14 ms·

Mastodon has hit 2M active users today

186 points by _han 3y ago

ehutch79 3y ago
Hasn't threads hit over 100m? Even if 90% just signed up to check it out and never use it again, that's a lot. And it was rushed out because twitter was busy shooting itself in the foot. I'm not sure how mastodon people are so bullish on it. It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'.
- some_furry 3y ago
  I'm happy for Threads' metrics and hope investors and venture capitalists focus on Threads rather than the rest of the Fediverse.
- WithinReason 3y ago
  I wonder how many of those 100m are active users
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    I think it is safe to assume its over the 2M mastodon users. But if they want to keep em, they need to roll out some features and I want to hear more about the roadmap to federation.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      For comparison, the number of Mastodon users (not active) as reported by known instances is more like 13M.
- vuln 3y ago
  Clicking one button != signing up.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    It's not one button, they had to download an app and then auth via instagram. I don't see how it is different from any other service where you can sign in with google/facebook/etc.
    - vuln 3y ago
      So two buttons? > I don't see how it is different from any other service where you can sign in with google/facebook/etc. It was an account merge. You cannot delete your threads “PROFILE” without deleting your instagram. There is no other service which utilizes google/Facebook/etc to login that when I cancel my account on that platform I lose my google/Facebook/etc account. From the TOS “You may deactivate your Threads PROFILE at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram ACCOUNT,” (emphasis mine) Hell even the tos clearly states its not a threads account. It’s a profile based on the instagram account which are irrevocably tied. But hey, they are working on it. Ya know after all the publicity about shattering “SIGN UP” records. https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/07/delete-your-threads-account/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/07/delete-your-threads-account/
- notRobot 3y ago
  Meta/FB wants everyone on the planet to be on Threads (because profit). Mastodon doesn't need everyone to be on it, since it doesn't make money from/off users. Mastodon isn't for everyone. And that's okay.
  - ehutch79 3y ago
    This is the answer.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    The problem isn't with Mastodon or FB. It's with the organizations that want to build consensus, or rather the illusion of consensus. Twitter was where this was done because everyone was there. It isn't possible if some groups are in one ghetto, others are in another, and so on. They're preaching to the choir at that point and that's no way to influence policy.
    - notRobot 3y ago
      Mastodon doesn't need to influence policy.
- infotogivenm 3y ago
  I think a lot of mastodon users left twitter as part of an existing community, and so the migration process was pretty straightforward; usually they had one community instance that is effectively Threads for them. I think being bullish on Mastodon in particular is missing the point; a similar comment compared it to saying “Yahoo Mail will be the forever future of electronic messaging!” in the 90s. Of course not; email the protocol was the future, yet yahoo mail chugs along to this day. Likewise ActivityPub (which Threads intends to support) will probably be the future, not any one particular UI implementation in front of it.
  - jchw 3y ago
    The thing that's amazing about ActivityPub is if it becomes large enough to have similar network effects to other social media platforms, it effectively would bring back the ability for people to publish on their own domain without worrying about whether their audience will be able to follow them. In a strange way, ActivityPub feels like it could do what RSS did, only better. Maybe. Or, maybe it won't. But then again, even if it doesn't take off to the level that people hope, a couple million active is plenty of company still, if it can be sustained.
- kklimonda 3y ago
  Some people enjoy the internet of old, where you had to put some effort into finding venues for collaborating. There is nothing wrong with some places prioritizing building communities over algorithmical reach of the larger platforms.
- bushwald 3y ago
  Why does it need to compete with tech giants for people to be enthusiastic about it? Having an organic community is good for longevity if not massive short term adoption.
  - minsc_and_boo 3y ago
    Not GP, but the utility of a social app is linked to network effects - i.e. the more people who use it, the more utility it provides. Otherwise you're risking tooting to the wind.
    - lambic 3y ago
      There are diminishing returns at a certain point though, the crowd gets so large that utility stops increasing. I want to interact with experts in subjects I'm interested in, the occasional media figure, and some brands. Sadly brands are lacking, but I get enough of the rest on Mastodon to keep me happy. It's a shame Patrick Rothfuss isn't on Mastodon, but John Scalzi is, so that's cool.
  - ehutch79 3y ago
    The feeling I get from comments on hacker news and such, is that mastodon is a replacement for twitter that _everyone_ should switch to. So you're competing with twitter and any other replacement like threads.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  Mastodon is weird in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It doesn't feel clear how it works, what the limitations are, etc. My profile is on sdf.org but it's extremely slow. The recommendations don't seem to work. There is no algorithm to show me miscellaneous content. I just don't "get it", what it is, what it's for, etc. I had this feeling quite distinctly when I first used twitter too though
  - Shared404 3y ago
    > The recommendations don't seem to work. > There is no algorithm to show me miscellaneous content. Not sure which recommendations sdf.org has, but imo the lack of an algorithm is a bonus. My advice to find content is to browse #introductions and find hashtags for topics you're interested in, and then follow those hashtags and browse them for people you find interesting and follow them directly as well.
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      > imo the lack of an algorithm is a bonus. For me it's a negative. I want the site to guess what I want to see and give me content accordingly, rather than me having to choose
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    The idea is that you would subscribe to hashtags to see what people talk about. Or you can go in "Local"/"Federated" and you see what people talk about in your instance or within their network. But it's all chronological, there's indeed no algo to tell you who to follow (Twitter used to be like that, you'd show up to an empty feed basically) Not sure why it is that slow, might be the server? Mine is quite fast and followed the WWDC keynote in real time with sometimes dozens of toots a minute
  - lanstin 3y ago
    Follow #hashtags that you are interested in to get a broad slice of miscellaneous content, and also check the "trending locally" page from time to time (showing posts that are popular on your instance). #bookstodon #rust #programming #go are some good ones. #maths is excellent (but I'm in maths grad school). There's a growing number of sharp wits and interesting bots to follow. For sure the content exceed my time budget for entertaining social media. I haven't tried getting targeted answers by asking Mastodon, so I can't comment about that.
- ezekg 3y ago
  Threads can't even calculate active users yet. They launched a week ago. Sign ups != active users.
  - ehutch79 3y ago
    Which is why I said 90% probably don't even count.
- vidarh 3y ago
  I'm bullish on it because it's not subject to the whims of any one player, and the Fediverse is also not just Mastodon, but also Misskey, Calkey, Akkoma, Lemmy, Bookwyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube and many more, all of which can interoperate. And eventually Threads too if they follow through. It's a long game of wanting an entirely different model where the threshold to try new things is far lower because you can tap into an existing network from day one. But Mastodon in itself is valuable to me already today. If it keeps growing, great, but I'll be there even if it doesn't. It's taken over the place from Twitter for me as the one social media site I keep permanently open on a separate virtual desktop. I check Twitter less and less.
- tgvaughan 3y ago
  I'm a "normal person" who's never created a mastodon account, and just tried this. The original article (a "toot") has a "sign up now" button in the side pane, which I clicked, entered a username and email address and pressed submit. I immediately received an email with a confirmation link, which I clicked. Now I can toot.
  - ehutch79 3y ago
    Somehow I doubt your level of technology literacy is the same as the average twitter/threads user. (You'd have more tech literacy) Just being on hacker news is a bit of a filter.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  What's not to like about a world where there are a bunch of viable options of different sizes rather than a single eternal September? It's such a blessing that Twitter and Reddit undid the world where Twitter and Reddit were considered the only choices. They forced out the early adopters of the next generation of social networks. Who knows where or if Mastodon will fit into that, but what's important is that it's become normalized to try new options. Of course the masses will stay where they are for quite a while, but it wouldn't be good for them all to flood a new service still trying to find its identity.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    > What's not to like about a world where there are a bunch of viable options of different sizes rather than a single eternal September? In essence, we have seen the ghettoization of political organizations when it comes to influence over social media networks. For the previous ~10 years, Twitter was the place everyone of every background roamed and progressives were very successful at leveraging the platform (and influencing the corporation externally and internally) to center their issues and create a false consensus on their positions and to get opposition exiled into ghettos. They have since been ghettoized themselves as many left Twitter because their rivals have been allowed to participate, pulled from exile and others emboldened. Hence there's this desperate search for "New Twitter" amongst the chattering class. The election cycle is going to heat up in 6 months so it's becoming critical to try and herd normies into a place of their choosing where their media and influences can again dominate. Mastodon was too hard. Threads is a deal with the devil (Meta is evil) but it's the most legit chance to un-ghettoize them and reclaim social media dominance and thus real world influence like they've recently lost.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 3y ago
  > It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'. Why is that relevant? Like I genuinely don't understand this incabability to imagine people just...interacting via a medium, and that it is ok if not everyone is on a single platform. Not everything is about shareholders and creating another megacorp that can ruin my experience as fast as possible. Sure, some people are not tech literate enough to use a platform like Mastodon, but that is perfectly fine, there are more than enough options for them. Also yes, Mastodon isn't the right platform for people that mainly want to sell you something or 'build their brand', and that is fine too! (certainly a plus for many) Meanwhile every relevant (as in: information and tweets I actually appreciated, compared to a ton of accounts I followed, but were just rather 'low effort' content I don't exactly miss) account I followed on Twitter is now on Mastodon. So all I need to stay and be happy on Mastodon is for it to not lose those users again, and slow growth is a plus too.
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    > Why is that relevant? Because millions of Twitter users are (were?) looking for a replacement and a LOT of people, rightly or wrongly, were selling Mastodon as that replacement.
    - beej71 3y ago
      It's absolutely a replacement for some people. (For me, it's waaay better than Twitter ever was.) But nothing is a replacement for all people.
  - ehutch79 3y ago
    It's relevant because commenters on here and other places are saying everyone should switch from 'the bird site' to mastodon?
- sundarurfriend 3y ago
  There's nothing to be "bullish" about, it's not a startup trying to become a unicorn at some future point. It's useful to me right now, because there are more than enough people to have interesting discussions, news articles, and photos.
Sunspark 3y ago
Mastodon is going to hit drama very soon which may end in its demise. Meta wants to enter it so they can slurp up everything. You're going to run into the situation of some server admins going "OK sure, I will federate with Meta" and others going "By the power of Grayskull! I shall block Meta!".
- jkubicek 3y ago
  Mastodon is all public. If the only thing Meta wants is to ingest people’s posts, is there any reason to implement ActivityPub? They can get it all for free today.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Some smaller sites have indeed blocked Threads. I fail to see the drama in that. Some people seem intent on causing drama, but most actual server admins seem to just ignore Threads until it becomes a problem.
  - FalconSensei 3y ago
    and that's the whole point of the federation, right? Each instance can choose who to block or not, and life goes on
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      First a bunch of instances blocked Pawoo and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Gab and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Truth Social and Counter Social and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Journo Host and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they (pre-emptively) blocked Threads and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech… The drama lives on and on. Freedom of Association is just as important and key part of Freedom as Speech, though many, especially Americans, tend to forget that it exists as a related Right. Blocking on Mastodon isn't a bug, it's a feature. Drama from blocking on Mastodon is maybe a bug, but criticism and deliberation and community opinion gathering and consensus building are features (and Freedom of Speech) that sometimes look like drama. People expecting useful criticism and deliberation to "kill" Mastodon because "drama" are missing that process survives iteratively and the process isn't a bug.
bluefishinit 3y ago
My favorite part about Mastodon is the general lack of self-promotion. Twitter/Instagram... are made of people perpetually preening professionally and socially. Mastodon is, for the most part, just people being weird and silly. Very refreshing.
- wnevets 3y ago
  > My favorite part about Mastodon is the general lack of self-promotion. Twitter/Instagram... It turns out very bad takes, self-promotion, fake guruism and rage baiting mostly exist on social media because of the algorithms
Pxtl 3y ago
Compared to the meteoric rise of Threads, it's hard to argue that they didn't fumble the bag when the end-zone was wide open. Once you get past the user-hostile joining and following process, ultimately Mastodon just has awful content discoverability since there's no algorithmic feed available, not even good reply displays. You're relying on your follows to retoot anything interesting, and one prolific poster can completely flood your feed. It's just not good enough. I really tried to like it, but it just isn't.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  > Compared to the meteoric rise of Threads, it's hard to argue that they didn't fumble the bag when the end-zone was wide open. Following the conversations here, you can sort of see why. Seems like a lot of Mastodon didn't really want to be a Twitter replacement and it also seems like a lot of Mastodon admins and users are happy for that. I entirely support that, I just wish they hadn't wasted a lot of people's time by pretending.
  - beej71 3y ago
    > pretending I don't get this. I read what Mastodon was from their own site, decided that sounded way better than Twitter at this game, and went there. And it was better for me. I don't recall being misled. How much time could possibly have been wasted?
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  on the other hand, I loved Twitter when it was chronological, and hated it with all my heart after they started changing that. Mastodon is way better for me.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    Even when it was chronological, there was a happy middle-ground where it would show you the context of reply-tweets and would collapse tweet-threads. And nobody wants a mandatory algorithmic feed, but an optional one is definitely a good thing - show me the follows of follows, the accounts that get lots of likes from my follows, etc.
andsoitis 3y ago
According to Statista, there were 10 million registered users as of March 2023: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registered-mastodon-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registere...
- vidarh 3y ago
  You can get up to the hour stats from a number of Mastodon bots and it's now around 13M
idlewords 3y ago
I hope it keeps hitting them.
swayvil 3y ago
Timeline vs thread tree. I strongly prefer the latter. How about you?
- Kye 3y ago
  This is a matter of presentation. A reply from Mastodon to a thread on Lemmy will appear within the thread. Pick a kbin or Lemmy instance you like and you can still interact with people on Mastodon. On the flip side, threads appear as toots/posts and replies, and replies to replies, etc. on Mastodon.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
2M what... silos? conversation happening in disconnected realms..... it's like saying there are 2M blogs on blogger or tumblr
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I think people _greatly_ overestimate the amount of defederation that goes on. Most of those 2M are visible to most of the rest.
Ensorceled 3y ago
A significant number of the people I follow on Twitter set up mastodon accounts but that kind of ran out of steam within a few months and I rarely see Mastodon mentioned anymore. A much larger number have set up Threads accounts and either posting on Twitter less or are gone entirely. It's anecdotal, but I think Mastodon missed the boat, in large part because of the pretty terrible sign up experience. Most people noped out at "First, pick a server, but don't worry, this list only includes the ones who promise to be safe!", most of the rest when they hit "The server suggested by the person you want to follow is not taking new signups".
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  > It's anecdotal, but I think Mastodon missed the boat, in large part because of the pretty terrible sign up experience. The Fediverse missed the boat of becoming the next public square because it was never sailing that route to begin with, if you'll pardon the slightly twisted metaphor. ActivityPub, and by extension Mastodon, are not community spaces; they are tools for building community spaces. There are at least three major spaces currently: the heavily-moderated, mostly lefty area, the barely-moderated, heavily alt-right area, and the area dominated by Pawoo and defined primarily by Japan's legal jurisdiction regarding image media. There are some interfaces between these broad areas, and some sub-divisions within them, as well as some smaller, mutually allowlisted islands that don't federate outside at all. Building a new public square may be Eugen Rochko's goal, but it's not what most instance admins and moderators want. Joining the Fediverse looking for a new Twitter is and always has been a mistake.
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    > The Fediverse missed the boat of becoming the next public square because it was never sailing that route to begin with, if you'll pardon the slightly twisted metaphor. I agree entirely. There were a lot of people saying that the Fediverse was the next Twitter but that fell flat due, in part, because a lot of Mastodon communities weren't interested.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    And there are even more when you factor in the many other services speaking ActivityPub.
8organicbits 3y ago
Here's another tracker that shows a higher number. https://fediverse.observer/stats https://fediverse.observer/stats I suspect it's hard to measure this accurately as the users are spread over several thousand servers, and presumably servers can lie about their user count. It's like measuring how many email addresses exist, you can only estimate. What matters more to me is what kind of community exists. I joined Twitter late and found it was hard to engage because it was so chaotic. People shouting past eachother or making cheap shots. Not my thing, I didn't stay. Mastodon "looks like twitter" but doesn't feel like that. We know that community-based moderation can work at scale, that's what Reddit uses, so I'm hopeful Mastodon will keep it's safe feeling.
id00 3y ago
When moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I was really surprised by the amount of new type of people that I have little to no visibility before: not super famous but good writers, teachers, niche open source enthusiasts, less known indie game devs, open source hardware manufactures, scientists, regional activists, etc. I'm really pleased with the quality of my feed and discussions that I have. Reminds me of Twitter when it was just launched. People can complain about UX and the slow grow (especially compared to Threads) but the truth is - right now, there is enough audience and content to make it engaging and useful. I don't think there is much value in the explosive growth that some people want from it.
- efields 3y ago
  I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Mastodon might have had slow growth but it definitely is a community. It's going to operate differently. It won't scale fast or make big ad revenue money. That's okay. That's great, actually. Threads is _clearly_ a Hail Mary play to extract as much ad rev as possible from Meta's most engaged social network, Instagram, by putting those same users in a new space and hope they have enough juice to keep each other occupied long enough to justify the CPM.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    > I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Agreed, megaforums with links between them, but just enough to enable migration rather than direct contact, seems to be the way to go. I think another type of person is going to emerge from this though, and that's a lot of people who just decide to opt out. I like to think that people will take the experiences of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and so on... and realize that disengagement from these platforms is in and of itself empowering. A move away from endless engagement, endless over-consumption of meaningless twaddle, and distancing from the sorts of people and drama that only really exist online in the first place. Maybe we can all finally accept that, "Twitter isn't a real place," and all that entails.
swayvil 3y ago
Can anyone recommend a nice peer to peer social media thing? Hey https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/
- swayvil 3y ago
  ok I have no idea
  - swayvil 3y ago
    ok it works. And it's good. The snap install wasn't working but the tar gz download did.
Kye 3y ago
I keep updating my Mastodon deathwatch: https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/109982031390613361 https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/109982031390613361 The text: 10k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 100k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,000k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,300k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,400k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,800k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,900k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 2,000k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" I'm starting to think these people aren't real doctors.
IHasHands 3y ago
[flagged]
vuln 3y ago
This is a real achievement not like the bullshit Threads account merger that’s being portrayed as “omG sHaTtErInG sIgNuP rEcOrDs In ThE fEdIvErSe.”
bookofjoe 3y ago
erm, Threads hit 100M on day 5
- timbit42 3y ago
  Sure, but it's no better than Twitter or any other social media run by a for-profit company (in spite of Musk's lack of success in making Twitter profitable).
hospitalJail 3y ago
Is there a way to 'get started'? I saw a list of Ukraine war accounts on reddit, which as interesting as it is, isn't the vibe I want to center my day around.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

186 points by _han 3y ago

Hasn't threads hit over 100m? Even if 90% just signed up to check it out and never use it again, that's a lot. And it was rushed out because twitter was busy shooting itself in the foot. I'm not sure how mastodon people are so bullish on it. It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'.

some_furry 3y ago
I'm happy for Threads' metrics and hope investors and venture capitalists focus on Threads rather than the rest of the Fediverse.
WithinReason 3y ago
I wonder how many of those 100m are active users
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  I think it is safe to assume its over the 2M mastodon users. But if they want to keep em, they need to roll out some features and I want to hear more about the roadmap to federation.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    For comparison, the number of Mastodon users (not active) as reported by known instances is more like 13M.
vuln 3y ago
Clicking one button != signing up.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  It's not one button, they had to download an app and then auth via instagram. I don't see how it is different from any other service where you can sign in with google/facebook/etc.
  - vuln 3y ago
    So two buttons? > I don't see how it is different from any other service where you can sign in with google/facebook/etc. It was an account merge. You cannot delete your threads “PROFILE” without deleting your instagram. There is no other service which utilizes google/Facebook/etc to login that when I cancel my account on that platform I lose my google/Facebook/etc account. From the TOS “You may deactivate your Threads PROFILE at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram ACCOUNT,” (emphasis mine) Hell even the tos clearly states its not a threads account. It’s a profile based on the instagram account which are irrevocably tied. But hey, they are working on it. Ya know after all the publicity about shattering “SIGN UP” records. https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/07/delete-your-threads-account/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/07/delete-your-threads-account/
notRobot 3y ago
Meta/FB wants everyone on the planet to be on Threads (because profit). Mastodon doesn't need everyone to be on it, since it doesn't make money from/off users. Mastodon isn't for everyone. And that's okay.
- ehutch79 3y ago
  This is the answer.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  The problem isn't with Mastodon or FB. It's with the organizations that want to build consensus, or rather the illusion of consensus. Twitter was where this was done because everyone was there. It isn't possible if some groups are in one ghetto, others are in another, and so on. They're preaching to the choir at that point and that's no way to influence policy.
  - notRobot 3y ago
    Mastodon doesn't need to influence policy.
infotogivenm 3y ago
I think a lot of mastodon users left twitter as part of an existing community, and so the migration process was pretty straightforward; usually they had one community instance that is effectively Threads for them. I think being bullish on Mastodon in particular is missing the point; a similar comment compared it to saying “Yahoo Mail will be the forever future of electronic messaging!” in the 90s. Of course not; email the protocol was the future, yet yahoo mail chugs along to this day. Likewise ActivityPub (which Threads intends to support) will probably be the future, not any one particular UI implementation in front of it.
- jchw 3y ago
  The thing that's amazing about ActivityPub is if it becomes large enough to have similar network effects to other social media platforms, it effectively would bring back the ability for people to publish on their own domain without worrying about whether their audience will be able to follow them. In a strange way, ActivityPub feels like it could do what RSS did, only better. Maybe. Or, maybe it won't. But then again, even if it doesn't take off to the level that people hope, a couple million active is plenty of company still, if it can be sustained.
kklimonda 3y ago
Some people enjoy the internet of old, where you had to put some effort into finding venues for collaborating. There is nothing wrong with some places prioritizing building communities over algorithmical reach of the larger platforms.
bushwald 3y ago
Why does it need to compete with tech giants for people to be enthusiastic about it? Having an organic community is good for longevity if not massive short term adoption.
- minsc_and_boo 3y ago
  Not GP, but the utility of a social app is linked to network effects - i.e. the more people who use it, the more utility it provides. Otherwise you're risking tooting to the wind.
  - lambic 3y ago
    There are diminishing returns at a certain point though, the crowd gets so large that utility stops increasing. I want to interact with experts in subjects I'm interested in, the occasional media figure, and some brands. Sadly brands are lacking, but I get enough of the rest on Mastodon to keep me happy. It's a shame Patrick Rothfuss isn't on Mastodon, but John Scalzi is, so that's cool.
- ehutch79 3y ago
  The feeling I get from comments on hacker news and such, is that mastodon is a replacement for twitter that _everyone_ should switch to. So you're competing with twitter and any other replacement like threads.
bowsamic 3y ago
Mastodon is weird in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It doesn't feel clear how it works, what the limitations are, etc. My profile is on sdf.org but it's extremely slow. The recommendations don't seem to work. There is no algorithm to show me miscellaneous content. I just don't "get it", what it is, what it's for, etc. I had this feeling quite distinctly when I first used twitter too though
- Shared404 3y ago
  > The recommendations don't seem to work. > There is no algorithm to show me miscellaneous content. Not sure which recommendations sdf.org has, but imo the lack of an algorithm is a bonus. My advice to find content is to browse #introductions and find hashtags for topics you're interested in, and then follow those hashtags and browse them for people you find interesting and follow them directly as well.
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    > imo the lack of an algorithm is a bonus. For me it's a negative. I want the site to guess what I want to see and give me content accordingly, rather than me having to choose
- jeromegv 3y ago
  The idea is that you would subscribe to hashtags to see what people talk about. Or you can go in "Local"/"Federated" and you see what people talk about in your instance or within their network. But it's all chronological, there's indeed no algo to tell you who to follow (Twitter used to be like that, you'd show up to an empty feed basically) Not sure why it is that slow, might be the server? Mine is quite fast and followed the WWDC keynote in real time with sometimes dozens of toots a minute
- lanstin 3y ago
  Follow #hashtags that you are interested in to get a broad slice of miscellaneous content, and also check the "trending locally" page from time to time (showing posts that are popular on your instance). #bookstodon #rust #programming #go are some good ones. #maths is excellent (but I'm in maths grad school). There's a growing number of sharp wits and interesting bots to follow. For sure the content exceed my time budget for entertaining social media. I haven't tried getting targeted answers by asking Mastodon, so I can't comment about that.
ezekg 3y ago
Threads can't even calculate active users yet. They launched a week ago. Sign ups != active users.
- ehutch79 3y ago
  Which is why I said 90% probably don't even count.
vidarh 3y ago
I'm bullish on it because it's not subject to the whims of any one player, and the Fediverse is also not just Mastodon, but also Misskey, Calkey, Akkoma, Lemmy, Bookwyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube and many more, all of which can interoperate. And eventually Threads too if they follow through. It's a long game of wanting an entirely different model where the threshold to try new things is far lower because you can tap into an existing network from day one. But Mastodon in itself is valuable to me already today. If it keeps growing, great, but I'll be there even if it doesn't. It's taken over the place from Twitter for me as the one social media site I keep permanently open on a separate virtual desktop. I check Twitter less and less.
tgvaughan 3y ago
I'm a "normal person" who's never created a mastodon account, and just tried this. The original article (a "toot") has a "sign up now" button in the side pane, which I clicked, entered a username and email address and pressed submit. I immediately received an email with a confirmation link, which I clicked. Now I can toot.
- ehutch79 3y ago
  Somehow I doubt your level of technology literacy is the same as the average twitter/threads user. (You'd have more tech literacy) Just being on hacker news is a bit of a filter.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
What's not to like about a world where there are a bunch of viable options of different sizes rather than a single eternal September? It's such a blessing that Twitter and Reddit undid the world where Twitter and Reddit were considered the only choices. They forced out the early adopters of the next generation of social networks. Who knows where or if Mastodon will fit into that, but what's important is that it's become normalized to try new options. Of course the masses will stay where they are for quite a while, but it wouldn't be good for them all to flood a new service still trying to find its identity.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  > What's not to like about a world where there are a bunch of viable options of different sizes rather than a single eternal September? In essence, we have seen the ghettoization of political organizations when it comes to influence over social media networks. For the previous ~10 years, Twitter was the place everyone of every background roamed and progressives were very successful at leveraging the platform (and influencing the corporation externally and internally) to center their issues and create a false consensus on their positions and to get opposition exiled into ghettos. They have since been ghettoized themselves as many left Twitter because their rivals have been allowed to participate, pulled from exile and others emboldened. Hence there's this desperate search for "New Twitter" amongst the chattering class. The election cycle is going to heat up in 6 months so it's becoming critical to try and herd normies into a place of their choosing where their media and influences can again dominate. Mastodon was too hard. Threads is a deal with the devil (Meta is evil) but it's the most legit chance to un-ghettoize them and reclaim social media dominance and thus real world influence like they've recently lost.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 3y ago
> It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'. Why is that relevant? Like I genuinely don't understand this incabability to imagine people just...interacting via a medium, and that it is ok if not everyone is on a single platform. Not everything is about shareholders and creating another megacorp that can ruin my experience as fast as possible. Sure, some people are not tech literate enough to use a platform like Mastodon, but that is perfectly fine, there are more than enough options for them. Also yes, Mastodon isn't the right platform for people that mainly want to sell you something or 'build their brand', and that is fine too! (certainly a plus for many) Meanwhile every relevant (as in: information and tweets I actually appreciated, compared to a ton of accounts I followed, but were just rather 'low effort' content I don't exactly miss) account I followed on Twitter is now on Mastodon. So all I need to stay and be happy on Mastodon is for it to not lose those users again, and slow growth is a plus too.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  > Why is that relevant? Because millions of Twitter users are (were?) looking for a replacement and a LOT of people, rightly or wrongly, were selling Mastodon as that replacement.
  - beej71 3y ago
    It's absolutely a replacement for some people. (For me, it's waaay better than Twitter ever was.) But nothing is a replacement for all people.
- ehutch79 3y ago
  It's relevant because commenters on here and other places are saying everyone should switch from 'the bird site' to mastodon?
sundarurfriend 3y ago
There's nothing to be "bullish" about, it's not a startup trying to become a unicorn at some future point. It's useful to me right now, because there are more than enough people to have interesting discussions, news articles, and photos.

Sunspark 3y ago

Mastodon is going to hit drama very soon which may end in its demise. Meta wants to enter it so they can slurp up everything. You're going to run into the situation of some server admins going "OK sure, I will federate with Meta" and others going "By the power of Grayskull! I shall block Meta!".

jkubicek 3y ago
Mastodon is all public. If the only thing Meta wants is to ingest people’s posts, is there any reason to implement ActivityPub? They can get it all for free today.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Some smaller sites have indeed blocked Threads. I fail to see the drama in that. Some people seem intent on causing drama, but most actual server admins seem to just ignore Threads until it becomes a problem.
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  and that's the whole point of the federation, right? Each instance can choose who to block or not, and life goes on
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    First a bunch of instances blocked Pawoo and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Gab and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Truth Social and Counter Social and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Journo Host and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they (pre-emptively) blocked Threads and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech… The drama lives on and on. Freedom of Association is just as important and key part of Freedom as Speech, though many, especially Americans, tend to forget that it exists as a related Right. Blocking on Mastodon isn't a bug, it's a feature. Drama from blocking on Mastodon is maybe a bug, but criticism and deliberation and community opinion gathering and consensus building are features (and Freedom of Speech) that sometimes look like drama. People expecting useful criticism and deliberation to "kill" Mastodon because "drama" are missing that process survives iteratively and the process isn't a bug.

bluefishinit 3y ago

My favorite part about Mastodon is the general lack of self-promotion. Twitter/Instagram... are made of people perpetually preening professionally and socially. Mastodon is, for the most part, just people being weird and silly. Very refreshing.

wnevets 3y ago
> My favorite part about Mastodon is the general lack of self-promotion. Twitter/Instagram... It turns out very bad takes, self-promotion, fake guruism and rage baiting mostly exist on social media because of the algorithms

Pxtl 3y ago

Compared to the meteoric rise of Threads, it's hard to argue that they didn't fumble the bag when the end-zone was wide open. Once you get past the user-hostile joining and following process, ultimately Mastodon just has awful content discoverability since there's no algorithmic feed available, not even good reply displays. You're relying on your follows to retoot anything interesting, and one prolific poster can completely flood your feed. It's just not good enough. I really tried to like it, but it just isn't.

Ensorceled 3y ago
> Compared to the meteoric rise of Threads, it's hard to argue that they didn't fumble the bag when the end-zone was wide open. Following the conversations here, you can sort of see why. Seems like a lot of Mastodon didn't really want to be a Twitter replacement and it also seems like a lot of Mastodon admins and users are happy for that. I entirely support that, I just wish they hadn't wasted a lot of people's time by pretending.
- beej71 3y ago
  > pretending I don't get this. I read what Mastodon was from their own site, decided that sounded way better than Twitter at this game, and went there. And it was better for me. I don't recall being misled. How much time could possibly have been wasted?
FalconSensei 3y ago
on the other hand, I loved Twitter when it was chronological, and hated it with all my heart after they started changing that. Mastodon is way better for me.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  Even when it was chronological, there was a happy middle-ground where it would show you the context of reply-tweets and would collapse tweet-threads. And nobody wants a mandatory algorithmic feed, but an optional one is definitely a good thing - show me the follows of follows, the accounts that get lots of likes from my follows, etc.

andsoitis 3y ago

According to Statista, there were 10 million registered users as of March 2023: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registered-mastodon-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registere...

vidarh 3y ago
You can get up to the hour stats from a number of Mastodon bots and it's now around 13M

idlewords 3y ago

I hope it keeps hitting them.

swayvil 3y ago

Timeline vs thread tree. I strongly prefer the latter. How about you?

Kye 3y ago
This is a matter of presentation. A reply from Mastodon to a thread on Lemmy will appear within the thread. Pick a kbin or Lemmy instance you like and you can still interact with people on Mastodon. On the flip side, threads appear as toots/posts and replies, and replies to replies, etc. on Mastodon.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

2M what... silos? conversation happening in disconnected realms..... it's like saying there are 2M blogs on blogger or tumblr

rsynnott 3y ago
I think people _greatly_ overestimate the amount of defederation that goes on. Most of those 2M are visible to most of the rest.

Ensorceled 3y ago

A significant number of the people I follow on Twitter set up mastodon accounts but that kind of ran out of steam within a few months and I rarely see Mastodon mentioned anymore. A much larger number have set up Threads accounts and either posting on Twitter less or are gone entirely. It's anecdotal, but I think Mastodon missed the boat, in large part because of the pretty terrible sign up experience. Most people noped out at "First, pick a server, but don't worry, this list only includes the ones who promise to be safe!", most of the rest when they hit "The server suggested by the person you want to follow is not taking new signups".

NoraCodes 3y ago
> It's anecdotal, but I think Mastodon missed the boat, in large part because of the pretty terrible sign up experience. The Fediverse missed the boat of becoming the next public square because it was never sailing that route to begin with, if you'll pardon the slightly twisted metaphor. ActivityPub, and by extension Mastodon, are not community spaces; they are tools for building community spaces. There are at least three major spaces currently: the heavily-moderated, mostly lefty area, the barely-moderated, heavily alt-right area, and the area dominated by Pawoo and defined primarily by Japan's legal jurisdiction regarding image media. There are some interfaces between these broad areas, and some sub-divisions within them, as well as some smaller, mutually allowlisted islands that don't federate outside at all. Building a new public square may be Eugen Rochko's goal, but it's not what most instance admins and moderators want. Joining the Fediverse looking for a new Twitter is and always has been a mistake.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  > The Fediverse missed the boat of becoming the next public square because it was never sailing that route to begin with, if you'll pardon the slightly twisted metaphor. I agree entirely. There were a lot of people saying that the Fediverse was the next Twitter but that fell flat due, in part, because a lot of Mastodon communities weren't interested.
- vidarh 3y ago
  And there are even more when you factor in the many other services speaking ActivityPub.

8organicbits 3y ago

Here's another tracker that shows a higher number. https://fediverse.observer/stats https://fediverse.observer/stats I suspect it's hard to measure this accurately as the users are spread over several thousand servers, and presumably servers can lie about their user count. It's like measuring how many email addresses exist, you can only estimate. What matters more to me is what kind of community exists. I joined Twitter late and found it was hard to engage because it was so chaotic. People shouting past eachother or making cheap shots. Not my thing, I didn't stay. Mastodon "looks like twitter" but doesn't feel like that. We know that community-based moderation can work at scale, that's what Reddit uses, so I'm hopeful Mastodon will keep it's safe feeling.

id00 3y ago

When moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I was really surprised by the amount of new type of people that I have little to no visibility before: not super famous but good writers, teachers, niche open source enthusiasts, less known indie game devs, open source hardware manufactures, scientists, regional activists, etc. I'm really pleased with the quality of my feed and discussions that I have. Reminds me of Twitter when it was just launched. People can complain about UX and the slow grow (especially compared to Threads) but the truth is - right now, there is enough audience and content to make it engaging and useful. I don't think there is much value in the explosive growth that some people want from it.

efields 3y ago
I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Mastodon might have had slow growth but it definitely is a community. It's going to operate differently. It won't scale fast or make big ad revenue money. That's okay. That's great, actually. Threads is _clearly_ a Hail Mary play to extract as much ad rev as possible from Meta's most engaged social network, Instagram, by putting those same users in a new space and hope they have enough juice to keep each other occupied long enough to justify the CPM.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  > I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Agreed, megaforums with links between them, but just enough to enable migration rather than direct contact, seems to be the way to go. I think another type of person is going to emerge from this though, and that's a lot of people who just decide to opt out. I like to think that people will take the experiences of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and so on... and realize that disengagement from these platforms is in and of itself empowering. A move away from endless engagement, endless over-consumption of meaningless twaddle, and distancing from the sorts of people and drama that only really exist online in the first place. Maybe we can all finally accept that, "Twitter isn't a real place," and all that entails.

swayvil 3y ago

Can anyone recommend a nice peer to peer social media thing? Hey https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/

swayvil 3y ago
ok I have no idea
- swayvil 3y ago
  ok it works. And it's good. The snap install wasn't working but the tar gz download did.

Kye 3y ago

I keep updating my Mastodon deathwatch: https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/109982031390613361 https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/109982031390613361 The text: 10k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 100k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,000k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,300k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,400k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,800k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 1,900k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" 2,000k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!" I'm starting to think these people aren't real doctors.

IHasHands 3y ago

[flagged]

vuln 3y ago

This is a real achievement not like the bullshit Threads account merger that’s being portrayed as “omG sHaTtErInG sIgNuP rEcOrDs In ThE fEdIvErSe.”

bookofjoe 3y ago

erm, Threads hit 100M on day 5

timbit42 3y ago
Sure, but it's no better than Twitter or any other social media run by a for-profit company (in spite of Musk's lack of success in making Twitter profitable).

hospitalJail 3y ago

Is there a way to 'get started'? I saw a list of Ukraine war accounts on reddit, which as interesting as it is, isn't the vibe I want to center my day around.

deleted 3y ago

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