There is no question that for-profit social network projects will end up as Twitter did. The only question is when.
Ideally, the comment system should be either self-hosted or more fediverse-like. The rest is a temporary compromise that will sink in the sands of time.
I disagree. I think ATProtocol found a pretty good balance for de/centralization. Yes most people are on Bluesky PDSs but the data is easy to backup and move and Mastodon does not improve on that afaik.
I know I shouldn't react this way, but this view that Mastodon can only be successful if it's the largest platform out there always gets under my skin. There are about a million active users of the fediverse, and I know plenty of us find it nice right now.
Active users are measured in different ways by different platforms, so if we compare registered users, fedi has 12.5M compared to 42M for Bluesky. So it's approximately 25% of the size.
It's not the best place to go if you want to get a large following, and it's not Serious Business, but as a user that's not what I want from a social platform. I have plenty of people to follow who are talking about things that interest me.
You're welcome to come have a look if you want, but otherwise no worries. We're doing fine. Maybe you'll check it out sometime when some drama happens at Bluesky. The fediverse is not going away any time soon.
It's probably user error on my part. But as a somewhat technical user, I've been locked out of Mastodon account for months for no discernible reason. I had my standard first name and last name and I'm on one of the biggest Mastodon servers (mastodon.social).
I suppose I could just create a brand new account or move to another server but it hasn't seemed worth the effort so far
It is a more complex system than having a single central organization. Not every interest is well represented, so there may not be a lot of content for everyone.
I've never had a mastodon.social account, but I can understand the frustration of having technical issues. If you really wanted to join, like you said, you can just try joining on a different server or even software - with other social networks you generally don't get that choice.
But it looks like you gave it a try and made the rational choice that, for you, it's not worth that effort.
But just because it's not your thing, and it's not the biggest one out there, doesn't mean it failed or missed it's shot. Personally I think it's pretty amazing that an open source project, with no VC money or marketing department or big corporate tie in, has about a million active users, and has for a long time now.
My biggest turnoff has been the fact that you don't own your own data/account and are beholden to whichever dictator(s) run the instance you started out on. You can migrate, but that entire process is just convoluted. I should be able to create an account with my own keys and use them anywhere. Servers can choose to use and share allowlists or blocklists. Each instance being its own little world kills discovery and adds a ton of friction.
And instances seem to be pretty heavy on resources. Reminds me of why Matrix never really took off, running a Matrix server is just too difficult and time-consuming for what you get out of it.
I know proponents of Mastodon will point out that you can work around these warts, but I don't want to. I don't think the model is suited for me.
Noster is cool, I've experimented with it but it doesn't solve all of my problems and has some problems of its own, such as spam. Most importantly, it's not really P2P, despite being decentralized.
I have also explored other P2P approaches and built prototype social networks. I prefer a more P2P approach, I think it's more scalable, but it's complicated because IP privacy by default is important in large social networks. I'm still searching for the right solution. I think the advances in LLMs are going to help do a much better job at solving the moderation problem in social networks, and so I am experimenting with that in my off time.
They're not the biggest, but big enough to have a lot of active accounts, so I think they're likely to persist and get more than one shot on goal. (Similarly for Bluesky.)
Not sure why above is downvoted. You’re right. Google Trends reveals how much of a flash in the pan Mastodon was post-Twitter: https://imgur.com/a/i2Vq9FR
Social media needs to be very simple for the masses to adopt. The elevator pitch needs to be one sentence and must not include the word “server”.
Yeah that was the original name they came up with, and it stuck internally. Makes sense as they need to distinguish the "servers" from the actual servers.
Mastodon doesn't need to be "adopted by the masses" to be successful. I and plenty of other people are perfectly fine happy with it (and I use Mastodon comments for my blog.)
I don't understand the knee-jerk reactions whenever Mastodon comes up here. Someone always has to declare it dead, someone always has to rant about "leftist politics" and "fascist moderators." And then they usually suggest Nostr which is far more dead than Mastodon.
Nothing is perfect - Mastodon does have its rough edges - but even a moderately successful breakaway from mainstream social media is worth celebrating. I remember when the consensus on HN was that any alternative to the mainstream would be impossible, doomed to fail. The fediverse has its community and its identity, it isn't a flash in the pan.
Of course, if you move the goalposts far enough you can say any result is a success. Mastodon looks to have around 800k active users. For comparison IRC has (according to netsplit.de) around 280k users. Is that successful?
>Mastodon looks to have around 800k active users. For comparison IRC has (according to netsplit.de) around 280k users. Is that successful?
Yes.
Bear in mind many people here would consider geminispace to be a success and I seriously doubt that it even has 100k users.
"Success" has valid definitions beyond market capture and revenue. Mastodon is a success because it hosts a community and because it represents a validation of the model of decentralized federated social media.
And it isn't a zero-sum game, either. The entire point is that there doesn't have to be one "Twitter" one "Facebook" one "Youtube," or even one protocol to rule them all.
Mastodon has more users than HN. It's a success. It's also unlikely to go away. Well, OK, it may go away if BlueSky ever becomes decentralized in practice. If that doesn't happen, the only "threat" to Mastodon is some other federated, decentralized service.
It's been around long enough that it has reached steady state. Existing (active) users are happy with its architecture, and are not concerned with discoverability, etc. Why would they leave?
I find this article profoundly insightful. On a side note, the text reminds me the good old days of internet, where everybody shared useful information without strings attached. No attention seeking, no ads, no emotional drama. Just spot on perfect
It is getting downvoted because it is a well known silly trope. Generally, success reinforces itself. That’s why there have been a bunch of countries that have had multi-generational streaks of repeated success. Eventually, this feedback look can fail, but it isn’t on some predictable four generation pattern.
> Eventually, this feedback look can fail, but it isn’t on some predictable four generation pattern.
Actually, it kind of is.
See The Fourth Turning and any other book based on the Strauss-Howe generational theory.
Is this theory air-tight and inviolable? No. Does it more or less support this “silly trope”? Yes. I think it’s safe to say that it is directionally correct.
If you think that it's just an imagination, the universe will make you physically feel what it really is. Not all at once, but gradually, drop by drop. And then, you'll learn the true meaning of another "meme" word: ignorance.
This is what they want you to believe. You are useful and convenient when you are malleable (to someone's else agenda aka "their choice"). Ideally, you should not practice any discernment at all, raise no questions, silence any suspicions. As if it's all by sheer coincidence and predefined by external forces ("chance").
It's not the truth. It's an observation, one of many. It does not look neat, it looks horrible. However, I am ok to give it a deeper nuanced appreciation than to just negate it right off the bat.
He clearly has psychiatric involvement in his personality: NPD at least, psychopathic at worst. Both type of personalities are great manipulators who can deceive even the closest friends, more so the masses.
affected or marked by a persistent pattern of antisocial, impulsive, manipulative, and sometimes aggressive behaviour (not in current technical use).
"a psychopathic disorder"
Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality,[1] is a personality construct[2][3] characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, persistent antisocial behavior,[4] along with bold, disinhibited, and egocentric traits. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress,[5] which create an outward appearance of normality.[6][7][8][9][10]
psy· cho· path ˈsī-kə-ˌpath ˈsī-kō-
: a mentally unstable person
especially : a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one's actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies
----
Seems spot on to me. You'll find a dictionary is your friend.
That I can agree with. Especially now that he's aging and is displaying clear signs of cognitive decline.
I can see he's also being increasingly influenced by his circle like Miller, also for the fact that unlike in 2017, there was no huge line of people coming to the administration, but after his first term now we have all these guys orbiting him trying to use him as a vehicle to push their policy.
And it seems to be fairly easy, just stoke him a bit saying "they don't want you to do this because they think you're weak!!"
And you can see it with the whole excessive gifting by foreign leaders. It works. Myself I'd be insulted because it feels so fake, but he seems to be unaware.
The guy's ego has blown up like crazy this past decade.
Nowadays people complain about AI scrapers with the same vain as they complained about search indexers a way back when. Just a few years later, people had stopped caring too much about storage access and bandwidth, and started begging search engines to visit their websites. Every trick on the planet Earth, SEO optimization, etc.
Looking forward to the time when everybody suddenly starts to embrace AI indexers and welcome them. History does not repeat itself but it rhymes.
This is an interesting approach. Archive.org could be such a solution, kind of. Not its cold storage as it's now, but a warm access layer. Sponsorship by AI companies would a good initiative for the project.
I can't imagine IA ever going for it. You'd need a separate org that just scrapes for AI training, because its bot is going to be blocked by anyone who is anti-AI. It wouldn't make sense for it to serve multiple purposes.
Common Crawl would be a better fit, but still might not want to serve in that capacity.
Search indexing historically has had several of orders less impact on bandwidth and processing costs to website maintainers.
My recommendation is to copy the text in this article and pass it LLM to summarize this article's key points, since it appears you missed the central complaint of the article.
The problem with that software title is caused by a hostile licensing system it uses. It relies on an offline form of online activation where the activation key is tied to your installation ID, which in turn depends on OS/hardware identifier of your computer. This is an overkill IMO.
I cannot imagine people working with ceramic tiles cracking a static licensing system. Yes, they can overshare license keys but realistically this does not happen too often, and there are non-invasive ways to circumvent this.
I've worked on parts of a training platform for a specific professional group... There's literally been widespread hacks to bypass the need to watch mandated training material. You'd be surprised the efforts people will go through to get to/through something they need.
Ideally, the comment system should be either self-hosted or more fediverse-like. The rest is a temporary compromise that will sink in the sands of time.