Mastodon Is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media – In a Good Way

Basically a [dupe]

This is a blog about a comment on a thread from earlier today, in which all the conversation is basically over there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37334737

I don't know if I am an outlier, but even though I love the idea of decentralized social media and dislike a lot about Twitter, my Twitter experience is better than my Mastodon experience.

I use both as a log of interesting stuff I want to preserve and maybe review in the future.

Both work fine for this purpose.

But when I see "529 Views, 7 likes, One Reply" on Twitter, it gives me an additional sense of community:

https://twitter.com/marekgibney

On Mastodon, I have never seen any reaction whatsoever:

https://masto.ai/@mg

It might be just because my Twitter account is older. I don't know. But somehow I have the feeling it will stay this way.

Ish.

Advertising-based media gets funding and will work. Due to the nature of funding, any ad-based media will always be bigger and more mainstream. See Youtube, TikTok, Instagram. The content creators are now glorified advertisers who can hawk their attention-economies for money.

You can't beat money, not for mainstream. Those who work for money can make more money, and spend that money to make more money on top of that. That in of itself drives more content and eyeballs, and to some degree higher-quality (or at least, more attention-grabbing) media.

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That's not to say that Mastodon is going to fail. We nerds don't care much about attention and care more about having a discussion space to share ideas. Yes, there's a degree of attention-economy here as well (see any 1980s-era computer magazine: the advertisements for various computer parts are obvious). So there will be a tredmill towards advertising and attention media IMO, even on something like Mastodon. (Ex: Tumblr and Threads might be ActivityPub / Mastodon compatible, what then?).

Recognizing that we're a niche community who prefers to slink away from attention (and indeed: attention-grabbers disgust us rather than intrigues us), that's fine. We just need to build our own little corners of the internet that matches our discussion style and pace.

But don't fall into the trap of believing that Mastodon can displace Twitter (or whatever replaces Twitter in the long term, like Threads or Tumblr or whoever). Appreciate what Mastodon has built, but also recognize its a niche appeal.

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For the non-Mastodon aware, I think the best example of such a discussion site is https://mastodon.gamedev.place/explore, perhaps one of the better Mastodon instances for nerds that match Hacker News's stereotypes.

There's no chance that gamedev.place will ever become a mainstream instance. And that's fine and cool. Their focus on game development and programming issues makes them a pleasant community to interact with. That's the kind of community that only Mastodon can build, that will not work as well on Twitter.

Personally I did not last long on Mastodon but that's mainly from the standpoint of also never having been super interested in Twitter as a medium. His breakdown of what the average social media feed looks like rings true though. My instagram feed is obnoxious and overrun with the same 12 accounts between ads. I turn off the "recommended" posts every 30 days and will be very sad when those are not optional anymore. I wish I could commit to leaving the platform, but I'm not there yet.

I am not or was ever was a big twitter user, but friends made me sign-up a few years ago.

I signed up to Mastodon after Elon bought Twitter and I find I use Mastodon far more than I ever used Twitter.

It's surprising to me that forums haven't made a comeback. I guess because forums don't scale well and therefore VC has zero interest in funding them.

Everything I dislike about modern social media was a solved issue on a well-run forum: less spam and self-promotion, a tighter community, more toleration for off-topic discussion. When I look at Mastodon, it still has the same blaring "listen to me!" format that Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. all have.

On the traditional forum, the idea of making a thread purely to "share your thoughts" on the topic-du-jour was anathema. Threads were topic-based, not individual based, and the designated personal spaces (post signatures) also allowed for much more creativity – while still not being the primary focus.

Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

I feel like the decentralization of things like Twitter and reddit makes me wish RSS could make a comeback. Has it? (or did it never leave?)

mastodon isn't doing much of anything because it just doesn't have the adoption. people are still using twitter

I have seen the future

And it is a Wordpress site with an ActivityPub plugin

For a turn of the wheel

Every Internet site a small node, hosted by friends or family, sharing your thoughts with the world, with far fewer middlemen (for good and for ill)

Until the corporations get enough of their claws into the AP attention stream to co-opt it and become it’s main host and cut it off from its roots to feast on greater portions of everyone’s attention and money

And once again we are watching places like Facebook and Google and Twitter and Amazon devour the Internet

And once that, too has passed

There shall be a new protocol for the people to talk upon

And whatever it is, however it works, ultimately it will be a plugin

For Wordpress.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again my unpopular opinion is that Mastadon will never become mainstream outside of tech literate communities - it’s just too complicated to wrap your head around if you’re used to centralised social media sites. There is a certain learning curve and unfortunately I can’t see it taking off for the average non-technical person who just likes to doom scroll in front of the TV

I still question the value of the idea of "social network".. in the fact that socializing is not the same as sending rapid short letters.

Mastodon - or rather the 'fediverse' of which Mastodon is part - 'rewinds the clock on social media' in that it makes it possible to recreate the heavily censored echo chamber which Twitter ended up being under Dorsey, Agarwal, Roth, Gadde and the rest of the old leadership group. At the same time the fediverse makes it possible for those who are censored by the former to create their own instances where they can act in any way they want ranging from erudite conversations on important matters (if only...) to shit-posting memes. The rampant censorship - shunning entire instances because they do not toe the party line in some way - which permeates the fediverse has led and will continue to lead to the formation of disparate islands of federation with hardly any connections between them.

With a bit of luck there will eventually emerge a large enough contingent of federated sites which neither cave to the censorship demands from the 'progressive/left' factions nor devolve into the God & Guns parochialism often seen on the 'conservative/right' side. A place where 'conservative' and 'progressive' subjects can be discussed without the immediate labelling - 'racist!', 'nazi!', 'homophobe!' or 'commie!', 'hippie!', 'purple-haired freak!' - which is all too common on 'social' media. For this to happen people should stop being afraid of being labelled and start standing up for their own ideas instead of simply parroting whatever some influencer-type puts in their mouths.

"A comment on a Hacker News thread" article not starting on a good foot.

That's good to hear, finding basic information is so difficult on Facebook.

went on mastadon a few times, seems clunky and no one is on it

Hopefully nostr will get more of attention too.