7 ms·

The fediverse strategy of offering copycats of centralized adtech social media - but without the surveillance and ads - has not worked in the past. Who knows,

The fediverse strategy of offering copycats of centralized adtech social media - but without the surveillance and ads - has not worked in the past. Who knows, the launch of Loops might break that pattern, but it would be a more enduring victory to build attractive products that are 1) new and 2) not replicable in centralized form.

spiderfarmer 2y ago
Most of the content I enjoy is produced to make money. Without a financial incentive, content creators will just ignore the platform.
apitman 2y ago
Not just without the ads. Also without the good UX.
guerrilla 2y ago
Mastodon works great in the present.
- openrisk 2y ago
  Not for the 99.99% of people. Maybe you should raise the bar when defining "it works great".
  - krapp 2y ago
    99.99% of what people? Every time Elon does something particularly stupid with Twitter, Mastodon takes on another wave of new accounts. It seems to be doing fine.
    - baegi 2y ago
      Eh, I don't see "better than Elon's burning pile of garbage" as the greatest endorsement.
    - openrisk 2y ago
      fediverse (active) user growth is saturating at minuscule numbers https://fedidb.org/ https://fedidb.org/ in the meantime for much of the planet the "internet" means Meta properties. if you don't ask tough questions you will "keep doing fine" and nothing will change
      - izacus 2y ago
        1 million MAU is nowhere near "miniscule".
        Klonoar 2y ago
        No, it is - when you compare it to the incumbent properties it’s trying to replace.
        krapp 2y ago
        Mastodon isn't trying to replace any incumbent properties. The concept doesn't even make sense for a federated network. Not everything is a zero sum game of capitalist growth and competition, and there are valid definitions of success which do not require Mastodon completely subsume Twitter. I think it's OK to simply be an alternative.
      - evoke4908 2y ago
        [flagged]
        openrisk 2y ago
        You seem to have missed the point that the OP is about a newly launched fediverse TikTok competitor [1], not Mastodon. I am not sure the people building Loops want it to be "small and unpopular". You are also confusing server size with the overall adoption of these platforms. I am trying to tell you that the broader movement for (re)decentralization is stalling and that is (in part) because it too closely emulates the successes of centralized adtech media. [1] https://loops.video/ https://loops.video/
    - openrisk 2y ago
      > Elon does something particularly stupid with Twitter, Mastodon takes on another wave of new accounts It seems that Bluesky has a different opinion on who actually benefits from the Twitter implosion, at least the last episode https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/bluesky-now-has-10-million-users/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/bluesky-now-has-10-million... And at least one Mastodon user seems to be very anxious about it: https://masto.es/@pablogilah/113064426425857890 https://masto.es/@pablogilah/113064426425857890 But my point is not about protocol wars or disputing that fediverse platforms are "good enough" for a small number of niche users, predominantly techies. The challenge is to take the fediverse mainstream. When somebody is building a "Tiktok competitor" this is clearly what they have in mind.
      - krapp 2y ago
        "niche" and "mainstream" are moving targets, but from what I've observed, plenty of non-techie people are already on the fediverse. Even if you don't consider that mainstream, adoption is clearly moving in that direction. And even if the fediverse never becomes "mainstream" (centralization may simply always be the most popular model because of lower friction and convenience) that's still OK. I liken the Fediverse to the old internet, where you had personal sites and blogs and forums. Many of those never had millions of views or millions of users and they did fine. The draw of the Fediverse is opting out of the commercial surveillance and exploitation driven web ecosystem and every "x for fediverse" alternative makes it look more attractive.
  - guerrilla 2y ago
    It does what it's supposed to do. People can choose to use the tool, or bathe in propaganda and hatred on Twitter. That's up to them.
    - cmxch 2y ago
      > propaganda and hatred and Mastodon/Bluesky don’t have their own flavors of each, except in a form that prevents any contrary (or factual) word from piercing the filter bubble?
      - zappb 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - Kiro 2y ago
      The only time I see a post on Mastodon it's always some angry and hateful rant. It seems extremely toxic.
    - xigoi 2y ago
      You forgot the best choice: neither.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Replicating what TikTok does would involve doing things that most users of Mastodon don't want: algorithmic ranking of their content. Even implementing simple search has been controversial. With TikTok pretty much the whole point of the platform is algorithmic ranking to provide users an endless stream of content. I'm not using it but I get why it works. I see people using it in public transport all the time watching short clips of whatever. It has an addictive quality, apparently. And that's intentional. A platform that doesn't do the ranking and doesn't have the content producers targeting it because there is no ad money, is fundamentally going to be very different. Boring probably. I assume loops is planning to not do that. But then that raises the question what they are looking to get out of the fediverse connection.
- spiderfarmer 2y ago
  What will content creators gain from this platform? Nothing. So it will never succeed.
  - foobarbecue 2y ago
    That's what I thought about Wikipedia in 2001.
    - jmb99 2y ago
      What direct alternative to Wikipedia had the first mover’s advantage with a billion monthly active users in 2001?
      - foobarbecue 2y ago
        Encarta. (No idea what user numbers were, but it was ubiquitous.)
        jmb99 2y ago
        Definitely not a direct alternative, since Encarta was not free nor user-editable.
jeroenhd 2y ago
There are plenty of new ideas happening on the Fediverse but without the advertising budget none of them are catching on. So, instead, you end up with "Twitter but not tied to just Twitter" and "Instagram but not just tied to Meta", because those are services people recognise. A good example of this may be https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/, which I haven't heard of a non-Fediverse alternative for. What doesn't help is that the Fediverse can't just design its own protocol and run with it, the whole point is for stuff to be federated. A minimal compatibility with platforms like Mastodon or another video platform is expected, and that makes developing these platforms just a tad more difficult. This isn't exclusive to the Fediverse either. HN is a Reddit clone, which itself is a clone of every similar platform before it, going back all the way to NNTP and before; Facebook cloned Twitter into Threads, just about every messenger on my phone is just copies of copies, Google Docs is a worse copy of Microsoft Office, Bing is just Google with a theme, and so on.
- bsammon 2y ago
  > A good example of this may be https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/, AKA "Meetup but not tied to Meetup" (and French!)
- Moru 2y ago
  Oh, is that David Revoy graphics I see there? Why yes, it is! Mobilizon looks just like what my daughter was looking for, thanks! I love these different projects that aren't going the beaten path of the advertising industry. Life gets a bit harder in a way but also less distractions.
- thih9 2y ago
  > A good example of this may be https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/, which I haven't heard of a non-Fediverse alternative for. The landing page of that service says that it is: “an ethical alternative to Facebook events, groups and pages”.
- Neonlicht 2y ago
  Look I can install TikTok with one push of a button on my phone. That's how you get every 12 year old girl on the planet to use your app in the first place. No secret club nonsense.
diggan 2y ago
What exactly is "has not worked in the past" supposed to mean? There are lots of ActivityPub services around, and while they might not have taken over the world like Twitter did at one point, maybe not every service out there need to have "Take over the world" as their success criteria? They seem to have Good Enough amount of people on them, as there are daily users, and the services seem to work for the purposes they were built. Couldn't that be considered a success?
- openrisk 2y ago
  Depending on how you count the fediverse / activitystream/pub concepts are now more than a decade old. There have been indeed many AP services around, but practically none - except Mastodon - has seen any significant adoption. That exception is almost certainly because of the Twitter "situation" (incidentally currently boosting also the traction of the unrelated Bluesky/ATProto project) which has created a small window of opportunity. No such window exists for the other centralized social media / adtech platforms and adoption of all other services (video, audio, pictures, forums, events, professional profiles etc.) is therefore minimal. > Couldn't that be considered a success? It is actually enormous success given the resources. But when you consider the vast and rapidly growing number of people trapped in the handful of adtech platforms then you must either concede that the status-quo is unchangeable or change strategy.
  - 39896880 2y ago
    The status quo before fediverse-type services was the lack of existence of fediverse-type services. Therefore, the continued existence of fediverse-type services proves that the status quo is changeable. People want to carve out a space on the web that isn’t controlled by surveillance capitalism, fuck let them. They don’t have to dismantle the entire infrastructure to deserve that.
  - sureglymop 2y ago
    I've used mastodon for years before the twitter thing and there was always a lot of content and engagement. It may have been more niche groups/servers talking about niche things which was great. With the twitter exodus, I was afraid that it would lose that, due to the sheer amount of ex twitter people joining and posting about nothing of interest. But it didn't happen. It's still as great as it always was. Imo it's actually much more like hacker news than like twitter. Though maybe it depends on who you interact with.

spiderfarmer 2y ago

Most of the content I enjoy is produced to make money. Without a financial incentive, content creators will just ignore the platform.

apitman 2y ago

Not just without the ads. Also without the good UX.

guerrilla 2y ago

Mastodon works great in the present.

openrisk 2y ago
Not for the 99.99% of people. Maybe you should raise the bar when defining "it works great".
- krapp 2y ago
  99.99% of what people? Every time Elon does something particularly stupid with Twitter, Mastodon takes on another wave of new accounts. It seems to be doing fine.
  - baegi 2y ago
    Eh, I don't see "better than Elon's burning pile of garbage" as the greatest endorsement.
  - openrisk 2y ago
    fediverse (active) user growth is saturating at minuscule numbers https://fedidb.org/ https://fedidb.org/ in the meantime for much of the planet the "internet" means Meta properties. if you don't ask tough questions you will "keep doing fine" and nothing will change
    - izacus 2y ago
      1 million MAU is nowhere near "miniscule".
      - Klonoar 2y ago
        No, it is - when you compare it to the incumbent properties it’s trying to replace.
        krapp 2y ago
        Mastodon isn't trying to replace any incumbent properties. The concept doesn't even make sense for a federated network. Not everything is a zero sum game of capitalist growth and competition, and there are valid definitions of success which do not require Mastodon completely subsume Twitter. I think it's OK to simply be an alternative.
    - evoke4908 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - openrisk 2y ago
        You seem to have missed the point that the OP is about a newly launched fediverse TikTok competitor [1], not Mastodon. I am not sure the people building Loops want it to be "small and unpopular". You are also confusing server size with the overall adoption of these platforms. I am trying to tell you that the broader movement for (re)decentralization is stalling and that is (in part) because it too closely emulates the successes of centralized adtech media. [1] https://loops.video/ https://loops.video/
  - openrisk 2y ago
    > Elon does something particularly stupid with Twitter, Mastodon takes on another wave of new accounts It seems that Bluesky has a different opinion on who actually benefits from the Twitter implosion, at least the last episode https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/bluesky-now-has-10-million-users/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/bluesky-now-has-10-million... And at least one Mastodon user seems to be very anxious about it: https://masto.es/@pablogilah/113064426425857890 https://masto.es/@pablogilah/113064426425857890 But my point is not about protocol wars or disputing that fediverse platforms are "good enough" for a small number of niche users, predominantly techies. The challenge is to take the fediverse mainstream. When somebody is building a "Tiktok competitor" this is clearly what they have in mind.
    - krapp 2y ago
      "niche" and "mainstream" are moving targets, but from what I've observed, plenty of non-techie people are already on the fediverse. Even if you don't consider that mainstream, adoption is clearly moving in that direction. And even if the fediverse never becomes "mainstream" (centralization may simply always be the most popular model because of lower friction and convenience) that's still OK. I liken the Fediverse to the old internet, where you had personal sites and blogs and forums. Many of those never had millions of views or millions of users and they did fine. The draw of the Fediverse is opting out of the commercial surveillance and exploitation driven web ecosystem and every "x for fediverse" alternative makes it look more attractive.
- guerrilla 2y ago
  It does what it's supposed to do. People can choose to use the tool, or bathe in propaganda and hatred on Twitter. That's up to them.
  - cmxch 2y ago
    > propaganda and hatred and Mastodon/Bluesky don’t have their own flavors of each, except in a form that prevents any contrary (or factual) word from piercing the filter bubble?
    - zappb 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - Kiro 2y ago
    The only time I see a post on Mastodon it's always some angry and hateful rant. It seems extremely toxic.
  - xigoi 2y ago
    You forgot the best choice: neither.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Replicating what TikTok does would involve doing things that most users of Mastodon don't want: algorithmic ranking of their content. Even implementing simple search has been controversial. With TikTok pretty much the whole point of the platform is algorithmic ranking to provide users an endless stream of content. I'm not using it but I get why it works. I see people using it in public transport all the time watching short clips of whatever. It has an addictive quality, apparently. And that's intentional. A platform that doesn't do the ranking and doesn't have the content producers targeting it because there is no ad money, is fundamentally going to be very different. Boring probably. I assume loops is planning to not do that. But then that raises the question what they are looking to get out of the fediverse connection.

spiderfarmer 2y ago
What will content creators gain from this platform? Nothing. So it will never succeed.
- foobarbecue 2y ago
  That's what I thought about Wikipedia in 2001.
  - jmb99 2y ago
    What direct alternative to Wikipedia had the first mover’s advantage with a billion monthly active users in 2001?
    - foobarbecue 2y ago
      Encarta. (No idea what user numbers were, but it was ubiquitous.)
      - jmb99 2y ago
        Definitely not a direct alternative, since Encarta was not free nor user-editable.

jeroenhd 2y ago

There are plenty of new ideas happening on the Fediverse but without the advertising budget none of them are catching on. So, instead, you end up with "Twitter but not tied to just Twitter" and "Instagram but not just tied to Meta", because those are services people recognise. A good example of this may be https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/, which I haven't heard of a non-Fediverse alternative for. What doesn't help is that the Fediverse can't just design its own protocol and run with it, the whole point is for stuff to be federated. A minimal compatibility with platforms like Mastodon or another video platform is expected, and that makes developing these platforms just a tad more difficult. This isn't exclusive to the Fediverse either. HN is a Reddit clone, which itself is a clone of every similar platform before it, going back all the way to NNTP and before; Facebook cloned Twitter into Threads, just about every messenger on my phone is just copies of copies, Google Docs is a worse copy of Microsoft Office, Bing is just Google with a theme, and so on.

bsammon 2y ago
> A good example of this may be https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/, AKA "Meetup but not tied to Meetup" (and French!)
Moru 2y ago
Oh, is that David Revoy graphics I see there? Why yes, it is! Mobilizon looks just like what my daughter was looking for, thanks! I love these different projects that aren't going the beaten path of the advertising industry. Life gets a bit harder in a way but also less distractions.
thih9 2y ago
> A good example of this may be https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/, which I haven't heard of a non-Fediverse alternative for. The landing page of that service says that it is: “an ethical alternative to Facebook events, groups and pages”.
Neonlicht 2y ago
Look I can install TikTok with one push of a button on my phone. That's how you get every 12 year old girl on the planet to use your app in the first place. No secret club nonsense.

diggan 2y ago

What exactly is "has not worked in the past" supposed to mean? There are lots of ActivityPub services around, and while they might not have taken over the world like Twitter did at one point, maybe not every service out there need to have "Take over the world" as their success criteria? They seem to have Good Enough amount of people on them, as there are daily users, and the services seem to work for the purposes they were built. Couldn't that be considered a success?

openrisk 2y ago
Depending on how you count the fediverse / activitystream/pub concepts are now more than a decade old. There have been indeed many AP services around, but practically none - except Mastodon - has seen any significant adoption. That exception is almost certainly because of the Twitter "situation" (incidentally currently boosting also the traction of the unrelated Bluesky/ATProto project) which has created a small window of opportunity. No such window exists for the other centralized social media / adtech platforms and adoption of all other services (video, audio, pictures, forums, events, professional profiles etc.) is therefore minimal. > Couldn't that be considered a success? It is actually enormous success given the resources. But when you consider the vast and rapidly growing number of people trapped in the handful of adtech platforms then you must either concede that the status-quo is unchangeable or change strategy.
- 39896880 2y ago
  The status quo before fediverse-type services was the lack of existence of fediverse-type services. Therefore, the continued existence of fediverse-type services proves that the status quo is changeable. People want to carve out a space on the web that isn’t controlled by surveillance capitalism, fuck let them. They don’t have to dismantle the entire infrastructure to deserve that.
- sureglymop 2y ago
  I've used mastodon for years before the twitter thing and there was always a lot of content and engagement. It may have been more niche groups/servers talking about niche things which was great. With the twitter exodus, I was afraid that it would lose that, due to the sheer amount of ex twitter people joining and posting about nothing of interest. But it didn't happen. It's still as great as it always was. Imo it's actually much more like hacker news than like twitter. Though maybe it depends on who you interact with.