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Mastodon lacks what BlueSky has - a company with money driving the experience forward and getting everyone going in the same direction. Let's start with "no on

Mastodon lacks what BlueSky has - a company with money driving the experience forward and getting everyone going in the same direction. Let's start with "no one has heard of mastodon" because no one is spending money marketing it to joe public. Sure it'll spread by word of mouth, but honestly that's not terribly compelling (because most of the current mouths are, um, the same people ranting about the incumbents. ) I don't disagree that the same process leads to the same outcome. I personally don't think bluesky will ultimately be any different to the rest. But the no-money approach of mastodon means its a very very slow burn, which will take a decade or more to succeed, and even then may not be what we expect when a billion people show up.

EGreg 2y ago
TruthSocial is a forked Mastodon
- treyd 2y ago
  They've disabled federation and replaced the frontend with an alternative. They just needed something that worked out of the box.
mariusor 2y ago
> Mastodon lacks what BlueSky has - a company with money driving the experience forward and getting everyone going in the same direction. Which is a good thing from the spec point of view but maybe bad from a user adoption point of view. Even for the later you'd be wrong, as Threads is supposed to be an ActivityPub application.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>Let's start with "no one has heard of mastodon" because no one is spending money marketing it to joe public. Sure it'll spread by word of mouth, but honestly that's not terribly compelling While I think Mastodon's irrelevance is deserved, let's also be fair to the "incumbents": Facebook, Mysterious Twitter X, Reddit, et al. gained and maintain their critical mass from word of mouth. Many other would-be upstarts in history also usurped thrones by word of mouth, foremost example being Firefox against Internet Explorer. Mastodon's problem with becoming relevant (and also BlueSky's problem with upending Mysterious Twitter X) is far more fundamental than lack of awareness.
timeon 2y ago
I do not think that for service to be dependent on some particular company is successful way to do it. It is successful to deliver some kind of service but, as we have many examples from and post- web2.0, that service does not have desired outcome. Anyway I have checked several social medias today (HN included) and everywhere except one place there was too much noise about TikTok - only place that my feed was without it was Mastodon - it is quite slow there but i consder it to be good thing. However I think that there is no good social media - Mastodon included and my days would be improved without any of them. RSS feeds feels like more then enough. Discussion seems to be mostly point-less. Maybe even this one, but those enhanced with algorithmic engagement and endless scroll are net-negative.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  Try slowsocial.us or something then?
wkat4242 2y ago
I don't really care whether it's got a ton of people though. I do care if it's truly free and federated. It's for the same reason I don't recommend Signal to anyone in my circle. I don't want to trade one walled garden for another (Signal still refuses third-party clients for example). I use Matrix which is truly open.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  Wasn't the encryption on Matrix cracked and a bunch of criminals were caught?
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    no; that was a different thing: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/unrelated-cybercriminal-network-taken-down/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/unrelated-cybercriminal-netw...
dmje 2y ago
IMO what kills Mastodon is what us nerds say is the single important point about Mastodon: federation. Stay with me... So: federation is very cool in principle, and it's extremely cool in that it in theory means we don't have Just One Batshit Master of all our content... but in the way it's being done with Masto, it IMHO makes for a weak proposition. Why? Mainly because people (normal people, not us lot) don't understand or care what "federation" is. They expect (because it's been the norm for every other service), a SINGLE place where they can go to find their mates and celebs and politicians. What they instead get is a thing where: 1) They can't search a global place and find all those people they want to find (why the Mastodon team don't have this as the #1 thing they are working on, who knows) 2) They find someone on one "instance" (not understanding what an "instance" is) and then can't (easily) follow them from their own instance without having to think about namespaces and all that 3) They naturally gravitate towards the biggest one - probably mastodon.social - and then we're right back at the beginning, with everyone on a single instance, beholden to the possibly loony who might shut it down / monetise it / etc Moving between instances is much harder than it is claimed to be (you lose all sorts of stuff like your history, or at least you did when I tried it). Federation also brings all manner of hard things to those trying to run an instance - I tried, as "medium level nerd" and ended up walking away from the complexity of just not understanding why some content didn't seem to be getting from my instance to others, etc etc. If I was the Mastodon team, I'd be focusing all my attention on global search, and on never using the word "federated" in any of their marketing ever again. It might well be the coolest thing, but it's a non-marketable thing. Of course all this is predicated on "a good outcome" being "everyone on Mastodon" and I do appreciate those who don't want that. It's definitely the case that less people tends to make for better online social spaces, and maybe small niche groups leads to better things all round.
- metabagel 2y ago
  > They can't search a global place and find all those people they want to find (why the Mastodon team don't have this as the #1 thing they are working on, who knows) Amen and hallelujah! This is why I gave up on Mastodon. I read that not allowing full text search across instances was actually a design decision in order to discourage brigading. But, more crucially it undermines discovery.
seba_dos1 2y ago
> Mastodon lacks what BlueSky has - a company with money driving the experience forward and getting everyone going in the same direction. You mean, it lacks centralization?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  It lacks a patron, shall we say.

EGreg 2y ago

TruthSocial is a forked Mastodon

treyd 2y ago
They've disabled federation and replaced the frontend with an alternative. They just needed something that worked out of the box.

mariusor 2y ago

> Mastodon lacks what BlueSky has - a company with money driving the experience forward and getting everyone going in the same direction. Which is a good thing from the spec point of view but maybe bad from a user adoption point of view. Even for the later you'd be wrong, as Threads is supposed to be an ActivityPub application.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>Let's start with "no one has heard of mastodon" because no one is spending money marketing it to joe public. Sure it'll spread by word of mouth, but honestly that's not terribly compelling While I think Mastodon's irrelevance is deserved, let's also be fair to the "incumbents": Facebook, Mysterious Twitter X, Reddit, et al. gained and maintain their critical mass from word of mouth. Many other would-be upstarts in history also usurped thrones by word of mouth, foremost example being Firefox against Internet Explorer. Mastodon's problem with becoming relevant (and also BlueSky's problem with upending Mysterious Twitter X) is far more fundamental than lack of awareness.

timeon 2y ago

I do not think that for service to be dependent on some particular company is successful way to do it. It is successful to deliver some kind of service but, as we have many examples from and post- web2.0, that service does not have desired outcome. Anyway I have checked several social medias today (HN included) and everywhere except one place there was too much noise about TikTok - only place that my feed was without it was Mastodon - it is quite slow there but i consder it to be good thing. However I think that there is no good social media - Mastodon included and my days would be improved without any of them. RSS feeds feels like more then enough. Discussion seems to be mostly point-less. Maybe even this one, but those enhanced with algorithmic engagement and endless scroll are net-negative.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
Try slowsocial.us or something then?

wkat4242 2y ago

I don't really care whether it's got a ton of people though. I do care if it's truly free and federated. It's for the same reason I don't recommend Signal to anyone in my circle. I don't want to trade one walled garden for another (Signal still refuses third-party clients for example). I use Matrix which is truly open.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
Wasn't the encryption on Matrix cracked and a bunch of criminals were caught?
- Arathorn 2y ago
  no; that was a different thing: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/unrelated-cybercriminal-network-taken-down/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/unrelated-cybercriminal-netw...

dmje 2y ago

IMO what kills Mastodon is what us nerds say is the single important point about Mastodon: federation. Stay with me... So: federation is very cool in principle, and it's extremely cool in that it in theory means we don't have Just One Batshit Master of all our content... but in the way it's being done with Masto, it IMHO makes for a weak proposition. Why? Mainly because people (normal people, not us lot) don't understand or care what "federation" is. They expect (because it's been the norm for every other service), a SINGLE place where they can go to find their mates and celebs and politicians. What they instead get is a thing where: 1) They can't search a global place and find all those people they want to find (why the Mastodon team don't have this as the #1 thing they are working on, who knows) 2) They find someone on one "instance" (not understanding what an "instance" is) and then can't (easily) follow them from their own instance without having to think about namespaces and all that 3) They naturally gravitate towards the biggest one - probably mastodon.social - and then we're right back at the beginning, with everyone on a single instance, beholden to the possibly loony who might shut it down / monetise it / etc Moving between instances is much harder than it is claimed to be (you lose all sorts of stuff like your history, or at least you did when I tried it). Federation also brings all manner of hard things to those trying to run an instance - I tried, as "medium level nerd" and ended up walking away from the complexity of just not understanding why some content didn't seem to be getting from my instance to others, etc etc. If I was the Mastodon team, I'd be focusing all my attention on global search, and on never using the word "federated" in any of their marketing ever again. It might well be the coolest thing, but it's a non-marketable thing. Of course all this is predicated on "a good outcome" being "everyone on Mastodon" and I do appreciate those who don't want that. It's definitely the case that less people tends to make for better online social spaces, and maybe small niche groups leads to better things all round.

metabagel 2y ago
> They can't search a global place and find all those people they want to find (why the Mastodon team don't have this as the #1 thing they are working on, who knows) Amen and hallelujah! This is why I gave up on Mastodon. I read that not allowing full text search across instances was actually a design decision in order to discourage brigading. But, more crucially it undermines discovery.

seba_dos1 2y ago

> Mastodon lacks what BlueSky has - a company with money driving the experience forward and getting everyone going in the same direction. You mean, it lacks centralization?

robertlagrant 2y ago
It lacks a patron, shall we say.