Comment by Sir_Cmpwn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sir_Cmpwn | Hacker News Reader

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>They are not successful because Signal has not yet done anything particularly egregious

Like I said: Moxie toes the line. He doesn't cross it. Well, everyone has a different line. He's crossed mine but not the lines the average user sets.

>We've both given anecdotes; user counts would be more conclusive. I've found +1 million [0] for Mastodon.

I question the methodology behind this figure. The nature of the decentralized network makes it difficult to get good estimates. All I have are anecdotes. Yes, the overwhelming majority of users are on Mastodon. However, I personally interact with several users on several different Pleroma instances and a couple on GNUSocial instances, and I did not seek them out for this purpose.

>I question the methodology behind this figure. The nature of the decentralized network makes it difficult to get good estimates. All I have are anecdotes. Yes, the overwhelming majority of users are on Mastodon. However, I personally interact with several users on several different Pleroma instances and a couple on GNUSocial instances, and I did not seek them out for this purpose.

However they are the exception. Because the overwhelming majority of users are on Mastodon, the Mastodon developers have the power to modify protocol implementations. If it was closer to an even split, any breaking changes would fracture the community, while in this case some smaller groups may be lost.

Come on. You can say the same thing about Chrome's effect on web standards. In reality that's not how it works, and the situation is far better than Signal.

Gmail is using their influence to modify email standards[0]. This is exactly how it works in reality. If a certain service provider holds most of the user base, they can implement breaking changes without fracturing the community. In some cases it's a net positive, helping protocols evolve, and in some cases it's a net negative.

[0]https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007100/google-amp-gmail...

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