4 ms·
Highly recommend folks check out Mastodon as well - fully decentralized, no ads, no algo, no corporate control. It is continuing to grow steadily and has tons
by chevman 2y ago
Highly recommend folks check out Mastodon as well - fully decentralized, no ads, no algo, no corporate control.
It is continuing to grow steadily and has tons of activity compared to a few years ago.
https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- m3kw9 2y agowhy isn't mastodon one of the winners like bluesky?
- barry-cotter 2y ago> fully decentralized, no ads, no algo, no corporate control. No one owns it so there’s no team of well paid professionals trying to make it grow.
- jsheard 2y agoMastodon is confusing for non-technical users, while Bluesky is pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter.
- agumonkey 2y agoAnd beyond that, the federated aspect makes it very different from a global site like twitter. It was aimed at having control but in doing so you feel disconnect IMHO.
- silisili 2y agoI consider myself a technical person, perhaps not social media savvy anymore, and Mastodon confused the hell out of me. I don't think it stands a chance with regular Joe.
- metadat 2y agoTry using it, it has extra steps and decisions that add friction and are annoying / challenging for end-users.
- Zak 2y agoIt did see a big surge in popularity when Musk bought Twitter, but user numbers right now are not growing significantly.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- churchill 2y agoIt's not idiot-proof. Common-denominator platforms where you're expecting the general population need to be intuitive and work like people expect them to. Mastodon doesn't and their federated model is a pain in the behind.
- ericjmorey 2y agoIts fundamental design lacks the ability to provide features that many people want, because the developers see those features as anti-features to be avoided. Bluesky's AT Protocol was developed specifically to address what they saw as shortcomings with the ActivityPub protocol used by Mastodon and other similar services.
- Zak 2y agoIt's fundamentally reasonably capable of things like full text search and better discovery, which its lead dev and much of the community see as anti-features. There has been some recent progress on search, but being searchable is opt-in only because many users are opposed to search. I think decisions like that are an active choice not to become popular.
- vidarh 2y agoMy impression from conversations here is that the AT protocol largely came from the developers being unaware of how they could've achieved the same thing with no or minimal extensions to ActivityPub. There may or may not be actual benefits to the protocol, but they could have achieved a far smaller delta and largely kept interoperability without any major sacrifices.
- cjensen 2y agoIt's a worse experience for posters for two major reasons: blocking is not as effective (blocked people can still read and respond), and there are too many weird scolds who yell at people for not adding content warnings for trivial things. I don't post so it doesn't affect me directly. It affects where the people I follow choose to post.
- teeray 2y agoBecause you can go to Bluesky and click “Sign Up” without a confusing explanation about instances.
- genem9 2y agoThis. Nostr could learn from this too.
- grishka 2y agoMastodon has a big honkin' "Join mastodon.social" button both on joinmastodon.org and in the mobile apps to solve this exact problem.
- rvz 2y agoGood solution. Problem is they have chosen a 'default instance' in the app which goes against the idea to encourage federation of the platform and instead accelerates centralization and there was backlash over that change. [0] mastodon.social will only get more centralized and is the only one that is benefitting from that change. [0] https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110233282251253677 https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110233282251253677
- teeray 2y agoBut the fact they still have this perception of confusing sign-up means they were too late.
- rvz 2y agoGood question. When you say Mastodon, my answer is 'which one' or 'which instance'? That basic hurdle is the reason why it is a barrier to many potential new users and it has traded complexity over ease of onboarding when trying to sign up new users (who are not techies or sys-admins). One solution is to set a default instance. I.e 'mastodon.social' and tell users to sign up there. Again, that increases the issue of centralization. To prevent that, you close sign ups and tell users to sign up elsewhere. Then the issue continues on other instances. Along side other issues, that is why new users just went to Bluesky or Threads instead.
- tsunamifury 2y ago[flagged]
- drewolbrich 2y agoThis isn't the most important reason, but compared to similar web sites, Mastodon's user experience is awkward.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pimlottc 2y agoThey probably are, but they don’t have a marketing team like BlueSky does
- nostrfanboi 2y agomastodon is federated, not decentralized
- tcfhgj 2y agofederation is a form of decentralization
- dyauspitr 2y agoFederated and no control just means it’s going to be overrun by trolls at some point?
- Zak 2y agoProbably not. Each server has its own moderation, and servers that tolerate bad behavior from their users get blocked by most other servers. I'm not sure the current model would do well against a large coordinated manipulation campaign, but it handles isolated trolls at least as well as corporate social media.
- stubish 2y agoNo corporate control. Server admin block nodes they don't want to see, so it is important to join a server with similar views as your own, or run your own server.
- seba_dos1 2y agoThey already had 8 years to overrun it.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoIt's probably a bit more work than a lot of trolls are willing to put in. Trolling doesn't require a lot of thought or creativity, but setting up the infrastructure does.
- dyauspitr 2y agoYou don’t get trolls unless you have a lot of people on there already.
- seba_dos1 2y agoThey already had millions of people to troll.
- kaonwarb 2y agoI appreciate Mastodon and wish it were growing steadily. Unfortunately, activity metrics (see the second chart on this page, for example [0]) suggest that it's on a steady, slow decline. [0] https://mastodon-analytics.com/ https://mastodon-analytics.com/
- jszymborski 2y agoI see a plateau after a bunch of churn from large waves of migrations. Would be surprised if this won't be the case for bsky. Regardless of MAU count, there's plenty happening there to keep me active, and you get to see Threads users who speak ActivityPub as well as Bsky users via a bridge.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- genem9 2y agoDon’t forget nostr!
- amanzi 2y agoI signed up to Fosstodon and then followed a bunch of Python and Django folks. This has been great so far, and my feed is full of relevant, interesting posts. I see a lot of posts complaining about Mastodon and pointing to its decline, but for my use-case, I get a lot of value from it and am pretty happy. I'm not sure what benefits I would get by moving over to Bluesky?
- ge96 2y agoI wonder how the world would change if ads just disappeared I get things have to be sold but damn it's out of control
- lostlogin 2y agoLife without Pihole and a blocker is just grim. Every so often I get exposed to that world. It’s awful.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoI would use PiHole, but them using Github is just a nonstarter (notably because that might be one of the websites I'm considering blocking, catch22 for blocklist updates). Or have they finally moved somewhere else less morally bankrupt ?
- drivingmenuts 2y agoA lot of free services would disappear if they were unable to make some sort of ad-based income. Some people would be unable to do anything except whatever was provided by their government without ad-supported services (thinking Google products, YouTube, etc.) It would eventually go back to the way it was in the old days - a few actually-useful-but-struggling sites, a few paid-for services that might or might not survive, a passel of vanity sites and some incoherent cranks and weirdos (Time Cube, etc.). Heaven for some, but mostly boring for everyone else after an hour.
- ge96 2y agothat is fair, it's amazing how YouTube can eat a big file for free so you can have other people watch it, no storage cost concern edit: I'm more talking about the influence on people's minds whatever the ad is in particular the bad ones/narrative
- BlueTemplar 2y agoIt's not like storage is particularly expensive unless you start to have hundreds of hour-long videos... Speaking of, one of the things that the 2012 Twitter APIpocalypse killed off, was Flattr 1.0 (with its buttons on websites to Flattr stuff so at the end of the month the sum of money you set away would be spread over all the Flattrs you made).
- quantadev 2y ago[flagged]
- celdon25 2y agothat's a yikes from me
- amathyst 2y agoNobody take the bait
- jrflowers 2y agoIf anybody is wondering what sort of political viewpoints quantadev is talking about, one example is they posted that The Onion and Alex Jones are the same https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42138285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42138285
- quantadev 2y agoI love having "followers" like you, jrflowers. Did you ever figure out how to setup that URL that pulls up just my posts?
- jrflowers 2y agoThis site doesn’t have followers but if you see somebody POSTING in the VOICE of a guy wearing a sandwich board that says CHRIST WAS A LIZARD it only takes two clicks to see the other stuff they voluntarily posted publicly here (username -> comments)
- muglug 2y agoI joined Mastodon in the big post-Elon user exodus. It’s great for geeky stuff, but Bluesky is much better for entertainment and news (i.e. what I mostly used Twitter for, pre-Elon). If geeky stuff is what you’re interested in, you can build that community on Mastodon easily. But if you want more popular content and users, they’re on Bluesky.