this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2023
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Can Mastodon seize the moment from Twitter? (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 years ago by SteveKLord@slrpnk.net to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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Eugen Rochko is the CEO of Mastodon — the open-source decentralized competitor to Twitter. It’s where a lot of Twitter users have gone in our post-Elon Musk era.

The idea of Mastodon is that you don’t join a single platform that one company controls. You join a server, and that server can show you content from users across the entire network. If you decide you don’t like the people who run your server or you think they’re moderating content too strictly, you can leave and take your followers and social graph with you. Think about it like email, and you’ll get it. If you don’t like Gmail, you can switch to something else, but you don’t have to quit email entirely as a concept.

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[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Interesting revelation from #gargron in recent interview on server choices for newcomers (https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter)

“However, I think that possibly going forward, we might rework the onboarding user experience into presenting a default option as well as an advanced option, where all that stuff with choosing a server would basically be hidden away from the people who get intimidated by choice.

Also Another statement about groups (which isn’t new to me)

“What’s next for Mastodon? What should people be on the lookout for next?

Groups, probably. That’s a big feature that’s coming. Well, it’s what you would expect. Facebook has groups, Twitter has communities, and Mastodon will have groups as well.”

[–] _ed@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wonder how compatible groups will be with other applications.

[–] witcraft@hubzilla.fediversum.de 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@_ed

I wonder how compatible groups will be with other applications.

That depends how strictly Mastodon (and other applications) stick to AP conventions over defining their own realm in the Fediverse... I've seen many discussions in e.g. Hubzilla how devs work persistently around quirky non-standard solutions of other platforms (including diaspora and Mastodon). Sometimes it's more a matter of philosophy (e.g. dedication to ensuring privacy vs. "we are designed around public posting", so groups have to be work-arounds for the basic philosophy instead of just a special case of existing privacy by design). Usually, they make it work in the end (at least for the Hubzilla side) - sometimes with a few compromises.

But I think often it's a matter of dedication to interoperability attitude vs. platform-centric thinking by design.

[–] 0x1C3B00DA@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

And mastodon has consistently used platform-centric thinking over interoperability since its start. You can notice how whenever gargron talks about groups, he doesn't mention any of the current implementations and the masto team is rarely involved in FEP or interoperability conversations (other than to defend their own stance)

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I did notice the lack of any mention of other fediverse group mechanisms.

Overall, you'd have to presume that Mastodon being so dominant on the fediverse is just not a good thing, this being a tiny demonstration I'd say. Though to be fair, mentioning Friendica to that journalist may have just resulted on more questions.

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@maegul @SteveKLord Groups in Mastodon, especially if they're interoperable with Lemmy, would be a great thing to see in my book.

The added bonus is there's already a number of groups in the Fediverse on the day the feature goes live.

[–] SteveKLord@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah I'm definitely interested in how it will play out and think it could be great. Interoperability should always be the goal, increasingly so. I'd like to see more of that and Eugen working with the designers of Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc more cooperatively. Yeah it seems like he realizes now is the time to make changes while there's interest but before the next big leap off of centralized social media.

[–] ziggy_stardust@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Isn't that a very big risk of... Centralization ? (Maybe he talks about it in the interview - weirdly, I can't access it)

Edit : sorry, just read the article, Lemmy app was fucking up the link for me. Well, I can understand the argument of people starting on default server and then moving on, but I'm afraid it mostly applies now and would probably reduce with broader adoption.

[–] SteveKLord@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yeah I'm curious what form the groups will take. There are are group channels now to a small extent but they're hardly noticleable. It seems like he wants to win over people from facebook next. I'm a little concerned about the impact that will have on the the culture of Mastodon since when the last boost from Twitter happened due to Elon's takeover, some people brought attitudes you'd expect on Twitter.

I don't always agree with Eugen's decisions but it's interesting to see the Fediverse get more press at least and he did a pretty good job of explaining it to those who are totally new to it.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There is a pull request up for groups in Mastodon, but it hasnt been updated in a long time. It is also completely incompatible with Lemmy.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/19059

[–] witcraft@hubzilla.fediversum.de 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@nutomic

There is a pull request up for groups in Mastodon, but it hasnt been updated in a long time. It is also completely incompatible with Lemmy.

What I honestly do not get is why platforms with evidently less features, more restrictions, and less compatibility get the most attention. Or, to be honest, I think I know: They just promote themselves stronger.

Mastodon is not that bad. It's just a shame that they limt the character number. Would be nice to have real groups, too. Oh, and if they could implement good ways of private posting, that would be a blast. While we are at it, they could implement local posts (blogs). Maybe not only blogs, but also photos, videos, and other files. Wikis are not much different from blog posts, either. In fact, you could even implement an add-on system for whatever content to be hosted and shared (webDAV, and calDAV calendars and cardDAV addressbooks would be the icing on the cake). The problem is that most of that content would be hosted on your local instance, so you'd have to add means to authenticate remotely (as in OpenWebAuth) and control read/write persmissions of users on other instances federatedly. Oh, and in case you want to port your identity to a different server, it would be a dream to move all your history and content with you. Or even host your identity synced over multiple instances, so if one is not temporarily or permanently not available, you just switch to another one until it is back online.

I know, this is all science fiction, but maybe one can hope for some of it to be added to Mastodon within the next two decades... Sorry for the promotional rant for Hubzilla and, with some simplications, also (streams) - which started to provide all that 12 years ago, including the open source code for it, ready for copying from Open Source to other projects.

There is so much choice in the Fediverse of existing platforms. I wonder why people usually focus on the simple ones and expect them, against their philosophy, to grow into full-featured ones...

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

So i've poked around the fediverse a little bit and I wouldn't underestimate the power of "ease of use".

And while I think microblogging is the worst format for social media ... I again wouldn't underestimate how relatively attractive it is to follow a person and just send off a small message and get one back ... the direct personal interaction of a straight forward microblogging platform is probably quite good for ramping people onto a new system.

Part of the problem is that Mastodon is arguably not a great citizen of the fediverse. Maybe no platform is to be honest (I really don't know). In my view, there's a point at which a certain level of dominance that ethically demands action in favour of the fediverse over the particular platform one works on. In Mastodon's case, that point has probably been reached ... maybe a while ago.

Without a strong sense of such a culture ... I fear the fediverse will always have the potential to go the way of Linux Desktop: (IMO) a fractured, confusing (and probably lower quality than it needs to be) array of options that puts-off many would be open source users and so never took off even after it was too late (ie, everyone uses android and iOS now anyway).

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Would you be willing to comment on how compatible it would be or is with the fediverse at large and the (new) ActivityPub protocol for groups ?

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Activitypub groups are nothing new, they have been used in Friendica, Hubzilla, Peertube and Lemmy for years. I described how it works in FEP 1b12. Mastodon decided to create a different implementation which isnt compatible with any of these.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Twitter also apparently has groups of some sort, though I don't know how that works. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, groups exist in the fediverse outside of Mastodon, including here but also Friendica and Hubzilla, with which Mastodon users can and do interact.

Beyond that, there's also been a good deal of talk about how useful groups are outside of the idea of luring facebook people over, especially in relation to allowing people to find others of similar interests etc. Personally, I find this rather convincing from a Mastodon perspective and hope that that's part of Eugen's reasoning, because I think a grouping structure plus a freeform chatting/microblogging structure are a complementary pairing.

[–] SteveKLord@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In a way it's slightly redundant since each instance is already a "group" though it would be interesting to see how people from various instances can create groups for specific topics and goals. I'm a little leery of luring too many facebook users here too quickly and the impact that will have on moderation and how respectful the culture here remains but it's ultimately inevitable. The group structure you mentioned sounds interesting though a bit like Discord so who knows if that's in his thinking too.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Instances are by no means like groups on mastodon except in the case of niche and smaller instances, which are cool but the minority on a user basis.

On mastodon, instances in general are best thought of as not useful from a user and UX perspective IMO. They simply don’t do much for the user.

[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's not Twitter that Mastodon has to seize the moment from. It's all the other commercial offerings that will inevitably pop up in its place as Twitter crashes and burns.

[–] SteveKLord@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Agreed. I think the headline was more to catch the attention of your average social media user but Eugen does mention the way those services tend to fade away so hopefully it's just a matter of time before more people make the leap.

[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

I think he's a bit over-hopeful at the fediverse's prospects, sadly. People will give up so much (like all of their privacy!) for a small amount of convenience.

[–] si_irini@mastodon.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@SteveKLord
To be honest…
The question is do we want the trolls of Twitter here?
It's more relaxed here, calmer and nicer.
I'm still on Twitter, you can be on multiple platforms.
I see completely different things on Twitter and use Twitter differently.

[–] SteveKLord@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago

That's definitely an important question. The culture on Twitter can be far less respectful than Mastodon so we definitely don't want that here but the moderation options give users more control when dealing with bad actors so eventually it balances out to some extent.

I got rid of Twitter when Musk took over and brought actual fascists back while getting rid of anti-fascists but I agree you can use different services and expect different things from them. The Fediverse is more inherently built to last and for I feel increasingly more inclined to post on those services, though.

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