@arstechnica the very fact that I get my news from Ars Technica (and other sources) on Mastodon now is enough for me to say that the #TwitterMigration worked out quite fine in my case… (although I wish more accounts made the move like AT and Flipboard did)
@arstechnica@rtme Yes. I’m one of the nerds who also thought the internet was much better when most people weren’t on it.
However, as I grew up I understood that theres another game called: ”Here’s how you can reach everyone”.
There are people like Musk who worship the game as it is now. And then there are people like this guy who want to change it for the better. But people like me & him are blocked by the people who want to #deny the game.
@arstechnica should have left this on his blog where you found it. This dude's attitude is exactly why he and his ilk deserve to grow old on a melting planet run by nazis
@arstechnica Yes, sometimes i wish there were more to read on Mastodon. Nobody reads my posts here, but nobody read them on twitter either. On the up side, Mastodon weaned me off my habit of scrolling twitter an hour a day just to keep up. Facebook and Instagram are now unusable with all the unwanted content you have to wade through. So, I’m happy with Mastodon. I learn a few things everyday. I see dog and cat posts. I donated to @moderators. I’m happy 🙂
@arstechnica What's interesting is that the quality of discussions and posting here is so much higher. The people on the fediverse seem to love it and the people on twitter seem to hate it.
@arstechnica
Good read. You kind of glossed over the whole Fediverse thing. With Reddit having a moment, then Lemmy or Kbin could be big. If the same happens with Instagram and @pixelfed goes crazy then we have a much bigger proposition on our hands than just Mastodon, which will actually be a big boon for Mastodon.
I am also tired of telling people "it's decentralised" and them just not giving a shit. However, tell them it's not owned or controlled by some Fascist Billionaire, they are much more interested. While decentralised isn't a selling point, there are many benefits that are.
Most importantly, it's the community experience here that's just so nice and that's thanks to good moderation. You are 100% correct to point out how difficult this will continue to be but having good moderation as a core philosophy may prove to be the best selling point of all.
Mastodon's exploded in size. Instances which lay dormant for months now receive traffic by the minute.
It sounds like the standards for success are '1 billion people migrating, or it's a failure'.
> [Mastodon's] user base accepts no funding model other than charity
"Charity" is a strange word to mean 'paying for the service that you use'.
> [I informed] other instances that [my instance] was going offline for good [...]. Around 25 percent of these were returned undelivered
This might imply that 25% of instances drop off routinely...like websites, or e-mail contacts, or anything. The other 75% will endure, so the network remains reliable.
Besides, a little death is healthy.
> Decentralization is not a selling point for 99% of people
Nor does anyone care about asphalt, but if you take it away they'll notice. Decentralization is meant to be useful, not well-advertised.
@arstechnica this article is interesting. Some definite good points, like how surprisingly complicated it can be to follow someone on a different instance. And that's without mentioning how completely useless Mastodon search is.
But I thought Twatter was a wart on the arse of civilization BEFORE the Satan from South Africa bought it... so is Mastodon better? Absolutely, even with its UX faults.
@arstechnica I fell this article is a bit overly dismissive and largely misses the point of the ‘hostility’. Twitter’s long been regarded as a cesspool that, like Facebook, people used because it was the only way to connect with their community.
With awareness of Mastodon growing, people found communities where they aren’t outliers and feel relatively safe. It’s not just ‘principle’ or ‘my way or the highway’ thinking. It’s people desperately trying not to turn their new platform into the old one they fled from where they weren’t safe.
The problem with growth mindset and even taking money from certain sources is that it introduces incentives that consistently push users far down the priority list. Advertising means getting increasingly invasive to maximize its value. Loans and VC money means they’ll want it back in excess and they have the admins under their thumb to make product and policy changes that negatively impact users to maximize returns.
And Facebook, as your site has covered thoroughly, is a known bad actor. Yes, they provide an opportunity for growth, but they also bring considerable influence. Do I know exactly what harm they intend to do? No, and I don’t want to. They lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. Do they have insights into Fediverse activity? Maybe, but that doesn’t mean throwing up our hands and giving them more. They should be resisted by every means possible.
Mastodon doesn’t succeed by being big, it succeeds by being good. And you don’t achieve good by bringing along all the bad influences that turned the other places into cesspools.
Are people expecting most Mastodon users to deploy their own instances? I feel like a lot of the discomfort the writer feels could've been solved by just starting with an account on a large, generally default instance, and moving to something more private later.
Discover ability does need to be addressed, but that might also be part of what I'm liking about the platform. I don't feel like I'm having content shoved down my throat constantly.
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