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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

And it is not early days anymore.

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.

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It's not a failure. This idea that it has to be huge to be a success comes from the instagram, Facebook, twitter and YouTube way of counting success. 100 million views, 10k likes in an hour, 100k followers... these humongous numbers are not normal, and they're not necessary for a rewarding social experience online. In fact I think the opposite is true.

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's a total failure. John Mastodon, the CEO and founder of Mastodon, was just fired from the company after their stock prices hit an all time low.

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.

This is how it works today:

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.

Mastodon is used by German and European government agencies (e.g. social.bund.de, social.network.europa.eu). There was a real-life meet-up of Mastodon users a few hours away from where I live last month. Jan Boehmermann, a German comedian and TV personality started his own Mastodon server, and the Mastodon logo appears in the intro of his TV show. The uni I studied at uses it, and so does the bank I use.

> It's not a failure

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.

[0] http://sp3r4z.fr/mastodon/accurate_user_count

1) it's not a platform,

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.

> 1) it's not a platform,

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17788060

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15514987

192,000 is not "virtually no one." There are a about dozen sovereign nations with fewer people.

> 192,000 is not "virtually no one."

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.

Why the obsession with total registered users? Do Twitter or Facebook even publish that data? I cannot find it. Every number they use is based on MAU or DAU. Which is because the registered users number is quite meaningless. It just goes up over time. Spammers, bots, multiple accounts, banned accounts. No business or service has a 100% retention rate. Half a million MAU is not the scale of Twitter, but it's not nothing, and it's way more people than you'll ever want to have in your home feed.

> It is a failure.

It's not a failure.

It is a failure as I have already explained.

Sorry, I thought we were doing the "my opinion is the rightest, because i said so!" thing.

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

> Sorry, I thought we were doing the "my opinion is the rightest, because i said so!" thing.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17788060

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15514987

It is absolutely an opinion. Your metrics are right, but "it's a failure" is absolutely an opinion. It's your opinion, based on what you place value on. Mastodon is not a failure to the 200k people that use it, it's a success to them. Thats their opinion, because they value different things than you.

"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.

I just don't get OP's "years have passed, only a few hundred thousand ppl use it daily, therefor it's an abject failure" stance.

Not everything has to be used daily by a million+ people to be considered a success.

I agree. Mastodon is more fun to use than Twitter.

The fact that multiple companies have those numbers indicates the numbers are in fact “normal”. What isn’t normal is continuing to insist that the typical person cares enough about the ideology that motivates projects like Mastodon in spite of the literally hundreds and thousands of failed projects indicating the contrary.

I dont know what hundreds of thousands of projects you're talking about, or what ideology for that matter. It isn't about ideology. I can actually talk to hundreds of thousands of people and say whatever I want. Whatever I want. And they can too. And nobody comes in and tells us to do anything. And there's not a bunch of political influencers and journalists coming around trying to tell us what to think, there's no billion dollar names, just people. It is legitimately a better experience.

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.

The people who view Mastodon as a Twitter disruptor care.

My favorite part about Mastodon/The Fediverse is people like you think it is dead and hopeless and don't come there

It is dead. 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'.

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 use it, and sometimes I unfollow people because the timeline gets to be too much to keep track of (so not dead). I have met people off it in real life.

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.

It is indeed dead. We have given it 6 years and little to no-one is on the platform.

> 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.

Consider the feeling mutual.

Happily so!

Just because you are not there, doesn't mean other people are not.

> 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)

That sounds pretty dismal? E.g. >90% of "registered users" don't actually use the platform.

It's because it is dismal and Eugen is right as well and there is evidence supporting that [0] which it is still true to this day with the up-to-date instances that are active and with users who have logged in at least once over a week.

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.

[0] http://sp3r4z.fr/mastodon/accurate_user_count

Having a low active user count doesn’t mean there’s no one to interact with. I use it sometimes, I see lots of interaction. It’s not a success as a business (which it’s not necessarily trying to be) but that doesn’t mean it’s not a thing (a protocol) that many people are regularly using.

>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.

Despite the name of your source, it seems to consider less than half of existing Mastodon servers. According to my own crawler, the up-to-date active user count is 540,258.

Do you think Twitter or Facebook is any better?

Yes? Facebook's MAU is almost half the world population. Hell, their daily active users is almost 2B.

Facebook claims 700+ million login daily but many are bots.

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.

Mastodon considers 20 people in a hashtag as trending because people don't use hashtags for new topics very often, and the hashtags that do get used often and regularly are exactly the opposite of "trending". And because trending data is somewhat limited by your server's view of the fediverse (each server calculates trends based on content from users it is subscribed to).

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.

[1]: https://todon.nl/@alternative_be/108894477425005957

Twitter doesn't have to "lose", for Mastodon to "win".

By virtue of the incumbency and respective "business" models, it is possible for Mastodon to not lose even as Twitter wins, while the converse is ... implausible.

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