No, it did not. Tired of hearing this. According to who? In what?
I’ve seen platforms that ceased to exist over the years. I’ve seen social media companies getting acquired or going bankrupt. I’ve seen entire portals losing their users. The Fediverse keeps growing. How is this failing?
@rolle Mastodon is an unmitigated success. Last November the platform on boarded literally millions of users overnight. The whole thing scaled out with volunteer adminis and it's retained a good chunk of those users. It's astonishing really.
@rolle Perhaps people have become accustomed to the constant bombardment of advertising and influencers, so for them, this represents the true vision of a social network.
Mastodon, on the other hand, gives people what was the true essence of a social platform, fostering communities with the exchange of ideas and thoughts.
I will never leave Mastodon, even if it means creating my own instance and sharing it with friends and family.
@rolle It's hard to find a more credible source for how many users bsky has, but from what I could find, they've only got one (1) million users with another million waiting to join, compared to Mastodon's ten (10) million users, according to the most recent stats a quick search turned up! Now somebody tell me: who, exactly, is "failing?"
@rolle In the short time I've been on Bluesky I can very much feel, how more alive Mastodon is - and how much more interesting, even without having an algorithm.
@rolle the Fediverse is exactly what the Internet needs.
Facebook came along, which gutted independently run communities for the sake of convenience and centralization. All these years later, Facebook groups and pages are still woefully basic compared to what people had built for themselves 20-30 years ago, and what functionality they do offer may disappear without notice if the bean counters demand it.
Communities need to be run by communities again, not business people.
@rolle Mastodon doesn't track their users, show ads and tries to squeeze money out of everything. From a pure capitalistic point of view, it's a failing product.
I like this. Mastodon is the best proof that we don't need capitalism behind everything to keep something running. Peaceful, I might add. Without creating echo-chambers where everyone screams at everyone for no appeared reason.
@rolle that’s what I don’t understand about bluesky. Why would people be attracted to that, again, while mastodon exists? And forget the feature disparity, I’m talking about the long view: who remembers Microsoft trying to invent their own internet in the 1990s, the original MSN? It gave way to the open internet, and last time I checked I could still use email.
At this rate bluesky is yet another fling, soon forgotten, while mastodon is forever, exactly because it’s open.
@collectifission@rolle Assuming that people who matter -- politicians, journalists, businesspeople, experts -- flock to Bluesky and stay there, then the masses will be attracted to Bluesky, never mind if the service and features are shit, and even if it's behind an invitation.
Invitation restrictions in itself may contribute to the attraction ("ooh, this is exclusive"!).
Mastodon is open, sure enough. So were old-time newsgroups. And they were great! But they were still niche entertainment.
@collectifission@rolle And because discussions tend to get polarized, do note that I'm not saying anything about Mastodon "failing", and I don't even know who has said anything like that. Simply pointing out what is, at the moment, making Bluesky attractive to so many people: because folks who they follow are going there in large numbers.
And if openness was everything that counted, Punk in Finland forum would totally dominate the public discussion in the country that I live in.
@jojalonen good point. Though, if someone set up a Mastodon instance with the exact same model as Bluesky, it could grow rather quickly. Invitations, #MastodonBirdUI (or similar), decent onboarding (which Mastodon severely lacks) and a decent default app (possibly fork one to create one specially tailored to your instance), it could grow rather quickly. @collectifission@rolle
@collectifission@rolle Sadly I believe it's a lack of knowledge and disinterest to learn or take the time to learn the difference in the first place.
When many hear "#decentralized" they unfortunately associate that with crypto and there already, based on that incorrect first impression, you've lost a lot of people.
I've been trying to get my mutuals over to the #fediverse but instead they tend to pick #BlueSky which could as easily follow a similar path of #enshittification as #Twitter.
@cragsand@collectifission@rolle Or maybe it’s simply because if you ask someone to join bluesky, you’d direct them to the bluesky website vs telling them to join mastodon and then sending them on a blind quest to find a server while leaving them oblivious to the potential repercussions their choice may have in their experience.
@rolle Mastodon is incapable by definition of failing! It's a federated network. As long as one person—one person—has a Mastodon server running in his garage or in Mukhosransk (Perhonpaskankaupunki), Russia, Mastodon has not failed.
Anyone who does not understand the above paragraph when it's explained to him is a total fucking retard and not worth further engaging with.
Mastodon can't fail. Mastodon is conversation. Conversation never fails. Mastodon conversations expand our understanding. Failure is not possible here like it is with algorithms and the X🚽.
Failed to be profitable to rich people and make big initial offerings and investments.
The only metric our society believes in is stockmarket rich person feelings and mastadon is inherently never going to matter for that.
Mastadon works for small social groups of users who want it for non profitable purposes. It doesn't have centralized chief exploitation officer who can be interviewed to ask about vision for the future.
I'm not even sure there is a way for media to report on it. They simply don't have a framework for such a thing.
It failed to become the social-standard for information exchange online. That's the goal most media think Mastodon should chase.
Personally, I think it would have been even better if it became the standard online place-to-be like twitter was. It would've be convenient to have federation, control over your feed and your data, and all your important media and favourite people to follow.
But It didn't become the standard. It's fine - it wasn't really aiming for this in the first place. it is a fun, somewhat nerdy platform to connect with people.
@rolle because people think that if it doesn't go mainstream that means it's dead, but since Mastodon is open and decentralized, it means it's virtually never gonna die.
@ikkeT Yeah I kind of realize this. It is why I need to let go. I blame my digital obsessive thought process of sorts: ”Why won’t they understand!?!?” :blob_smile_sweat2:
@rolle the goal of admin is so important, they have to allow and block manually hundred of instance every weeks. If the work is not well made, check the hastag keyword page on many instances and see yourself. We are not communicate with all the fediverse, its look like more we talk to random ppl, by 'luck' some can read it.
This could propably be improved ?
Producing a centralized system that applied metadata to each instance, to automatize the job for admin ?
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