Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter
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It is unfortunately a common misunderstanding, and I must admit we didn't help the situation by leaning into calling servers "communities" on joinmastodon.org in the past (not anymore). There do exist plenty of "themed" Mastodon servers, aimed at specific communities, e.g. phpc.social which describes itself as a server for the PHP community, because some secondary discovery features of Mastodon lend themselves to what kind of feels like a slack/irc/subreddit, but ultimately, in their primary purpose, servers are service providers just like GMail/Outlook/Fastmail are for e-mail.
I've been aware of Mastodon pretty much since its inception and I had no idea that this was the case. The messaging really needs improved.
Not sure how much clearer it gets.
You must be part of an exceptionally small minority then. I, too, have known about Mastodon since it's inception, and this was not news to me. As another commenter said, a debate during that time was that users were beaten over the head with too much discussion of federation and instances.
This is always how it's worked, and it's nearly impossible to join any instance without following & interacting with people from other instances on a daily basis. It's like the one thing about Mastodon you can't escape knowing about even if you actively try.
I don't use Mastodon, so perhaps that's why. It always seemed like a Twitter clone except with fewer people and, importantly for this particular discussion, where you can't interact with anyone.
Guess I was mistaken, but that's why I never bothered to learn anything further about it.
How can you not know, since it's clearly "decentralized" in every claim made about its service. That's the textbook definition of decentralized.
Further, once you pick a server, if you are kicked off, you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.
This seems obvious to me as a necessary feature...?
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/3796 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668
Most do, the default is open federation.
> As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers.
It's hardly a surprise that most people don't want to associate with neo-Nazis and others with similar worthless ideologies.
The fact that admins can firewall off instances if they're are run by arseholes is a good thing.
I would flip what you just said on its head and say practically the opposite: the virtue of Mastodon is that when the Nazis seize power not all instances will be forced to censor Jews (whereas Twitter will be forced to do it or shut down).
For a server to operate you only need a very basic power source and internet connection, even in an occupied country it seems plenty doable.
Sure someone can set up a server somewhere and publish whatever they want but if no one reads it it won't really matter. Most people won't change where they get their news overnight even if the government does impose censorship. That's why federated social media is so valuable, widespread use of it ASAP is a benefit to society. It can de-concentrate the ownership of media distribution, decentralize control and make the next Office of Censorship's job much harder.
Being able to choose which other servers your server federates with is a feature, not a bug.
> you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.
Not true as of recent (May 2022 or so) versions of Mastodon.
This extreme amount of curation is why each fediverse instance is its own community. You only get to experience fediverse through the lens of your instance admin's moderation policy.
You keep most of what you'd expect when you transfer, but you do lose your posts.
However, I agree with you that (over-)moderation is a huge issue facing Mastodon. However, that's true of any online community run by users.
The ideal, in my opinion, it's improving the process for people to self host instances. It's simply too hard for the average person currently and the copy on websites such as masto.host is ambiguous for people who may not be experienced with such concepts. My belief is that Mastodon will thrive when there are more communities of smaller groups.
Not true- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...
Overzealous spam filters seem like the email equivalent. I have reoccurring issues trying to get self hosted email received by GMail/outlook addresses. Although these filters are an impersonal corporate policy rather than up to an individual instance admin's discretion.
Humans are naturally converging towards communities, and Mastodon leaned into that. But it's actually not the right tool, because in the end it's centered around individual accounts. Lemmy is the closest thing to what the author wants I guess.
If I remember correctly, one of the main element of the product vision was to allow better moderation, to have a "safer" online experience.
Provided it is a very relative concept, the community approach makes a lot of sense.
In a way, it is very similar to how forums used to be.
Can it be improved? 100%. Many UX elements would make the product more popular, but was it meant to be a twitter replacement? not sure.
Sorry for my bad english.
Eugen's product vision is fighting the "community-driven spaces" idea as hard as he can, as far as I understand – to the extent that that maps onto instances, and not the [groups that don't yet exist].
> But because each server effectively acts as a separate version of Mastodon, participating in multiple instances is a hassle. For each one, you must maintain separate profiles and follower lists, and there’s no way to view multiple “Local” timelines in a single feed.
I agree that it'd be nice to be able to view other instances' local timelines. But from here on out, the piece gets real confused by its idea that this is the only way to use Mastodon and thus that you should have one account per instance – this is not how most people use Mastodon.
> The mobile app isn’t really set up for hopping between instances, either. If you get bored with once instance and decide you’d like to check out another, the only option is to sign out of your account and sign up for a new instance from scratch.
So... log on to your desktop and [move].
> The overarching issue here is that Mastodon is trying to be too much like Twitter when it really ought to be more like Reddit.
If you want ActivityPub Reddit, you want [Lemmy], but with less FOSSy users.
> In the ideal version of Mastodon, users would be able to browse the content of those communities, and jump between them at any time, but would still have easy ways to interact with anyone else on the network.
This... is what I do. This is how I use Mastodon. This exists???
[groups that don't yet exist]: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/861#issuecomment...
[move]: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move
[Lemmy]: https://lemmy.ml/
How do you do that? When I used Mastodon, I could only see my own instance's local timeline and the federated timeline. Basically, how do I Mastodon?
Then you follow anyone who is posting or boosting interesting stuff. On a large instance you can also subscribe to tags. I don't think you can remote-subscribe to tags (except via RSS). On a small instance tags are less useful as they only show posts the instance already knows about (e.g. from people someone is following).
Once you follow enough people, you'll see them boosting posts from all over the fediverse. Then you have the inverse problem. You'll have to ignore or unfollow, because mastodons seem to be allergic to the concept of algorithmic feeds. (You can guess why.)
> browse the content of those communities, and jump between
Ah, the magic of web links. Click a post date or profile, and Bam! You're on their instance.
I use an instance I host myself that only has one other user on it. I've found that in such a case you have to follow very aggressively (to get content federating over to your instance; X who I follow RTed something from Y that sounds interesting, Y's profile seems like a good vibe, I follow) and unfollow aggressively (Y is live-tooting a reality show with many, many posts), which is kind of doing the work more manually that Twitter's algorithmic regime does for you. But it's also giving you control, so... trade-offs.
Yeah, this is like the most fundamental thing about Mastodon. You can access numerous instances from a single account. You don't need one account on every instance.
>This... is what I do. This is how I use Mastodon. This exists???
I share your sense of incredulity here. That's.... what Mastodon does! How could you write a piece about what Mastodon is or isn't good for and... guh. It's like suggesting that cars are good but wouldn't it be better if there was a highway system so people could drive their cars and meet each other.
All social media should begin to be viewed through this lens if we are ever going to make any progress with creating better online tech, because each and every single one of these monopolies are currently levereraging their positions in the economoy to influence politics and society at large in a very toxic way.
It's nice. It's kinda like the Internet used to be before Endless September started.
I do think it could be a lot better if Eugen would stop trying to make it so much Like Twitter, I upped the post length limit to ~7k and it's fucking wonderful. I can have conversations with my friends. In paragraphs.
Unless you think your conversations have to be public for everybody else to see.
A non-profit social media site just has my friends, without any need to regularly spend time keeping up filters.
Telling journalists what they may, or may not write, is always worrying. But telling they aren't allowed to write about problems they, from experience, see, even more so.
That aside, The whole twitter style, shouting into the void, microblog communication platform is really stupid.
When I decided to give mastodon a try because someone I know set up an instance devoted to a subject I enjoy. the whole experience was baffling and inefficient compared to other communications systems I have tried. I stick with it because local instance is only about 100 people and they are all good folk. I Have a hard time imagining how terrible it is to have the whole world on one instance and am rather happy that I passed on twitter.
We have given it enough time to realize the claims as a Twitter alternative and it has simply failed. Twitter had tens of millions of users in its first 6 years. Mastodon is still struggling and considers 20 people as 'trending'.
Mastodon is a total failure, and virtually no-one is there or uses it frequently or daily other than the general hyper tech-crowd and that is the fact.
Regardless of the $48BN takeover, I'm already seeing the Mastodon circus running back to Twitter as they knew Mastodon was going the way of the Mastodon; extinction.
We are talking 6 years and even less users using it. That sounds like a total failure on Mastodon's side to be a viable Twitter alternative.
I also have a twitter account, that I use to follow a few (6 maybe?) accounts I care about. I scroll through that every week or two. I like those accounts, but twitter feels needy, constantly screaming for more attention. This is the website, not using an ad blocker.
You say Mastodon is dead, so maybe you like a website constantly pushing you to engage more? I can understand how it would make the site feel more lively, especially for new users.
Mastodon is not the same as Twitter, but there are plenty of us that prefer it. If you want 100000 followers it's the wrong platform, I'll give you that.
> Even the users who 'moved' to Mastodon came back to Twitter again are still posting on Twitter. Why? Because there is no-one on Mastodon even after the Twitter 'exodus'.
There have been many small exoduses, and some people stayed with Mastodon.
> Mastodon is not the same as Twitter, but there are plenty of us that prefer it.
With the constant comparisons and mentions of Mastodon, being an alternative to Twitter even in its early days, it will be judged as so and my strict judgement is that it has failed.
> There have been many small exoduses, and some people stayed with Mastodon.
I'm almost certain that this year's Twitter exodus to Mastodon, that more than 90% of users who registered at the time do not use it regularly and have moved back to Twitter due to little to no interaction there.
That is the fact of the matter after 6 years of operation.
> My conservative estimate of current Mastodon network totals, based on my own stats aggregation, is 3 million registered users and 250k monthly active users.
> - Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko (April 2022)
It doesn't matter because you are not talking or interacting with them. You have a small list and unless you explore groups.
Most of the world uses google search outside of China. I don't feel connected to them and if the volume dropped to a few hundred people using google search it wouldn't affect my experience.
Facebook isn't a community site it is a social media with expectations that you consume more content than you contribute.
3,064,237 total registered Mastodon accounts and only 192,384 users using it. That is 7% of active users using the platform and 93% of everyone else not using it. There is virtually no one to talk to or interact with on the platform.
This is enough to tell us that Mastodon is indeed a failure and has not replaced Twitter after 6 years of marketing itself as a Twitter alternative.
I think this is pretty obviously false. There are vibrant communities on Mastodon that left Twitter so they could exist in peace. Furry and furry friendly community, lgbtq+ webcomic artists, sex workers are a few off the top of my head that created their own communities.
And I would have thought this was self evident, but you can be an alternative and succeed as an alternative without it meaning you have to replace the original or absorb all the active users of the original.
Lots of people use the network daily. I do. It's more fun than twitter. You can experiment. You can say whatever you want if you pick the right servers. And you'll see people doing that, and saying things you don't like. And thats fine.
I'll never use big corporate social media again in any form.
It is a failure.
Having 3 million registered users and only 192,000 using it every month in the end after 6 years is more than 90% of all users not using it. With those numbers, there is virtually no-one using the platform which explains why many continued to keep posting on Twitter, more than on Mastodon.
So it is still a massive and complete failure in almost every way.
Yes it is, when compared to the total number of registered Mastodon users as I have mentioned from the start with "virtually" meaning 'nearly', 'almost', 'more or less', 'close to'. My use of the word could not get any more accurate and clearer.
192,000 of 3,000,000 is around 6.4%, where that is closer to 0 than 94% is, meaning that approximately 2,808,000 users are still not using it regularly after registration and after 6 years of existence, it has struggled with that ever since.
You can try to deny it. But the numbers don't lie.
It's not a failure.
But no, it's not a failure. "low user numbers" does not automagically mean something is a failure, as others in this post have hinted at
Except mine isn't an 'opinion' and is based on Mastodon's own statistics in daily active user numbers, registered users, user behaviour and the claims, and comparisons made at the time when it already launched and was pitched as a Twitter alternative, especially on HN. [0] [1]
Fast forward 6 years later, 94% of people registered are still not using it. That is virtually no-one, other than the tiny tech circles that even still need to post on Twitter since there is still little to no-one on Mastodon.
That is a fact; not an opinion.
> But no, it's not a failure. "low user numbers" does not automagically mean something is a failure
It is a failure and I have repeatedly shown that the numbers don't lie after 6 years of operation. If it is not a failure, then what I am seeing here is the complete denial of this failure.
"194k people use it, that's more than the populations of 20 sovereign nations! That's a success" has correct metrics, as correct as yours, but using that to call it a success is an opinion. Just like your statement is an opinion.
Not everything has to be used daily by a million+ people to be considered a success.
2) 192000 is the number for mastodon, there's a wider network that mastodon servers are a part of,
3) this is not some company like twitter or gab or whatever with quarterly performance announcements and user on boarding targets, it is software that works, works well and people use it. That's the criteria for "not a failure" in this case.
You know whats a failure? The corporate "unite the world by sharing ideas, a better world through freedom of information exchange" ideology and motivation of the founders of the big tech sites, specifically twitter. They have already proven this by abandoning it. They're failures.
It is a platform. The creator of Mastodon seems to think it is.
> 192000 is the number for mastodon, there's a wider network that mastodon servers are a part of,
That is the daily active user count of the entire Mastodon network and instances that have been online for long enough to at least have one user login once a week.
> this is not some company like twitter or gab or whatever with quarterly performance announcements and user on boarding targets,
Yet, out of 3 million registrants and only 192k use it. That is more than 90% of people not using it meaning that there is virtually no one using it on a daily or even weekly basis. That is a failure for something that has been constantly compared to as a 'Twitter alternative' or 'alternative social network' ever since its 1.0 or 2.0 release and each time Mastodon is brought up anywhere else other than Mastodon; like this site for example [0][1], Twitter, Facebook and online news articles.
After 6 years of existence, it really is a total failure and the denial, constant contradictions by it's supporters (it is a platform like it or not) and deflections underscores the low usage with a clear majority of users still running back to Twitter after a few days of using Mastodon.
I don't care what a typical person cares about, that's the point you're not getting. Nobody on fedi does. Nobody on the internet does outside of the stockade. Caring about what other people care about is how you get these monoculture wannabe coca cola commercials that are the mainstream 5 site web. The old internet we have nostalgia for is still there, with modern technology, you just have to go use it. So that's what people like me do.
That's not how it works. It's open source and can be forked and improved upon. It doesn't need millions of users to survive and be useful to a lot of us.
Outside of the tech circle, virtually no-one cares at all after 6 years of existence especially with the constant comparisons to Twitter back then and today. This also explains that many people who left Twitter to Mastodon months ago came right back to post on Twitter again because the level of interaction on Mastodon is extremely low.
It isn't early days anymore and 6% of registered users are not using it. If that is not a failure to convince Twitter users to use or migrate to Mastodon, then I don't know what is. Not exactly a convincing elevator pitch for normal users to use outside of tech.
Just 6 days ago somebody posted a poll asking people how often they log in to Mastodon [1]. 2,691 people responded to their poll, 71% answering "every day". Consider it was posted by someone with 201 followers, and people only had 6 days to respond. That, to me, is slightly more than virtually no-one. 2,859 sysadmins consider Mastodon worth running on their domain.
I use Mastodon on a daily basis. I follow interesting people on it, I get more than my fair share of cat pictures through it, I find out about things happening in the world through it. I don't use Twitter. To me, it is a Twitter alternative, because it has replaced Twitter for me. Don't see what other claims there are to realize.
Twitter is literally experimenting with being more "Mastodon-like" with "Circles"
Are there any paths or efforts toward the reverse? I know that's not the design but might there be some value, utility, and possibility in a more "centralized" Mastodon?
Specifically, the value of centralization here wouldn't be governance, but analytics. Finding out what people are "mostly talking about" and perhaps getting more attention to bigger names. I know that's not everybody's bag but I think it would be valuable.
This is unlike Twitter, where followers have no choice but to put up with my thoughts, book reviews and photos even if they are only interested in one thing.
If multiple Twitter accounts are encouraged, I've never seen the people I follow use it. They all post multiple kinds of things through one account, and never ask followers to follow any other Twitter accounts they may be using.
I REALLY like the idea (and practial implementation) of linking different domains of information together trough an open standard like ActivityPub!
Mastodon is good for communities and tech chat.
We talk about Mastodon the tech a lot, but I don't see it linked very much outside of meta discussion about the platform.
The reason it is not getting actually replaced by another product is very simple: they can't move the community of Twitter there. Largest public place to go and make your political enemies seethe and cope in 280 characters or less.
A mastodon instance is often its own island, with one view of the world, and they don't connect to any other instances with a different view of the world because the others are intolerant assholes (but themselves are alright, of course). Ironic, given the protocol is made specifically to link instances together so that the network become more robust, and that people joined because it's a more open design than twitter.
On the other hand, Twitter that is full of trends, SJW, extremists of all sides and censorship, manage to send me toward new paths of thinking regularly.
The focus on decentralisation and not on solving the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [1] means they focused on the wrong problem. They've just created an island for jerkwads that think they are better from the other jerkwads at the bird site.
Now, I wouldn't be against a Twitter-like for direct friends. Like Google+ for a moment tried to do before it imploded.
1: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
Most of the problems listed are UI problems. You can use any client you want.
A few shortcomings of all current clients, particularly application clients (not web clients) are the inability to merge timelines, the inability to create custom timelines, the inability to follow instances and the inability to remote follow (client only follow, your account isn't actually following). These are all things technically possible that expand the usability of the software but nobody seems to implement it.
Beyond that, there's more than just mastodon there.
And the network can replace twitter. And it will, either it or something like it. Twitter is a company, it has to show revenue to investors, which means it has a limited lifespan hardcoded in. It has to change things, which always means alienating users. An open network like activitypub on the other hand, can function just fine with 2 users for a hundred years before people start using it. It doesn't have to have growth, which means it can continue on indefinitely. Nobody has to change anything, but you can if you want. Open tools will, in all cases, supplant the corporate offerings they compete with given enough time.
If you're referring to something else let me know, I'd be interested.
Gab had no more toxic content than any twitter thread on a contentious topic.
I think it's an issue with MS Outlook, not with email.
AFAIK, the two apps that blocked gab were Tusky and Toot!. This isn't like all email clients were doing this. The other thing is that local server admins blocked gab en masse. This is why you should find an instance that matches your requirements.
Maybe this isn't the way most people are using Twitter though, I would agree that being off the platform entirely would be better than just letting their algos serve up content to you and becoming addicted to the dopamine rush of likes and retweets.
No, I think almost everyone on Twitter is there to consume stuff that conforms with their worldview/politics, same as you.
I don't think Mastodon can ever recover from this even with the so called 'migration' that happened because of Elon buying Twitter, I don't think that caught on to shift anything, probably only a small fraction of techies use the main Mastodon instance and that is pretty much it.
TruthSocial makes this even worse.
When I think of Mastodon I think of TruthSocial, the main instances have little to no activity, almost no reason to join any them.