
Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch - codesections
https://www.codesections.com/blog/mastodon-elevator-pitch/
======
bilbo0s
OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among _regular_ people cares. You
guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between
tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you.
None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people,
your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for
mastodon that indicates any features at all that would convince any of Kim K
or Kylie Jenner's followers to go take a look at it. I'll even go a step
further and say that Mastodon is probably more for fringe groups than for the
unwashed masses those fringe groups are trying to influence.

Look, you want me to get excited about Mastodon? Show me something exciting I
can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. Is there
some triple-I indie game that Mastodon will allow me to play in my browser?
(Or triple-A non indie? I'm not picky. Just don't show me a point and click
please.) Post the link for that game, you'll get a lot more people trying
Mastodon. Alternatively, is there some new and novel porn that Mastodon will
allow me to access? Or is there a new generation of FIFA stars on Mastodon? Or
new generation of NBA stars? I mean, even a new generation of "It" Girls
chasing NBA stars would be better for attracting users than "thoughtful and
local uncommented retweets". Which is not only what you're asking me to get
excited about right now, but is likely not even true. Boosts will be no more
thoughtful than retweets, likely a good deal less thoughtful since Mastodon
seems to be on a road that relegates it to fringe groups.

Right now, it's like buying a large tract of land in Kansas and saying that
you've started a new municipality. No we don't have beaches, or theaters, or
parks, or much of anything else, but everyone here is more thoughtful. so
we're _much_ better than Miami, San Diego, or Minneapolis.

I mean, it _might_ work? But I think Las Vegas hit on a much better method of
populating empty area by just saying, "HEY! We've got gambling and naked
women!"

~~~
tomohawk
The big social media sites are in the process of evicting everyone who doesn't
100% agree with them. We've seen this kind of thing in history before, and the
one thing we know about it is that it is a process without end. Once one group
gets removed, another group becomes the outlier, and they become the next
target, and so on. Heck, they're already banning political ads from mainstream
candidates for US Congress.

This creates a demand for alternatives. Once a community moves to a system
like Mastodon, that creates a demand for that system.

No one cares about myspace anymore. In 10 years, noone will care about
twitter. That's the nature of technology.

~~~
s73v3r_
“The big social media sites are in the process of evicting everyone who
doesn't 100% agree with them”

That is a flat-out lie, unless you disagree with the terms of service. Find me
one person that was booted that wasn’t booted for violating the ToS.

~~~
tomohawk
You might want to get outside of your bubble a little instead of making
accusations like that.

Perhaps you could explain the case of Elizabeth Heng, a candidate in CA of the
US Congress?

~~~
s73v3r_
I think you might need to get out of your bubble, if you think that most of
these people are just "disagreeing".

As for your example, she violated the ToS. They then changed their minds. I'm
not seeing the grave injustice you're claiming.

~~~
tomohawk
Take a step back and look at what you're justifying.

A candidate from a mainstream party for US Congress with mainstream views
creates an ad about her past that is true and historical, and that gets
banned.

Hiding behind vague TOS does not cut it.

------
danShumway
From the article:

> _Twitter Is in the Outrage Business; Mastodon Isn 't a Business_

I need to spend way more time thinking about this, but I feel like in some
scenarios there is a competitive advantage to not needing to care about stuff
like stock prices or insane prices.

If you can get a business or a project to the point where it's stable and
competitive and it's funding you _enough_ to keep going, then there's a whole
bunch of stuff that you don't need to care about. That's obviously not
universal, but there are clearly downsides to large businesses. There are
things that large business will always be worse at then a small business or
personal project.

Again, I haven't thought enough about this to make a cognizant point, but...
it feels like something I want to think about more. Being a nonprofit or a
small business or a completely non-commercial entity should in some instances
give you a competitive advantage over other businesses. Facebook can copy
every single feature and then some of Snapchat.

But Twitter can't really copy everything that Mastadon is doing, because some
of the stuff that Mastadon is doing is completely contradictory to Twitter's
entire business model. I feel like there's something to be said about (if
you're in Mastadon's position) figuring out some way to tie at least a few
public-facing features into that nonprofit model that you know, 100%, your
largest competitors will literally never be able to do.

~~~
wool_gather
It's worth noting that one of the supporting points here

 _> And Twitter doesn't have any choice in the matter, either. [...] Twitter
is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to
make as much money for their investors as they can_

is not, strictly speaking, true. This has been discussed a few times on HN
recently. (And this book _The Shareholder Value Myth_ is well worth reading:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17529520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17529520)
.) There's no categorical legal requirement for a company to make share value
the absolute, #1 priority. On the other hand, it may be that enough people
believe this duty exists that it has a sort of _ipso facto_ existence.

~~~
quadrangle
If investors feel that profit is not being maximized, they can sue or take
other actions to punish those they see as not focusing on profit etc.

I mean, the point is that "you aren't prioritizing profit" has legal standing
for investors. And "we don't prioritize profit in cases that involve harming
the world" does _not_ is not a legal stance for the company unless the harm
itself is illegal or the entity is a Benefit Corp or similar.

~~~
tlholaday
I agree that investors may sue management for fraud or corruption. "Not
maximizing profit" is neither fraudulent nor corrupt.

Investors who feel that profit is not being maximized can sell their shares or
can vote to replace management. They can also buy sufficient shares from other
unhappy shareholders to let them take control of the company altogether, and
manage it themselves.

What evidence do you have that any shareholder has ever won a lawsuit against
a company on the basis that the company was not maximizing profits?

~~~
asntbqjkwbucaa
It's true that investors can sell if profit isn't being maximized, but how
often does that happen in privately held companies?

E.g. if startup X has the tech to take over a market, but is insufficiently
pursuing a profit opportunity because of moral squeamishness, chances are
relatively good that investors in X will simply replace the executives with
somebody that will pursue those opportunities since that's vastly cheaper than
building up competitive tech in a new investment.

Similarly with publicly traded companies, not pursuing profit opportunities
can result in large sell offs of a stock. You see a lot of animus against
short sellers that suggests that the "businesses must maximize profit" norm is
thoroughly ingrained in investor communities even if it's not legally
mandatory.

~~~
nl
_Similarly with publicly traded companies, not pursuing profit opportunities
can result in large sell offs of a stock._

That isn't obviously true. Eg, Amazon spent years actively doing everything
possible to avoid making profits.

If investors don't like a company's strategy then they can try to get
management changes or they can sell. But company strategy goes way beyond the
blind pursuit of profit.

 _E.g. if startup X has the tech to take over a market, but is insufficiently
pursuing a profit opportunity because of moral squeamishness, chances are
relatively good that investors in X will simply replace the executives with
somebody that will pursue those opportunities since that 's vastly cheaper
than building up competitive tech in a new investment._

That maybe true sometimes, but it is a lot rarer than you seem to believe
(especially with early stage companies). The team running the company is a
very large part of what people invest it. As a good counter example: Uber. Few
would say that Travis wasn't pursuing profit every way possible, and it was
the investors that moved against him because of his bad moral judgment.

~~~
asntbqjkwbucaa
With early stage companies, often what happens is investors subsidize an
investment precisely because they know what the profit strategy is and because
they think it's strong.

With Uber, Travis was attempting to undercut competition. Investors subsidize
rides because when there is no competition they are in a better place to
profit. Amazon (I believe?) was reinvesting the money in the business while
subsidizing prices and package delivery to gain loyal customers. Many times an
investor will subsidize a no-advertisement experience to gain an audience, and
then switch on ads when the network effects are strong enough to retain the
audience.

This is basically Machiavelli's advice that new princes should give favors to
the masses when they rise to power, so that their positions are stronger
later. But the real goal is always to turn profit aggressively, even if
investors are patient for a few years while they maneuver into the right
position.

Also just to be clear, no investor wants a business to pursue _every_ profit
opportunity. They want the business to focus on a strategy that will maximize
profit given their strengths, and that always involves focus rather than being
distracted by every possible opportunity.

------
twblalock
I went to the Mastodon website and clicked "Get Started" and was brought to a
menu where I needed to choose a server. Many of them focus on niche interests,
and it was not very clear what to do if I wanted to be a member of more than
one of them.

I'm a techie; I could figure it out. But it is too much to ask of the general
public to wade through many niche servers they won't understand, e.g. the one
for BSD fans and multiple furry-themed servers. And there seem to be several
overlapping Chinese-language servers -- which one should a Chinese newbie
choose? And what prevents each server from devolving into a petty little
fiefdom where the moderators abuse their power?

Compare that to getting started on Twitter: pick a username and password,
boom, done!

The Mastodon project is clearly designed for a technical audience, whether or
not that is what they actually intended. Outside of the techie bubble the
usability is just not there.

~~~
ohtwenty
You make a good point (and one that's being worked on being overcome, better
onboarding and whatever).

But consider twitter:

>Compare that to getting started on Twitter: pick a username and password,
boom, done!

And then what? follow some celebs? Figure out if you know anyone? On mastodon
you can use the local feed to find people interested in the same subjects (or
same culture), and then you start talking. I've seen many people be surprised
that within an hour or two on mastodon they've had more and better
interactions than years on twitter. The experience once you're there tends to
be quite good (from my completely unbiased and scientific viewpoint, of
course)

~~~
randomsearch
Wait, so once you've overcome the off-putting insanely technical (who in their
right mind thinks about "servers" outside of tech circles?) onboarding,
mastodon is a lot better?

It does not make an iota of difference.

~~~
ohtwenty
>who in their right mind thinks about "servers" outside of tech circles?

the way a lot of subreddits are used, for example, is intuitive enough to
people who get used to the concept. 'servers' or 'instances' as a word might
be too technical, but the concept of different groups you join, while still
being able to talk to others? Of course my experience is 99% people who _have_
persisted and joined, but they seem to enjoy it.

Mostly because you join, you think "this is confusing but I've arrived" and
there's a few hundred people on the same instance who are interested in
similar things, who know people from other instances who have similar
interests, etc. I think it might help build a network quicker (or at least,
that's what I've heard from a lot of newer people that have joined since I've
been there!)

~~~
mynameisvlad
But you can only create your account on one server. It feels limiting compared
to subreddits, which you use a centralized account to subscribe to several.

~~~
AsyncAwait
You can follow anyone on any other Mastodon server with that one account, so
it's basically the same. That's what the federation is for.

------
simula67
> One of the most pernicious parts of Twitter is how people will retweet
> something dumb, offensive, or awful that an opponent said, along with a
> message mocking that opponent. Over time, this leads people on all sides of
> an issue to see only a distorted caricature of their opponents, comprised of
> an amalgam of all the worst features of that group.

> How does Mastodon solve this issue? Well, Mastodon doesn't have retweets; it
> has "boosts". Boosts are essentially like retweets, with one key difference:
> there's no option to add your own commentary.

I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on
Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad ideas
often takes longer than 240 characters. In fact, putting forward bad ideas
takes less time and energy than refuting them. This is why, usually, burden of
proof is placed on the one making a claim. Otherwise people who value truth
will be exhausted from the approximately 10 times the effort it takes to
refute false claims and truth will never win out.

Showing bad ideas to be bad is very important in civil discourse, not being
able to point out bad ideas by "retweeting" them with commentary will likely
make this social network an echo chamber devoid of intellectual curiosity

~~~
masklinn
> I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on
> Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad
> ideas often takes longer than 240 characters.

It's not even the right problem.

The problem is not mocking people, disagreeing with them or whatever
(incidentally the twitter character limit doesn't preclude external links or
tweet chains, which are extremely common at least in science twitter). It's
that doing so through a retweet (or a boost) is a signal to followers, and
that can send hordes harassing a single person, because it's very easy for
followers to click on the RT/boost and reply, and they're not going to see
that _thousands_ of people already did exactly that.

And the person at the other end of the pipe has to deal with a flood of
burning garbage.

And more generally that kind of crap is easily weaponisable, twitter provides
few tools to deal with it, and they don't usually apply their own rules. I
don't know that Mastodon is any better.

Fundamentally, social platforms are only good so long as they've not reached
their eternal September yet, or are actively prevented from doing so through
active and unforgiving moderation — which can have its own issues.

~~~
xigma
Is this really such a big problem, especially for the average user, to make it
a key feature of the platform?

Sure, occasionally an otherwise obscure person might find themselves at the
end of an unexpected shitstorm, but otherwise it generally affects more
prominent users, who are _well aware_ that anything mildly controversial can
turn into lots of angry replies.

Is _that_ even a real problem? Isn't it actually valuable information to know
that people get really angry about this-and-that? Aren't researchers able to
use this data to learn something about human behavior?

Seems to me like people want to blame technology for something that's really
amplified human nature. A rehashing the old story of the "basically good"
human corrupted by some foreign evil.

~~~
masklinn
> Sure, occasionally an otherwise obscure person might find themselves at the
> end of an unexpected shitstorm, but otherwise it generally affects more
> prominent users, who are well aware that anything mildly controversial can
> turn into lots of angry replies.

And that's supposed to be a good or even neutral thing… how?

> Is that even a real problem?

Very much so.

> Isn't it actually valuable information to know that people get really angry
> about this-and-that?

Not really, and that isn't even relevant to the issue of it actively harming
people.

> Seems to me like people want to blame technology for something that's really
> amplified human nature. A rehashing the old story of the "basically good"
> human corrupted by some foreign evil.

You're the only one talking about "basically good human". The amplification of
human nature is the very issue at hand, "human nature" has not evolved in that
context and while it may work at small scales it demonstrably does not at the
scales we're involved in. As a result it is ethically and functionally
necessary for the tool to mitigate human nature since they're the ones
amplifying it to downright and outright harmful levels.

------
robertwiblin
This is a good article. I just wanted to take issue with this claim: "Twitter
is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to
make as much money for their investors as they can."

This is a common misconception. While public companies have some duties to
shareholders they are not required to maximise profits as such:
[https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-
obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

It's important to be aware of this so that corporations cannot use this excuse
to get off the hook for otherwise immoral behaviour.

~~~
tlholaday
Thank you for battling against the "must maximize profits" antipattern.

------
peatmoss
The posting from a few days ago that reimagined email as a social network
really got me thinking how much our approach to social networks has been led
by the webbification of everything.

The spirit-of-the-nineties approach to recreating mastodon would probably look
like one or two dominant native apps and something like a newsgroup server. Or
maybe something like a really great RSS reader.

Questions about federation vs a walled controlled servive would be silly,
because technologists are fighting it out to sell the best app. And of course
a walled-in service is stupid because that would be as obsolete as Compuserve.

We’re all fighting it out on the web now. Well, except possibly on iOS and
(grudgingly) Android. In some ways I think the web was how we geeks made
survival on Linux possible, as we never had the mass to demand desktop apps.

Part of what I liked about the reimagining of email as social media was that
it allowed for the return of the app. In the case of Mastodon, the protocols
are presumably open and don’t preclude interaction via apps. So here the
question of web or heavy client is not technical but one of point of view or
preference.

This is all to say I kind of miss when we were chasing “the killer app” as
opposed to competing for service share. When the focus was on the user’s
desktop, any associated service was more or less seen as boring
plumbing—-certainly nothing to have brand affinity for.

EDIT: Case in point, there’s another comment explaining that Mastodon doesn’t
let you move instances and retain followers. In the 90s app-centric view of
the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client’s
job, for better or worse. Your computer crashes, you lose who you were
following. If you want to publish who you’re following that’s you or your
client’s job.

Giving up your social network graph to the service provider isn’t an issue in
the heavy client model, because the 90s service isn’t going to pay to store
that information on your behalf anyway. It wasn’t because the service viewed
that personal information as “oily rags”; it was because they simply didn’t
want to expend the resources to store it.

~~~
icebraining
_In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because
following other people is the client’s job, for better or worse._

In the 90s, if you moved from your universities' mail server to Lycos, you
also lose all the people who you were following, since they still had the
previous email address.

Mastodon just happens to work in the reverse (you have a list of people you
follow, rather than of people who follow you, as in email), but the issue is
the same.

~~~
peatmoss
Yes, though it was hypothetically possible to buy a domain and host your own
email. Not a solution for most people in those days, certainly!

That’s gotten harder and easier today. It’s never been harder to properly
manage a mailserver yourself. On the other hand, registering a vanity domain
and hosting with a neutral 3rd party like (my current) Fastmail has never been
easier.

Someone should make a startup that suggests and registers a vanity domain on
users’ behalf and then configures the email hosting provider of the user’s
choice, spelling out the costs and tradeoffs of each. Work out the billing
with a handful of providers and take a small monthly cut. It’s probably a beer
money startup :-)

Come to think of it, given this problem is so old, I’d be surprised if nobody
has made this.

~~~
extralego
I’m surprised FastMail hasn’t made it.

------
DanAndersen
>Finally, with instances, you keep control: if you find that you don't like
the moderation policies or culture of a particular instance, you're always
free to pick up and move to a different one.

Last I heard, Mastodon didn't support migration between instances while still
keeping followers, etc. Instead, you have to essentially start from scratch
with a new account on a new instance. This is a serious problem because it
strongly discourages exodus; Twitter itself shows that people will put up with
a lot of nonsense before leaving to alternatives because they've cultivated a
brand and a following and don't want to lose it all. Moderators of instances
are not a static thing; like any political system it shifts with whoever is in
charge over time. An instance that seemed friendly to a user initially can
over time become more oppressive to them, but the user has invested so much
into that instance that they would have to leave behind that they'd put up
with it when they shouldn't have to.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Yeah, I spent a few weeks (months?) on Mastodon, and even though I was on a
cooperatively owned and operated instance[0] it just wasn't a substitute for a
fully p2p social network.

I found another network called Scuttlebutt[1] that I've been using almost
daily. It has a few neat features:

\- your account is just your public key

\- your profile is an append-only feed of JSON messages, each
cryptographically signed

\- when you follow people you replicate their profile on your device

\- messages are transmitted with an eventually consistent gossip network,
which is fast and resilient

\- you can assign nicknames to yourself and others, and since there isn't a
central naming authority (if you have two friends named Matt, you get to
disambiguate however you would in real life)

\- all data is downloaded locally, so you can view all the same content
whether you're online or off-grid

\- you can reply while offline and your messages will sync when you peer again
(again, think gossip networks)

\- there are tons of different clients and implementations and applications
running on the network

    
    
      - Twitter-like posts  
    
      - IRC-like chat  
    
      - blogging  
    
      - Signal-like private messages
      
      - image search  
    
      - chess (!)  
    
      - secret sharding among friends (!!)  
    
      - mutual credit  
    
      - by far the best community I've ever been a part of
    
    

Anyway, if you want to love Mastodon you might look into Scuttlebutt.

[0]: [https://social.coop](https://social.coop)

[1]: [https://scuttlebutt.nz](https://scuttlebutt.nz)

EDIT: having trouble formatting the list, did I mention that Scuttlebutt
supports full Markdown?

~~~
radus
Giving scuttlebutt a try - thanks! Here are my experiences:

1\. App seems quite unpolished for Windows, it looks best not maximized. I was
asked to provide a name and was a little disconcerted by the message that this
is going to be public and cannot be deleted.

2\. I've now joined a public server. This required going to a github page,
following a link and copying and pasting an "invite" into the Patchwork
application. The first one I tried threw and error that I didn't understand,
but the second one worked and connected me to over 700 people.

3\. The channels page is completely empty.. it seems like all I can see is a
feed of people following one another.

4\. Problem above solved by re-starting the app! Now taking a long time to
download information, but I can see actual content.

5\. I posted my first reply to someone's message. You get the prompt reminding
you that everything is public and forever every time it seems.

My overall impression after about 30 minutes doing the above is that this is
potentially really cool, but a few steps away from being immediately usable by
someone who isn't tech oriented. Going to try a few more Scuttlebutt apps as
I'm curious how well my identity can transition across different clients.

~~~
18pfsmt
I'm not a user, but I have been watching it (and its related projects on
github). I believe Patchwork[0] is the social network you joined, and it is
_based_ on scuttlebutt[1].

It seems like very early times for most people even considering the downsides
of centralized 'social media,' and it will take time and hand-holding to
demonstrate the alternative possibilities. A great client app that could unify
the user experience, but offer power-user features could go a long way. Most
people that I know (older) are not overtly interested in participating in any
public social network (i.e. Twitter).

I wonder if one could build a more closed, private, white-list-default (triple
opt-in!) type of social network on top of SSB with the right client software?

[0] "A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure
Scuttlebutt (SSB)."
[https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork](https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork)

[1] "A database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient
replication for peer to peer protocols" [https://github.com/ssbc/secure-
scuttlebutt](https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt)

~~~
ChristianBundy
Yep, Patchwork is a Scuttlebutt client that implements some of the most common
funxtionality: pubs, following, blocking, posts, likes, replies, and some
profile data.

Other clients like Patchbay do that _plus_ more experimental features, but
it's all running on top of Scuttlebutt and you can change clients at any time.

If you're familiar with cryptocurrencies, these clients ate like wallets --
there are a ton of different ones with all sorts of pros and cons, but you're
still on the same network with the same append-only feeds.

With that said, these _are_ rough around the edges, especially when it comes
to entering the network for the first time. We've got a lot of work to do. I
appreciate the feedback!

------
how_to_bake
I recently joined Twitter and I have to agree that Retweets are the most
cancerous part.

Accounts with many followers act like schoolyard bullies with their gang of
yes men.

I still see federation as being too niche, but it doesn't have to be that way!
I think in an ideal situation, federated servers would rely more on physical
location than on deviant niche hobbies or addictions.

The Smith family should have a server (or your neighborhood should) rather
than cyberpunk.furry.foxes. Because the reality is that people are more than
just one thing and the concept breaks down when you start discussing action
movies or cryptography on your @steve@luddite.peace account.

I think secure-scuttlebutt goes for more of the real world location-based
server concept a bit. But I think most people prefer the peace of mind of some
kind of administration being possible if needed.

~~~
thsealienbstrds
ISPs could even provide the federated services like they provide e-mail.
Another way it might work is companies that sell people federated service
servers as products that they can deploy for example in their home or let the
company host it. In any case maintenance must be included. I don't see how
federated will take off without commercial support. The Smiths might be
technically capable but I doubt the Jones's who are not are willing to let the
Smiths control their service. That kind of defeats the point.

~~~
esrauch
Do people use ISPs email anymore?

~~~
twblalock
Yes, and it keeps people locked in to their ISP because switching would
involve updating the email address in all of their online accounts and
notifying all of their contacts about the change.

I finally convinced my parents to bite the bullet and switch to Gmail so they
can switch to a better ISP. It's a real problem.

------
jamesrcole
I think the term "toots" is spectacularly bad, and could majorly hinder
broader uptake of their service.

Word of mouth (or 'word of text') is a major way services like this spread.
Imagine discussions of Twitter in the media but where the words "tweet" and
"tweeted" are replaced with "toot" and "tooted".

~~~
wool_gather
Can you elaborate on the problem you see with the word "toot"?

~~~
0xcde4c3db
It's an onomatopoeic term for briefly sounding a horn, but I almost never hear
it used for that. In my experience, there are two primary uses of the word in
American English:

1) In the expression _toot [one 's] own horn_, which means to praise oneself.
Often in the form "I don't want to toot my own horn, but [...]".

2) A cutesy word for a fart, used primarily when talking to young children.

Notably, an elephant using its trunk to make noise is said to be _trumpeting_
, not _tooting_.

~~~
yborg
So I'm born and raised in the US Midwest, and in my entire life 'toot' was
never used as euphemism for 'fart' except in the context of the elementary
school rhyme. I can perfectly understand people not liking the sound of the
word or even how it looks, but the fart connotation seems like a manufactured
rationale to me. Actually, for the population that would possibly use the word
that way, i.e. 8 year-olds, the usage would be a positive feature, not a
negative.

~~~
jamesrcole
It may not have that meaning for you, but it does for others. It's nothing
manufactured.

And, for many people, it's the only meaning that naturally comes to mind in
phrases like "I tooted" or "Joe tooted".

------
kylnew
I can’t quite get over this critiquing of Twitter’s Retweet system. I totally
understand how it’s misused but all the benefits are overlooked too. I love
retweeting with commentary for positive reasons. I find they are a great way
to validate and engage people who reply. I never think of using them as a tool
for shaming, so I would be sad to see the feature go.

~~~
jadbox
There's two issues I'm concerned about. As you mentioned, one is yanking
retweets because 'it can be used for ill'. I doubt that would make any real
difference in toxic behavior, but would hurt positive commentary more.

The other concern is the "block posts by tag" (e.g. ban all #politics). This
could cause an even greater problem where it allow stronger social bubbles to
form because one side could outright block the other (people blocking #dems or
#gop). It could become like a Black Mirror episode where people literally do
not know what's happening outside of their group/tribe because they've blocked
entire groups/topics/nodes. We have this problem today to an extent, but I
worry about new platforms that provide more tools for group isolation.

~~~
vageli
> There's two issues I'm concerned about. As you mentioned, one is yanking
> retweets because 'it can be used for ill'. I doubt that would make any real
> difference in toxic behavior, but would hurt positive commentary more.

> The other concern is the "block posts by tag" (e.g. ban all #politics). This
> could cause an even greater problem where it allow stronger social bubbles
> to form because one side could outright block the other (people blocking
> #dems or #gop). It could become like a Black Mirror episode where people
> literally do not know what's happening outside of their group/tribe because
> they've blocked entire groups/topics/nodes. We have this problem today to an
> extent, but I worry about new platforms that provide more tools for group
> isolation.

In that case, couldn't the opposing side just use the other tag? Who could
enforce proper tagging in this case?

~~~
jadbox
That's a fair point, but I'm thinking of this more in principle. Is it a good
direction for platforms to reduce toxic behavior by imposing more
communication limitations and providing topic/group isolation systems?

------
pbhjpbhj
Who names these things - cumbersome, heavy, ancient ... doesn't look like they
did even a cursory test.

I'm as anti-marketing as the next person but that doesn't mean I'd call my
child Shithead.

~~~
radus
I'm a little turned off by posts being called toots but I suppose I could get
over it.

~~~
AsyncAwait
Not everyone lives in the U.S. and in Europe toot is not offensive, it just
means the sound an elephant makes with its trunk.

------
kethinov
What Mastodon badly needs is a desktop client as good as Twitterrific that can
crosspost to both Twitter and a Mastodon instance to lower the barrier to
slowly switching. Something like Pidgin/Adium is for IM.

That way people can default to Mastodon where possible and fallback to Twitter
where necessary.

~~~
StavrosK
I use this service:
[https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/](https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/)

It posts your posts from one to the other, so I can use them interchangeably.
I definitely prefer Mastodon, although I was never a big Twitter user.

~~~
DavideNL
> " _Due to an issue with Twitter, posting from Mastodon to Twitter is
> temporarily disabled. For more information check out this thread._
> [https://masto.donte.com.br/@crossposter/100479477531222745](https://masto.donte.com.br/@crossposter/100479477531222745)
> "

------
DoreenMichele
I think it's a lousy article with a poor title. It's poorly written. It leads
with the wrong info. It's framing sucks.

But just as I was thinking "The fact that Twitter is a business is a feature,
not a bug" they mentioned they are funded by Patreon. So, they are a business,
and one that possibly has a more sustainable business model than Twitter. They
just don't call themselves a business for some reason.

I've done a lot of volunteer work over the years. Volunteers tend to be
unreliable because they aren't being paid. They are often bitter people
because they aren't being paid, so they want you to damn well be grateful as
all hell that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Etc.

So, I'm less of a fan of open source than I used to be. If you want to do a
thing sustainably, creating a business you are passionate about that can also
pay your bills makes more sense than doing it for free. Getting the incentives
right matters. Doing it for free means either you are independently wealthy,
you are a bored homemaker or you actually do something full-time to pay your
bills and this gets what little time and energy you have left over.

Maybe I need to look up the info on the guy who said he would answer my
questions patiently if I had any and make "trying Mastodon" my new hobby for a
bit.

------
tablethnuser
I am interested in joining a Mastodon instance but I don't know how to find
the right one to join.

Every pro-Mastodon article mentions I can pack my bags and leave for a new
instance but if you do research you find that that feature isn't built yet and
the community can't agree on how it should work. So picking the right server
is currently a very heavy decision.

I've tried some of these instance finder tools but they reveal that Mastodon
instances are like 25% furry communities and other fringe fetishes and I
really just want a place to talk tech, philosophy, and video games.

~~~
ColinWright
There are many, many out there. I suggest you join one with a deliberately
"throw away" account and start following a few people. Then see where they
are, and after a time export the list of people you follow, and move.

I'm on [https://mathstodon.xyz/](https://mathstodon.xyz/) and
[https://fosstodon.org/](https://fosstodon.org/) if you want to start on
either of those.

Then again, maybe you will neither need nor want to move.

A quick web search for "mastodon instance tech video games" has produces a few
pages listing some instances with comments about what sorts of things they
cover:

[https://thefishcrow.com/2017/04/08/mastodon-instance-
content...](https://thefishcrow.com/2017/04/08/mastodon-instance-content-
list/)

[https://instances.noct.zone/](https://instances.noct.zone/)

Visit one of those pages and Ctrl-F for the things you're interested in.
Again, a couple of minutes searching has suggested
[https://elekk.xyz/about](https://elekk.xyz/about) and
[https://mastodon.gamedev.place/about](https://mastodon.gamedev.place/about)

~~~
fritz8261
Anybody knows of a free speech Mastodon instance? Something that’s not banned
from the rest of the network, of course. :/

~~~
mikedilger
I spent an hour looking and gave up. They all either get banned, don't take
registrations, or they ban content too aggressively, especially under
categories like racism/sexism/xenophobia/nationalism/socialism/etc, wherein
the SJWs leave the terms undefined so that they can ban any opinion they
disagree with. I'd love to find a server that is committed to the Chicago
Principles.

------
raverbashing
> Well, Mastodon doesn't have retweets; it has "boosts". Boosts are
> essentially like retweets, with one key difference: there's no option to add
> your own commentary.

I disagree. Retweets can be an issue but they have their place as well

What _all_ "timeline" social networks are missing is the underboost, the
downvote button, call it as you want.

People will boost good stuff but they will boost crap.

Networks need the contrary signal, they need the "WTF are you thinking posting
this crap here" signal.

Not censorship, but a "tone down" indication.

Twitter has been cutting down and restricting/banning accounts which I'm not
fundamentally against it but they are focusing on _one_ side of the political
spectrum. With that, I can't agree.

~~~
talkingme
The downvote is to ignore it. People will still boost crap but even with a
small amount of users anything will quickly get buried in the timeline.

~~~
raverbashing
Ignoring is ok, but not as good.

------
mortenjorck
This is about as useful to countering toxicity as, say, not supporting avatars
and claiming your experience is superior to Twitter because no one can upload
a swastika.

To start, the author doesn't get the terminology right: A retweet on Twitter
is the un-commented repost to which Mastodon's "boost" is analogous, whereas a
"quote tweet" is the thing Mastodon doesn't have native support for. Twitter
didn't natively support quoting either until comparatively recently in its
history, and there was plenty of toxicity on the platform before then.

Before native quote-tweet support, you would just see a URL to the tweet
someone was commenting on, and you'd have to click to view it rather than
seeing it expanded inline, which is no less possible on Mastodon. And since
this is really up to the client anyway, there's no reason a Mastodon client
couldn't auto-expand quoted "toots," nullifying this supposed advantage.

------
oedmarap
I love Mastodon but the only thing stopping me from using it is the way they
approach federation [0].

The "ideal" for me is to make an account on a centralized official Mastodon
instance (with Keybase verification, if needed) and then be able to seamlessly
join another instance without having to sign up for that instance separately
to be a member -- and thus not having to make a per-instance account.

That way my account is created once, and I can jump between other instances
OAuth-style.

I do like the fact that niche instances exist, but in my opinion it's better
to be known as [username@mastodon.social] even when being a member of
[@niche.social] much like how Disqus or Gravatar works, in principle. At least
the option would be nice.

[0]
[https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using...](https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using-
Mastodon/FAQ.md#federation)

------
armandososa
We should remember that the retweet feature was originally created by the
community, like, years before twitter implemented it officially. You'll
compose a tweet with the format "RT @username <quote post>" and broadcast it
to all your followers. There's no reason mastodon users can't do the same.
Right?

~~~
denzil_correa
Slightly off-topic but important mention about the RT feature. RT was
definitely not the first "feature" and there were many other ones which
existed. There were some factors that led to the adoption of the RT convention
[0].

> The inventors of these variations were not the typical user. They posted
> more tweets, had higher network degree, and were more likely to describe
> themselves with words like “geek” and “founder”; in other words, they were
> the core members of the Twitter community. The early adopters were also more
> active and innovative. The variations spread through densely connected
> networks, bouncing from person to person in a way that meant most adopters
> of the varia- tion were fewer than two hops from someone who had never been
> exposed to the variation on Twitter when they first used it. This could be a
> general finding, that social conventions are more likely to arise in the
> active and densely connected parts of a community.

[0]
[https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/view/...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/view/4661/4983)

------
dorfsmay
Isn't the concept of local servers making it easier to create a bunch of echo
chambers?

I haven't even tried Mastodon because my understanding of identify is tied to
a server rather than an email or a gpg key... so outside of your control
(unless you run your own server). My understanding is that when the server you
are currently using disappear, your current identity, history, etc...
disappear too.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
You can export most of your data and move to another instance. It's not the
most elegant process, but it seems to work out fine in the long run. You just
tell people where you went.

~~~
dorfsmay
It's well beyond not being elegant:

Exports are fine for when you want to move, but typically too late when the
server you use and its data disappear. Do Mastodon evangelists advertise the
fact that you need to do frequent export?

I follow a lot of people on twitter because I came across one of their tweet,
check their history, and found them interesting. They have no idea who I am,
they don't post often enough that I could remember their names. If their data
and metadata were to disappear, how could they know how to contact me to let
me know they have changed server, and therefore identity? Even if I remembered
them and did noticed they had disappeared (two huge assumptions), how could I
find them on their new server?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
In practice I think most people just don't care if ancient posts are lost.
They aren't exactly the cultural cornerstones of the internet. This isn't a
problem often enough that your history is going to be empty most of the time.
I think I only know of one occasion where an instance with ~20 users shut down
with little warning.

------
azangru
Could anyone share their thoughts about the attractiveness of a platform that
says how many characters long your posts can be?

What I see on Twitter is that people are constantly fighting this limitation
by writing several tweets in a row (sometimes marking them as parts of a whole
message). I would think that’s an annoyance. So what’s the attraction?

~~~
ohtwenty
It's not mentioned but it depends on the instance how long the character limit
is (as in, it's configurable). default is 500, but there's some with a limit
of 5000, or 666 (some witchy instance iirc)

~~~
makomk
Probably witches.town, which was intentionally destroyed by its owner and no
longer exists.

------
garfieldnate
Uuuuuh mastadon people, you know "toot" means "fart" for a lot of people,
right? I laughed pretty hard reading lines like, "...a middle ground between
unfollowing someone and seeing every toot they ever make." Very unfortunate
vocabulary choice there.

------
mikebelanger
I'm yet another person who's skeptical that this project and its instances
will be able to solve any issues that currently plague the more popular,
profit-based social media platforms.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it worsens things. Let's take the widely-
known phenomena of 'information bubbles' \- where your feeds/networks only
serve you information that confirms something you already believe/some
worldview you already have.

Not only would a mastadon instance server be prone to attracting users of the
same mindset - cross-posting from other sites would be problematic. What if
posting on instance A doesn't violate instance A's content guideline terms,
but does violate the content guidelines of instance B? Users of B are less
likely to see certain content from A. In some ways that's worse than the one-
instance for profit networks. As much as I dislike the snarky reply to bad-
retweet phenomenon - at least opposing ideas are being discussed there.

Plus, these instances can be run by anyone, and those people can set up any
terms they want. Someone like Alex Jones could set up his own mastadon
instance, and have his own content guidelines, and wrap his followers in an
even 'thicker' information bubble.

------
phreack
So instances are like subreddits? Having never used Mastodon I'm not entirely
sure I understood what an instance is, but if they are just like subreddits
then I'd say that's a way better elevator pitch than trying to define them,
and it also helps to show that people do like to congregate on a large
platform around topics.

~~~
ohtwenty
Kiiiind of, but there's quite some general instances. Most of them are more
like a "here's some people interested in the same subjects as you". So yes, on
my (politically motivated, I guess) instance I find quite some people with the
same political slant (and some commentary on that), but many cats, daily
stories, etc. Just like twitter or other platforms. It's worth a try seeing
what joinmastodon.org tells you, and have a look.

~~~
phreack
Now I see. I looked around and it seemed hard to choose 'the right instance'
to begin, knowing nothing about the platform. Most had esoteric names, like
clubs. It might be a nice idea for Mastodon advocates to create general topic
instances, that may feel more approachable for newcomers.

In any case, it does seem like a great platform and might blow up in time with
few changes in the onboarding process

~~~
ohtwenty
>It might be a nice idea for Mastodon advocates to create general topic
instances, that may feel more approachable for newcomers.

Yeah, the instance names are often quite silly, but there's silly people on
there. I mean 3000 variations of "mastodonUKsocial.com" or something wouldn't
really tell you all that much more. If you don't want to go to
mastodon.social, the biggest english language instance, octodon.social is a
good, smaller (~11k users) general instance with a good vibe. Fwiw i think a
lot of people use twitter to follow 'their kind of people' (lgbt groups, open
source fans, music people) and this codifies those groups a bit more into
proper instances/servers/communities, while of course allowing you to follow
other people.

------
est
I hope mastodon could allow @domain.tld "naked" user names.

Much simpler to remember, also connects directly to personal website.

------
andyidsinga
> The Why: Twitter Is in the Outrage Business; Mastodon Isn't a Business

This section casting twitter as being in "the outrage business" but mastadon
not being a business at all doesn't quite sit right.

Even though mastodon "the open source project" is "not a business", there is
an entity behind it accepting $ for it's development[1] and presumably has
control over the rules by which the main line development occurs and controls
the brand "mastadon" and its website.

I think that section would be more useful and convincing if folks behind
mastadon discussed how the money flows in twitter cause it to be in the
"outrage business" and how the Mastadon maintainer's money flows solve those
problems.

[1] (Gargron -
[https://www.patreon.com/mastodon](https://www.patreon.com/mastodon))

(edits: grammar)

------
interfixus
At the joinmastodon.org site, in order to get me started and in touch with
likeminded individuals, it is suggested I define myself as a heterosexual or a
white European.

No, wait, the terms are _LGBTQ+_ and _Black American_ , whatever was I
thinking?

~~~
rainbowmverse
You might like [https://playvicious.social/](https://playvicious.social/). The
impression I get from his toots is he's trying to carve out a space where
marginalized people, and especially people of color, can just _be_ without
having to deal with unsolicited opinions since you can report and expect that
someone who understands will deal with it.

------
bluishgreen
I tried to login, and this error gif gave me a headache. I get it, some error
has happened, but this looping speed some sort of triggers me.
[https://mastodon.social/oops.gif](https://mastodon.social/oops.gif)

Mastodon needs more designers and a general sense of visual design. If not a
keen visual design ethic, then at least a basic sense of "visual
obnoxiousness" to avoid.

(Any Mastodoners watching, kindly pass on the message)

------
cwyers
The lead point is about misuse of quote retweets. I don't disagree that quote
retweets can be misused in the way that the article says, but I don't think
that's the primary use. And Twitter didn't invent the quote retweet, users did
and Twitter adopted it as an official feature. If people really want to use
it, they will without official support.

The points about moderation I found much more interesting, and I wish the
author had led with that.

------
vesak
It sure is!

[https://mastodon.social/@vegai](https://mastodon.social/@vegai) if people
want to gather followers together.

------
smsm42
Being "better than Twitter" is not hard - Twitter is awful on almost any
metric you can find. The only redeeming feature is has is that sometimes
interesting people post interesting things there. Do they do it on Mastodon? I
honestly have no idea - I've never once encountered anybody linking to a post
on Mastodon, and I am a voracious consumer of content.

------
notyourtypical
> Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter

I sort of agree, it's like Twitter users forming their own groups but it
didn't make me like Mastodon. I don't like the name, I don't like the fact I
have to sign up for every group, every group has its own layout, which is
confusing and I just don't get the whole idea behind it. Sorry, I'll stick to
Reddit

~~~
AsyncAwait
> I don't like the name, I don't like the fact I have to sign up for every
> group

You don not have to do that at all. The point of federation is that you sign
up on one instance and can follow and communicate with people on practically
every other instance from that single account. Think about how email works.

------
jeffbax
I think that Mastodon has a lot going for it, and indeed It think an open
source federated system is a great idea I hope to see succeed, but I don't
think that RT is the main problem with Twitter.

Maybe I'm lucky that few pay attention to me, but I haven't had a lot of
trouble making Twitter incredibly, if not the most, useful social network. Its
easy to find your interests and fairly simple to ignore/block things you don't
care about.

I also don't think that "there are people I disagree with also using this
space" === "this place is toxic" which seems to be the lazy default these
days. I prefer Twitter, being a US company, tread as close as it can to the
1st Amendment. I think that people need to engage with views they are
unfamiliar with or misunderstand -- though there's certainly the echo chamber
problem, to never face ideas that challenge you is to never grow yourself and
understand what you believe as most often reflected in classrooms that now
boycott professors or require everything come with some trigger warning.

Twitter has a ways to go to provide tools for dealing with trolls but it's
making its way there in a way that seems more methodical and less reactionary
than something like FB, and while I find characters like Alex Jones offensive,
I find the rush for people (particularly some journalists and 20's something
safe-space-mobists that are every bit as vocal as the mobs on the right) to
default to the ban hammer more offensive.

These companies have immense power over speech in a way that should frighten
us, not encourage us to have the centralization as an excuse to circumvent the
1st amendment. True, no platform is obligated to host someone, but given they
are effectively monopolies (extremely responsive to legislator outrage that
would otherwise have to fight the 1st) this should give everyone more pause
than it appears to.

Jones fell like a domino once Apple removed him first. When Spotify removed
the reprehensible music it did, the other companies fell in line and the
immediate reaction was for activist groups to demand more and more be removed
to varying degrees of things being actually offensive (do we now remove old
NWA tracks?)

This is all an incredibly slippery slope, and to me the sign of the times is
that the trolls have made it so that any difference of opinion is now
something everyone flees from and that the default is to assume the worst of
someone who might have a different point of view than you do.

~~~
s73v3r_
"there are people I disagree with also using this space"

Claiming that is what people mean when they claim something is toxic is just
as lazy, if not more so. And you’re basically saying that it’s on minority and
underrepresented groups to be the one to engage, rather than those that are
antagonizing them.

Alex Jones is an even more egregious case because he’s gotten in trouble not
just because he “said things people disagree with”, but because he sent a
harassment mob against the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook,
claiming it was a “false flag operation.” Several of them now are not able to
visit the graves of their children, the harassment is that bad.

I’m sorry, but I just do not see this as anywhere near the “slippery slope”
you’re complaining it is.

~~~
jeffbax
I understand the bad things Jones does, like the doxxing and maybe that is
sufficient enough to ban him (and reasonable in that case), but he's just an
extreme example for the slippery slope for speech and censorship that IS
already here (and which takes almost no imagination to predict where it will
ultimately go)
[https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1031544806823141376](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1031544806823141376)

Additionally, I would rather US companies try to favor behavior honoring the
Constitution generally, even though they don't have to.

------
Torwald
This is way too long for an elevator pitch.

------
xigma
What I expect of a "better" Twitter:

\- A timeline that shows what people I follow say, in chronological order

\- no censorship, unless requested and enforced by authorities in _my_
jurisdiction

\- no notifications, no @messages (unless I follow them)

I don't even understand how Mastodon really works or how it's comparable to
Twitter. Do people post onto channels? Do I have to join channels to read what
they post on those channels?

To me Mastodon just looks like "Twitter with more moderation" and I don't
think the average Twitter user cares about that, because they don't partake in
mudfights with other users, nor do they care about other users getting into
mudfights with one another.

Social Media isn't actually that terrible to use, it just _looks terrible_
when some journalist selects some particularly "outstanding" posts and
proclaims the end of civility because of this technology.

~~~
fredsir
> I don’t even understand ...

It works exactly the same as Twitter, except that not everyone is using
Twitter.com. Some are using mastodon.social, some are using some other
instance and so on, but you can still follow people on other instances, like
you can email people using gmail from a hotmail adress and so on. A username
is @username@instance instead of just @username as with Twitter.

~~~
xigma
E-Mail doesn't have moderation (besides Spamfilters). It's unclear to me how
this all ties in, if I follow someone and they get banned from their instance,
how does it affect me? How does it affect their content?

Not saying there aren't solutions for this, I'm saying it's unclear from just
looking at the service and _I don 't care about moderation in the first
place_. So it's unclear to me how this is "better".

~~~
ohtwenty
so join an instance with lax moderation. or set up your own.

if you're thinking "that's expensive", look into Pleroma, it can run on a $1 a
month server or a raspi. Set something up purely for you, then find some
people on other instances you'd like to follow

~~~
xigma
That's not really answering my questions. I understand that different Mastodon
instances have different moderation. I _don 't_ understand how that ties into
the usage of the service as a Twitter clone.

Who decides how content is relayed? Can I be on multiple instances at the same
time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one?

Frankly, I don't even want to _have_ all these questions, it's too
complicated. I'll just stick with Twitter.

~~~
ohtwenty
>Who decides how content is relayed?

I mean things are relayed if you ask for them to be. Two cases, pretty much:
(1) someone is following someone else, content is asked for by the one server
and pushed to the other. (2) You look up a URL (someone's posts, a profile,
etc) and it asks the other server for it. Of course you can block certain
instances from asking for stuff, or block/mute specific people if you'd like
to, so it's not just out there for anyone to grab (except of course that it's
the internet, so realistically nothing is ephemeral).

>Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance
anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one?

Of course you can be on multiple instances. Just like you can make multiple
emails. Same case though: why would you? some edge cases (being able to see
multiple local/home timelines for example, even from people you're not
following, via the 'local timeline' tab). So yeah, there's people that have
multiple accounts, just like you can have a few reddit or HN accounts if you'd
like to. There's definitely usecases, but most people just have the one
account. Moving is being worked on, it's not 'seamless' by any means, but you
can download a backup of followers etc and upload that to another instance,
and have your old account forward to the new one (preventing people from using
your old handle, and also meaning that if there's a link somewhere they'd know
where you moved to).

>Frankly, I don't even want to have all these questions, it's too complicated.
I'll just stick with Twitter.

Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these
questions. If you introduced email or reddit to someone they wouldn't
necessarily right away think of data portability, multiple accounts, etc. The
onboarding needs a bunch of work, but for basic usage it's really not all that
hard.

~~~
xigma
Thanks for the info, I'm still unclear on this (my original question):

If I'm on one instance, and some person is on another instance, if that person
gets kicked out of that instance (for a poor joke, let's say), do I lose
access to all their messages?

From what I gather by your answer, the answer is "Yes". They need to get
another account and I need to follow them on a new one, which may imply _I_
need a new account as well.

Further, if I go for a "free speech" instance, I will run the risk of getting
blocked (by proxy) by other instances because of what _other people_ do on
that instance.

On Twitter, this isn't such a big problem because people don't get banned that
easily, but with all these moderators and "codes of conduct" being emphasized
for Mastodon, I think it will be a problem.

> Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these
> questions.

They will have the question of "why do I want this?". One answer to that is
"no single corporate entity decides who gets to see what", but from what I
understand the whole system is _worse_. All this complication to fight
"outrage" and "harassment" which I don't think most people are bothered with
in the first place.

------
jimbo1qaz
>Mastodon lets you or your moderators decide to block entire instances

If your instance operator blocks another instance, are they effectively
banning you from following or viewing anyone on the other instance? That would
be very stifling.

------
Grue3
Do they have a search yet, that isn't searching by a hashtag? Twitter wins
here by default with proper search and filtering options. How am I supposed to
find people talking about something?

------
PretzelFisch
I guess I don't understand why so much effort is put into these federated
social networks rather then starting with a blog and rss perspective to build
the same kind of network.

~~~
tablethnuser
I'd like things to go in this direction as well, but with slightly different
tech than rss. What you really want is the notification layer of social
networks as a standard, so that ppl who follow you are merely alerted that
they should visit your site. RSS can be used for this of course, but it's
really meant for content syndication rather than as a notification transport
layer

~~~
teleclimber
You're describing ActivityPub, which is a W3C recommendation[0], which happens
to be what Mastodon uses. At least one blogging platform is set up to interact
with the fediverse[1]. Hopefully many more one day.

[0] [https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/)
[1] [https://discuss.write.as/t/activitypub-
support/64](https://discuss.write.as/t/activitypub-support/64)

~~~
ohtwenty
Plume is a WIP, and has been discussed here before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17411173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17411173)

------
forrestthewoods
I tried the gamedev Mastadon, but it’s entirely hobbyists and students.

I want a platform where I can interact with peers. I’ll go to where ever that
is. But so far Mastadon is not the place.

------
subway
Too bad the Mastodon devs hate SRV records so much. The reliance on WebFinger
for federation is the biggest blocker for me deploying an instance on my
personal domain.

~~~
_eht
Can you expand more on why WebFinger is the blocker for you? I've been
considering running a server lately on my personal domain and didn't even
consider SRV vs WebFinger.

------
brunoqc
Is mastodon a one man show? I was interested but I had doubts when I saw those
posts on their discourse about the project governance.

------
giffarage
If X is better than Y, is stating so necessary?

------
jl2718
People went to twitter specifically for the outrage. I think the alternative
to twitter is nothing.

------
Rotdhizon
Aside the point a little bit, but I just made a mastadon account today and
I've already seen a few dozen female accounts that exist solely to promote
their patreon/gofundme accounts. The exact same type of negative atmosphere
that plagues snap, IG, and twitter.

------
Avamander
Let me know when Mastodon can take RSS, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and etc.
feeds as inputs. The platform needs to have a way to import content to
bootstrap an instance without having a lot of friends.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Isn't that a place for 3rd party services, like IFTTT? Doesn't have to be
first party.

~~~
Avamander
I don't know, my current experience is that the system lacks content I want to
see and there's no easy way to import that. It's just my honest opinion about
the system in the current state.

------
k__
Worse UI and fewer users, can't recommend.

~~~
ohtwenty
>fewer users

that's just a bad point to make? I mean of course a newer platform will have
fewer.

UI is a good point (although I prefer it this way). But there's Pinafore[0] or
Halcyon[1], or Brutaldon[2] that allow you to change the UI layout if you log
in with those.

0: [https://pinafore.social/](https://pinafore.social/) 1:
[https://halcyon.toromino.de/login](https://halcyon.toromino.de/login) 2:
[https://brutaldon.online/about](https://brutaldon.online/about)

------
ummonk
I'm just never joining a social network that requires me to "toot". Sorry.

------
theshadowknows
I also enjoy micro.blog

------
digitaLandscape
> As a result, Mastodon users basically never boost toots to say how wrong
> they are, and there isn't an issue with armies of followers descending on
> the original author.

Because Mastodon is full of like-thinking people, and the ones they'd strongly
disagree with aren't joining.

This isn't a bad thing (it's the "local" point this post makes), but it's
important to emphasize this as the primary factor responsible for people being
nicer, above any design decisions the author is complimenting. Keeping people
civil is easy when there are ten thousand times fewer and they all voted
socialist.

I checked the mastodon.social local timeline and fewer than 1% of posts were
tagged, so I don't see how that's going to make a big difference to my
experience.

> Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal
> duty to make as much money for their investors as they can.

False. This isn't a legal obligation, it's what the investors want because
they're toxic scum.

~~~
ohtwenty
>Because Mastodon is full of like-thinking people, and the ones they'd
strongly disagree with aren't joining.

or they're on other instances. there's some far-right political instances, for
example (that the leftist crowd of the larger majority of early adopters don't
really talk to, although they _could_ in most cases)

------
wild_preference
I was expecting a post trying to convince me to care about federated servers
for my social media, but it made some decent points.

I really like the “Boost” approach to the retweet-with-snark problem. And I
like to see Mastodon addressing Twitter’s outrage-as-a-business problem.

------
sonnyblarney
If Mastodon wants to be successful, it might be beneficial to try to get some
luminaries on board, i.e. the 1% that the rest follow. Unfortunately, they are
in the conflict business as well.

Another option would be to consider dropping out of the concept altogether.

------
undoware
What I find amusing about all these "solutions" to "online outrage" is that
they are invariably made by comfortable centrists, with a smattering of
libertarians. I can say this with some authority as both of these terms would
have aptly described myself, before I lost my career, my home, and everything
else in gender transition, and ended up working three minimum wage jobs
instead of coding for 2 years.

Let me tell you where the outrage is coming from. It's not coming from UX
decisions. It's coming from mind boggling suffering. It's coming from
exhausted and starving bodies who are disrespected and discarded, repeatedly.
It's coming from a lack of opportunity and a lack of services necessary for
survival. It's coming from a parlous minimum wage and no safety net. It's
coming from addiction and the homelessness and precariousness that so often
drive it.

Those prone to conservatism interpret their pain as an attack on them from
people who look different. Those prone, like myself, to systems level thinking
about social structures view it (correctly) as an induced state, effectively
selected for because the alternative was selected against.

The pain and outrage leaks onto social media, but it is not from there.

It is all around you, and it is nearly big enough to blot out the sun.

Get ready.

~~~
quadrangle
I can get behind or at least validate the concerns of everything here except
"…bodies who…"

If this language aims to show the blunt physical way that _others_ dehumanize
the people in question… well, that's not clear. Maybe exploitive actors see
others as just "bodies", but that's not a _good_ way to see people.

The concept of a "person" is bigger than just their physical body, in the same
way that this sentence is bigger than just a bunch of binary numbers.

If you want to highlight the dehumanizing, objectifying way that power sees
people, it would be "…bodies that…"

Using "who" makes it seem like you think you can refer to people as "bodies"
in a way that is non-objectifying…

~~~
undoware
I used 'bodies' specifically, because that is what we, the precariat, are to
the systems that govern our lives.

We are warm bodies. Useful for interfacing with other warm bodies. When those
bodies cool, they are discarded.

Yes, it really is like this. If you doubt me, by all means, come check it out.

~~~
quadrangle
Thanks for clarifying. So, if you are writing from the perspective of the
dehumanizing system that sees the precariat as mere "bodies", then it is
"bodies that…" not "bodies who…"

------
scarejunba
If you told me this in an elevator, I would think you're one of those online
people who cares a lot about your online presence and has big arguments about
social networks.

Also, let me be honest, the language in the article is the sort used by people
who have arguments about whether lolicon should be legal or not. This is not
something I'm interested in talking about. Just like voat.co and friends this
is a fringe-people network. No thanks. I don't want 99% of my conversations to
be about furries.

Consequently I would ignore you.

