I’ve been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey – I’m just going to use “Mastodon” as shorthand here, purists can bite me) for over a year now, a…
The Twitter migration failed because in my opinion Twitter hasn't died (yet), if Twitter continues how it's going, for example limiting the amount of direct messages a unverified user can send, eventually there will be a migration.
Digg migration was a success because the change they did was too extreme and sudden.
Big social networks have died in the past and I think Twitter will be no exception.
The problem is that the Fediverse is currently too clunky for normal people to accept it and migrate.
If Twitter dies, it'll be a company like Meta with their upcoming Threads app that brings in the users. Not something where I have to take the extra step of picking an instance and do extra verification to make sure the Drake I'm following is the real Drake.
Just to add some context here, I was around for the start of Twitter, somewhere in the first 10k users, and you have to realise that even with Twitter these things just weren't there at the start either, it took years for Twitter to move away from SMS for posting, formalising things such as retweets and hashtags, all of which were started by users.
I can still remember watching Diggnation when Kevin Rose first passed 100k followers, it took a long while after until celebs started joining and the million plus accounts started arriving.
These things take time and gradual growth, the fact that there are Mastodon accounts with 100k plus followers already puts it way ahead of the original Twitter growth curve, likewise for Kbin with 150k+ users and thousands of communities already.
The problem here is what the article says - Mastodon isn't competing against the primitive Twitter of 2008, it's competing against the much more mature and generally huge Twitter of 2023.
I think comparing follower numbers is a bad metric - it's very easy to be a big fish in a small pond, and Mastodon's pond is very small indeed, and has shrunk dramatically in terms of active users since December.
Digg migration was a success because reddit was already the main source of information. 50% of digg posts were "stolen" from reddit. The content was already existing on reddit and if you could get over its "oldschool" looks, it was a straight up superior site in every way.
This cannot be said about the current reddit/twitter competitors.
I don't agree. Reddit was a buggy mess with a reputation for pretentious conversations, a terrible UX, and a lack of content. I believe the exodus succeeded because:
Kevin Rose was so far up his own ass that he refused to rewind the extremely unpopular changes. The changes all happened at the same time, and he didn't give users a way to opt out. He didn't boil the frog like Reddit has been. This is, IMHO, the largest and most disruptive move Reddit has taken since Digg v4.
Reddit was "capable" of handling the millions of monthly users. The content followed. For years we had to contend with a much worse UX, including frequent crashes, but we did so because Digg's design was worse. For the Fediverse to succeed, someone needs to invest heavily into infrastructure to support a large migration.
So much of Reddit's post were just reposts of stuff on Twitter. And Twitter's success was really due to a cadre of highly connected journalists and celebrities who could generate content
In other words, everything is a lot more fragile than you think. A big migration from Twitter to some other site, either Mastodon/Fediverse or even Tiktok, will kill Twitter. And if people don't repost those things to Reddit, Reddit will follow suite too.
Even Digg technically survived Digg v4 (it's still around BTW). MySpace did not instantly shut down once Facebook got popular. Twitter is dying because we can figure out the direction of where it is headed. Mastodon will be the most popular recipient, but it won't be the only one. It is wrong to describe the migration as a "failure" because it is still on-going.
Mastadon is not a good Twitter replacement. It lacks discoverability and ease of use. I think Bluesky has potential to succeed where it failed.
I'm not sure kbin or Lemmy can truly replace Reddit overnight either. They aren't as easy to use. More importantly, they have no good mobile apps, which is the whole reason people are looking for a Reddit alternative to begin with.
Yeah. I'm not sure why most people would want to use frankly any of these alternatives beyond a blackout period when they're all mostly worse than Reddit's mobile app anyway. The only things they do better IMO are ads (the official Reddit ads can be really bad) and simply that desire to not give money to Reddit when they're acting like they're currently acting. Neither which are frankly going to convince the average person.
But I mean, the site doesn't have much content nor an app (or comparable quality mobile site). These sites aren't without merit, but to actually stand a chance of actually replacing reddit takes a lot.
To each their own, but I vastly prefer kbin's mobile site to the default reddit mobile app. Kbin doesn't have gesture controls / swiping, but I'll accept that sacrifice for better readability and space usage.
For me it's because it's become very obvious to me that social media and corporations aren't a good mix. The fediverse harkens back to the old internet, which I for one very much miss.
Yep. Just joined kbin today and it already very much feels like the reddit from 8-10 years ago. And mastodon feels similar to early twitter. I forgot how much better it is. Sure they lack some polish at this point, but not being subjected to an algorithm trying to manipulate me into addiction in order to drive ad revenue is incredibly refreshing. Kind of reminds me that not all social media has to be inherently horrible for my mental health -- most of it has just been systematically engineered to be that way.
Agree with @Burp@Overcast and @BedSharkPal
Caveat: I’m an artist; I build ice cream castles
But
Humans are feelings creatures not rational ones. Everyone can relate to bad feelings using the corporate platforms. That’s the hook imo. To offer more respect, more honesty, and just better feelings here in the Fediverse. I think it feels good here but there’s room for improvement.
Now, I did read the entire blog editorial. I have been guilty of some of the issues identified in it. I joined Mastodon in October and quickly became an evangelist (I only use that word negatively lol). I’ve also lost some enthusiasm. I’ve struggled to figure it all out. I’m changing my habits. Etc. I still don’t know what will work best for me but I know it won’t be any of my existing accounts on Twitter, or Meta. It will more likely be something within the fediverse because it feels better.
A lot of the points in the editorial & a lot of the criticisms in these comments I agree with. (A lot, not all. Some people complain illogically & there’s no point in answering. They’re just going to be sad/mad until they aren’t.) It’s all good food for thought. I don’t see any reason in denying or arguing when someone has a bad experience here. Holding hands and making it better together is my preferred way forward. Oh yeah, I’m not just an artist. I’m a gay artist. Despite all the shit I still believe in spreading love. Ok gonna go barf now.
For me is the fact that if I use the mobile app I feel like I'm being scammed by Reddit whereas if I use Kbin I feel like I'm collaborating to something that could be awesome and better than what came before
Overnight, definitely not. But I see a lot of potential in Kbin specifically. I think if the user sign up process is simplified (maybe just auto balance what instance you are signed up to unless you want to register to a specific instance, but that would probably require logins to be federated) then maybe make magazines more unified between instances (I'm not sure how to do this without over complicating the mod process, maybe it's just solved by searches excluding the @[instance] after the magazine name in the search and sort it by population) and that would be a huge start to usability for general users. Right now the people here probably mostly realize were just beta testing a new social media type that hopefully fleshes out into a nicer experience. I love the idea of decentralizing social media so that the control is put into the hands of the users of the platforms but it has to be in a way where users who don't care don't even realize it's happening otherwise we'll all just pile into one instance forever.
As much as I love Mastodon, I do have to admit its shortcomings, and that I'm more tech-savvy than I give myself credit for-- finding (and moving) instances turned out to be just a mild annoyance instead of a whole ordeal.
My use case is not the same as the laypersons. Where I stayed, they understandably grew frustrated and gave up.
I didn’t stick with Mastodon because it didn’t feel like you could interact with others; there was no quote “tweeting” and I’m not sure you could even like a post. Felt like everything posted just went into an empty abyss
Thing is, quote tweets, searchable posts, and basically everything people were looking for were there. Just on Misskey servers, not Mastodon ones. And people just didn't get that they could move and choose
Because people heard about "Mastodon" and were not open to the idea of learning about what it was. We've all been largely conditioned over the last 15 years to see the internet as singular branded spaces accessed via mobile apps, and now the bulk of people using it don't have the schemae to see it as anything else.
It’s interesting that was your experience, because for me it’s the opposite. Twitter got so big that it kind of turned into an abyss for me, whereas I get way more engagement on Mastodon.
So how is Kbin going to cover its operating costs? If a fediverse server must survive on donations, it seems like donating should be built into the user experience. For example, there could be a Kbin Gold similar to Reddit Gold.
I remember years ago when Reddit Gold first became a thing there was a progress bar on the site indicating how much of their daily server costs had been covered by Reddit Gold. Something like that might be useful.
You misunderstand what kbin is, if you think there's A server that has to cover operating costs. kbin isn't a site, it's just server software, it's meant to be run in many many places, and those individual servers talk to each other.
Who's going to be paid for the ongoing maintenance of the software? Who's going to pay for the servers the software's run on? A decentralized architecture doesn't remove the operating costs of a large scale social media site. As the article alludes to, it might even increase operating costs.
To be honest, I'm not interested in small, niche communities. I want the fediverse to grow into something that can rival social media giants like Reddit, and Twitter. How a site is monetized is as key of a feature as anything else, because without monetization, a site is doomed.
Who's going to be paid for the ongoing maintenance of the software?
I'd imagine no one in particular. It's donations and open-source model. Eventually (if it gets popular) it might get some other business model or grants from FOSS funds. Remains to be seen.
Who's going to pay for the servers the software's run on?
Same here. Donations and/or whoever hosts the servers. Instances should grow to whatever their maintainer can afford/has planned. Then they should close signups. Other instances might pop up. There are currently a lot of Lemmy instances and some people are starting to spin up new kbin instances.
How a site is monetized
Eventually someone is probably going to try ads for their site.
But fediverse is not just "a site". It's many. They all have their own rules, plans and ambitions.
I never thought of how capping sign ups doesn't affect you in the fediverse... you can just sign up on a different instance! Very cool to think that server hosts can stay within their own limitations.
I thought that kbin was a website in Poland that implements the ActivityPub protocol and so it's able to talk to and share posts with other websites in the "fediverse" such as: Lemmy, kilioa.org, fedia.io, ect.. because they implement the same protocol. But I'm very new here so I'm not really sure!
kbin is the software. kbin.social Is in Poland, I think, you'd need to ask Ernest to verify. But kbin.social isn't kbin it's just a kbin instance, the strength (and it can be argued, weakness) of kbin (and other federated software) is that it's intended to be run on many smaller, individual instances, that talk to each other, rather than be just one big monolithic site (reddit, facebook, twitter, etc).
It's a different way of looking at things, and thinking about things, and it comes with it's own quirks and challenges.
Operating costs are something I worry about a bit as a user. If there's nothing or nothing obvious enough, the site will just die because it will become too expensive. Surviving off donations for the sake of donations is possible, but it's hard. I mean, Wikipedia is a household name and it still has to beg for donations with massive, guilt tripping banners.
And Reddit Gold gave some perks I think perhaps from the start? I forget the exact details of what it was like when it was first introduced, but at the very least, its biggest usage was as basically a "super upvote". It wasn't just to donate to the site, but also to inform someone that a post or comment they made was really good. I think it may have also given a short period without ads?
Great article. I skimmed some parts and close-read others and didn’t find anything to disagree with. “People are quite adept at making compromises on their beliefs for the sake of utility or pleasure” especially hit home. This is why my middle of the road and even progressive-minded friends continue to use Twitter: they can create a permission structure that allows it.
UX, UX, UX. When a massive group of people wants to leave a platform, there must be an intuitive, thoughtfully designed, reasonably available alternative available that moment. Platforms like Mastodon make users feel full of questions. They feel lost. They go back where they came from because at least things made sense there, even if the guy running it is a proudly heartless lunatic.
The Digg migration — no hashtag back then — succeeded because there was such an alternative: Reddit. I agree with you that the closed source nature of the software didn’t factor and won’t factor for 99% of users. We just want a place where the product decisions are made differently.
So far I think Kbin is okay. I came here, I joined, and I never think about other servers or instances. It looks and feels a lot like Reddit. I don’t care about followers, so there isn’t some count to give me anxiety about having something mid-configured.
The only problem is when normal people compare a new and fledgling website against an existing mature ecosystem. Even if the mature site is dying, it will win out most of the time. People have lost their ability to practice patience. Our internet culture has made us want something now rather than make us cultivate the things we want to see. This is why people dislike Mastodon, Lemmy, Tildes, Kbin, and Squabble. they, the normal internet user, want these sites to be instantly mature and thriving when they visit them, they don't want to exert the effort to help them grow. They don't realize that if they want to see and experience something they want, they sometimes must exert an effort to cultivate it,
The thing is, you're doing the exact thing that the article mentions about forgiving defects in a product - and not interrogating whether there are any changes needed or things that it could do better - because you are close to it and invested in it.
It's not the job of some random user who wants to shitpost on $amicrobloggingapp to put in work to nurture an alternative that doesn't properly meet their needs. Most will accept that a growing platform will be quieter than the one they're leaving; they will not accept quiet and, from their point of view, broken as a platform.
And frankly, a lot of people did put in that work too, and got treated with suspicion and hostility. New users can't seem to ever win; they try to stick around and shape $whateveritis to meet their needs, they get accused of trying to take over and change the direction of someone else's home. They leave, they weren't committed enough to the vision, or in your words patient enough to make it work.
Really good article. I agree with most of your points. I am one of the few apparently that actually believes in not supporting fascist billionaires. Not sure what all those other “resisters” are doing on that site still. Drives me crazy.
Just wanted to note that the mastodon app now defaults to mastodon.social so people don’t have to pick a server. Picking a server was/is absolutely a barrier to entry, I don’t care how many people on Mastodon say it isn’t. So that will help going forward. They are also working on quote posts and search functionality. Hopefully these things are in place for the next potential wave when Meta/Instagram spin up their alternative. I think Tumblr is also planning on forking to the Fediverse so that will help. I don’t think it’s totally lost that Mastodon can overtake Twitter but agree they screwed up their big chance in November 2022 by being too insular for too long.
You didn’t call it out explicitly but I also wanted to mention that CW nonsense. That shit is whack but has really died down with more people joining. No one gives a shit about that crap.
I've checked out mastodon and other federated twitter clones quite a few times, and never felt the need to migrate. Twitter has always been more active, and felt more polished and solid. In comparison the federated sites felt small and restricted. Since musk took over, twitter has been even better than it was before, so again no pressure felt to move. I still use twitter.
In comparison, reddit has been my home for like 12 years and this blackout has really fucked up my usage of reddit. Kbin feels nearly identical to reddit, even if it's a bit smaller. I still find myself clicking onto reddit, only to realize that my subs are missing, so then I move back over here to kbin.
Kbin is cozy. I like how I can see other federated sites' content easily, I like how kbin magazines and fediverse microblog are both clearly distinguished. It feels like I'm on a new reddit, but with the ability to see the fediverse as well. it's cozy. Provided there's still content, there's a solid chance I'll stick around.
The only thing I'd like to see is if I could do twitter/mastodon style self-posts for microblog. Right now it seems I have to select a specific magazine? But it feels weird selecting a magazine/community for just my own rambles/musings? I ended up making a magazine matching my kbin name for this purpose, but idk what the proper way to do things is...
In technicals it definitely has degraded for sure. I wouldn't say it "died" though. People still post on there, there's activity, people are free to share stuff, etc.
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