I'm sure this has been said thousands of times before, but I never tire of making this point - I don't see the Fediverse ever becoming relevant. And while I'm glad for posts and writeups like...
I'm sure this has been said thousands of times before, but I never tire of making this point - I don't see the Fediverse ever becoming relevant. And while I'm glad for posts and writeups like this, I think they illustrate why. Nobody would make a post like this about Instagram, or Twitter (if it still existed). There's simply no need to. On Mastodon, and other federated platforms however, this is more or less the price of admission. You need to know how the Internet works. You need to know how the Web works. Once you've got that covered, here's another can of worms: Federation and the ActivityPub protocol.
I hesitate to compare it to obviously harmful online trends like cryptocurrency, but you can't deny the parallels. It's touted as "the future" by evangelists, but when you actually try to follow up on that, it's middling at best and terribly confusing at worst. And that's, to a certain extent, by design - if I want to make an account on Instagram, I go there and make an account. Simple. My technophobic 60-something dad can manage this. But trying to get him to sign up to Mastodon? Oh, well, just go on the website, then pick an instance, then understand that everyone can be on a different instance and posts don't necessarily all interact, and- at that point, he's left the room.
It's doubly annoying because the web needs, now more than ever, a platform like Mastodon. Like Twitter. I think the takeover and subsequent tire fire-ification of Twitter has proven that these platforms are almost like a public utility in a way. But Mastodon? It does not serve this purpose. Not well, at least. There's a running joke that the Fediverse is a great place to talk to other people about the Fediverse, and so far, I unfortunately have seen very little evidence to suggest that that's not generally true.
So what's the natural end-point here? Hard to say. I don't think Mastodon will be forgotten, I think it serves its purpose as a place for tech-adjacent discussions quite well, but it'll never have mass market appeal. X won't be an option either, at least not for those with an ounce of self-respect and the desire not to see right-wing garbage and hustle culture Musk worship all day - so what's left? Threads? Instagram? TikTok? Those all aren't suited to the task, or in the case of Threads, DOA - and larger form blogging platforms like Substack or Medium don't fill the need for rapid fire discussions in the comments. Reddit is borderline unusable after Rexit, and the post quality has gone down significantly.
I don't even know how to end this message. I don't have any satisfying conclusions, no solutions, nothing to fix the mess that the giant corporations and empathy-devoid billionaires left behind for us to clean up. It's frustrating, it's making me angry, and it's going to happen over and over again.
Absolutely. People feel like there's a need for a Twitter-like, the "internet town square" where virtually everyone can come and interact, but I don't think it's true. The internet was doing well,...
Is it for everyone? Is Tildes? No. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Absolutely. People feel like there's a need for a Twitter-like, the "internet town square" where virtually everyone can come and interact, but I don't think it's true. The internet was doing well, and arguably better, before Twitter, Facebook, and al. I'm sure it will be fine after them too.
I'm not saying that people from everywhere don't deserve their internet town square, but as long as the town square is owned by a single entity that needs to extract value from it, and can resell it to anyone with more money than braincells, it will fail. Inevitably. Mastodon isn't sexy, but decentralization is IMO the least-worst option.
I don't know that Mastodon will ever be "relevant" in the general audience sense, but it's sticking pretty well for the crowd I had previously been following on Twitter, and I find myself engaging...
I don't know that Mastodon will ever be "relevant" in the general audience sense, but it's sticking pretty well for the crowd I had previously been following on Twitter, and I find myself engaging both more frequently and more meaningfully there than I ever did on Twitter.
So for me personally, I don't really mind if Mastodon never achieves mainstream popularity. Maybe it's even better that way for the communities that have taken root on it. It's not bad to be small.
I don’t see how we can know what the future will bring. Maybe Mastodon will improve, or ActivityPub will improve, or some alternative to Mastodon will become popular? Many Internet forums have...
I don’t see how we can know what the future will bring. Maybe Mastodon will improve, or ActivityPub will improve, or some alternative to Mastodon will become popular?
As a 1-person server, my server does not receive that many posts! I only get posts from people I follow or posts that explicitly mention me in some way.
The causes several problems:
when I visit someone’s profile on Mastodon who I don’t already follow, my server will not fetch the profile’s content (it’ll fetch their profile picture, description, and pinned posts, but not any of their post history). So their profile appears as if they’ve never posted anything
bad reply visibility: when I look at the replies to somebody else’s post (even if I follow them!), I don’t see all of the replies, only the ones which have made it to my server. If you want to understand the exact rules about who can see which replies (which are quite complicated!), here’s a great deep dive by Sebastian Jambor. I think it’s possible to end up in a state where no one person can see all of the replies, including the original poster.
favourite and boost accounts are inaccurate – usually posts show up having at most 1 or 2 favourites / boosts, even if the post was actually favourite or boosted hundreds of times. I think this is because it only counts favourites/boosts from people I follow.
All of these things will happen to users of any small Mastodon server, not just 1-person servers.
...
This means that replies can get pretty repetitive because people literally cannot see each other’s replies. This is especially annoying for posts that are popular or controversial, because the person who made the post has to keep reading similar replies over and over again by people who think they’re making the point for the first time.
I'm sure this has been said thousands of times before, but I never tire of making this point - I don't see the Fediverse ever becoming relevant. And while I'm glad for posts and writeups like this, I think they illustrate why. Nobody would make a post like this about Instagram, or Twitter (if it still existed). There's simply no need to. On Mastodon, and other federated platforms however, this is more or less the price of admission. You need to know how the Internet works. You need to know how the Web works. Once you've got that covered, here's another can of worms: Federation and the ActivityPub protocol.
I hesitate to compare it to obviously harmful online trends like cryptocurrency, but you can't deny the parallels. It's touted as "the future" by evangelists, but when you actually try to follow up on that, it's middling at best and terribly confusing at worst. And that's, to a certain extent, by design - if I want to make an account on Instagram, I go there and make an account. Simple. My technophobic 60-something dad can manage this. But trying to get him to sign up to Mastodon? Oh, well, just go on the website, then pick an instance, then understand that everyone can be on a different instance and posts don't necessarily all interact, and- at that point, he's left the room.
It's doubly annoying because the web needs, now more than ever, a platform like Mastodon. Like Twitter. I think the takeover and subsequent tire fire-ification of Twitter has proven that these platforms are almost like a public utility in a way. But Mastodon? It does not serve this purpose. Not well, at least. There's a running joke that the Fediverse is a great place to talk to other people about the Fediverse, and so far, I unfortunately have seen very little evidence to suggest that that's not generally true.
So what's the natural end-point here? Hard to say. I don't think Mastodon will be forgotten, I think it serves its purpose as a place for tech-adjacent discussions quite well, but it'll never have mass market appeal. X won't be an option either, at least not for those with an ounce of self-respect and the desire not to see right-wing garbage and hustle culture Musk worship all day - so what's left? Threads? Instagram? TikTok? Those all aren't suited to the task, or in the case of Threads, DOA - and larger form blogging platforms like Substack or Medium don't fill the need for rapid fire discussions in the comments. Reddit is borderline unusable after Rexit, and the post quality has gone down significantly.
I don't even know how to end this message. I don't have any satisfying conclusions, no solutions, nothing to fix the mess that the giant corporations and empathy-devoid billionaires left behind for us to clean up. It's frustrating, it's making me angry, and it's going to happen over and over again.
Absolutely. People feel like there's a need for a Twitter-like, the "internet town square" where virtually everyone can come and interact, but I don't think it's true. The internet was doing well, and arguably better, before Twitter, Facebook, and al. I'm sure it will be fine after them too.
I'm not saying that people from everywhere don't deserve their internet town square, but as long as the town square is owned by a single entity that needs to extract value from it, and can resell it to anyone with more money than braincells, it will fail. Inevitably. Mastodon isn't sexy, but decentralization is IMO the least-worst option.
I don't know that Mastodon will ever be "relevant" in the general audience sense, but it's sticking pretty well for the crowd I had previously been following on Twitter, and I find myself engaging both more frequently and more meaningfully there than I ever did on Twitter.
So for me personally, I don't really mind if Mastodon never achieves mainstream popularity. Maybe it's even better that way for the communities that have taken root on it. It's not bad to be small.
I don’t see how we can know what the future will bring. Maybe Mastodon will improve, or ActivityPub will improve, or some alternative to Mastodon will become popular?
Many Internet forums have come and gone, though.
From the article:
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