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So far, the alternatives are 'inferior' in various ways. But after the owner of the site started posting various anti-semitic things (blaming the ADL on the si

• zeroonetwothree 3y ago
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• tptacek 3y ago
  Ever since Musk took over, Mastodon has felt pretty much identical to old Twitter for me; same people, same conversations. I recommend it. I've stopped paying attention to Bluesky. Everybody always points out that the alternatives to Twitter are inferior. The issue there is, X is also inferior to Twitter. Pick your poison.
  • pantalaimon 3y ago
    The only problem I have with Mastodon is that it's hard to discover new things. If you already have some people you know who to follow that's great, but there is hardly any discovery or recommendation beyond that.
    • timbit42 3y ago
      While you can follow people on Mastodon, that's not the best way to discover new things. The best way is to follow hashtags. I only follow a few people on Mastodon because there are few people who I want to see everything they post. I'd rather follow hashtags so I can see posts on topics I am interested in and not posts I'm not interested in.
    • ajsalminen 3y ago
      That is true and the usual recommendation is to follow hashtags but I think making lists easily shareable would also help a great deal.
    • littlestymaar 3y ago
      What's wrong with the “explore” and “live feed” buttons? Also isn't that the point of a micro-blogging platform that the discoveries are made through the “retweet” of the users you follow? For years that used to be the main way discovery worked on Twitter, before they moved to algorithmically curated feed (which became full of “high-engagement” crap pretty soon).
  • rsynnott 3y ago
    I think it _really_ depended on what your Twitter bubble was. Mastodon generally feels like “better twitter” to me, but the sort of people I interacted with on Twitter were generally also the sort of people who’d find Mastodon appealing. (Actual Twitter now feels like a graveyard; if I look at the “Following” tab on my dormant Twitter account, there’s barely anything going on at all.) This will not be the case for everyone.
• jug 3y ago
  Bluesky is growing and going more and more mainstream in tone by the month. https://vqv.app/stats/chart https://vqv.app/stats/chart
  • bdcravens 3y ago
    1.3M members in 5 months is nowhere near critical mass. For reference, retired American football player and sportscaster Troy Aikman has 1.5M followers.
    • EA-3167 3y ago
      If you're talking about followers on Twitter, I have to wonder how many are just bots.
      • littlestymaar 3y ago
        This, or just old accounts.
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • CSSer 3y ago
      1.3M members under invite constraints. The implication is that number would probably explode if opened up. They aim to drum up excitement, but it’s a fine line. It’s also to buy time to build out the tech. To be clear, I’m only offering an interpretation, not my personal opinion. I currently sit on ten invite codes for Bluesky. Among my friends I’ve offered to that have declined, I get the impression that they’re in “wait and see” mode. At least one has told me as much explicitly too.
• yanderekko 3y ago
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• akmarinov 3y ago
  Honestly, he’s a step away from claiming global warming is a hoax…
  • louison11 3y ago
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    • dpkirchner 3y ago
      There isn't much here to discuss. What does "solid, truly scientific proof" look like to you, and what would researchers need to do to meet that standard?
    • bdcravens 3y ago
      Musk isn't dumb, but he's a visionary entrepreneur, not a scientist. Referencing "smart people" as an appeal to authority is a very weak argument. A brilliant attorney isn't qualified to work on my code either. As for questioning science, that's literally the purpose of science. It should be done via better science, not hero worship.
    • foogazi 3y ago
      On what evidence do you base your thoughts on ?
    • gremlinsinc 3y ago
      > Of course, we have an ecological problem and we do need to address it: there is no question that we are responsible for deforestation, plastics in the ocean, and the extinction of species. Deforestation alone has caused parts of climate change, so by that fact alone you contradict yourself. you can't say people are responsible for deforestation, deforestation causes climate change, but people are not a cause of climate change. Plastics in ocean maybe affects plankton levels and other things that could take carbon out of the atmosphere, etc. Scientists are lately claiming that we're moving even faster to bad situations than originally scheduled, most likely because to be more alarmist even if accurate would upset some people in powerful positions, like Galileo pissing off the Catholic Church etc... What event would it take for your to say human caused climate change is real?
• tracer4201 3y ago
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• user3939382 3y ago
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  • jazzyjackson 3y ago
    >> Elon Musk described himself as "aspirationally Jewish" in a recent interview where he discussed the fallout with the Anti-Defamation League over the spread of antisemitic content on X. > taylorswift-yeah-OK.gif
  • bagels 3y ago
    "Elon Musk describes himself as 'aspirationally Jewish'" I don't know if it matters, but this may not be the same thing.
  • pantalaimon 3y ago
    > Musk is Jewish Since when?!
  • mcpackieh 3y ago
    > its original mission Framing a black guy for murder. (Which failed, thankfully. Miraculously, the southern jury didn't fall for the frame-job.)
    • bagels 3y ago
      Do you have any sources I can read about this?
• beej71 3y ago
  Mastodon is already everything I wished Twitter had been. Maybe I'm not like most people, but I'm fine with that. It's a roaring success. As far as I'm concerned, Twitter can just keep being Twitter... as long as it does it over there.
• CSSer 3y ago
  If Threads wins, all I have to say is that we have learned nothing on this subject in the past decade and change.
  • bdcravens 3y ago
    We've learned a lot. We've learned that global social media needs tens of billions of dollars in funding to succeed, and the only possible alternatives are those backed by nation-states. I know we'd love to believe that a bunch of geeks with $5 Digital Ocean droplets running Mastodon can disrupt this reality, but that's just not happening outside of a very niche market.
    • CSSer 3y ago
      That’s not my dream. I simply hold the opinion that Meta is the worst possible candidate for this.
      • bdcravens 3y ago
        Among those with the means to fulfill it, who would you trust? Google? Microsoft? Apple? Another VC-handcuffed startup?
        • allarm 3y ago
          If there’s no one around to trust enough not using social media at all is fine alternative.
    • firecall 3y ago
      You could argue Twitter was a niche market as compared to Facebook! Twitter was constantly criticised for never living up to its potential; features, growth, revenue. Now people are complaining that Twitter isn’t like it was. The world has moved on I guess. Do people generally have the energy to get engaged in new social media networks. Dark social is where my activity is. Almost nothing is public these days, for me and my friends anyway.
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• newZWhoDis 3y ago
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  • sundaeofshock 3y ago
    From where I sit it sure looks like Musk is enabling antisemitism. Having said that, I’ll bite: can you give an example of fair criticism by Musk that was labeled antisemitic by the ADL?
  • palmfacehn 3y ago
    >Confounding fair criticism with “antisemitism” is absolutely pathetic. I wouldn't say pathetic, but it is dishonest. In terms of realpolitik it makes sense. Political groups will act politically. Elon's break with the previous Twitterati regime is a political move. Of course there will be push back from opposing partisans. It is also problematic in that it trivializes antisemitism. The worst opposition elements are empowered when identity politics warriors overstep and trivialize. To be clear, this works both ways.
• deleted 3y ago
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• colinsane 3y ago
  increasingly i just disagree with the metrics along which people compare these things: 1. is the thing likely to survive for long enough that it makes sense for me to build a community/connections on it. 2. will my experience of it improve as it develops over the years. and i’ve just been burned by the “shiny new platform, it’s cool for 5 years, then the investors cash out” playbook so many times now, and mutations of it like Apple’s (where they lock their devices down over time — but in a way that avoids backlash), that i just massively overweight (2). Mastodon/Activity Pub is excellent. i don’t have to worry about some nutcase with $$ barging in and slapping ads everywhere, hiding shit behind paywalls, shoving “reels” or “shorts” i never asked for into my timeline, messing with the “algorithms”, or whatever. Mastodon is, and it will continue to be, and at this point that’s about all i ask from anything.
• slowhadoken 3y ago
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  • theothershoe 3y ago
    Just in case you're not aware, Soros conspiracy theories are a dog whistle for the less-publicly-acceptable "jews control the world" conspiracy theory. Of course it's not racist to criticize a specific person for specific actions. But that's not what the vast conspiracy theories around Soros are. Whether or not you are acting in good faith, you are repeating antisemitism (maybe unknowingly) when you bring this stuff up.
    • slowhadoken 3y ago
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• mrtksn 3y ago
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  • littlestymaar 3y ago
    > Honestly , the product has become much better since he took over. Indeed, having internet prostitutes with a blue tick as top comment on almost every tweet, what's not to like… (at least I'd rather have Onlyfan sex-workers on top than Musk's fan base but still). > The community notes were developed before the take over but Twitter apparently opted for centralised moderation and did not introduce the feature. Community notes started in 2021, as a pilot called birdwatch who was basically the same thing and was already open source and decentralized[1] and it was slowly being expanded in scope, the fact that the expansion culminated roughly at the same time as Musk taking over is essentially a coincidence. [1]: https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes/commit/9441a8205f4bdb9f551daf43d68634ad5ee4b5ae#diff-b335630551682c19a781afebcf4d07bf978fb1f8ac04c6bf87428ed5106870f5 https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes/commit/9441a8205f4...
    • mrtksn 3y ago
      Coincidence or not, it's much better now. He could have chosen to disband it too. And the blue checks, they are available for anyone. If you are not happy about the current composition of blue check people, all you have to do is to have more people form your side to purchase a blue check.
      • littlestymaar 3y ago
        I'm not going to give money to a magnate that uses his wealth to promote far-right conspiracy theories and platform literal Nazis while deplatforming journalists and workers unions, just to change the composition of the blue check fauna. Thanks but no thanks.
        • mrtksn 3y ago
          It's up to you to take over their platforms just like they took over pretty much all the social media platforms. If you care about your causes just as much as you may care about a coffee and a cookie you can chip in about as much money, which is 8$/m, and cause them problems. No one is entitled to use this billions dollar infrastructure for free even though the ad and tracking business models might have given that impression. Those who care, put in resources. Nazis care enough, put in time and money and are achieving quite a bit. If you suspect that you are not treated the same for your money, you can go after that. Those Conspiracy theorist did the same and are achieving quite a lot because despite that they are so wrong about so many things they were right about some stuff like speech suppression and they worked hard and came on top of it.