Monthly Fediverse posts cross 1 billion for the first time
masto.ai
masto.ai
> The growth-hacking folks around here should realize that from the perspective of the Fediverse there is no such "contest". This is probably the biggest difference why Twitter is by no means an alternative to Mastodon. There's no need to grow at all costs, move fast and break things, do crazy things to get engagement levels up, no commercial incentives, valuations, VC and shareholders to satisfy. The Fediverse is a network created by people, for people, and it is noticeable in the culture.. if you stop the frantic growth-hacking and take the time to discover it.
X is really important.
5 things you have to know: (thread)
All because of trying to game/use all the engagement figures about what shows your post more. Splitting your content into two tweets with half the people clicking through after reading the first results in half the people actually getting the information but massively more engagement stats so Twitter thinks it's much more important.
This seems to be a trend amongst wannabe influencers - sader than the lack of actual content is that you see the same thread copied and pasted and used by multiple accounts.
The infra can't really support it without heavily centralizing the model (something for which Mastodons questionable tech stack already doesn't do itself any favors).
There's also a bit of a privacy concern in that many instances just don't like it when big nameless entities start scraping the posts of their users, which also leads to a fairly hostile mentality towards the concept.
A lot of open source developers also post about other topics like their cats, dogs and favorite types of bread.
Which is fine. It's their profile. With twitter I could filter out these with carefully crafted search queries on separately maintained lists since I only have so much time in my day to devote to Tech,
I cannot do this on Mastodon since no one is diligent about hashtags and it is an explicit policy to cripple search. I've most stopped following open source developers since then.
I'm not consistent with it. I just check it occasionally. For people I'm particularly interested in (and who don't post that often!), I'll go to their profile and scroll down that separately to if there's anything I've missed. For others, if I didn't see it then that's ok.
> A lot of open source developers also post about other topics like their cats, dogs and favorite types of bread.
I just don't follow (or later unfollow) anyone who does this.
I care a lot about some random person's astronomy pictures. They're fun to look at. And some random person's programming content, or history or geology content... Good stuff.
You can seriously curate your own feed on Mastodon.
How many books get added to a library, or how many ppl get shoved into the library, has no effect on how many books one person can actually read and digest at a time.
Most of what we hear of the Fediverse is rants about twitter and a few of the same subcultures over and over again.
There used to be a site long ago, lost to the mists of time, called Big Boards, tracking the biggest forums:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130223011947/http://rankings.b...
10 years ago it was a thing called Gaia online with Chibi anime thingies and 2 billion messages. The more things change..
Sadly, I can't regain access to it, as it was deactivated. Last time I tried, I needed to create a new account in order to create a support request, and things got weird. That was a decade ago, I think.
I feel like this isn't true anymore. There's definitely a lot of chatter about Twitter of course and even more so now that there's regular Twitter related drama happening. But I have 7 federated instances on speed dial that range from general purpose, to infosec, to art, and to game development. They all talk about a lot of stuff, not just the things related purely to the server theme. I checked all of their local timelines just now and found only one post talking about Twitter and it was just a link to a news item where Elon talks about government access to Twitter.
Notably absent were any growth hack posts. Everything was just stream of consciousness stuff.
How many XX-chromosome neurotypical a-political undyed-hair normies are on your 7 federated instances? Please, count.
People can be miffed at me for pointing this truth out but that is how social networks grow big. Such is life.
The Rihanna/Swift/Kardashian/BlackPink people will never switch and as they will correctly inform you, they run the world. It is called social media, remember?
Social people will stay on Instagram and Twitter as that is where you get attention. AI researchers are all on Twitter too for that matter. The gravitational pull is too strong.
Edit: Hmm, I wonder who is downvoting this obvious mathematical fact of life, such a mystery!
Social networks grow big by targeting young female users as a vector for growth. Well documented countless times and talked about at length by the people who work there, this is one of the very key original "growth hacks" and not some sort of secret.
Rihanna posts baby pictures on twitter that get more views and engagement than all of the fediverse combined. This captures the key demographic.
You're welcome to publicly explain how the statement that you need buy in from content producers in the vain of Rihanna/Swift/Kardashians/BlackPink to capture the young female crowd, which brings in the young male crowd, which drives enough critical mass to bring in everybody else, an outright mathematical fact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law), as some sort of flame bait.
I am familiar with your link. What guideline specifically am I violating here in this thread please Dang? Thanks in advance.
This is not that hard.
> And no doubt others as well.
I think you should do some soul searching.
> This is not that hard.
Pretty hard without specific examples from this thread. Which you have not provided.
Nobody will see this behavior deep in a days old thread. It is very clear that you are not acting impartially. I know it and you know it.
"How many XX-chromosome neurotypical a-political undyed-hair normies are on your 7 federated instances? Please, count."
contains flamebait, name-calling, and snark. In a rather concentrated form! This sentence:
"People can be miffed at me for pointing this truth out but that is how social networks grow big"
is just grandiose flamewar rhetoric of the kind we don't want here. And this sentence:
"Edit: Hmm, I wonder who is downvoting this obvious mathematical fact of life, such a mystery!"
broke the site guideline against going on about downvotes.
You had a substantive point to make in that GP comment, but you made it in a way that broke the site guidelines badly. I shouldn't have to explain this to you—it seems quite obvious.
If you had made the same point in a thoughtful, respectful, conversational way, that would have been completely fine.
An attempt that was not sincere.
"And no doubt others as well" <- You are just transparently grasping at straws. You very much should have doubt, this is not an appropriate attitude for a mod on HN.
"contains flamebait, name-calling, and snark. In a rather concentrated form!"
What to be clear beyond a shadow of a doubt for the record is the name, specifically, that I am "name-calling"? The snark is in your mind friend. I was talking about the demographics, full stop.
Here is the guide line you are violating:
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Repeatedly saying that mention of Metcalfe's law is "grandiose flamewar rhetoric" does not make it so. It just does not.
> If you had made the same point in a thoughtful, respectful, conversational way, that would have been completely fine.
I do not believe that to be the case at all. The objection is clearly to its contents and you are retrofitting "violations".
By all means can you demonstrate how my comment can be re-written without changing its meaning? You are not acting as an impartial moderator at all, I don't think you can. There is no "proper phrasing" possible. You took a very mundane post and exploded it into "grandiose flame bait" no less. I urge you to do some soul searching about your behavior.
Just so it is clear to you, there is a growing crowd here that grudge/group flags comments they personally disagree with. They go through peoples comment histories and punish them for wrong think, flag unrelated things, even one word comments like "thanks". Flag first to discourage what they personally find disagreeable and attempt to justify it later if at all. My mention of this particular, somewhat new behavior for HN, is not a "violation". As soon as I posted these users went and started flagging en messe (not just downvoting) random old unrelated comments - hence I edited my post. Their behaviour is acceptable to you? I am the one you call out?
Maybe they've moved what you consider "respectful" language a bit too far with these tactics. Your explanations given here are lacking. There was no flaming going on, none, it is benign neutral language. My most charitable explanation is that you are being played by this group.
And again, nobody will see this now but you dang - do as you wish with this feedback. Consider addressing that particular problem for one or at least acknowledging it.
The exception is when twitter does something exceptionally stupid or controversial, but even then I don't think twitter ends up overwhelming my feed or anything.
Looks like those hundreds of millions of users really did move on.
Twitter: 220M+ DAU over 17 years.
Mastodon: ~50,000 DAU (1.4M MAU) over 7 years.
What matters in social networks is scale and it still means more users and there is already evidence that Mastodon not only was and is still struggling to scale, but eventually needed to re-centralize to handle their scalability issues, ie. using Cloudflare. Most of the instances there, are hosted by enthusiasts and hobbyists which intermittently struggle with more users.
If an instance is too small, it will easily be at risk of getting attacked and overloaded with users, with the instance falling over and having to close signups. If its too large, they become more centralized and to incentivise federation they have to close signups. Either way, centralization is inevitable.
It's already bad enough for normal users to 'choose an instance' if their can't register on a closed one or if a rouge admin bans you or an entire instance over something silly. Thus, It is quite clear to me, that for normal users who are not techies or geeks, Mastodon is not a viable alternative or even remotely to replace Twitter or even a recommendation.
Co-admin of https://functional.cafe here. Mastodon lists us as having 213 active users currently, so I guess this counts as a small instance. Haven't seen our instance fall over for more than a day or two except for hitting hardware limits, mostly hard disk space.
Also, I have no idea why you perceive closing sign-ups as a sign of failure. Closing sign-ups or going invite-only protects the current users and state of the instance (and, indirectly, the rest of the Fediverse) both from the dangers of attacks from new users and from explosive growth. Is it some sort of measure of success, to be able to always invite new people even at the expense of already existing ones?
Centralisation do makes seems much simpler to build, but it's not a strength, it's a big weakness and create single points of failure.
The endless Twitter drama and hot takes being pushed in your face by Twitter's engagement algorithm is tiring. I'd be happy if that dredge would be kept away from the Fediverse. It sadly isn't, but at least the situation hasn't gotten nearly as bad as Twitter's thanks to smaller communities that aren't afraid to practice moderation. I know the idea that someone might kick you off your server for being toxic is a problem for some free speech absolutionists, but personally I'm glad to see them return to Twitter/Truth Social/Gap/that weird web3 Twitter without moderation.
If you're trying to build a brand, Twitter is a lot better. Their fake engagement statistics below every post help a lot when it comes to inflating popularity statistics and you can't use ads on Mastodon to force your brand down other people's time lines. Only people who genuinely want to see what you're saying are seeing your content and that's why Mastodon will never replace Twitter:you can't buy your way to some twisted sense of popularity.
I doubt complete centralisation will ever happen. We'll probably end up with a sort of email light, where it's quite easy to set up a smaller instance but the majority of users flock to a few popular servers the same way Gmail and Outlook have replaced ISP mail accounts. However, because Mastodon and other Fediverse services don't really have a way to do AI moderation in a way that pretends to work well enough, I don't think scaling up to servers of more than a few thousand people is really viable.
What value does scale have, if you get only lazy retweets and likes and low-quality responses? I don't need 'eyeballs-on-tweet' kind of exposure, but interesting discussions. I get these on the Fediverse, and yes I managed to pass the 15 minutes selection of an instance. Which isn't all-too-important either, as instances federate with each other and you can migrate later, if you wish.
Btw, for an example pitching that Twitter isn't a good replacement for Mastodon, see yesterday's thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35578226
Normal users use the block button, protected tweets and whitelisted or follower-only replies which those already exist. Problem solved. This is a non-issue.
Even by looking at the so-called 'migration', it has failed to convince existing Twitter users to stick around on Mastodon which by comparing with the figures: 220M vs 50,000 daily active users, it is not even close to 1%.
It's clear the Mastodon has decided to immediately disqualify itself and has decided to add more barriers to entry and migrations within migrations as features as you have just admitted:
> ...yes I managed to pass the 15 minutes selection of an instance. Which isn't all-too-important either, as instances federate with each other and you can migrate later, if you wish.
My point(s) still stand. An island for techies and geeks isn't a great pitch to normal people who dislike Twitter and are looking for a viable alternative.
> Dividing MAU by 30 would not be a good approach.
It is. By doing so with the top 20 Mastodon instances [0] we get even less than 50,000 users using it daily, hence the generous approximation. Even if we don't, we can only imply that the DAU is ultimately far less than 100,000 users a day, posting at least once on the platform.
This is why many Mastodon supporters would rather not tell me the daily active users and would immediately avoid mentioning it, which this is the real reason why they cannot claim that millions are using it 'daily'.
[0] http://demo.fedilist.com/instance?software=mastodon&onion=no...
This is not how Twitter measures DAU. In fact, most Twitter users are quiet lurkers who rarely if ever tweet. Twitter makes money (or used to make money) from their eyeballs, not from their tweets.
The whole point is:
>> Even if we don't, we can only imply that the DAU is ultimately far less than 100,000 users a day, posting at least once on the platform.
Either way, it is safe to assume and with the data from Fedlist and matching it with the instances of 'active users' it is still less than 1% of the DAUs on Twitter, hence why Mastodon fans (like yourself) cannot claim and proudly show that there are 'millions of users' using it daily.
Furthermore, debunking the so-called 'Twitter migration' that wasn't.
Is this an admission that 50,000 was just an invented number out of nowhere?
Here are some stats though: https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics
> Mastodon fans (like yourself)
Mastodon users like myself
> there are 'millions of users' using it daily
Not millions plural, but over a million according to the link above.
What do you think '~' stands for? It is approximate estimation and my point still stands unchallenged.
> Here are some stats though: https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics
You don't even know yourself. That statistic is "MONTHLY" active users, not DAILY active users. You gave a figure that is collected directly from the 'servers' page that literally says "Monthly Active Users". [0]
Try again.
I think it stands for, you made it up. You still haven't given any citation whatever for that number.
> You gave a figure that is collected directly from the 'servers' page that literally says "Monthly Active Users".
It also literally says right below that, "Data collected by crawling all accessible Mastodon servers on Apr 15, 2023."
Look at the data. It has daily counts. For example, here's the April 15 data that matches with what the page says:
{"period":"2023-04-15","server_count":"9509","user_count":"6641082","active_user_count":"1201004"}
I think it's actually the "Monthly" label there that seems somewhat misleading, unless perhaps it means they update the page once a month.
In any case, as another commenter mentioned, DAU and MAU tend to be relatively close. You don't go from 1.2M monthly users all the way down to 50K daily active users, that's nonsense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35600846
Do you think Twitter has 6 billion MAU?
We both know there are NO sources. You gave a source for the MAUs. Thus, we can only give approximations and estimations of its DAUs.
> I think it's actually the "Monthly" label there that seems somewhat misleading, unless perhaps it means they update the page once a month.
Now you think it's the label's fault, after 7 years? Oh no! "It's misleading"!
Something that has been representative of Mastodon's monthly usage for 7 years is now not believable and is 'misleading'! /s Oh dear.
> In any case, as another commenter mentioned, DAU and MAU tend to be relatively close. You don't go from 1.2M monthly users all the way down to 50K daily active users, that's nonsense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35600846
Not for federated networks, yet here we are comparing centralized platforms like Facebook, Twitter and counting the numbers as if they are the same which we both know they aren't.
Henceforth, give a proper source that is verifiable that shows Mastodons DAUs and NOT its MAUs next time since you're still struggling to do so.
The question is what "Monthly" is supposed to mean exactly, given that the raw numbers change every day, as everyone can see from the above link. And as I said, one possible interpretation is "unless perhaps it means they update the page once a month".
> Not for federated networks
Says you, with no evidence, again. What exactly was your methodology for producing the estimate "50,000"?
And that represents the 'monthly' usage as I repeatedly said. That only shows MAUs, not daily. Never was a problem for 7 years.
> The question is what "Monthly" is supposed to mean exactly, given that the raw numbers change every day, as everyone can see from the above link. And as I said, one possible interpreation is "unless perhaps it means they update the page once a month".
It is clear that it is representative of the MAU of every "active" Mastodon instance and corroborates with that fedi-list link I gave which also clearly shows "MAU" and matches with that.
There is no room for excuses or blaming labels after 7 years of Mastodon's MAUs count.
> Says you, with no evidence, again. What exactly was your methodology for producing the estimate "50,000"?
Yet it seems that you haven't even tried refuting it with any verifiable source and you are continuously passing the MAU metric as the DAU which is clearly incorrect, which I can dismiss your so-called 'DAU' source for Mastodon. Until then:
"Give a proper source that is verifiable that shows Mastodons DAUs and NOT its MAUs next time since you're still struggling to do so."
You: Yadda yadda yadda... [no answer]
I'm actually fine with taking 1.2 million as the assumption for the monthly active user count, but it's still absurd and inexplicable to go from that to a 50K daily active user estimate.
You: This... https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics
Me: That is MAUs, Not DAUs. Read this: https://joinmastodon.org/servers "Monthly Active Users"
Do you have a verifiable source for the DAUs? Not MAUs?
You: Errr......
So once again, you come back and have zero verifiable source(s) for the DAUs count for Mastodon.
> I'm actually fine with taking 1.2 million as the assumption for the monthly active user count, but it's still absurd and inexplicable to go from that to a 50K daily active user estimate.
It has always been that source for Mastodon's 'Monthly Active Users' for years and you knowingly used it to prove the numbers for the 'Daily Active Users', then when questioned you blamed the 'label' as 'misleading'.
The "Monthly Active Users" label could not have been more clearer and has been for years. You are free to dismiss my estimate, but once again you have admitted that you don't have any sources to even show me the DAUs.
So again:
"Give a proper source that is verifiable that shows Mastodons DAUs and NOT its MAUs"
At this point I doubt that you will. You seem to be very committed to avoiding the question, even though I've granted the assumption that you wanted.
If you care about a revenue stream like ads, or are a prominence wanting a broadcasting platform.. but in general: why, no, not at all?
It's like those threads about Signal, talking about how much better it is compared to whatsapp and the rest - okay, maybe, but if my friends aren't there already, it's worthless.
And also, what about those monopolies, I understand motivation, but the outcome is problematic.. If we want the everybody encompassing user platform it shouldn't be commercialized and owned like that, with a lot of idealism ;)
> but if my friends aren't there already, it's worthless
See that is another level problem there also.. if everybody jumps out of the window, I need too?How did we survive just prior to mega social networks.. huh.
So again, I know for some what you mention is the important point. But don't tell evryone, and also every playform, that if they are not aiming for super growth they are doing it wrong, because (and likely even intentionally) they aren't!
Not really. Having quality interactions is more important to me than having many interactions.
For me, Mastodon now have more of the right people than Twitter, but I still hold on to my Twitter accounts too because there are others I still want to talk to there.
On fedi I feel like I have a small community who engages with my posts. I think that's what people want, even a few hundred followers is enough to feel heard. I can control my own timeline and find content I want. It really doesn't matter if it's only 1% the size of Twitter because my timeline is leagues better.
How do you know that people saw your posts on Mastodon?
Whether it's an "Eternal September" thing or not that Mastodon hasn't hit yet remains to be seen. It really reminds me of modern social media meets older school internet (IRC & web forums days).
Citation definitely needed for this number.
It's not only false, it's egregiously false.
These stats seem to suggest that there are well over a million DAU: https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics
Please. That is the figures for the MAUs [0] and you're clearly using that to attempt to pass that as a source for the non-existent daily active users metric and you know it.
Moreover, you're still attempting to pass off 50,000 as something you just didn't make up out of thin air.
Correct. [0] "Monthly Active Users"
That does NOT say "Daily". Surely you can read that.
> Moreover, you're still attempting to pass off 50,000 as something you just didn't make up out of thin air.
Even it is wrong, There are no sources out there that is verifiable and you haven't provided one after I debunked your figures (which is actually the MAUs).
So as long as the exact DAUs is unknown, the figures can be estimated to be as low as 100,000 DAUs and even worst case 50,000 DAUs.
Yes, I discussed the issue in the link I gave. Surely you can read that.
> So as long as the exact DAUs is unknown, the figures can be estimated to be as low as 100,000 DAUs and even worst case 50,000 DAUs.
This doesn't follow. I can estimate it as 2 people. Or 2 billion people. Where does 100,000 or 50,000 come from? You repeatedly refuse to give any evidence that you haven't made those numbers up out of thin air.
Anyway, it's redundant to argue the exact same thing in 2 different threads, so let's stick to the other thread please, since it has more info and explanation.
Nope. After 7 years that is the MAUs as clearly shown to everyone. There are no issues with that figure.
> This doesn't follow. I can estimate it as 2 people. Or 2 billion people. Where does 100,000 or 50,000 come from? You repeatedly refuse to give any evidence that you haven't made those numbers up out of thin air.
NO source exists for Mastodon that verifies the DAUs, since it is not given; meaning that one can only estimate. The problem with your 'link' is that you continuously use it as the wrong metric when it is for the MAUs.
So until you provide a verifiable source for the 'DAU' figures it can only be estimated. I gave mine and you can disagree with it. But without such a definitive verifiable source confirming the DAUs, I can just dismiss it like you can dismiss my estimate.
Furthermore, it is no good blaming a 'label' that has been there for 7 years and now having a problem with it given you still don't have a source for the DAUs.
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that "active_user_count" in https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics is monthly active users, there's still a major problem with your daily estimate, because the monthly active user count is remarkably stable from day to day.
We have 32 days of data, and on most days the change in monthly active users is only around 5000, sometimes less. There was one day where the active user count dropped 13K, and one day where it grew 27K, but those are outliers.
How is it possible that ~92-96% of Mastodon users are not daily active users, yet the monthly active user count only changes from day to day by an average of less than 10K? Your numbers just don't add up. They don't even make sense, as far as human behavior is concerned, and it certainly doesn't align with what we see on every other social network.
They certainly seem to be very loyal, consistent monthly active users. I'm not sure what Twitter means exactly by a "daily" active user. I think I would have been considered one, but I also definitely missed days, so what qualifies or disqualifies an account as a daily active user? How many days can you miss?
Hold on, are you... getting DAU by dividing MAU by 28? That's very much not how that works; perhaps the easiest way to illustrate this is by considering Facebook, which has ~2bn DAU, but obviously does not have 48bn people using it every month.
In general for social media stuff, DAU and MAU are pretty close to each other; Facebook is 2bn vs 3bn or thereabouts, and AIUI Twitter is even closer.
Once matrix is up to discord levels of features, and the horrors facebook will be willing to todo for one last sip of growth get revealed, things might turn sour fast. All it takes is the social carawanne lead animals leaving the beaten track and the whole network will unravel following them.
It's something that more and more people will adopt over time because it's free and "good enough" for some use cases. A fraction of those who adopt it will contribute to it and it will improve. The longer this virtuous cycle continues the harder it is to stop. Over several decades it will commoditize a chunk of a technology layer that's currently proprietary (basically, the social graph). Maybe a huge chunk of it.
Again just like Linux and WordPress - there will be lots of of critics and naysaying from people who don't understand the economics of the software industry (or in some cases simply don't want to). They will be wrong, again. They will moan about it for many years after it has become successful. History repeats.
EDIT: @madeofpalk Better comment than mine, great links.
https://efdn.notion.site/0314a1800b774258a8e6197487c479bc?v=...
Individual Mastodon nodes might be interested in maximizing their userbase. But talking about "Growth goals for Mastodon" is like trying to talk about "Growth goals for the Internet."
I'm not even sure why people need to argue about this. If you want to use Mastodon, then do it, and if you don't want to use Mastodon, then don't. Is anyone forcing you? It's a personal choice. And no, Mastodon will never replace Twitter for hundreds of millions of people; it was never designed to do so. Mastodon vs. Twitter is a false dichotomy. It's more like Twitter vs. itself, Twitter vs. not-Twitter. From my own perspective, Mastodon is simply a place I happened to go after I already decided to stop using Twitter.
I suspect that to a large extent, arguing Twitter vs. Mastodon is only a proxy for arguing for or against the new owner of Twitter, and this argument has been rehashed ad infinitum on HN from various angles.
I'm perfectly capable of hating Elon Musk and Mastodon at the same time.
That's fine. So, don't use Twitter or Mastodon, and don't argue Twitter vs. Mastodon?
No, my claim was specifically about "arguing Twitter vs. Mastodon".
> Those things are not related.
Exactly! That's my point. They are entirely separate issues that are too often conflated.
> But if I dislike both, I'm supposed to not "argue Twitter vs. Mastodon"? It doesn't make any sense.
If you dislike both, then it doesn't make any sense to argue Twitter vs. Mastodon. It's a false dichotomy.
You're the one that is conflating them.
>If you dislike both, then it doesn't make any sense to argue Twitter vs. Mastodon. It's a false dichotomy.
How?
Q.E.D.
You'd think more people would be happy that the FAANG hegemony is being broken, at least a little, but I guess not.
Maybe people here are just projecting.
So the Fediverse took ~2 times as long, but in the face of much tougher competition and network effects. Better than I would have guessed!
Email, the thing with the "@" symbol, was invented in 1971. Most people did not use it until 30 years later.
ActivityPub, the thing with the two "@" symbols, is now 5 years old. If we assume it will propagate twice as fast as email, it will take another 10 years until it hits the mainstream.
Before Mastodon we had Status.net, Identi.ca, and GNU Social.
The Fedi will be celebrating its 15th year soon:
I wonder if pixelfed is going to have storage issues someday with the videos uploaded. I guess its dependent on the server but pixelfed.social is the only one with a large userbase.
I’m on a server with similar enough people and between the list of people I’m following and the “local” timeline for my server, I have a healthy stream of nerdiness and silliness.
It's perfectly understandable to me, but it's also not exactly great UI design.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679#issuecomme...
let your_instance="masto.ai";
document.location=(
"https://"
+ your_instance
+ "/authorize_interaction?uri="
+ encodeURIComponent(document.location)
)
You can use my bookmarklet editor to turn it into a bookmarklet:
Why is it so hard for techies to understand that celebrating and optimizing for complexity and difficulty, isn't a great selling point for Mastodon?
Yet, standing desks exists.
I think that's a good thing.
But if software has a UX problem and the only viable solution requires copying snippets of code around, then that is a reasonable criticism of the software.
Just like when you see an email on a website, that website cannot know which email service you use.
To easily follow someone on the Fediverse, your browseer needs to know how to handle Fediverse links for you.
Just like your browser needs to know how to handle email links for you.
What’s missing here is a standardised protocol scheme.
The old follow button would just open a popup where you entered your home instance + username. It would then redirect you to your instance (not needing a sign in cuz you're already logged in on that) and your instance would do all the magic for following.
I do think Mastodon can use a better follow button, though, but I don't know how to really do that without a browser extension that can access arbitrary websites (aka "a bad idea").
I know web applications can register protocol handlers, so perhaps an web+activitypub:// protocol combined with installing such a handler upon login at one's home server might help? Of course Safari doesn't implement this, but all other desktop browsers do and on mobile you can just use the apps.
Mangane (fork of Soapbox) UI running on my Akkoma instance is a two-click follow - click on the username, click on the follow button (which isn't wildly different to Twitter, technically - one click on the three dot menu, one click to follow; only difference is that you don't leave the tweet you're looking at.) Should imagine some JS/UI whizzkid could replicate the three dot menu and copy the follow (mute, etc.) functionality there (alas, this is far beyond my skillset.)
The problem isn't the follow button when browsing within your home instance, it's when you get linked to someone else's account on their home server and want to follow them.
Akkoma has 'Remote Follow' which uses an OAuth flow to execute the follow action on your home server. I think that's too heavy of a solution but it is pretty decent UX. Definitely better than Mastodon's which primarily prompts you to 'Sign in' 'On this server'. That's almost never relevant to the user and should not be the primary prompt when you click Follow.
The reason it's confusing currently is that people link to their home server, which is not useful to someone trying to follow them.
I mainly use Twitter for town-level information (as a glorified RSS), and the local administration barely masters Twitter, let alone more complex tools. But if there is a simple way to copy their messages towards the Fediverse, that could help bootstrap it.
There's also a decent, chance your posts are already readable on Mastodon through https://bird.makeup/. I wouldn't use that as an official source, but it's probably good to know about. It should also be noted that some servers block dedicated Twitter forwarding services like these because of the massive moderation task blindly forwarding the Twitter cesspool can cause.
I can't tell you what tool or program suits your needs most. There are systems ranging from fully custom ActivityPub servers to simple set-and-forget IFTT automations (https://ifttt.com/explore/how-to-crosspost-mastodon-twitter) that can solve the problem of "post the same stuff on two platforms". Sadly, the most easy to use tools that I know of are useless without access to the Twitter API and I doubt you'll be willing to spend the ridiculous amounts of money Twitter demands for that for a few replicated tweets.
As far as simple guides, everyone has their own idea of what "simple" means. In its most basic form, you type or paste text into an input field and hit the send button, just like on Twitter. You give people your username to follow (@user@server.com),they type that into their dashboard and they hit the follow button. If you want to reply to people, you click the reply button and type a reply. Retweeting and liking works the same way as on Twitter, with similar icons. Usernames are a bit longer because they include a domain name, but honestly who even cares about usernames on social media.
If you've ever emailed someone outside your organisation, using Mastodon shouldn't be harder than using Twitter. The hard part is synchronising the two, because the only people who have put effort into that so far either used the Twitter API or are comfortable with running shell scripts.
perhaps try WordPress out with the ActivityPub plugin?
Also somewhat surprised there wasn't more of a spike in April 2022; IIRC that's when Musk made his offer and it's certainly when I started un-mothballing my old mastodon account.
Still don't understand the connection between "Fed" and "Mastodon". I think a Mastodon-based social network should be called "Tuskverse" or "Pachyverse" or "Stompverse"
Being based on the same protocol, they are all to some extent interoperable - e.g. you can follow Pixelfed users from your Mastodon account.
"Fediverse" is the umbrella term for all of these applications working together. It is a portmanteau for "federated" and "universe". The "federal police" association is unfortunate, but it is something USA only - rest of the world doesn't really see this.
The US holds no monopoly on the concept of a federation. Germany (Föderale Bundesrepublik) is one too, so is India or Russia.
It's the first time I hear someone take offense with the name. I think it's nice honestly, captures the essence of the network well.
I say this as someone who has spent time trying to measure these things and has written a fair bit of software attempting to measure things like this.
In many ways, I hope that blindness continues...While i know my opinion there hurts valid research studies (and any stats work like yourself might conduct - sorry about that!), I think the pseudo-privacy that the network affords is worth the likelihood that any data set is only a fraction of the true numbers. My intent is not to be flippant....i just really value this nebulous aspect of the network...Like someone who values their small town feel (warts and all), and dislikes Big City folks who charge into said fictional small town trying to change things that may not need changing. (Not saying you or other researchers do so...just using a cheesy analogy)
How many of these posts are non-spam, useful etc?
Shouldn't we measuring usefulness of info, friendships formed, partnerships created, things learned etc? Though I don't know how to measure any of these, or if it is even possible.
9 times out of 10, this "data driven" stuff is just useless and annoying
As you point out, it's not without it's flaws, but I think most people would say that some data is better than none.
Social networks operate on an attention economy.
They all enforce this on each other as well, with a shared block list of servers on which the operators allow users to say things outside of this narrow political viewpoint.
This sort of restriction on speech isn't conducive to a healthy community where ideas and thoughts can be shared freely. Instead it's more like an authoritarian state where you have to be super careful about what you say, under threat of exile.
I disagree with your overall take for a few reasons. Some of the best forums on the Internet in the days of yore were heavily moderated. Some of the best subreddits are the most heavily moderated (AskHistorians is the example people provide routinely).
Not every place should be about an open free speech debate about everything. Having topic-focused spaces is perfectly reasonable and you as the user are owed nothing if you join one and start posting off-topic content.
Users are not owed a spot in any given community.
The "heavy moderation" of IRC days is markedly different than the "heavy moderation" that exists today. Back in the day, the ircops had all the power of the ban hammer. Today, the mob has all the power, and overwhelm the admins.
The mods try to hold onto a semblance of power by pointing to a strict set of rules and codes of conduct, but the reality is the mob gets the final say in who stays or goes, regardless of what the "rules" say.
There's nothing stopping a moderator/operator from simply blocking accounts on-instance who are erroneously flagging/reporting people.
There's also nothing stopping Wil Wheaton from finding a more sympathetic server admin or starting his own Fediverse server instances and ignoring people reporting his accounts (see also: Kevin Beaumont).
I've seen hobby chats that do not actually discuss the hobby they're designed for, because the keyboard warriors moderating the place have decided that their political flavor of the month is more important. It's not a healthy atmosphere for discussion, but it's the dominant one across the platform. And you WILL be aggressively blocked if you do not fit into it.
Peertube and Pixelfed have fared so much better, I guess because the SocMed(tm) format is inherently designed around creating a bubble.
But the Fediverse is not one monolithic network. And nobody is obligated to listen to a single thing you say. So if you start hassling a bunch of people who are there to talk to their friends while also being openly queer, non-white, and liberal, then you'll start racking up the blocks. Keeping a community healthy involves kicking out people who want to destroy it, too.
By tying each individual to a server you are allowing cancel by association culture. Individuals should not be put in left/right buckets (or any other buckets) and have that association be used to censor/exclude them. The structure of the Fediverse encourages in/out groups. That’s why it sucks, and that’s why giving individuals the power over their own identity will be the future of social.
And as it happens the reason most Mastodon instances are moderated the way they are is that their users demand it.