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Mastodon
#1
Another off-topic discussion question.

Given the apparently imminent ... collapse? failure? bankruptcy? of Twitter, a lot of people are turning to mastodon. I am writing a mid-length article about it and I have been thinking on the topic of online communities for a while now.

It is interesting that there is such a strong and also siloed community built here and it seems kinda unique but OTOH I wouldn't know if others exist because I'm not part of them.

So I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on mastodon, and twitter and our place here.

I'm also curious, I think this site was started either before mastodon, or certainly before it grew meaningfully. The same *might* be true of Discord (or Matrix/Element) which is another common siloed community building tool.

But I also think this tool is a bit different. Mastodon doesn't really seem to enable threads or separate rooms. Discord is much more real time feeling, which I think probably would feel empty without sufficient users to fill a room.

Mastodon would also be less...siloed...we have conversations here that I don't really consider public, but mastodon is more public.

But maybe I'm wrong in my thinking here. What are your thoughts?
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#2
I am liking Mastodon so far, given that many of the people I follow on Twitter are migrating there, though some have gone to CounterSocial. Waterloo Region Connected is great because it focuses exclusively on Waterloo Region. The downside is that most of the people in the Region who might be interested in regional and city issues are not here. They are on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc. This is the problem with social media. If you decide that Facebook or Twitter is bad for whatever reason and switch to the hot new one, you can't convince all of your friends, family and people you follow to switch along with you, so instead of quitting one network for another, you end up just adding to the number of networks that you follow. That happened with Google+. I thought that it was better than Facebook, but hardly anybody switched, and it eventually died. A public forum where everybody gets together to discuss the issues of the day is a good thing, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get everybody to agree on which forum that should be.
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#3
It's just like the messaging apps on my phone ... do I really need to add yet another one?

As for Twitter/Mastodon, I very rarely post, so I'll continue my occasional reading on Twitter as long as the posts are there.
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#4
I like twitter primarily because it's the easiest place to get a chronological newsfeed. I only follow a few dozen accounts, and I almost never venture into the comments. I'm not the biggest social media person... Never heard of Mastadon. Don't use facebook or anything like that.
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#5
(11-11-2022, 01:00 PM)Joedelay Highhoe Wrote: I like twitter primarily because it's the easiest place to get a chronological newsfeed. I only follow a few dozen accounts, and I almost never venture into the comments. I'm not the biggest social media person... Never heard of Mastadon. Don't use facebook or anything like that.

FYI, this is from the Wikipedia article on Mastodon:

Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to the Twitter service, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy options, and moderation policies.[6][7][8]

Each user is a member of a specific Mastodon instance (also called a server), which can interoperate as a federated social network, allowing users on different instance to interact with each other. This is intended to give users the flexibility to select a node whose policies they prefer, but keep access to a larger social network. Mastodon is also part of the Fediverse ensemble of server platforms, which use shared protocols allowing users to also interact with users on other compatible platforms,[9] such as PeerTube and Friendica.
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#6
First time I've heard of Mastodon. Let me crawl out from under my rock
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#7
Mastodon is interesting but will never really replace Twitter because it's not user friendly enough.

As mentioned, it's a weird amalgamation of Twitter and Discord where it sort of functions like Twitter, but it also functions like Discords with the different servers you join. It's a great concept and decentralized social media is important due to how much of the internet is in the hands of a few billionaires and/or their companies (or incredibly wealthy companies like Adobe or Intel) and I would love to see it catch on...but it is never going to get that big due to how "complicated" it is. Note: it is not actually complicated - at least to most of us here I would think - but your average person isn't going to want to waste the time figuring a thing like that out. Twitter is special in that you can sign up within 60 seconds and be 82 years old and navigate it with ease. There isn't much to figure out. But messing around with servers and stuff? Not for most people.

I think Mastodon will stay primarily relegated to fans of technology/software and the woke eLoN MuSk iS A LiTeRaL NaZi crowd - at least until they realize they're just talking within echo chambers on Mastodon and come crawling back so they can argue online - that thinks they're pissed off he bought it. Yeah the guy is an asshole and a moron and has already made ridiculous choices since taking over, but unless he bankrupts the company (which he actually might really harm it financially haha...sorry the link is German, but should be translatable) but in the end Twitter is always going to be the same place it always has been: a place to shitpost, a place for serious discussions, a place for connecting with friends you know or e-friends on the other side of the world, a place to follow artists/musicians/other creatives and so on. And it's always going to have its shitty side. Twitter was just as bad before Musk took over so I don't know why so many people are acting like it's somehow become worse. In a way, it has become better because of all the jokes people are making about his ownership.

Mastodon is a cool thing and you can for sure find some interesting communities on there, but it's not going to be a Twitter killer. It'll just be TwitterDiscord with some niche servers that people will go to for specific interests whether it's silent Hungarian films, physics, C++, cycling, Waterloo Region, steam tractors or whatever unique thing a group of people want a place to talk about things. But since Discord exists and with some effort, can be made to function less real time, I don't think it'll ever get that big. I had an account years ago on a few servers and going back recently, nothing has changed or grown, so I left again.
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#8
(11-11-2022, 02:56 PM)ac3r Wrote: Mastodon is interesting but will never really replace Twitter because it's not user friendly enough.
....

Blah blah blah.

I've heard this so many times...it really isn't true. It's user experience is not as polished as twitters, but it's completely usable by anyone who figured out twitter.  IMO the UI is not an obstacle to using it, although plenty of people will look at it and say "it's not twitter" then walk out, but that's it being different, not it being bad or unusuable.

And people understand the distributed nature just fine...if you can understand email or your phone providers you can understand this.

We don't give people enough credit. Some things people don't get, but it's pretty easy to explain this to them, "what's an instance"..."oh, it's like the way you can have email through gmail or through hotmail or whatever"..."oh, okay...so what's gmail"..."Mastodon.social". There, done.

"Unless he bankrupts the company"...he told the (remaining) employees in a meeting yesterday that he didn't know that the burn rate of the company was and that bankruptcy was possible. Then he went on twitter and mocked some more advertisers...so I'd say bankruptcy is a real possibility. Also, I don't know anyone who has called Elon a Nazi, but he absolutely did advocate for voting for fascists in the US election a few days ago.

It is actually very different from Discord, I only brought up discord because Discord is more similar to here. Discord has significant segregation between communities...Mastodon doesn't really. You can view your local instance feed if you want, but if you view YOUR feed it is composed of all your follows no matter where they are.
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#9
You honestly think Elon bought Twitter to have it go bankrupt? Because he has a proven track record of excelling financially and otherwise at everything he does. No billionaire wants to be seen as a looser. He is way too narcissistic to allow that..
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#10
I have set up over at Counter Social so far but it currently feels empty. I haven't found a ton of people over there that I know and I'm not seeing much housing conversation to join yet - which is what I spend a lot of time on in Twitter.

I'm on a waitlist for Project Mushroom which is apparently somehow connected to Mastodon so I think I'll end up over there as well. I don't plan on sticking with both Counter Social and Mastodon though so I'll see where I can find the most connection on issues of interest to me.
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#11
(11-11-2022, 04:57 PM)dtkmelissa Wrote: I have set up over at Counter Social so far but it currently feels empty. I haven't found a ton of people over there that I know and I'm not seeing much housing conversation to join yet - which is what I spend a lot of time on in Twitter.

I'm on a waitlist for Project Mushroom which is apparently somehow connected to Mastodon so I think I'll end up over there as well. I don't plan on sticking with both Counter Social and Mastodon though so I'll see where I can find the most connection on issues of interest to me.

Counter.Social's software is a fork of Mastodon. It used to be federated, but the founder of Mastodon didn't like that CS blocked certain countries, so many Mastodon nodes blocked CS, so the owner (the Jester) stopped federating and went his own way. 
The Short History of CounterSocial and Mastodon from The Jester's point of view.
Wikipedia article about The Jester.
The Notorious Hacker Who’s Trying to Fix Social Media

Counter.Social seems to be good, but it is privately owned by one individual with his own idiosyncratic ideas of how things should be. I am skeptical about that.
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#12
As someone who uses twitter as a forum and RSS feed replacement, getting started with Mastodon has been a supremely confusing process.
local cambridge weirdo
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#13
(11-11-2022, 04:33 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(11-11-2022, 02:56 PM)ac3r Wrote: Mastodon is interesting but will never really replace Twitter because it's not user friendly enough.
....

Blah blah blah.

I've heard this so many times...it really isn't true. It's user experience is not as polished as twitters, but it's completely usable by anyone who figured out twitter.  IMO the UI is not an obstacle to using it, although plenty of people will look at it and say "it's not twitter" then walk out, but that's it being different, not it being bad or unusuable.

And people understand the distributed nature just fine...if you can understand email or your phone providers you can understand this.

We don't give people enough credit. Some things people don't get, but it's pretty easy to explain this to them, "what's an instance"..."oh, it's like the way you can have email through gmail or through hotmail or whatever"..."oh, okay...so what's gmail"..."Mastodon.social". There, done.

"Unless he bankrupts the company"...he told the (remaining) employees in a meeting yesterday that he didn't know that the burn rate of the company was and that bankruptcy was possible. Then he went on twitter and mocked some more advertisers...so I'd say bankruptcy is a real possibility. Also, I don't know anyone who has called Elon a Nazi, but he absolutely did advocate for voting for fascists in the US election a few days ago.

It is actually very different from Discord, I only brought up discord because Discord is more similar to here. Discord has significant segregation between communities...Mastodon doesn't really. You can view your local instance feed if you want, but if you view YOUR feed it is composed of all your follows no matter where they are.

You're giving the average person too much credit and I think not getting it.

Stuff like Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and so on work because they're extremely straightforward. You create an account in 60 seconds and bang, you're online and can be following whatever sort of thing you want. A 70 year old grandma can sign up while she sips tea and become a popular poster. It's simple, which is great. The average person - the vvvaaaaasssstttt majority of users on the internet these days - don't have the patience for messing around with hunting out servers/instances that suit their interest and finding friends. They want instant, mass results and they want to be part of what is the biggest platform where the most people are. Gone are the days of the internet most of us grew up with in the 90s or 80s where it was actually decentralized and everybody on it got to do their own thing, whether it was making ASCII art, posting in Usenet groups or IRC channels or designing a Geocities page. About the only mainstream thing left that resembles that these days is Tumblr but they killed themselves by - seriously - banning porn, which is kinda amusing. I believe Linus Tech Tips said that recently regarding Twitter/Musk and how making bad choices like that can have a huge impact on your userbase/revenue. Twitter is filled to the brim with porn, amongst other things. Nothing is really going to change, there will just be more hate and shitposting.

The culture of the internet and people and actual generations has simply changed. People no longer care about that stuff. I think they should because I grew up on the "old" internet where I was one of those people making ASCII art, lurking obscure IRC groups, phone phreaking etc. But thanks to the way the internet has become so corporatized and Web 2.0'd (and now, increasingly, Web 3.0'd) everyone has forgotten that. Or was just never part of that old internet so they don't get it. That's what I mean by saying something like Mastodon will never be that big. It's way too niche, requires way too much effort (in reality, very little effort, but people have little patience these days) and is too confusing for most people who are used to the current ecosystems. I'd love to return to an era where the internet was treated as it was intended: a crazy wild west where you are free to do what you want, say what you want and talk to who you want but I think that's hard to return to. Almost all technologies out there get simpler and easier to use for people with time.

As for Musk, I think he's just a socially inept idiot that got sucked into being one of those chronically online fools now suffering from brain rot and this is the result. He's extremely basic...even 4chan users are more intelligent than this guy. He's just a shitty businessman that took advantage of things to get where he is, became extremely "online" due to memes and algorithms, fell down some lame rabbit holes of far-right conspiratorial misinformation and because he has a lot of money, thought it would be an ePiC TrOLl to buy Twitter and start shit. I mean the guy is online for tens of hours a day fighting with check marks like Stephen King. He's a moron, very bored (probably emotionally empty inside, if I had to guess) and very rich. He'll probably do incredible damage to Twitter but it's not going to go bankrupt. There's waaaaayyyyy too much at stake. Just advertisers alone will eventually come smack him and say smarten up (even though some have left - for now - due to his actions, but that just seems like platitudes...at the end of the day they want money and advertising on Twitter = money). It is the social network right now with everything from a brutal war in Ukraine unfolding on it, billions of dollars in advertising taking place on it, journalists and politicians and everyone in between using it as a communication medium and so on. He's right to call it the world's town square or whatever. It's not going to vanish because it's way too important.

Also another problem with Mastodon is that you just get a bunch of Mini Musks. My server must be run this way! Only this can be said! You must follow these rules. It just creates this niche, gated echo chamber where you end up with specific groups of people who think or believe etc the same way. The reason something like Twitter or Instagram works so well is that you can pretty much get away with anything on there. You might get banned eventually, but you're able to go on there and talk about your cooking, your pet cat, dox people you don't like, post videos of rapes, spread state propaganda etc. It is an incredibly open forum for communication which is why it's so big. You can't have that with a bunch of federated servers that are all cocooned and full of people who think the same. As I said, Mastodon for sure has its uses because you can go on there and talk about whatever little thing you want with others, but it's always going to remain small due to how it pigeonholes everything into a corner (despite a global timeline, but that's a mess).
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#14
I had a bit of a learning curve around the instance stuff, but I'm doing well now.
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#15
(11-11-2022, 06:43 PM)ac3r Wrote:
(11-11-2022, 04:33 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Blah blah blah.

I've heard this so many times...it really isn't true. It's user experience is not as polished as twitters, but it's completely usable by anyone who figured out twitter.  IMO the UI is not an obstacle to using it, although plenty of people will look at it and say "it's not twitter" then walk out, but that's it being different, not it being bad or unusuable.

And people understand the distributed nature just fine...if you can understand email or your phone providers you can understand this.

We don't give people enough credit. Some things people don't get, but it's pretty easy to explain this to them, "what's an instance"..."oh, it's like the way you can have email through gmail or through hotmail or whatever"..."oh, okay...so what's gmail"..."Mastodon.social". There, done.

"Unless he bankrupts the company"...he told the (remaining) employees in a meeting yesterday that he didn't know that the burn rate of the company was and that bankruptcy was possible. Then he went on twitter and mocked some more advertisers...so I'd say bankruptcy is a real possibility. Also, I don't know anyone who has called Elon a Nazi, but he absolutely did advocate for voting for fascists in the US election a few days ago.

It is actually very different from Discord, I only brought up discord because Discord is more similar to here. Discord has significant segregation between communities...Mastodon doesn't really. You can view your local instance feed if you want, but if you view YOUR feed it is composed of all your follows no matter where they are.

You're giving the average person too much credit and I think not getting it.

Stuff like Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and so on work because they're extremely straightforward. You create an account in 60 seconds and bang, you're online and can be following whatever sort of thing you want. A 70 year old grandma can sign up while she sips tea and become a popular poster. It's simple, which is great. The average person - the vvvaaaaasssstttt majority of users on the internet these days - don't have the patience for messing around with hunting out servers/instances that suit their interest and finding friends. They want instant, mass results and they want to be part of what is the biggest platform where the most people are. Gone are the days of the internet most of us grew up with in the 90s or 80s where it was actually decentralized and everybody on it got to do their own thing, whether it was making ASCII art, posting in Usenet groups or IRC channels or designing a Geocities page. About the only mainstream thing left that resembles that these days is Tumblr but they killed themselves by - seriously - banning porn, which is kinda amusing. I believe Linus Tech Tips said that recently regarding Twitter/Musk and how making bad choices like that can have a huge impact on your userbase/revenue. Twitter is filled to the brim with porn, amongst other things. Nothing is really going to change, there will just be more hate and shitposting.

The culture of the internet and people and actual generations has simply changed. People no longer care about that stuff. I think they should because I grew up on the "old" internet where I was one of those people making ASCII art, lurking obscure IRC groups, phone phreaking etc. But thanks to the way the internet has become so corporatized and Web 2.0'd (and now, increasingly, Web 3.0'd) everyone has forgotten that. Or was just never part of that old internet so they don't get it. That's what I mean by saying something like Mastodon will never be that big. It's way too niche, requires way too much effort (in reality, very little effort, but people have little patience these days) and is too confusing for most people who are used to the current ecosystems. I'd love to return to an era where the internet was treated as it was intended: a crazy wild west where you are free to do what you want, say what you want and talk to who you want but I think that's hard to return to. Almost all technologies out there get simpler and easier to use for people with time.

As for Musk, I think he's just a socially inept idiot that got sucked into being one of those chronically online fools now suffering from brain rot and this is the result. He's extremely basic...even 4chan users are more intelligent than this guy. He's just a shitty businessman that took advantage of things to get where he is, became extremely "online" due to memes and algorithms, fell down some lame rabbit holes of far-right conspiratorial misinformation and because he has a lot of money, thought it would be an ePiC TrOLl to buy Twitter and start shit. I mean the guy is online for tens of hours a day fighting with check marks like Stephen King. He's a moron, very bored (probably emotionally empty inside, if I had to guess) and very rich. He'll probably do incredible damage to Twitter but it's not going to go bankrupt. There's waaaaayyyyy too much at stake. Just advertisers alone will eventually come smack him and say smarten up (even though some have left - for now - due to his actions, but that just seems like platitudes...at the end of the day they want money and advertising on Twitter = money). It is the social network right now with everything from a brutal war in Ukraine unfolding on it, billions of dollars in advertising taking place on it, journalists and politicians and everyone in between using it as a communication medium and so on. He's right to call it the world's town square or whatever. It's not going to vanish because it's way too important.

Also another problem with Mastodon is that you just get a bunch of Mini Musks. My server must be run this way! Only this can be said! You must follow these rules. It just creates this niche, gated echo chamber where you end up with specific groups of people who think or believe etc the same way. The reason something like Twitter or Instagram works so well is that you can pretty much get away with anything on there. You might get banned eventually, but you're able to go on there and talk about your cooking, your pet cat, dox people you don't like, post videos of rapes, spread state propaganda etc. It is an incredibly open forum for communication which is why it's so big. You can't have that with a bunch of federated servers that are all cocooned and full of people who think the same. As I said, Mastodon for sure has its uses because you can go on there and talk about whatever little thing you want with others, but it's always going to remain small due to how it pigeonholes everything into a corner (despite a global timeline, but that's a mess).

If you don't like how the Mastodon instance you signed up with is being run, then you can move to another one. With the large number of people joining lately, I am sure that there will be some well run ones.
Since Mastodon is federated, you are not stuck following the people on your local instance. I am seeing some journalists joining Mastodon and I think that there may be servers catering to them. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what people are capable of or willing to do when motivated.
One more thing: there is porn on twitter???!!! You must be following different people than I am. I don't recall anybody that I follow posting porn.
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