twitter users moving over." Even when Meta connects Threads to ActivityPub, it is a magnificent win for centralization and a complete nightmare for Mastodon and 'federation' and there is nothing they can do to stop it other than just de-federate and stay irrelevant. This post exactly highlights the same thing on what happened to XMPP, but worse. Especially even when admins of other large Mastodon instances can be corrupted by larger companies like Meta with money, NDAs and contracts to allow these instances to federate with Meta. This is the typical 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish' strategy all over again. As I said before: "Instagram's success on ActivityPub is also Mastodon's nightmare and it tends to more centralization." [0] A paradox that is unavoidable for Mastodon without accounting for its UX failures and risking more centralization to the point where Meta is already winning after when other companies can still 'buy' out admins of very large instances. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012434 [1] https://masknetwork.medium.com/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-one-of-the-largest-mastodon-instances-5273504ba92d https://masknetwork.medium.com/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-n...
- lapcat 3y ago
  > hardly interesting Interesting is a matter of perspective, but I've noticed over weeks and months that your HN account "rvz" has been constantly commenting about Mastodon, so you appear to be very interested, despite your claim to the contrary. ;-) > early days logicprog didn't say it was early days. > Nobody but a few geeks use Mastodon The issue is with "few". Millions of people aren't a few. Perhaps Mastodon users are all or mostly "geeks", i.e., technically sophisticated, but let's not pretend there aren't millions of users. Yes, the number is small in comparison to Twitter and Instagram, but it's large in absolute terms. > Mastodon could never even handle all Twitter users moving over. This is true. Some Twitter migrants to Mastodon want to bring everyone along. Others, such as myself, are happy to leave all of the celebrities, politicians, and trolls behind. My community, Apple developers, for whom I originally joined Twitter back in the day, have almost all migrated from Twitter to Mastodon, and my Mastodon feed is as active as my Twitter feed ever was, while my Twitter feed is now largely dead.
  - rvz 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > Another fan and avid reader of my comment history, deciding to comment directly to me about it. No, we both just happen to read and comment on a lot of Mastodon stories here, myself because I'm a Mastodon user, and you because... well, I don't understand your obsession with Mastodon. Anyway, I have a pretty good memory, and I remember discussing/arguing with you before in the comments of Mastodon stories. > The graph omits the entire history of Mastodon users before Oct. 2022, and it has been around since 2016. Not 2022. Thus, It is not early days and my point still stands. Again, nobody here said it was early days, so your point has no point. > That's the problem with that figure and it is still unimpressive in 8 years. "unimpressive" is a matter of opinion and perspective. I'm impressed that most of my community has migrated. This didn't happen with app.net back in the 2010s, unfortunately, which I'm still sad about and consider a missed opportunity, because app.net was superior to Mastodon in a number of ways. I never wanted 220M people to migrate to Mastodon. You can cackle to yourself that Mastodon didn't become the "New Twitter", and perhaps some people out there in the world believed it would be, but I'm not one of them, and nobody here appears to be one, so you're just inserting irrelevant dunks against your perceived foes into this discussion. Mastodon is not a failure for not having become the New Twitter, with hundreds of millions of users. I see no indication that Eugen Rochko ever had that goal in mind. Mastodon is a thriving community. It's a much smaller community than Twitter, which is fine and good. Mastodon is certainly not perfect, and it could use some improvements, but IMO attracting hundreds of millions of users would wreck everything that's good about it.
      - rvz 3y ago
        [flagged]
        lapcat 3y ago
        > I'm not the one cheerleading over any mass Twitter migrations to Mastodon with normal users Again you keep rambling, obsessed about this thing that's irrelevant to the linked article and the comments here. > as much as your are or using anecdotes and fantasies which can be easily dismissed. I have no idea what you're talking about. > we both know that logicprog didn't show the whole timeline since 2016. Yes, logicprog gave the link https://mastodon-analytics.com/ https://mastodon-analytics.com/ that has stats from Oct 22 to June 23, which is not the full history of Mastodon. But so what? logicprog didn't make any historical claims. I'm guessing that logicprog perhaps just googled for that link, and it came up in the search results. I have no insight into the design of that website. > You just don't like the fact that what I said is true. I don't even understand what I'm supposed to not like? I've already stated clearly, several times that I like the fact that Mastodon is much smaller than Twitter. > Mastodon users (and its die hards) know that it has been there for 7 - 8 years. Yes, this is an indisputable empirical fact. So what? > Then 'finally' other users took a look at it in November 2022, left and didn't look back hence the 'slump' in users. I personally joined in late 2022 and stayed. > It is still unimpressive. In comparison, Nostr has 3M total signed up in less than a year. [0] I don't quite understand how nostr defines "users", but in any case, from your own link: Users: 318,981 Trusted users: 82,323 Daily active users: between 7000 and 9000 Weekly active users: between 18,000 and 20,000 And the retention of users, 30 days after signup is pretty close to 0%. So I'm at a total loss about what you're celebrating. > Now when tested in November 2022, normal users tried it, weren't impressed and left It's not clear that "normal" users even tried it. Mastodon never had 200 million accounts at any time, or anywhere close to that number. By the way, lots of people also try Twitter and abandon it. That's par for the course on any social network. > In principle, it is a failure. Even Eugen knows this paradox. Following the UX failure of being unable to onboard normal users from Twitter to Mastodon, they chose a 'default instance' to sign up in the official mobile app. I wouldn't say that's an in principle failure. It's an issue, to be sure, and as I said, Mastodon "could use some improvements". But the goal was never to migrate and onboard every Twitter user, so the onboarding difficulties don't make the project a failure. It's a thriving community nonetheless. > The problem is however, whilst everyone was too focused on Twitter's death which didn't happen last year I would replace "everyone" with "you". ;-)
jeroenhd 3y ago
I was referring to the XMPP users before Google started federating. Twitter's slow descent into online hell has made Mastodon significantly more popular. However, there may be 7 million users, but about 2 million still use the platform at all. Two million people is a lot of people, but compared to Twitter's 240 million user accounts and Instagram's 2350 million user accounts the Fediverse is a spec of dust.
- beej71 3y ago
  Lucky for most of us who enjoy those platforms, two million people is plenty. Like all the bumper stickers in my town say, "BEND SUCKS. DON'T MOVE HERE."
  - logicprog 3y ago
    Precisely

rvz 3y ago

7 million 'created' accounts throughout its entire existence in 8 years is hardly interesting or early days. The point of the OP still stands that "Nobody but a few geeks use Mastodon, Mastodon could never even handle all Twitter users moving over." Even when Meta connects Threads to ActivityPub, it is a magnificent win for centralization and a complete nightmare for Mastodon and 'federation' and there is nothing they can do to stop it other than just de-federate and stay irrelevant. This post exactly highlights the same thing on what happened to XMPP, but worse. Especially even when admins of other large Mastodon instances can be corrupted by larger companies like Meta with money, NDAs and contracts to allow these instances to federate with Meta. This is the typical 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish' strategy all over again. As I said before: "Instagram's success on ActivityPub is also Mastodon's nightmare and it tends to more centralization." [0] A paradox that is unavoidable for Mastodon without accounting for its UX failures and risking more centralization to the point where Meta is already winning after when other companies can still 'buy' out admins of very large instances. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012434 [1] https://masknetwork.medium.com/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-one-of-the-largest-mastodon-instances-5273504ba92d https://masknetwork.medium.com/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-n...

lapcat 3y ago
> hardly interesting Interesting is a matter of perspective, but I've noticed over weeks and months that your HN account "rvz" has been constantly commenting about Mastodon, so you appear to be very interested, despite your claim to the contrary. ;-) > early days logicprog didn't say it was early days. > Nobody but a few geeks use Mastodon The issue is with "few". Millions of people aren't a few. Perhaps Mastodon users are all or mostly "geeks", i.e., technically sophisticated, but let's not pretend there aren't millions of users. Yes, the number is small in comparison to Twitter and Instagram, but it's large in absolute terms. > Mastodon could never even handle all Twitter users moving over. This is true. Some Twitter migrants to Mastodon want to bring everyone along. Others, such as myself, are happy to leave all of the celebrities, politicians, and trolls behind. My community, Apple developers, for whom I originally joined Twitter back in the day, have almost all migrated from Twitter to Mastodon, and my Mastodon feed is as active as my Twitter feed ever was, while my Twitter feed is now largely dead.
- rvz 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Another fan and avid reader of my comment history, deciding to comment directly to me about it. No, we both just happen to read and comment on a lot of Mastodon stories here, myself because I'm a Mastodon user, and you because... well, I don't understand your obsession with Mastodon. Anyway, I have a pretty good memory, and I remember discussing/arguing with you before in the comments of Mastodon stories. > The graph omits the entire history of Mastodon users before Oct. 2022, and it has been around since 2016. Not 2022. Thus, It is not early days and my point still stands. Again, nobody here said it was early days, so your point has no point. > That's the problem with that figure and it is still unimpressive in 8 years. "unimpressive" is a matter of opinion and perspective. I'm impressed that most of my community has migrated. This didn't happen with app.net back in the 2010s, unfortunately, which I'm still sad about and consider a missed opportunity, because app.net was superior to Mastodon in a number of ways. I never wanted 220M people to migrate to Mastodon. You can cackle to yourself that Mastodon didn't become the "New Twitter", and perhaps some people out there in the world believed it would be, but I'm not one of them, and nobody here appears to be one, so you're just inserting irrelevant dunks against your perceived foes into this discussion. Mastodon is not a failure for not having become the New Twitter, with hundreds of millions of users. I see no indication that Eugen Rochko ever had that goal in mind. Mastodon is a thriving community. It's a much smaller community than Twitter, which is fine and good. Mastodon is certainly not perfect, and it could use some improvements, but IMO attracting hundreds of millions of users would wreck everything that's good about it.
    - rvz 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > I'm not the one cheerleading over any mass Twitter migrations to Mastodon with normal users Again you keep rambling, obsessed about this thing that's irrelevant to the linked article and the comments here. > as much as your are or using anecdotes and fantasies which can be easily dismissed. I have no idea what you're talking about. > we both know that logicprog didn't show the whole timeline since 2016. Yes, logicprog gave the link https://mastodon-analytics.com/ https://mastodon-analytics.com/ that has stats from Oct 22 to June 23, which is not the full history of Mastodon. But so what? logicprog didn't make any historical claims. I'm guessing that logicprog perhaps just googled for that link, and it came up in the search results. I have no insight into the design of that website. > You just don't like the fact that what I said is true. I don't even understand what I'm supposed to not like? I've already stated clearly, several times that I like the fact that Mastodon is much smaller than Twitter. > Mastodon users (and its die hards) know that it has been there for 7 - 8 years. Yes, this is an indisputable empirical fact. So what? > Then 'finally' other users took a look at it in November 2022, left and didn't look back hence the 'slump' in users. I personally joined in late 2022 and stayed. > It is still unimpressive. In comparison, Nostr has 3M total signed up in less than a year. [0] I don't quite understand how nostr defines "users", but in any case, from your own link: Users: 318,981 Trusted users: 82,323 Daily active users: between 7000 and 9000 Weekly active users: between 18,000 and 20,000 And the retention of users, 30 days after signup is pretty close to 0%. So I'm at a total loss about what you're celebrating. > Now when tested in November 2022, normal users tried it, weren't impressed and left It's not clear that "normal" users even tried it. Mastodon never had 200 million accounts at any time, or anywhere close to that number. By the way, lots of people also try Twitter and abandon it. That's par for the course on any social network. > In principle, it is a failure. Even Eugen knows this paradox. Following the UX failure of being unable to onboard normal users from Twitter to Mastodon, they chose a 'default instance' to sign up in the official mobile app. I wouldn't say that's an in principle failure. It's an issue, to be sure, and as I said, Mastodon "could use some improvements". But the goal was never to migrate and onboard every Twitter user, so the onboarding difficulties don't make the project a failure. It's a thriving community nonetheless. > The problem is however, whilst everyone was too focused on Twitter's death which didn't happen last year I would replace "everyone" with "you". ;-)

jeroenhd 3y ago

I was referring to the XMPP users before Google started federating. Twitter's slow descent into online hell has made Mastodon significantly more popular. However, there may be 7 million users, but about 2 million still use the platform at all. Two million people is a lot of people, but compared to Twitter's 240 million user accounts and Instagram's 2350 million user accounts the Fediverse is a spec of dust.

beej71 3y ago
Lucky for most of us who enjoy those platforms, two million people is plenty. Like all the bumper stickers in my town say, "BEND SUCKS. DON'T MOVE HERE."
- logicprog 3y ago
  Precisely