I also think in addition to the points raised in the article about the fediverse generally being a bad solution, it was also because there wasn't one definitive destination, there were hundreds....
I also think in addition to the points raised in the article about the fediverse generally being a bad solution, it was also because there wasn't one definitive destination, there were hundreds. Digg exodus succeeded because everybody decided to move to reddit. I think the reddit one will succeed if people find sites they are comfortable moving to, but I have my doubts as fediverse solutions are always sub-par and people may not be willing to accept a solution that isn't exactly what they're leaving behind (even though reddit wasn't the same as digg before, users adapted to the new site, kinda like how people are adapting to tildes)
If instead of a fediverse destination they had chosen a traditional website similar to twitter like cohost.org, the migration would have been a lot more successful imo.
That's a feature for, as the article describes it, the "weird" people who want a nigh uncompromised platform. Even if an instance does go rouge, there's an easy, built-in ability to find or whip...
it was also because there wasn't one definitive destination, there were hundreds.
That's a feature for, as the article describes it, the "weird" people who want a nigh uncompromised platform. Even if an instance does go rouge, there's an easy, built-in ability to find or whip up your own instance and move all your content away. At least, in theory.
ofc (again, as the article noted), most people don't care about that and just want easy browsing or to follow their favorite personality X. TBH, even if Mastodon did do everything right, I don't think it could overcome that advantage of Twitter because of that. They may not like Musk, but they don't want to make an effort to change their behavior to get around Musk.
At least with Reddit/Digg, you were around for the community, not necessarily to follow Rick Astley. So there is a chance to slowly lose that community and gain a new one.
That's exactly it. Tildes doesn't have the same users as Reddit but it doesn't matter, because I wasn't friends with anyone on Reddit. On Twitter I follow friends and online friends, folks I got...
At least with Reddit/Digg, you were around for the community, not necessarily to follow Rick Astley. So there is a chance to slowly lose that community and gain a new one.
That's exactly it.
Tildes doesn't have the same users as Reddit but it doesn't matter, because I wasn't friends with anyone on Reddit. On Twitter I follow friends and online friends, folks I got attached to. It was less 'it has to have the perfect interface' and more 'I want to find the people I used to follow'.
One of the biggest reasons I gave up on mastodon is because I joined on a smaller instance, not social, and then couldn't figure out how to follow people who were on mastodon but not on social. It was the lack of being able to just search and follow that made me go 'fine, I'll stay on twitter then'. Because the folks I wanted to follow still also gave up and stayed on twitter
I think for Reddit people are likely to find one place to call home, but it may be a bit more spread out with different users in different places. To me, as an ex redditor, Tildes is that. I...
I think for Reddit people are likely to find one place to call home, but it may be a bit more spread out with different users in different places. To me, as an ex redditor, Tildes is that. I signed up to Beehive and Kbin too, but found the fediverse a tad confusing, and this is the one I find myself coming back to. It's starting to feel like home.
With Twitter I honestly think people all going 'I will go to Mastodon' ruined it a little. Mastodon wasn't the best choice of platform, as you said. I fell in love with this tiny little platform called Hive, which wasn't in the fediverse and was way more user friendly than mastodon. But barely any twitter refugees went over there, they all went to mastodon, and Hive has / had so few users if you aren't following a tonne you will check back two days later and see the same posts. So I just gave up on it.
After messing around a bit on Lemmy and Beehaw I kind of feel like it has a similar vibe as reddit but sort of concentrated in some way. I don't really like it to be honest and I'm not sure how to...
After messing around a bit on Lemmy and Beehaw I kind of feel like it has a similar vibe as reddit but sort of concentrated in some way. I don't really like it to be honest and I'm not sure how to articulate why. It's like on Reddit there was a lot of noise and a few nuggets of good stuff and a lot of annoying or lame stuff. But these places cut a lot of noise but the relate amounts of good and lame input is still there. But without the noise it's like I'm spending a lot more time looking at stuff I think is lame instead of stuff I'm just not interested in at all.
They have a commitment to no algo, you make your own feed on the topics you want, it doesn't do it for you. You probably didn't read their manifesto: https://antisoftware.club/manifesto.html...
They have a commitment to no algo, you make your own feed on the topics you want, it doesn't do it for you.
You probably didn't read their manifesto: https://antisoftware.club/manifesto.html
Basically they want to remain independent, they don't have any desire to sell to the highest bidder, they'd rather just operate breaking even and paying the bills.
A problem I've seen with "no algo" solutions is that content discovery is suddenly very hard, because there is no attempt being made to help me weed through all the crap to find new stuff I...
A problem I've seen with "no algo" solutions is that content discovery is suddenly very hard, because there is no attempt being made to help me weed through all the crap to find new stuff I actually want. I think instead of "no algorithm", I'd like to see alternatives offer an open algorithm with controls that let users understand and control how it prioritizes content in their feed.
The problem we have with algorithmic recommendations is that the goals of Facebook, YouTube, et al. do not align with the needs or desires of the user, not because it is a fundamentally flawed concept. These big social media sites tune their algorithm to prioritize engagement above all else. It doesn't matter if that engagement is positive or negative, as long as the user is still in the app and seeing ads.
This is very true. To highlight the Tumblr experience again, if you don't actually know anyone on the platform, then it takes quite a bit of effort to pour over various blogs to find ones you...
A problem I've seen with "no algo" solutions is that content discovery is suddenly very hard, because there is no attempt being made to help me weed through all the crap to find new stuff I actually want
This is very true. To highlight the Tumblr experience again, if you don't actually know anyone on the platform, then it takes quite a bit of effort to pour over various blogs to find ones you actually want to follow.
That said, I find the challenge of searching for new Tumblr blogs to follow kind of... old-web-esque? It feels like clicking through webrings or using StumbleUpon. On the one hand, you have to put in work? But on the other hand, you can discover some fascinating little pockets of the internet that exist outside the public view.
Personally, what I tend to do is start with a single blog that posts things I like. Then, I see who they're reblogging from, and jump to that blog. Then I see who they're reblogging from, and jump to that blog. Sort of like, manually hopping through the network of folks, trying to find new niches within Tumblr that catch my interest. In fact, I wish there was a way to visualize the network of folks, so I could find small little mutual circles sharing content outside the Tumblr mainstream?
But yes, it's a lot of manual work, and it's not for everyone. Still though, I find it rewarding to have to go on a little treasure hunt to find content, rather than having it delivered to me? Sort of like how music discovery used to be before algorithms... I feel nostalgic for those times.
FWIW, Tumblr is pretty light on the algo right now, too. In much the same way as Cohost, you make your own feed by following accounts that reblog the kind of things you want to see. ((In fairness,...
They have a commitment to no algo, you make your own feed on the topics you want, it doesn't do it for you.
FWIW, Tumblr is pretty light on the algo right now, too. In much the same way as Cohost, you make your own feed by following accounts that reblog the kind of things you want to see.
((In fairness, Tumblr has introduced a non-chronological "Best Stuff First" sort that's opt-out for new accounts, as well as "Based on your likes" recommended posts. But, because Tumblr's userbase is strongly anti-algo, there always seems to be rebellious posts floating around that instruct new users how to turn these sorts of settings off. And, the settings to turn them off are readily accessible!))
Yeah tbh tumblr had a good separation of followed and algorithmic content these days too. At least on the app, it's two separate feeds. It's algo also used to be shit but now it's surprisingly...
Yeah tbh tumblr had a good separation of followed and algorithmic content these days too. At least on the app, it's two separate feeds. It's algo also used to be shit but now it's surprisingly decent at finding me stuff I'd like, especially now that I follow some tags.
This is actually kind of why I feel like Mastodon is also failing to bring in the masses. The discoverability of people/tags to follow is non-existent so you're presented with a blank slate and...
They have a commitment to no algo, you make your own feed on the topics you want, it doesn't do it for you.
This is actually kind of why I feel like Mastodon is also failing to bring in the masses. The discoverability of people/tags to follow is non-existent so you're presented with a blank slate and you gotta figure out yourself. The lack of even a concierge when you sign up to choose some interests and be presented with a list of people/tags you can follow was a huge barrier of entry for me, and that's immediately after the barrier of picking the "right" instance to sign up for.
As much as I am wary of recommendation algorithms I will say that on twitter I found a lot of people to follow I would not have on Mastodon because they posted on topics/tags that, while they were in my sphere of interest, were not something I directly followed.
You're right, manifestos tend not to interest me and theirs is a good example of why. Automattic/Tumblr also seem interested in what can be accomplished without an algorithm, in building a space...
You're right, manifestos tend not to interest me and theirs is a good example of why.
Automattic/Tumblr also seem interested in what can be accomplished without an algorithm, in building a space where people choose what they follow. And I trust that just as much as I trust any "commitment" to no algorithms. The CEO, Mullenweg, seems to have been focused on building a more open internet for nearly 20 years.
Cohost has no money. This is a bit of a dig, but Automattic-owned Tumblr is probably more sustainable. They run ads and sell verification (lol) and do other stuff (I don't know I'm not on Tumblr)....
Would you say there are substantial differences?
Cohost has no money.
This is a bit of a dig, but Automattic-owned Tumblr is probably more sustainable. They run ads and sell verification (lol) and do other stuff (I don't know I'm not on Tumblr). Cohost is currently far from sustainable and there's a non-zero chance they'll implode in the future. I really hope they don't of course! It seems like a neat group of people running the whole thing and it's a neat website and there's neat people on there posting neat things. But that's a substantial difference from Tumblr being backed by a big corporation: and Cohost is also run by a corporation, just a smaller one.
Another difference is that Tumblr has expressed interest in joining the Fediverse: while Cohost was expressedly built to be their own garden.
This is such an important concept that permeates EVERYTHING(business, games, crypto, banking, etc), not just linux/mastodon and is of course correct here. Things like mastodon need to hide more...
Exemplary
Let me return back to my Linux analogy.
Linux, as a desktop OS, is 98% there. For most intents and purposes, a person can use Ubuntu or Mint or whatever as a drop-in replacement for Windows and be able to achieve their immediate goals 98% of the time – type document A, view website B, play game C. Cool.
The problem is that 2%. Because the proposition is not the 98% in a vacuum; it is that there is an alternative that meets 100% of the user’s needs, and they already have it. They are being asked to accept a trade-off of not being able to play their favourite game X, or communicate using app Y, or do work using piece of software Z, in place of something that does those things for them. They have no incentive to switch to something that provides them objectively less utility.
However, the people who are in charge of Linux distributions and are making decisions about how they’re structured, what they include and their compatibility level with other things, are going to be existing Linux users, who use it because it meets 100% of their needs already. That’s an exceptionally different viewpoint from that of someone for whom that 2% is a dealbreaker.
This is such an important concept that permeates EVERYTHING(business, games, crypto, banking, etc), not just linux/mastodon and is of course correct here. Things like mastodon need to hide more under the hood and let the power users find things there.
That said, I do think there's a major problem of just not enough people caring. I know waaaaay too many people who would swear that Musk is the devil "buuut i stay on twitter because...". Digg is always used as an example but digg was already populated by the kind of people who cared.
The "critical mass" a lot of people talk about is the mass of people who don't. They don't care about musk, they care about cat pictures. They don't care about facebook, they care about staying in touch with their friends. They don't care about Bezos, they just want to see who's at the door from their phone.
Digg was a nerdy/techy group, and that's almost ALWAYS the first adopter group because they're the ones bouncing around and trying new things (like tildes). The mistake digg made was pivoting for the masses to attract them. This doesn't work because it drives away your core group and makes the masses less likely to show up. You have to attract them some other way first, and then pivot, so when all your tech nerds and similar types leave no one even notices because they've been hiding out on the subreddits that don't hit the front page anyways.
Twitter was built for that community from the start, and that community needs something pretty massive to switch, and it will NEVER be a moral outrage.
I believe you are wrong - I was on Digg before the migration and frankly the majority were non-tech people who were in it for the cat pictures and memes. The actual difference IMO is the amount of...
I believe you are wrong - I was on Digg before the migration and frankly the majority were non-tech people who were in it for the cat pictures and memes.
The actual difference IMO is the amount of change. With Digg the change was so massive it became a fundamentally different website. They removed the ability to downvote, they changed how submissions worked (auto-pushing from the websites themselves), they deleted all user histories. For all intents and purposes it was a different site. And since people wanted the old site and an alternative was readily available, they moved.
With twitter, what exactly changed before and after Musk bought it? If I showed you a screenshot from the day before and from the day after, will you spot the difference? Most people wouldn't. Because all the changes are minor, like how the checkmark works, or straight up invisible - like internally firing a bunch of employees.
Same for reddit. ~95% of users are already using the official app or the web interface and will see zero difference after the API becomes paid. It affects only a tiny minority (3rd party app users). And they too can continue using the same reddit, just under a shittier interface.
If you want mass migration, you need mass change to the previous thing. A change that 95% of the users won't even notice will never spark mass migration.
All i can say is I was also on digg before the migration as well and I think you're focusing too much on the "low effort content" part of my example. Yes digg was for memes and cat pictures, but...
All i can say is I was also on digg before the migration as well and I think you're focusing too much on the "low effort content" part of my example.
Yes digg was for memes and cat pictures, but the user base was absolutely the kind that cares about a total UI overhaul. It wasn't soccer moms, blue collar workers, or whatever. It was still a very techy/young scene compared to the masses. The kind that, at this point, makes up a small minority of reddit.
The exact same thing happened with facebook, except they did it "right". Started with a young/techy crowd of college students, which grew into a similar crowd. It's when the extended family (mom/dad/aunt's/uncle's/etc) started getting on facebook that we started seeing the major changes. A lot of the people who were on facebook left (myself included), but the rest stayed.
Agreed. Another way of stating it is that Digg introduced their own 2% (or whatever). In the Windows / Linux analogy, it would be like Windows breaking backward compatibility so game X or software...
Agreed.
Another way of stating it is that Digg introduced their own 2% (or whatever). In the Windows / Linux analogy, it would be like Windows breaking backward compatibility so game X or software Y no longer worked and people had to find alternatives anyway. In that case, switching to something else that only does 98% of what you want (albeit a different 98%, perhaps) doesn't look like such a hurdle.
I've seen this argued as one of the smartest things Microsoft did: you can still run old-ass software on new versions of Windows, so no one ever loses their 2% (obviously that's hyperbole, but it's true in broad strokes).
I think moral outrage would probably have been enough because a lot of Twitter power-users are similarly invested in it. Once you lose the good Twitter contributors you will have distilled it down...
I think moral outrage would probably have been enough because a lot of Twitter power-users are similarly invested in it. Once you lose the good Twitter contributors you will have distilled it down to the most obnoxious kind of LinkedIn Influencer types and that will actively drive people away or just make them bored enough that they stop coming as often.
But the problem is that Mastodon is just not very good and there is no plan for it to become good enough for mass adoption. It's unreliable, has major scaling issues, and no great way for a new user to find and cultivate a good set of follows/followers to make the platform valuable to them. So they bounce off. Twitter was like that early on as well, but Twitter didn't have much competition in that area because everything was equally sucky.
Like the article says, the onboarding flow is awful. It's a bit tough even for techy people to want to bother figuring it out. That plus a majority, possibly even a supermajority of Mastodon power-users actively do not want broad adoption. They like having their small corner of the web and, based on how Gargron and some of the largest instances have operated in the past, I get the distinct sense that they feel a sense of ownership over the platform and take an active role in trying to shepherd its user base in ways that keep the "center of gravity" within their orbit. This gives it the vibe of some of the larger forums in the pre-Web2.0 days where cliques would come to dominate each one and if you weren't in the clique, you weren't gonna get much out of participating.
As a more technical user, I have never liked Mastodon. I don't like the way the handles have two @ symbols — it's a worse version of subdomains. I don't like that I'm supposed to choose which...
As a more technical user, I have never liked Mastodon. I don't like the way the handles have two @ symbols — it's a worse version of subdomains. I don't like that I'm supposed to choose which instance to join and that they have different focuses (though we used to talk about x Twitter as subgroups of the whole). I don't like that blocking other instances is out of my control, but lies with the admin of the instance. What happens then? Do I make the same username but on the instance I want to talk with people on?
I love the concept of independent websites that have some basic notification/interaction system, like the IndieWeb crew discusses. But I'm just as fine with everyone using something like Tumblr or NeoCities, where they get a subdomain and can pay for a custom domain if they're really into it.
Yeah, I'm a techie guy, and I fully understand the technology behind decentralization and the Fediverse. I just think it's a bad idea that basically isn't suitable for any purpose, and is...
Yeah, I'm a techie guy, and I fully understand the technology behind decentralization and the Fediverse. I just think it's a bad idea that basically isn't suitable for any purpose, and is especially unsuitable for social networks.
As someone else said in another thread, identity ought to be federated so that your social graph is portable. But nothing else really needs to be. Functionally, all any page needs to do is host a...
As someone else said in another thread, identity ought to be federated so that your social graph is portable. But nothing else really needs to be. Functionally, all any page needs to do is host a list of "names" that function as pointers to the accounts of everyone you follow and who follows you. As you move from service to service you take this graph of social connections with you.
I don't understand why people want to host the entire firehose of content across the Fediverse redundantly across instances. If you don't follow anyone, there can just be specific "relay" type accounts people follow that just have a curated set of users and that provides the firehose of stuff to make your feed look busy. But they've committed a bunch of design mistakes that derive from them trying too hard to replicate a centralized platform that's designed from the ground up to shove ads in your face. Different purpose means they needed to branch out and make a different thing.
The way the Fediverse does it, though, puts too many features in the instance admin's hands while also binding their hands quite a bit as to what kind of service they can run.
I think instead of that you’d have relays, which would basically be curated feeds to which you can subscribe for a broader stream of content. Functionally it would just retoot everyone it follows...
I think instead of that you’d have relays, which would basically be curated feeds to which you can subscribe for a broader stream of content. Functionally it would just retoot everyone it follows to everyone following it.
That’s better than a federated or local timeline IMO. You can get as wide or as granular as you want with your selection of relays and you’re not stuck with the federated selection your instance owner picked.
Hmm, that's interesting. That's a nice replacement for the federated timeline. And I suppose also a replacement for the local timeline on the large, flagship instances.
Hmm, that's interesting. That's a nice replacement for the federated timeline. And I suppose also a replacement for the local timeline on the large, flagship instances.
Related: Federation and its consequences have been a disaster for the Fediverse I suspect if I viewed federation as fundamental to the Fediverse I would feel the same way. But I'm on a nice little...
I suspect if I viewed federation as fundamental to the Fediverse I would feel the same way. But I'm on a nice little instance with its own culture and an active local timeline: and so I view federation as a bonus oh-i-can-talk-with-this-person-too.
I do think that the degree to which your instance admins determine your experience is far, far understated in "marketing" and what not. There's also an unfortunate focus on the Fediverse as its own thing ("just join any instance! it doesn't matter!") instead of the Fediverse as a way for distinct social media sites to communicate.
I respectfully disagree. Federation is not the problem. The problem is lack of users. Of course it would have its challenges like blocking other instances and able to make multiple users on...
I respectfully disagree. Federation is not the problem. The problem is lack of users.
Of course it would have its challenges like blocking other instances and able to make multiple users on different instances. Another big challenge is discovery of interesting content on local and other instances. It simply cannot compete with Twitter or Instagram's algorithm.
However, I see there's huge potential in federation for official content creator. Currently, Twitter is handling all the official accounts verification and after Musk's acquisition, we can see that it is less than ideal.
In federation, an official account can simply host its own instance and people would be able to follow it. It is not governed by a third party.
There's a lot of points made but the biggest one I haven't seen is that people stay with Twitter because that's where the famous people are. If you really care what your favorite actor or company...
There's a lot of points made but the biggest one I haven't seen is that people stay with Twitter because that's where the famous people are. If you really care what your favorite actor or company or politician has to say about something, then you have to be on Twitter. That can change but the famous people aren't going to be trendsetters. They follow the crowd which means any ultimate Twitter death requires a well populated replacement to be warmed up for them already. Once the famous people start to migrate though, Twitter will suffer rapid and aggressive population drain.
I feel like this is exactly the issue at hand. A lot of people seem to think that the federated nature of platforms like Mastodon is the problem but I don't think the "fediverse" is the issue...
I feel like this is exactly the issue at hand. A lot of people seem to think that the federated nature of platforms like Mastodon is the problem but I don't think the "fediverse" is the issue here, people are more than comfortable understanding this type of concept with e-mail. If all of these famous people migrated to another one (centralized or not), the crowd would also follow.
I dunno, I think the celebrity thing is part of it too, but people are only comfortable with email because it works very differently from the Fediverse, mostly because on the user side, email...
I dunno, I think the celebrity thing is part of it too, but people are only comfortable with email because it works very differently from the Fediverse, mostly because on the user side, email doesn't feel decentralized. As far as most end users are concerned, "alice@gmail.com" and "bob@yahoo.com" are just usernames that point into the vaguely-defined email world. When email starts to feel decentralized, for example when your work email gets filtered into the spam box of every gmail account because of your bad spam assassin score, or when emails that you need get filtered before your spam box because of their bad spam assassin score, or your work IT guy manually filters an entire domain and now you can't send or receive emails from there, people get confused and mad. The Fediverse is full of these kinds of incompatibilities. Famously several of the biggest instances on Lemmy have each other blocked, so if you want to use all of Lemmy, you need several accounts.
If every Gmail user also had to have an Outlook email and vice versa because Outlook and Gmail decided to defederate and block all emails between each other, people would stop using email. Fortunately, email doesn't behave like a decentralized system most of the time from the end user's perspective.
And it's worth noting that despite not having that trademarked decentralized feel that the Fediverse has, people still choose to use it almost exclusively for business correspondence and not social stuff.
Lots of what the author said makes sense. I think most people, ie, the 'critical mass' which makes or breaks platforms, flock towards centralization. It's the simplest "don't make me think"...
Lots of what the author said makes sense. I think most people, ie, the 'critical mass' which makes or breaks platforms, flock towards centralization. It's the simplest "don't make me think" solution.
I also note this isn't just limited to non-technical users, it goes for technical users too. Example, "everyone" uses Github so that's what everyone else uses, to be there. Whether they need its features or not.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I'm not sure Github is a good example. I can perform a dozen commands and have my entire Git repository history on Gitlab*, while deleting my Github...
, it goes for technical users too. Example, "everyone" uses Github so that's what everyone else uses, to be there.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I'm not sure Github is a good example. I can perform a dozen commands and have my entire Git repository history on Gitlab*, while deleting my Github repos. Migration is easy because Git =/= Github.
Windows is a better example. I CAN migrate to Linux, but it would be a lot more painful, and depending on product I may still need to support the Windows platform. I can never truly escape it since this is also a user-facing platform, wheras no one cares what repo I host my code on.
^(*the big exception may come from more powerful features like LFS or Github Actions. But the core 98% of Github's job of hosting would on other competitors).
Yea, i work IT and cloud, its cheaper and usually better to have central core apps that the entire company uses then to have each team do something different.
Yea, i work IT and cloud, its cheaper and usually better to have central core apps that the entire company uses then to have each team do something different.
I think it failed for the same reason the "Reddit migration" to Lemmy is going to fail: The average user does not care enough to learn how the Fediverse works. I've seen so many guides,...
I think it failed for the same reason the "Reddit migration" to Lemmy is going to fail: The average user does not care enough to learn how the Fediverse works. I've seen so many guides, infographics, how-tos, about how to get started on Lemmy. The problem is, if you need to view a tutorial before signing up for an account, it's already doomed. 90% of people who see that will give up and go back to what already works for them.
I agree, and I think defining it as a failure if everyone on twitter didn't migrate to something else is also a n odd way for them to frame it. A lot of people in my general sphere (software...
I agree, and I think defining it as a failure if everyone on twitter didn't migrate to something else is also a n odd way for them to frame it.
A lot of people in my general sphere (software engineering and tech) did migrate to Mastodon, and they're still there, and I do see links to Mastodon shared, and it does seem to be a normal thing in this sphere now.
Even though some people migrated over to other sites instead of everyone migrating over, I still see it as a big success, partial adoption and people becoming more comfortable with using decentralized ideas of the same type of site is a big step, and I love seeing it.
I saw the same thing in November on Mastodon. Ridiculous threads like "Dear new users, here's what you need to know to start on Mastodon ❤ 1/15". There's probably no better way to drive off the...
I saw the same thing in November on Mastodon. Ridiculous threads like "Dear new users, here's what you need to know to start on Mastodon ❤ 1/15". There's probably no better way to drive off the dear new users.
Yeah, it’s a shame. Maybe with more time, they could make the experience smoother for non-techie users, but we don’t really have time when these platforms are becoming worse at an alarming rate.
Yeah, it’s a shame. Maybe with more time, they could make the experience smoother for non-techie users, but we don’t really have time when these platforms are becoming worse at an alarming rate.
Read this yesterday, and was left wondering why is it assumed we should want to aim for a big platform and broad adoption? You can be a smallish community, but still non-exclusionary (which mostly...
Read this yesterday, and was left wondering why is it assumed we should want to aim for a big platform and broad adoption?
You can be a smallish community, but still non-exclusionary (which mostly the author conflates with “being a dick”) that still provides value to your users. Scale brings tons of headaches (e.g., moderation at scale is impossible, tech stack becomes way harder to maintain, harder to maintain coherent context and culture, much bigger incentive to take the poison pill of VC money, etc.)
“Too small” can also be a problem, but this community’s lifetime serves as a pretty good example that scale is not a requirement to provide value to users, probably significantly more value than if we jumped to a million users overnight at that
Yeeeessss! I so much don't care about scale. I care about interacting with people I care to interact with. If that means a bunch of fractured small communities, so be it. That's fine. That's,...
Yeeeessss!
I so much don't care about scale. I care about interacting with people I care to interact with. If that means a bunch of fractured small communities, so be it. That's fine. That's, shockingly, just like real human life where you mostly interact with a fairly small group of people in your immediate vicinity.
I'll add on that fractured small communities frequently implies distinct communities with distinct cultures - which is nice! My instance is tiny, sustainable (crowdfunds its bills and has multiple...
I'll add on that fractured small communities frequently implies distinct communities with distinct cultures - which is nice! My instance is tiny, sustainable (crowdfunds its bills and has multiple moderators), and very much its own little corner of the internet.
Before reddit and the like, I was on a bunch of unrelated forums at different sites. One for boxing/MMA, one for movies, one for music, etc. Stuff like Fark, Digg and ultimately Reddit killed that...
Before reddit and the like, I was on a bunch of unrelated forums at different sites. One for boxing/MMA, one for movies, one for music, etc.
Stuff like Fark, Digg and ultimately Reddit killed that off. Facebook kind of had some of it, but the public nature of that kind of social media is so different that I don't consider it the same.
Heck, old fart that I am, I used to be on several BBS's before that.
Reddit ultimately sucked all the oxygen out of the room and became the biggest central repository. Funny thing is, they kind of had what you might describe as "centralized federation". Subs were run differently, could have different CSS, different rules. It all tied in through one site, so average users didn't know or care. It was easier to discover and explore subs as they'd just show up on All.
If the fediverse could more easily integrate, it could be so much better.
Anyways, I don't mind of things splinter a bit if I can find active communities that discuss my interests. I don't need one massive content aggregator for everything.
The biggest thing they won't get is doom scrolling, and I'm ok with that.
I think this is a potentially fatal flaw that may make it nearly impossible for there to be a true fediverse competitor. At some level, you are still using someone else's server space, but they...
The problem here is that despite these large and escalating costs, a significant part of the fediverse is intrinsically hostile to anything other than charity or goodwill as a basis for running a server, due to hostility to capitalism as an abstract or just on a general point of principle regarding how web services should be funded. Any instance that runs advertisements to its users is likely to be blocked by any others purely on those grounds. Some instances have tried to introduce subscription fees for joining, and been blocked as a result. Ownership by a corporate entity or accepting funding from one is also likely to wind up with a block.
I think this is a potentially fatal flaw that may make it nearly impossible for there to be a true fediverse competitor. At some level, you are still using someone else's server space, but they are given no way to properly offset the cost for maintaining that server. Being an instance host is inherently a parasitic relationship, and the kinds of audience you are attracting can be quite hostile if you do anything but offer a tip jar (and as anyone with a tip jar can tell you... it won't be enough).
So options are limited. You either need to be some eccentric billionaire that cares about this stuff, make deals in secret which is a scandal waiting to happen, or you push through the noise of your loudest users and outdo the competition to a point where they become the very people they complain about on Twitter: "they have ads/charge for subs, but I stick to [best instance] because...". #1 is unlikely and the other 2 aren't exactly ideal solutions. Until we can figure out a proper monetization scheme that satisfies both parties, there's no hope of competing with centralized platforms.
To me it harkens back to the early days of the internet. Back in the 90s, newsgroups on Usenet were always freely available. There were no ads. I mean somebody, somewhere was paying for the server...
To me it harkens back to the early days of the internet.
Back in the 90s, newsgroups on Usenet were always freely available. There were no ads. I mean somebody, somewhere was paying for the server and pipes but I'll be damned if I know who it was back then.
I also think legal concerns could be a/another reason holding people back.
You're absolutely correct about costs eventually being too much for a hobbyist. Countless hobby pages in the 90s died a quiet death as bandwidth limits were reached or hosting costs got to be too much. Hosting is cheaper now than in the 90s but the scale could end up much larger so that is an issue. I don't think it would take a crypto-bro or GME ape who timed it right to spin up a message board but it may take that level of wealth to keep it going if it suddenly got popular, like "Front page of the internet" popular.
I wonder if people would be up in arms over unobtrusive self-hosted in-line banner ads? Similar to Geocities ads back in the day but kept locally (no remote network calls) and vetted by the site staff. A simple graphic link to an URL without x-scripting BS. Could enough money be made with 1 banner ad per page load at the top of the page? No super cookies, no tracking, no scripts--just a PNG+direct link to a webpage. I certainly wouldn't block that but would it attact enough advertisers?
Those pay basically nothing. If you don't have tracking capabilities for advertisers to get KPIs on how well their ads are doing, the ads aren't worth anything. Google and Facebook are too good at...
I wonder if people would be up in arms over unobtrusive self-hosted in-line banner ads?
Those pay basically nothing. If you don't have tracking capabilities for advertisers to get KPIs on how well their ads are doing, the ads aren't worth anything. Google and Facebook are too good at that so any online ads that don't go through their platforms (or a couple of other scummier ones) earn little more than a pittance. Not even enough to offset hosting costs.
There are exceptions, with blogs, but usually those blogs are well managed and have cultivated a known readership with well understood audience profiles for marketers to target. In this case, it ends up working more like print ads in magazines where the magazine does analysis on its subscriber/reader base and uses those profiles to tell buyers who they can reach with their ads. This requires teams of salespeople to maintain relationships with marketing departments, like Vogue has people whose entire job it is to liase with the marketing teams at fashion houses to help execute their plans for ad campaigns.
I wonder if Patreon (or similar) could be utilized for a steadier cash flow for a given instance. Small recurring donations from a larger number of users could potentially offset costs while still...
I wonder if Patreon (or similar) could be utilized for a steadier cash flow for a given instance. Small recurring donations from a larger number of users could potentially offset costs while still allowing most to use the platform for free. I mean, it still wouldn't be equal contributions from everybody, but it would be voluntary and thus still palatable for the user base. Kind of like the "buy me a coffee" thing, but a little more structured.
Caveat: This may have been explored and there may be inherent deal-breaking flaws I'm not aware of.
Perhaps a platform that straight-up charges for access beyond a certain level of "view only" but allows easy sponsorship of other users for a steep discount if many are paid all at once (kind of...
Perhaps a platform that straight-up charges for access beyond a certain level of "view only" but allows easy sponsorship of other users for a steep discount if many are paid all at once (kind of like gift subs on streaming sites). The biggest problem cheap subscriptions usually have is the proportionally high payment processor fees, so something like this could help alleviate that. One flaw in a model like this is that it might encourage 'whale' behavior if numbers are publicly displayed, but at the same time you do want to attract money of people willing to sponsor others. If the money pool gets too centralized, you kind of become beholden to those users, though if the finances are properly managed maybe it wouldn't be that big of an issue if something made any one sponsor whale mad enough to leave.
I remember Reddit back in the day showing a progress bar of "here's how much Reddit gold we need to maintain the site" and that seemed to work alright. Transparency and a proper user culture are very important for success, much like we see here on Tildes, though based on the nature of this site it kind of inherently won't end getting true mass adoption (which is by design).
One potential plus to this hypothetical site, if things are framed as "your account and every other is being paid for by community members" is that users may be more inclined to sniff out bot accounts to get them reported and banned, especially if they're not "high quality bots" being paid for by their developer or breaking ToS in any way. This could also backfire into witch hunts to free up user spots; I don't know for certain.
Masses want ease of use, and the Fediverse doesn't offer that. To use Twitter or Reddit, you just need to install an app. You have access to the content and only need an account if you want to...
Masses want ease of use, and the Fediverse doesn't offer that. To use Twitter or Reddit, you just need to install an app. You have access to the content and only need an account if you want to interact. It's as simple as it gets.
I think the Fediverse is a good starting concept. I would argue a common authentication and user management backend to all instances would be better. Instances would just host content and manage access permissions. That would avoid a lot of hassle, but it's too centralized. Maybe host the User DB on a blockchain? Who knows.
Speaking as admittedly one of those people he's talking about, this is very very true. I'm here though cause it's still convenient, I can get good conversation, and while I've seen mention of...
Speaking as admittedly one of those people he's talking about, this is very very true. I'm here though cause it's still convenient, I can get good conversation, and while I've seen mention of people "gatekeeping" it doesn't seem too harsh or at least I fit in mostly what they want.
I do miss having a large place like Reddit cause you could get a lot of different topics to talk about (I find this place being small you really don't get as much variety and if you want to talk about a more niche thing you barely get anything. For example right now I'm super excited about Starfield and this place maybe gets some topic on it every few days of which a few comments happen. I'm still going to reddit for starfield (only thing I am) and probably will until it's annoying to only use my computer (cause I refuse to download their app, fuck you reddit).
I would consider myself as one of those people that don’t really get(or perhaps more accurately, care) the point of decentralization and federation of everything. Tried to use Mastodon, saw a list...
I would consider myself as one of those people that don’t really get(or perhaps more accurately, care) the point of decentralization and federation of everything.
Tried to use Mastodon, saw a list of all the servers(and how tbf there wasn’t any instance of something I’m into). Didn’t look at either kbin or lemmy.
Matrix(Using Element client) is something I can get behind, it reminds of MSN Messenger, and you basically search for someone you know either through a chat room you’re already in, or by them giving you their “address” like you used to do back when MSN Messenger was more of a thing.
I also think in addition to the points raised in the article about the fediverse generally being a bad solution, it was also because there wasn't one definitive destination, there were hundreds. Digg exodus succeeded because everybody decided to move to reddit. I think the reddit one will succeed if people find sites they are comfortable moving to, but I have my doubts as fediverse solutions are always sub-par and people may not be willing to accept a solution that isn't exactly what they're leaving behind (even though reddit wasn't the same as digg before, users adapted to the new site, kinda like how people are adapting to tildes)
If instead of a fediverse destination they had chosen a traditional website similar to twitter like cohost.org, the migration would have been a lot more successful imo.
That's a feature for, as the article describes it, the "weird" people who want a nigh uncompromised platform. Even if an instance does go rouge, there's an easy, built-in ability to find or whip up your own instance and move all your content away. At least, in theory.
ofc (again, as the article noted), most people don't care about that and just want easy browsing or to follow their favorite personality X. TBH, even if Mastodon did do everything right, I don't think it could overcome that advantage of Twitter because of that. They may not like Musk, but they don't want to make an effort to change their behavior to get around Musk.
At least with Reddit/Digg, you were around for the community, not necessarily to follow Rick Astley. So there is a chance to slowly lose that community and gain a new one.
That's exactly it.
Tildes doesn't have the same users as Reddit but it doesn't matter, because I wasn't friends with anyone on Reddit. On Twitter I follow friends and online friends, folks I got attached to. It was less 'it has to have the perfect interface' and more 'I want to find the people I used to follow'.
One of the biggest reasons I gave up on mastodon is because I joined on a smaller instance, not social, and then couldn't figure out how to follow people who were on mastodon but not on social. It was the lack of being able to just search and follow that made me go 'fine, I'll stay on twitter then'. Because the folks I wanted to follow still also gave up and stayed on twitter
I think for Reddit people are likely to find one place to call home, but it may be a bit more spread out with different users in different places. To me, as an ex redditor, Tildes is that. I signed up to Beehive and Kbin too, but found the fediverse a tad confusing, and this is the one I find myself coming back to. It's starting to feel like home.
With Twitter I honestly think people all going 'I will go to Mastodon' ruined it a little. Mastodon wasn't the best choice of platform, as you said. I fell in love with this tiny little platform called Hive, which wasn't in the fediverse and was way more user friendly than mastodon. But barely any twitter refugees went over there, they all went to mastodon, and Hive has / had so few users if you aren't following a tonne you will check back two days later and see the same posts. So I just gave up on it.
After messing around a bit on Lemmy and Beehaw I kind of feel like it has a similar vibe as reddit but sort of concentrated in some way. I don't really like it to be honest and I'm not sure how to articulate why. It's like on Reddit there was a lot of noise and a few nuggets of good stuff and a lot of annoying or lame stuff. But these places cut a lot of noise but the relate amounts of good and lame input is still there. But without the noise it's like I'm spending a lot more time looking at stuff I think is lame instead of stuff I'm just not interested in at all.
I just looked at cohost.org and I feel like they have similar goals to Automattic-owned Tumblr. Would you say there are substantial differences?
They have a commitment to no algo, you make your own feed on the topics you want, it doesn't do it for you.
You probably didn't read their manifesto: https://antisoftware.club/manifesto.html
Basically they want to remain independent, they don't have any desire to sell to the highest bidder, they'd rather just operate breaking even and paying the bills.
A problem I've seen with "no algo" solutions is that content discovery is suddenly very hard, because there is no attempt being made to help me weed through all the crap to find new stuff I actually want. I think instead of "no algorithm", I'd like to see alternatives offer an open algorithm with controls that let users understand and control how it prioritizes content in their feed.
The problem we have with algorithmic recommendations is that the goals of Facebook, YouTube, et al. do not align with the needs or desires of the user, not because it is a fundamentally flawed concept. These big social media sites tune their algorithm to prioritize engagement above all else. It doesn't matter if that engagement is positive or negative, as long as the user is still in the app and seeing ads.
This is very true. To highlight the Tumblr experience again, if you don't actually know anyone on the platform, then it takes quite a bit of effort to pour over various blogs to find ones you actually want to follow.
That said, I find the challenge of searching for new Tumblr blogs to follow kind of... old-web-esque? It feels like clicking through webrings or using StumbleUpon. On the one hand, you have to put in work? But on the other hand, you can discover some fascinating little pockets of the internet that exist outside the public view.
Personally, what I tend to do is start with a single blog that posts things I like. Then, I see who they're reblogging from, and jump to that blog. Then I see who they're reblogging from, and jump to that blog. Sort of like, manually hopping through the network of folks, trying to find new niches within Tumblr that catch my interest. In fact, I wish there was a way to visualize the network of folks, so I could find small little mutual circles sharing content outside the Tumblr mainstream?
But yes, it's a lot of manual work, and it's not for everyone. Still though, I find it rewarding to have to go on a little treasure hunt to find content, rather than having it delivered to me? Sort of like how music discovery used to be before algorithms... I feel nostalgic for those times.
FWIW, Tumblr is pretty light on the algo right now, too. In much the same way as Cohost, you make your own feed by following accounts that reblog the kind of things you want to see.
((In fairness, Tumblr has introduced a non-chronological "Best Stuff First" sort that's opt-out for new accounts, as well as "Based on your likes" recommended posts. But, because Tumblr's userbase is strongly anti-algo, there always seems to be rebellious posts floating around that instruct new users how to turn these sorts of settings off. And, the settings to turn them off are readily accessible!))
Yeah tbh tumblr had a good separation of followed and algorithmic content these days too. At least on the app, it's two separate feeds. It's algo also used to be shit but now it's surprisingly decent at finding me stuff I'd like, especially now that I follow some tags.
This is actually kind of why I feel like Mastodon is also failing to bring in the masses. The discoverability of people/tags to follow is non-existent so you're presented with a blank slate and you gotta figure out yourself. The lack of even a concierge when you sign up to choose some interests and be presented with a list of people/tags you can follow was a huge barrier of entry for me, and that's immediately after the barrier of picking the "right" instance to sign up for.
As much as I am wary of recommendation algorithms I will say that on twitter I found a lot of people to follow I would not have on Mastodon because they posted on topics/tags that, while they were in my sphere of interest, were not something I directly followed.
You're right, manifestos tend not to interest me and theirs is a good example of why.
Automattic/Tumblr also seem interested in what can be accomplished without an algorithm, in building a space where people choose what they follow. And I trust that just as much as I trust any "commitment" to no algorithms. The CEO, Mullenweg, seems to have been focused on building a more open internet for nearly 20 years.
Cohost has no money.
This is a bit of a dig, but Automattic-owned Tumblr is probably more sustainable. They run ads and sell verification (lol) and do other stuff (I don't know I'm not on Tumblr). Cohost is currently far from sustainable and there's a non-zero chance they'll implode in the future. I really hope they don't of course! It seems like a neat group of people running the whole thing and it's a neat website and there's neat people on there posting neat things. But that's a substantial difference from Tumblr being backed by a big corporation: and Cohost is also run by a corporation, just a smaller one.
Another difference is that Tumblr has expressed interest in joining the Fediverse: while Cohost was expressedly built to be their own garden.
I built a twitter competitor .. I've got like 5 active users. my product is very popular you might say.
This is such an important concept that permeates EVERYTHING(business, games, crypto, banking, etc), not just linux/mastodon and is of course correct here. Things like mastodon need to hide more under the hood and let the power users find things there.
That said, I do think there's a major problem of just not enough people caring. I know waaaaay too many people who would swear that Musk is the devil "buuut i stay on twitter because...". Digg is always used as an example but digg was already populated by the kind of people who cared.
The "critical mass" a lot of people talk about is the mass of people who don't. They don't care about musk, they care about cat pictures. They don't care about facebook, they care about staying in touch with their friends. They don't care about Bezos, they just want to see who's at the door from their phone.
Digg was a nerdy/techy group, and that's almost ALWAYS the first adopter group because they're the ones bouncing around and trying new things (like tildes). The mistake digg made was pivoting for the masses to attract them. This doesn't work because it drives away your core group and makes the masses less likely to show up. You have to attract them some other way first, and then pivot, so when all your tech nerds and similar types leave no one even notices because they've been hiding out on the subreddits that don't hit the front page anyways.
Twitter was built for that community from the start, and that community needs something pretty massive to switch, and it will NEVER be a moral outrage.
I believe you are wrong - I was on Digg before the migration and frankly the majority were non-tech people who were in it for the cat pictures and memes.
The actual difference IMO is the amount of change. With Digg the change was so massive it became a fundamentally different website. They removed the ability to downvote, they changed how submissions worked (auto-pushing from the websites themselves), they deleted all user histories. For all intents and purposes it was a different site. And since people wanted the old site and an alternative was readily available, they moved.
With twitter, what exactly changed before and after Musk bought it? If I showed you a screenshot from the day before and from the day after, will you spot the difference? Most people wouldn't. Because all the changes are minor, like how the checkmark works, or straight up invisible - like internally firing a bunch of employees.
Same for reddit. ~95% of users are already using the official app or the web interface and will see zero difference after the API becomes paid. It affects only a tiny minority (3rd party app users). And they too can continue using the same reddit, just under a shittier interface.
If you want mass migration, you need mass change to the previous thing. A change that 95% of the users won't even notice will never spark mass migration.
All i can say is I was also on digg before the migration as well and I think you're focusing too much on the "low effort content" part of my example.
Yes digg was for memes and cat pictures, but the user base was absolutely the kind that cares about a total UI overhaul. It wasn't soccer moms, blue collar workers, or whatever. It was still a very techy/young scene compared to the masses. The kind that, at this point, makes up a small minority of reddit.
The exact same thing happened with facebook, except they did it "right". Started with a young/techy crowd of college students, which grew into a similar crowd. It's when the extended family (mom/dad/aunt's/uncle's/etc) started getting on facebook that we started seeing the major changes. A lot of the people who were on facebook left (myself included), but the rest stayed.
Agreed.
Another way of stating it is that Digg introduced their own 2% (or whatever). In the Windows / Linux analogy, it would be like Windows breaking backward compatibility so game X or software Y no longer worked and people had to find alternatives anyway. In that case, switching to something else that only does 98% of what you want (albeit a different 98%, perhaps) doesn't look like such a hurdle.
I've seen this argued as one of the smartest things Microsoft did: you can still run old-ass software on new versions of Windows, so no one ever loses their 2% (obviously that's hyperbole, but it's true in broad strokes).
I think moral outrage would probably have been enough because a lot of Twitter power-users are similarly invested in it. Once you lose the good Twitter contributors you will have distilled it down to the most obnoxious kind of LinkedIn Influencer types and that will actively drive people away or just make them bored enough that they stop coming as often.
But the problem is that Mastodon is just not very good and there is no plan for it to become good enough for mass adoption. It's unreliable, has major scaling issues, and no great way for a new user to find and cultivate a good set of follows/followers to make the platform valuable to them. So they bounce off. Twitter was like that early on as well, but Twitter didn't have much competition in that area because everything was equally sucky.
Like the article says, the onboarding flow is awful. It's a bit tough even for techy people to want to bother figuring it out. That plus a majority, possibly even a supermajority of Mastodon power-users actively do not want broad adoption. They like having their small corner of the web and, based on how Gargron and some of the largest instances have operated in the past, I get the distinct sense that they feel a sense of ownership over the platform and take an active role in trying to shepherd its user base in ways that keep the "center of gravity" within their orbit. This gives it the vibe of some of the larger forums in the pre-Web2.0 days where cliques would come to dominate each one and if you weren't in the clique, you weren't gonna get much out of participating.
As a more technical user, I have never liked Mastodon. I don't like the way the handles have two @ symbols — it's a worse version of subdomains. I don't like that I'm supposed to choose which instance to join and that they have different focuses (though we used to talk about x Twitter as subgroups of the whole). I don't like that blocking other instances is out of my control, but lies with the admin of the instance. What happens then? Do I make the same username but on the instance I want to talk with people on?
I love the concept of independent websites that have some basic notification/interaction system, like the IndieWeb crew discusses. But I'm just as fine with everyone using something like Tumblr or NeoCities, where they get a subdomain and can pay for a custom domain if they're really into it.
Yeah, I'm a techie guy, and I fully understand the technology behind decentralization and the Fediverse. I just think it's a bad idea that basically isn't suitable for any purpose, and is especially unsuitable for social networks.
As someone else said in another thread, identity ought to be federated so that your social graph is portable. But nothing else really needs to be. Functionally, all any page needs to do is host a list of "names" that function as pointers to the accounts of everyone you follow and who follows you. As you move from service to service you take this graph of social connections with you.
I don't understand why people want to host the entire firehose of content across the Fediverse redundantly across instances. If you don't follow anyone, there can just be specific "relay" type accounts people follow that just have a curated set of users and that provides the firehose of stuff to make your feed look busy. But they've committed a bunch of design mistakes that derive from them trying too hard to replicate a centralized platform that's designed from the ground up to shove ads in your face. Different purpose means they needed to branch out and make a different thing.
The way the Fediverse does it, though, puts too many features in the instance admin's hands while also binding their hands quite a bit as to what kind of service they can run.
That means that you have no local or federated timeline in return. I don't think I'd make that tradeoff, though I see why one would.
I think instead of that you’d have relays, which would basically be curated feeds to which you can subscribe for a broader stream of content. Functionally it would just retoot everyone it follows to everyone following it.
That’s better than a federated or local timeline IMO. You can get as wide or as granular as you want with your selection of relays and you’re not stuck with the federated selection your instance owner picked.
Hmm, that's interesting. That's a nice replacement for the federated timeline. And I suppose also a replacement for the local timeline on the large, flagship instances.
Related: Federation and its consequences have been a disaster for the Fediverse
I suspect if I viewed federation as fundamental to the Fediverse I would feel the same way. But I'm on a nice little instance with its own culture and an active local timeline: and so I view federation as a bonus oh-i-can-talk-with-this-person-too.
I do think that the degree to which your instance admins determine your experience is far, far understated in "marketing" and what not. There's also an unfortunate focus on the Fediverse as its own thing ("just join any instance! it doesn't matter!") instead of the Fediverse as a way for distinct social media sites to communicate.
I respectfully disagree. Federation is not the problem. The problem is lack of users.
Of course it would have its challenges like blocking other instances and able to make multiple users on different instances. Another big challenge is discovery of interesting content on local and other instances. It simply cannot compete with Twitter or Instagram's algorithm.
However, I see there's huge potential in federation for official content creator. Currently, Twitter is handling all the official accounts verification and after Musk's acquisition, we can see that it is less than ideal.
In federation, an official account can simply host its own instance and people would be able to follow it. It is not governed by a third party.
There's a lot of points made but the biggest one I haven't seen is that people stay with Twitter because that's where the famous people are. If you really care what your favorite actor or company or politician has to say about something, then you have to be on Twitter. That can change but the famous people aren't going to be trendsetters. They follow the crowd which means any ultimate Twitter death requires a well populated replacement to be warmed up for them already. Once the famous people start to migrate though, Twitter will suffer rapid and aggressive population drain.
I feel like this is exactly the issue at hand. A lot of people seem to think that the federated nature of platforms like Mastodon is the problem but I don't think the "fediverse" is the issue here, people are more than comfortable understanding this type of concept with e-mail. If all of these famous people migrated to another one (centralized or not), the crowd would also follow.
I dunno, I think the celebrity thing is part of it too, but people are only comfortable with email because it works very differently from the Fediverse, mostly because on the user side, email doesn't feel decentralized. As far as most end users are concerned, "alice@gmail.com" and "bob@yahoo.com" are just usernames that point into the vaguely-defined email world. When email starts to feel decentralized, for example when your work email gets filtered into the spam box of every gmail account because of your bad spam assassin score, or when emails that you need get filtered before your spam box because of their bad spam assassin score, or your work IT guy manually filters an entire domain and now you can't send or receive emails from there, people get confused and mad. The Fediverse is full of these kinds of incompatibilities. Famously several of the biggest instances on Lemmy have each other blocked, so if you want to use all of Lemmy, you need several accounts.
If every Gmail user also had to have an Outlook email and vice versa because Outlook and Gmail decided to defederate and block all emails between each other, people would stop using email. Fortunately, email doesn't behave like a decentralized system most of the time from the end user's perspective.
And it's worth noting that despite not having that trademarked decentralized feel that the Fediverse has, people still choose to use it almost exclusively for business correspondence and not social stuff.
Lots of what the author said makes sense. I think most people, ie, the 'critical mass' which makes or breaks platforms, flock towards centralization. It's the simplest "don't make me think" solution.
I also note this isn't just limited to non-technical users, it goes for technical users too. Example, "everyone" uses Github so that's what everyone else uses, to be there. Whether they need its features or not.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I'm not sure Github is a good example. I can perform a dozen commands and have my entire Git repository history on Gitlab*, while deleting my Github repos. Migration is easy because Git =/= Github.
Windows is a better example. I CAN migrate to Linux, but it would be a lot more painful, and depending on product I may still need to support the Windows platform. I can never truly escape it since this is also a user-facing platform, wheras no one cares what repo I host my code on.
^(*the big exception may come from more powerful features like LFS or Github Actions. But the core 98% of Github's job of hosting would on other competitors).
Yea, i work IT and cloud, its cheaper and usually better to have central core apps that the entire company uses then to have each team do something different.
Yep. This is why so many people have a preference for Apple OSes, on top of the added features like FaceTime that bring people in.
I think it failed for the same reason the "Reddit migration" to Lemmy is going to fail: The average user does not care enough to learn how the Fediverse works. I've seen so many guides, infographics, how-tos, about how to get started on Lemmy. The problem is, if you need to view a tutorial before signing up for an account, it's already doomed. 90% of people who see that will give up and go back to what already works for them.
I agree, and I think defining it as a failure if everyone on twitter didn't migrate to something else is also a n odd way for them to frame it.
A lot of people in my general sphere (software engineering and tech) did migrate to Mastodon, and they're still there, and I do see links to Mastodon shared, and it does seem to be a normal thing in this sphere now.
Even though some people migrated over to other sites instead of everyone migrating over, I still see it as a big success, partial adoption and people becoming more comfortable with using decentralized ideas of the same type of site is a big step, and I love seeing it.
I saw the same thing in November on Mastodon. Ridiculous threads like "Dear new users, here's what you need to know to start on Mastodon ❤ 1/15". There's probably no better way to drive off the dear new users.
Yeah, it’s a shame. Maybe with more time, they could make the experience smoother for non-techie users, but we don’t really have time when these platforms are becoming worse at an alarming rate.
Read this yesterday, and was left wondering why is it assumed we should want to aim for a big platform and broad adoption?
You can be a smallish community, but still non-exclusionary (which mostly the author conflates with “being a dick”) that still provides value to your users. Scale brings tons of headaches (e.g., moderation at scale is impossible, tech stack becomes way harder to maintain, harder to maintain coherent context and culture, much bigger incentive to take the poison pill of VC money, etc.)
“Too small” can also be a problem, but this community’s lifetime serves as a pretty good example that scale is not a requirement to provide value to users, probably significantly more value than if we jumped to a million users overnight at that
Yeeeessss!
I so much don't care about scale. I care about interacting with people I care to interact with. If that means a bunch of fractured small communities, so be it. That's fine. That's, shockingly, just like real human life where you mostly interact with a fairly small group of people in your immediate vicinity.
I'll add on that fractured small communities frequently implies distinct communities with distinct cultures - which is nice! My instance is tiny, sustainable (crowdfunds its bills and has multiple moderators), and very much its own little corner of the internet.
Before reddit and the like, I was on a bunch of unrelated forums at different sites. One for boxing/MMA, one for movies, one for music, etc.
Stuff like Fark, Digg and ultimately Reddit killed that off. Facebook kind of had some of it, but the public nature of that kind of social media is so different that I don't consider it the same.
Heck, old fart that I am, I used to be on several BBS's before that.
Reddit ultimately sucked all the oxygen out of the room and became the biggest central repository. Funny thing is, they kind of had what you might describe as "centralized federation". Subs were run differently, could have different CSS, different rules. It all tied in through one site, so average users didn't know or care. It was easier to discover and explore subs as they'd just show up on All.
If the fediverse could more easily integrate, it could be so much better.
Anyways, I don't mind of things splinter a bit if I can find active communities that discuss my interests. I don't need one massive content aggregator for everything.
The biggest thing they won't get is doom scrolling, and I'm ok with that.
I think this is a potentially fatal flaw that may make it nearly impossible for there to be a true fediverse competitor. At some level, you are still using someone else's server space, but they are given no way to properly offset the cost for maintaining that server. Being an instance host is inherently a parasitic relationship, and the kinds of audience you are attracting can be quite hostile if you do anything but offer a tip jar (and as anyone with a tip jar can tell you... it won't be enough).
So options are limited. You either need to be some eccentric billionaire that cares about this stuff, make deals in secret which is a scandal waiting to happen, or you push through the noise of your loudest users and outdo the competition to a point where they become the very people they complain about on Twitter: "they have ads/charge for subs, but I stick to [best instance] because...". #1 is unlikely and the other 2 aren't exactly ideal solutions. Until we can figure out a proper monetization scheme that satisfies both parties, there's no hope of competing with centralized platforms.
To me it harkens back to the early days of the internet.
Back in the 90s, newsgroups on Usenet were always freely available. There were no ads. I mean somebody, somewhere was paying for the server and pipes but I'll be damned if I know who it was back then.
I also think legal concerns could be a/another reason holding people back.
You're absolutely correct about costs eventually being too much for a hobbyist. Countless hobby pages in the 90s died a quiet death as bandwidth limits were reached or hosting costs got to be too much. Hosting is cheaper now than in the 90s but the scale could end up much larger so that is an issue. I don't think it would take a crypto-bro or GME ape who timed it right to spin up a message board but it may take that level of wealth to keep it going if it suddenly got popular, like "Front page of the internet" popular.
I wonder if people would be up in arms over unobtrusive self-hosted in-line banner ads? Similar to Geocities ads back in the day but kept locally (no remote network calls) and vetted by the site staff. A simple graphic link to an URL without x-scripting BS. Could enough money be made with 1 banner ad per page load at the top of the page? No super cookies, no tracking, no scripts--just a PNG+direct link to a webpage. I certainly wouldn't block that but would it attact enough advertisers?
Those pay basically nothing. If you don't have tracking capabilities for advertisers to get KPIs on how well their ads are doing, the ads aren't worth anything. Google and Facebook are too good at that so any online ads that don't go through their platforms (or a couple of other scummier ones) earn little more than a pittance. Not even enough to offset hosting costs.
There are exceptions, with blogs, but usually those blogs are well managed and have cultivated a known readership with well understood audience profiles for marketers to target. In this case, it ends up working more like print ads in magazines where the magazine does analysis on its subscriber/reader base and uses those profiles to tell buyers who they can reach with their ads. This requires teams of salespeople to maintain relationships with marketing departments, like Vogue has people whose entire job it is to liase with the marketing teams at fashion houses to help execute their plans for ad campaigns.
I wonder if Patreon (or similar) could be utilized for a steadier cash flow for a given instance. Small recurring donations from a larger number of users could potentially offset costs while still allowing most to use the platform for free. I mean, it still wouldn't be equal contributions from everybody, but it would be voluntary and thus still palatable for the user base. Kind of like the "buy me a coffee" thing, but a little more structured.
Caveat: This may have been explored and there may be inherent deal-breaking flaws I'm not aware of.
Perhaps a platform that straight-up charges for access beyond a certain level of "view only" but allows easy sponsorship of other users for a steep discount if many are paid all at once (kind of like gift subs on streaming sites). The biggest problem cheap subscriptions usually have is the proportionally high payment processor fees, so something like this could help alleviate that. One flaw in a model like this is that it might encourage 'whale' behavior if numbers are publicly displayed, but at the same time you do want to attract money of people willing to sponsor others. If the money pool gets too centralized, you kind of become beholden to those users, though if the finances are properly managed maybe it wouldn't be that big of an issue if something made any one sponsor whale mad enough to leave.
I remember Reddit back in the day showing a progress bar of "here's how much Reddit gold we need to maintain the site" and that seemed to work alright. Transparency and a proper user culture are very important for success, much like we see here on Tildes, though based on the nature of this site it kind of inherently won't end getting true mass adoption (which is by design).
One potential plus to this hypothetical site, if things are framed as "your account and every other is being paid for by community members" is that users may be more inclined to sniff out bot accounts to get them reported and banned, especially if they're not "high quality bots" being paid for by their developer or breaking ToS in any way. This could also backfire into witch hunts to free up user spots; I don't know for certain.
Masses want ease of use, and the Fediverse doesn't offer that. To use Twitter or Reddit, you just need to install an app. You have access to the content and only need an account if you want to interact. It's as simple as it gets.
I think the Fediverse is a good starting concept. I would argue a common authentication and user management backend to all instances would be better. Instances would just host content and manage access permissions. That would avoid a lot of hassle, but it's too centralized. Maybe host the User DB on a blockchain? Who knows.
Speaking as admittedly one of those people he's talking about, this is very very true. I'm here though cause it's still convenient, I can get good conversation, and while I've seen mention of people "gatekeeping" it doesn't seem too harsh or at least I fit in mostly what they want.
I do miss having a large place like Reddit cause you could get a lot of different topics to talk about (I find this place being small you really don't get as much variety and if you want to talk about a more niche thing you barely get anything. For example right now I'm super excited about Starfield and this place maybe gets some topic on it every few days of which a few comments happen. I'm still going to reddit for starfield (only thing I am) and probably will until it's annoying to only use my computer (cause I refuse to download their app, fuck you reddit).
The migration failed because none of the people that "the masses" follow left twitter.
Quite a few people I followed left Twitter, but they moved to Instagram instead.
Because none of the alternatives were any good.
I would consider myself as one of those people that don’t really get(or perhaps more accurately, care) the point of decentralization and federation of everything.
Tried to use Mastodon, saw a list of all the servers(and how tbf there wasn’t any instance of something I’m into). Didn’t look at either kbin or lemmy.
Matrix(Using Element client) is something I can get behind, it reminds of MSN Messenger, and you basically search for someone you know either through a chat room you’re already in, or by them giving you their “address” like you used to do back when MSN Messenger was more of a thing.