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Why would this Mastodon succeed when all the others have failed? And before you jump on with definition of "failed", I mean "failed to be the savior that repla
by andrewstuart 3y ago
Why would this Mastodon succeed when all the others have failed?
And before you jump on with definition of "failed", I mean "failed to be the savior that replaced Twitter when Twitter went into full revolt this year".
Mastodon had its big chance at that point and failed to be the new Twitter. Meta/facebook Threads also failed, Bluesky also failed.
Disrupting Twitter is either impossible or the formula has not yet been found.
- badsectoracula 3y agoThe Mastodon instance i'm on, mastodon.gamedev.place, works perfectly fine and has interesting content. Perhaps specialized instances (this is for game development) are more useful than grabbag instances (though of course due to how Mastodon works you can "follow" people from any other instance).
- ok123456 3y agoMastodon has all the fundamental problems of email. It's actually worse because personal grievance can get you blacklisted by the cabal of major instances, instead of actual spam.
- init2null 3y agoThe big instances don't care about the blocklist fascists. Mastodon.art consumes far more air than their users and those of their allies should receive. That being said, there are truly horrible servers that get almost universally banned. Many have borderline-illegal content and the rest have toxic content and users. The large servers have maintained a block policy resembling old Twitter. Unless we want a festering swamp of toxicity, that seems like a fair compromise. Anyone desperate for Gab can join Gab.
- ok123456 3y ago>rest have toxic content and users. The large servers have maintained a block policy resembling old Twitter. Unless we want a festering swamp of toxicity, that seems like a fair compromise. Anyone desperate for Gab can join Gab. This is why Mastodon is doomed. Instead of being a common carrier, it seeks to make a network free of 'toxicity'---whatever that means. Anything that crosses over into regulating perfectly legal speech will draw the exact people who shouldn't be regulating perfectly legal speech.
- treyd 3y agoMastodon doesn't seek to do anything. Instance operators decide their own policies and users are free to join instances that follow policies they agree with.
- xigoi 3y agoThe official list of Mastodon servers requires servers to enforce strict rules about political correctness in order to be listed there.
- init2null 3y agoNah, toxicity is targeting a non-public figure for abuse or committing doxing. Toxicity is advocating for violence or other crime. It's a replying to a post with targeted insults rather than reasoned disagreement. It's racism and obvious sexism. You could summarize it as simple human decency. The majority of us can agree on these standards. Despite that, I see plenty of people violate them across the political spectrum. It shouldn't be tolerated or respected, but you can hold a wide range of political beliefs without crossing that line.
- xigoi 3y ago> Toxicity is advocating for violence or other crime. It's a replying to a post with targeted insults rather than reasoned disagreement. It's racism and obvious sexism. You could summarize it as simple human decency. This sounds fine without context, but according to wokeists, misgendering someone is “advocating for violence” and criticizing Islam is “racism”, for example.
- dotnet00 3y agoWhile your concern is valid, the blacklist weirdos have been blocking off so much of the fediverse that you actually don't end up losing much since most others are also blocked.
- mattl 3y agoI’m really enjoying a mix of Mastodon and Bluesky
- distract8901 3y agoMastodon doesn't care to replace twitter, that was never the goal. Mastodon is happy in the niche its found for itself
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoWhy does it need to "succeed"? It's first and foremost a place where Mozilla's brands and contributors can publicly post stuff on infrastructure they themselves manage. Interoperability with other fediverse instances/clients and hosting accounts for randos is just icing.
- threeseed 3y agoThreads is #25 on the App Store and based on Zuck's interview yesterday he is happy with DAU/MAUs and looking to back it for years to come. So clearly it hasn't failed. And interestingly it may end up saving Mastodon since when it rolls out ActivityPub support it will mean 100+ million extra users being able to seamlessly interoperate.
- treyd 3y agoMastodon/Fedi doesn't need Threads to "save" it. I'm curious about the rationale behind this framing. It's growing well on its own, without some giant corporate backer. Many instances have already pledged to block Threads once they do enable federation to guard against data scraping and EEE.
- orblivion 3y agoI think Mastodon will win by attrition. It'll win over users when Twitter does something to piss off progressives. And then it'll wane for a while, but never quite die because there sort of isn't anything to die. And then something will piss off conservatives and there will be a growth of rightwing Mastodon. And then it'll wane somewhat. And so on. Ups and downs but like Bitcoin the trend will be upwards.
- kmeisthax 3y agoTalking about Mastodon in terms of it being "the new Twitter" is the wrong framing. Twitter is not replicable. It was a central chokepoint for a lot of journalists and programmers, but that Twitter is gone. Nothing will replace it. In fact, given how poorly that place was run (even, arguably, before Musk shat on it), I don't think anything should. Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky will all occupy their own corners of the social networking space. If they all adopt ActivityPub then they sort-of merge together, depending on how the instance operators decide they want that interoperability to happen. (FWIW, a lot of Mastodon instance operators have already said "hell no" to Threads interop.)
- agumonkey 3y agoI don't know how to think about all this.. twitter centralization was a sizable enough benefit to me. Maybe I'm not understanding or approaching mastodon right but I'm never sure I'm at the right place or if I see everything I should see. Triggers some virtual anxiety / fomo somehow.
- _thisdot 3y agoEven more important distinction is that "Mastodon" is not a Twitter alternative, rather a framework that lets you build a twitter-like space. Instances have twitter-like feature set )p. It's totally up to the individual instance managers to decide which direction to take.
- fomine3 3y agoMastodon can not replace Twitter for obvious reason: scalability. No one aimed it. Bet to Threads for it. Anyway it's great for me. It's unpopular opinion but it's good thing that Threads to add federation because we can connect to various user who never join "fediverse" like celebrities. Blocking it by instance is okay.
- rsynnott 3y agoWhen social networks die, they’re rarely wholesale replaced with a copy of that social network. There likely won’t be _one_ replacement for Twitter.