Not just Discord, every little social circle would spin up local mastodon instances. It would be really good for decentralization actually, I kinda want them to do this lmao
>Not just Discord, every little social circle would spin up local mastodon instances.
The Hacker News force is strong in this one.
on edit: born of familiarity with the genre here, but no there is not going to be a great upswelling of everyone running to spin up local mastodon instances. Except in some of the techie market, and not even all of us have the time for that.
Maybe a bit tangential to the original comment, but starting my potentially controversial rant on Mastodon and Twitter:
The real problem with Mastodon, is that it's too similar to Twitter! People try out new sites because they have something different in terms of content creation or consumption (Discord, with its real-time communication and flow of conversations, Tiktok for its instant video creation and consumption, etc...) But Mastodon has nothing new to show off, since it's basically a Twitter clone (yeah, with some extra features like federation, but seriously why use it when you have Twitter?)
Mastodon has basically become Twitter for ex-Twitter people who don't want to deal with ratios and wild crowds and have their own "cozy" space. And I've observed people trying to move to Mastodon and realize it's a very quite place and immediately jump back in on Twitter after a month... I understand that there is a niche of people who dig that kind of cozy stuff, but most people still just love the wildness of Twitter where anyone can be commented on, retweeted, quote-tweeted, "ratioed", and "get judged and fucked by the audience". Yes, it's also one of the most horrible and deranged places of the Internet, but people accept that and still log in because we have our own death drives to fulfill. We know that cigarettes and drugs are harmful, but isn't that the point?
There is only so much that one microblogging app differs from another, or one chat app from yet another chat app. But there's more to Mastodon than what you describe. The fact that you have chronological timelines, and not some random algorithmically generated list and recommendations flying in from everywhere, is really refreshing. This means too that when you first use Mastodon, your UI is mostly empty. It seems quiet. The impatient ones then already leave. If you take the time to build your following, then you get a great personal timeline. And the server instance you choose can already give you a nice community in the server timeline. The fediverse is small compared to Twitter user base, but with millions of users there's plenty to explore and engage with. And there's better netiquette in general.
Twitter also has chronological timelines, there’s a button on the top right.
> The fediverse is small compared to Twitter user base, but with millions of users there's plenty to explore and engage with.
…no, there isn’t. The population mainly consists of cartoon child porn artists and enthusiasts (pawoo.net), tech people (official and semi-official instances), small groups of queer people (on smaller closed instances), and that’s mainly it (from what I’ve seen). Engagement on smaller instances seems to be very low, with most toots being 0-1 likes and almost no comments posted on them.
> And there's better netiquette in general.
No, mob/clique mentality from Twitter is already there (but even more amplified by the federation aspect, since instances can ban other instances) The reason Mastodon doesn’t have that much drama is simply because there aren’t enough people there, and I predict a mass migration to Mastodon will be accompanied by the most dramatic controversies.
Oh, I totally agree on all counts. I have no reason to use Mastodon while Twitter still exists and is free. OTOH I'm currently working at a company building a social platform specifically targeted at crypto communities, and it's fun to think about what sorts of different features we can offer to that space of users and their specialized needs.
Please do. A wide portion of the Twitter audience wants crypto/NFT guys to disappear from Twitter, to the extent that they’re making blocklists and using third-party apps to filter out crypto-related posts and people. You’ll make life better for both sides.
Since I don't have enough karma to downvote I'll say why I hate this kind of comment.
1) It violates HN's comment guidelines, "Be kind." "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. "
2) It tries to put you above all the "nerds". As if you're so much smarter than the borderline asperger nerds that are somehow incapable of putting any thought into usability of products.
3) You're one of us, you're here on Hacker News. This is a giant non-monolithic forum.
4) It lacks imagination and it's stuck in the status quo. Innovation doesn't just appear fully formed out of a slick FAANG press conference. Innovation happens one curious motivated hacker at a time pushing barely usable tech forward while people like you sneer at them.
My main point is that "Free" is a strong force to reckon with, in the face of a monthly subscription fee. Of course, Mastodon isn't actually free, but it's the sort of situation like IRC, where only one ops guy willing to spend a little bit can host the space for everyone.
At least, this is the logic I and the rest of my Twitter circle (which is fairly large! I've met probably 50-100 people irl through Twitter, got my job through Twitter, have two accounts with follower counts in the thousands, etc) would likely use if planning to jump ship. People who treat Twitter as a pure feed rather than as a social space might be willing to pay, but part of what makes Twitter such a great news source is that _anyone_ can post current happenings, and how many of those _anyones_ with small accounts will be willing to pay just to use the platform once every week or two?
Of course, Twitter could get around all this by having paid accounts for power users only, but then many of the most important and largest accounts would jump ship and devalue the platform for everyone else, leaving only paid marketing accounts that cater to fans and brands. Not a great situation.
Point being, it's a hard problem, for Twitter to monetize without losing the thing that makes it a great platform, and my guess is charging all users a flat subscription fee ain't gonna cut it, and would produce an exodus to the next-most-similar platform, i.e. Mastodon.
While i agree with you that this is an unlikely future, trump is launching a mastadon instance for himself and his followers, so it is totally a thing that people are doing - slowly.
In fact, the domain of your account could actually be a huge social symbol. Maybe celebrities use @verified.social while everyone else gets @twitter.com or @trump.social or whatever.
masto.host is pretty much the standard managed platform for people who don't want to run their own Mastodon. $7 is only a little more expensive than this proposed price, and you can host a few friends on it.
