Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being.
0: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter...
Mastodon blew its moment. It could have eaten Twitter’s lunch. But onboarding—specifically, choosing a server—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.
Mastodon's real problem in my opinion is that its primary audience today doesn't actually want anyone new to join - it's VERY toxic for newcomers who don't fit a specific mold. It's a shame, cause we really do need something new.
I'm hoping some of the new decentralized ones take off.
Edit: I think the comment about this being survivor bias is fair, but I still believe the community itself is a bigger hurdle for Mastodon than the signup flow
I don't care about federation, and I want algorithmic discovery. Specific I want to follow all sorts of people from around the world (on multiple mastodon servers) and have more people suggested to me based on that. Mastodon can't even reliably search across servers.
The reality is even once you're connected, it can be a rough place to explore for newcomers.
It reminds me of how Metro Atlanta has grown. People move out a bit to get away from Atlanta traffic. Then they miss all the stuff they had in Atlanta, and start clamoring for all they miss from where they moved from. It often starts with a Target or a movie theater. Ten years on, they're complaining about Atlanta traffic again, and they move. And the cycle repeats until half of North Georgia is consumed by a web of crumbling asphalt roads dangling off packed highways.
The difference here is Mastodon, as a community, said "No. Learn a new way or buzz off." Most people buzz off, and occasionally complain about how hostile the community was to them to anyone who'll listen. Some people stick around and appreciate the different way of doing things. Repeat.
The challenge is that it's intentionally difficult to find your community on there unless you're invited in from an existing connection outside of Mastodon. I understand that's how some people want it - but blaming users for not understanding how to "learn a new way" in the first place IS hostile - whether you want to hear it or not.
Ultimately, doesn't matter. Mastodon will be what it will be, and folks like me will find something else that's a little more welcoming to people who aren't quite as my-tribe-only focused.
Then you're not who I'm referring to.
The first "recommended" server on the Mastodon's official website was something about anime, and the second seemed to be about some "Queer friendly furry community", whatever that means. Then there was one about tech and and the local Bay Area one.
At least, unlike GNU Ring (or whatever it's called nowadays) it didn't just crash on startup.
The great thing about Mastodon is that it doesn't push anything in my face that I didn't subscribe to.
I have not experienced that ... at all. Surely this is highly instance dependent.
The reason I'm confident saying that is that it's actually by design for the platform. The community is very hostile towards any kind of discovery tools or enhancements that help you explore the network without a direct introduction. Any attempt to provide that functionality is blasted with an intense amount of aggression and shut down.
My recommendation is to find an instance with some kind of governance plan, and hopefully a stable stream of donations. Volunteer instances indeed could go at any time. And of course, if you can, donate to one or a few instances out of good citizenship.
I think it's also worth mentioning there are other services built around ActivityPub as well (and federation). I found friendica pretty good (as a Mastodon/facebook alternative), although I don't use it.
Instances I can recommend to HN fellows are probably https://floss.social/about, https://chaos.social/explore and https://mathstodon.xyz/about. But don't worry too much, you can move later without too much issue (though moving posts themselves is not possible).
I think you don't necessarily even need that if you have a better way to support discovery and interaction with content from other places.
with social platforms, you do just that. you want to see a centralized list of available users to choose to follow or subscribe or join cult or whatever.
i'm deliberately using centralized here as not needing to know that multiple servers exist with different users in each. maybe i'm showing my ignorance of mastodon, but it seems like mastodon.com or whatever central website could just publish a list that mastodon clients can refer to rather than making users discovery a hunt and fetch kind of process. like a torrent index site. if that already exists, then i'll TIL the workings of mastodon. if it doesn't exists, then it seems very short sited.
I do agree that migrating between servers could be a more streamlined process though.
soo... mastodon.social? the instance listed as first option, clearly marked as being run by the Mastodon company?
But I'm sure you'll find another reason why doing exactly what you suggested isn't reasonable.
I'm not entirely sure that's a bug. Specifically, I'm curious whether it squelches non-niche conversations like: Are vaccines a nefarious plot by Bill Gates to implant mind-control chips?
The most recent gaff of exposing people "private" circles to the main feed (including private nudes) is probably going to create a new slew of legal issues.
I'd be willing to guess a single Kardashian has more followers than NPR (maybe I'm too cynical). Eventually, the way Musk is running Twitter, he'll give a free blue check mark for the Brawndo Corp. Maybe he could just rename Twitter to "Ow, my balls"
At that point, all of the big content companies are on your side – none of them are going for a “but we really want to use their content without paying for it!” argument – and it further increases the number of people reconsidering their continued use of the site.
So how many of their followers are bots and what’s NPRs true value to Twitter? I don’t know. I’ve got a small 5k following and I have similar engagement.
Most twitter account followers are nothing but bots. Millions of 'followers' but likes and retweets only in the dozens.
It also makes for huge egos. Like, they know they bought all their followers, but they wake up one day and forget, and start to believe their own bullshit.
To be fair it is everywhere, youtube accounts will millions of followers do the same. Never more than 200 comments or likes on them.
Seems to me the only organic accounts are the ones with only a few K.
I assume anything with 100k-1 million followers is 95% bots.
No one ever thought it was odd that these accounts all got their million followers in the first few days of acct creation, then literally didnt gain any more ever?
Or how odd it is that every celebrity or business just happened to hit 1mil+?
Please show me the celebrity/business/politician with even a quarter as many retweets or likes as their follower count.
It doesn't happen. It's an open secret they all buy their followers. They call it 'growth hacking' or 'fake it till you make it'- I call it bullshit.
There are firms that do nothing but increase follower count.
Simply do an internet search for 'where to buy twitter followers'. It's pretty sad its literally that simple.
I wouldn't envy the hosts having to read our their addresses but npr.org could absolutely implement WebFinger if they were thus inclined
I think it is time that we can call it a day after 7 years, and we should also admit that the Mastodon experiment has become unviable, unscalable, obsolete and already extinct as a serious alternative against Twitter. It had its slither of a chance, and it still failed.
Maybe a lesson in networks effects will tell you why the 220M+ daily active users on Twitter still continue to use the platform. Unsurprisingly.
https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-breaks-16-month-twitter-sil...
Nah.