@Gargron I adore Mastodon. Maybe this will make your day better - I wrote an essay a few months ago where I talked about Mastodon as what the future of the internet should and probably will look like. It’s my love letter to what you and the wider Fediverse have built. I couldn’t love it more. https://www.admdnewsletter.com/p/on-the-birth-of-a-new-internet
@Gargron here are some quotes for you: “But regardless of total user counts or what might happen in the future – Mastodon is important. Not even for the app itself, but for what it stands for.”
“More so, this social media without an algorithm or an owner is by far the most active, engaged, and interesting online space that I’ve been on in recent memory.“
yes, I love it, too, if only it had better support for small servers. Without backfilling options it’s a real pain. On my single user instance, most comments never reach me unless I open each original page in a browser and manually pull them into my timeline. It’s like being on a desert island.
You can see how much I love Mastodon from my dogged perseverance in doing this. But if I can have a wish for my birthday: please solve github issue nr 34 🙏 opened 2016 by Gargron.
@mariyadelano@Gargron@dangillmor I don't know that a new internet is being born so much as we are wresting control from the corporations back into the hands of the people. Personally, I want to see a brand new internet which removes the overcharging ISP from the equation and grants access to everyone: a truly open and democratic internet, not a place for corporate profits.
@mariyadelano@Gargron@dangillmor We have the technology just not the will to do it. I tried to start a community ISP and I had plenty of interest but a lack of follow-up and commitment.
@mariyadelano It was going to be a wireless-based ISP that would connect to the internet at large. The community would kind of own it structured as a not-for-profit co-op where we would seek donations and/or charge a low per month fee.
Many expressed interest but nobody was really willing to make the commitment. We would need volunteers to help get people online and help take care of the day to day of running an ISP. We would need people willing to learn Linux, BSD, and networking. It's a lot of work but it would be a labor of love so to speak.
Alas, I think the fact that it is ultimately going to become a 2nd job for people that may not get compensated for it, turned them away.
@mariyadelano good read. I too have been thinking, “Where did everybody go?” Knowing full well that I need to make new connections. I am also on Bluesky and threads mostly just to feel them out and they both have that sanitized algorithmic vibe. This is indeed the new internet.
@sladner yes! And it’s hard to figure this out but I do sincerely believe once we get past that discomfort we will have a better online experience for everybody.
@Gargron@dangillmor Jesus, Eugen. I'm . . . I feel like I haven't said clearly enough what I feel.
Mastodon is brilliant. Oh sure, we can make it better, we will make it better.
But it's already brilliant. I happily pay my monthly donation.
As a professional who lives or dies by word of mouth, I have an eighth of the audience I supposedly had on Xitter. But I have five times the engagement and interaction.
Every day I delight.
I'm sorry I haven't said it often enough. That's on me. <3
@Gargron first of all - huge thank you for Mastodon! I really enjoy my local feed, how much in control I can be what I see, hashtags are great, easy to add alt text to images, local servers are great. On Mastadon I engage with people instead of screaming into void. Keep up the great work you do!
@Gargron@dangillmor
I like that it is free of ads and respects privacy and independence of infrastructure is build-in, which makes it the perfect social network.
I love what you have created and i'm impressed by it. Been here only for a short time but meet interesting people and learned a lot. Thank you for your work! 🙏
@Gargron@dangillmor there's a great community here, and it's a perfectly functional social network.
The new search features are especially useful, and I'm glad they're opt-in. Having a site that's not driven by the need to grow engagement and sell user data just feels nice and I hadn't realized how exploitative all of the other sites were until I started using fedi.
@Gargron@dangillmor I like how easy it was to integrate Mastodon with its API in my website. And I like that I can browse through Mastodon without having the feeling that I'm lost in advertisement and algorithmic sorting.
@Gargron@dangillmor 1st Mastodon is great! 2nd I really would appreciate an (optional) algorithm that populates my timeline. There are a lot of interesting posts I’ll never see, because I don’t follow the poster or because it’s too far down in the linear timeline.
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