friendica.eskimo.com
I don't like the clickbait title at all -- Mastodon's clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn't surprise me if it outlives Xitter.
Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn't stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.
Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.
Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks. It's become obvious. That Twitter was mostly algorithm hype and FOMO.
Mastodon tries to be healthier but I'm not convinced that microblogs in general are that useful, especially to a techie audience who knows RSS and other publishing formats.
@dragontamer @The Nexus of Privacy
"short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks"
I agree and that's why the first site I put up was friendica, but I find on friendica, even though people have the space to express their thoughts in depth and eloquently, few do so, so perhaps Mastodon is so successful because it appeals to people who are incapable of effective self expression. At any rate, it is a reality that it is, so I do run one of those also.
What are some of the issues you'd like to see addressed? I don't use mastodon as much so I'm not familiar with what has / hasn't been done.
ex. I hear they've been working on content discovery, such as with the recommended accounts carousel
erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-ea⦠is a good overview (not by me!) of issues that the November 2022 wave ran into. What's frustrating is that so many of these are very similar to the issues the April 2017 wave ran into!
Release 4.3 did some work on the recommended accounts, that's good, but the problems start even before that. What instance to sign up to? Most people have better experiences on smaller instances that match either their interests or their geography ... but how to find them? mastodon.social is (for most people) kind of meh -- certainly not the worst, but it's not all that well-moderated, and it's big enough that the local feed isn't useful for finding interesting people or stuff -- and that's now the default. Also it took over a year to get 4.3 out; I get it, they're a small team, some stuff turned out to be a lot harder than expected, and they had to deal with a bunch of security patches in the interim ... still, that means progress is frustratingly slow.
A very informal inquiry into why some people on the Bluesky network didn't have a great time when they tried using Mastodon in the period leading up to the summer of 2023.erinkissane.com
short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks.
I 100% agree with this sentiment.
Jaron Lanier has a great book called You Are Not A Gadget, where he talks about the way we design and interact with systems, and he has some thoughts I think reflect this sentiment very well:
"When [people] design an internet service that is edited by a vast anonymous crowd, they are suggesting that a random crowd of humans is an organism with a legitimate point of view." (This is in reference to Wikis like Wikipedia)"Different media designs stimulate different potentials in human nature."
He talks about how when a system becomes popular enough, it can "lock in" a design, when others build upon it as standard. Such as how the very concept of a "file" is one we created, and nearly every system now uses it. Non-file based computing is a highly unexplored design space.
And the key part, which I think is relevant to Mastodon, the fediverse, and social media more broadly, is this quote:
"A design that share's Twitter's feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter's adoration of fragments."
Fragments, of course, meaning the limited, microblogging style of communication the platform allows for.
I've seen some Mastodon instances that help with this, by not imposing character limits anywhere near where most instances would, opting for tens of thousands of characters long. But of course, there is still a limit. Another design feature by Twitter that is now locked in.
But of course, people are used to that style of social media. It's what feels normal, inevitable even. Changing it would mean having to reconceptualize social media as a concept, and might be something people aren't interested in, since they're too used to the original design. We can't exactly tell.
As Lanier puts it,
"We don't really know, because it is an unexplored design space."
Non-file based computing is a highly unexplored design space.
No it isn't; that's what databases are.
I'm not a big expert on database technology, but I am aware of there being at least a few database systems ("In-Memory") that use the RAM of the computer for transient storage, and since RAM doesn't use files as a concept in the same way, the data stored there isn't exactly inside a "file," so to speak.
That said, they are absolutely dwarfed by the majority of databases, which use some kind of file as a means to store the database, or the contents within it.
Obviously, that's not to say using files is bad in any way, but the possibilities for how database software could have developed, had we not used files as a core computing concept during their inception, are now closed off. We simply don't know what databases could have looked like, because of "lock-in."
That's what some databases are. Most databases you'll see today still inevitably store the whole contents of the DB within a file with its own format, metadata, file extension, etc, or store the contents of the database within a file tree.
The notion of "lock in" being used here doesn't necessarily mean that alternatives don't or can't exist, but that comparatively, investment into development, and usage, of those systems, is drastically lower.
Think of how many modern computing systems involve filesystems as a core component of their operation, from databases, to video games, to the structure of URLs, which are essentially usually just ways to access a file tree. Now think of how many systems are in use that don't utilize files as a concept.
The very notion of files as an idea is so locked-in, that we can rarely fathom, let alone construct a system that doesn't utilize them as a part of its function.
Regardless, the files example specifically wasn't exactly meant to be a direct commentary on the state of microblogging platforms, or of all technology, but more an example for analogy purposes than anything else.
What social media platforms don't have some kind of character limit?
What platforms don't use a feed?
What platforms don't use a like button?
What platforms don't have some kind of hashtags?
All of these things are locked-in, not necessarily technologically, but socially.
Would more people from Reddit have switched to Lemmy if it didn't have upvotes and downvotes? Are there any benefits or tradeoffs to including or not including the Save button on Lemmy, and other social media sites? We don't really know, because it's substantially less explored as a concept.
The very notion of federated communities on Lemmy being instance-specific, instead of, say, instances all collectively downloading and redistributing any posts to a specific keyword acting as a sort of global community not specific to any one instance, is another instance of lock-in, adapted from the fediverse's general design around instance-specific hosting and connection.
In the world of social media, alternative platforms, such as Minus exist, that explore unique design decisions not available on other platforms, like limited total post counts, vague timestamps, and a lack of likes, but compared to all the other sites in the social media landscape, it's a drop in the bucket.
The broader point I was trying to make was just that the very way microblogging developed as a core part of social media's design means that any shift away from it likely won't actually gain traction with a mainstream audience, because of the social side of the lock-in.
Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks
Your post could fit on Mastodon
My post above is 376 characters, which would have required three tweets under the original 140 character limit.
Mastodon, for better or worse, has captured a bunch of people who are hooked on the original super-short posting style, which I feel is a form of Newspeak / 1984-style dumbing down of language and discussion that removed nuance. Yes, Mastodon has removed the limit and we have better abilities to discuss today, but that doesn't change the years of training (erm... untraining?) we need to do to de-program people off of this toxic style.
Especially when Mastodon is trying to cater to people who are used to tweets.
Your post could fit on Mastodon
EDIT: and second, Mastodon doesn't have the toxic-FOMO effect that hooks people into Twitter (or Threads, or Bluesky).
People post not because short sentences are good. They post and doom-scroll because they don't want to feel left out of something. Mastodon is healthier for you, but also less intoxicating / less pushy. Its somewhat doomed to failure, as the very point of these short posts / short-engagement stuff is basically crowd manipulation, FOMO and algorithmic manipulation.
Without that kind of manipulation, we won't get the kinds of engagement on Mastodon (or Lemmy for that matter).
Microblogging is definitely useful for many things, short and quick thoughts, links to news articles, jokes, memes etc. You can also comment and share things easily. Microblogging actually resembles instant messaging in a lot of ways, just with an undefined βgroup chatβ size.
I find it kinda funny that Twitter has become so toxic that people start thinking there must be something wrong with the format.
Also RSS clearly canβt replicate a big chunk of the desirable properties of microblogging (eg. easy sharing and commenting).
They are in competition with Mastodon, and have a marketing budget.
Five years from now, those platforms will become enshittified as their budgets dry up. They will need to milk the users for revenue. Well see another surge in a few years, until they learn that Mastodon is actually better.
Then the next Billionaire with a massive ego and huge budget comes out and makes another one.
Or we get Jack Dorsey making a new company for a 3rd time.
Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.
why is that though?
I think because when it comes to Instagram or Twitter type social media more people probably use it only to follow accounts and have no interest in being involved in it. So closer to treating it like a rss reader than something like lemmy or reddit. And conversation feed sucks in general.
I use squawker for Twitter. Can't comment, like, sub, or whatever and account follows are just local feeds like Stealth for Reddit or NewPipe or Freetube. And that's all I need from it.
because its name is Mastodon, something that when people google it pulls up a band.
Also because it's trying to be a hot fresh new thing but it's literally named after an animal that's extinct.
If it had a catchier and more unique name it probably would have caught on more.
ZING!
And dipshit elon literally argued in court that "twitter doesn't exist anymore"
HMMM MAYBE SOMEBODY SHOULD INVENT IT
You may have heard of Folsom Street Fair? The sex & kink positive, all-inclusive, world-famous, 2-day long, San Francisco street fair?
For the first time in over 2 decades of attending my husband and I were turned away from the new, unmarked, Trans & Non-Binary Gate & Safe Space because we werenβt, nor did we identify, as such.
Mastodon is pretty different to its competitors. It looks similar to Twitter / Bluesky, but the way the social network functions is completely different.
It's designed to be anti-infuencer... One of the things I hate about most social media platforms is a few people get all the attention. There are a few reasons for this, but it's not really based on merit.
I think a lot of people joined Mastodon wanting a Twitter clone. It's obviously not and Bluesky is, so people moved there. The approach Mastodon takes is far from perfect, and may not work out in the long run. But it seems like it's worth at least trying something different.
Itβs designed to be anti-infuencer
When my own feed, free of the algorithm, did not have content of interest. Because I or others took turns shouting into the void. Then I would go on the explore /front page where there was definitely an algorithm of influencers, many who had follower counts of thousands, talking about the same stuff. Many seemed to be upper middle class Americans .
I soon hated them, but many were broadcast to other instancesβ front page too. Between them and lack of interaction from people I wanted to hear from, I left
Let's see:
Network effect hits Mastodon specially hard as it competes not just with Twitter, but also Threads and Bluesky. In those situations, a smaller userbase means that people will outright ignore you as an option.
The way that federation was implemented; as linearchaos mentioned in another thread, if you settle in a smaller instance (the "right" thing to do), you won't get "good collections of off node traffic". So it creates a situation where, if you know how federation works you'll avoid big instances, and worsen your own experience; and if you don't, well, Mastodon's big selling point goes down the drain.
Federation itself introduces a complexity cost. That's unavoidable and the benefits of federation outweigh the cost by far; however, the cost is concrete while the bigger benefit is far more abstract.
Branding issues. Other users already mentioned it, but you don't sell a novel tech named after an extinct animal.
And this is just conjecture from my part, but I think that microblogging is becoming less popular than it used to be; people who like short content would rather go watch a TikTok video, and people who want well-thought content already would rather read a "proper" blog instead.
On a lighter side: the very fact that we're using the ActivityPub now helps Mastodon, even if we're in different platforms (like Lemmy, MBin, PieFed, SubLinks). Due to how federation works, you're bound to see someone in Mastodon sharing content with those forums and vice versa; it could be a bit less clunky but it's still more content for both sides.
On the text: I think that the author reached the right conclusion through the wrong reasoning. The activity peaks don't matter that much, when there's a huge influx of users you're bound to see some leaving five minutes later. The reason why Mastodon is struggling is this:
See those slopes down? They show that the stable userbase is shrinking. Even users engaged enough with the platform are slowly leaving, but newbies who could fill their place aren't popping up.
I disagree with your and the author's conclusions.
I have made my own long comment about it in thread, so here I am going to focus on your chart.
First, I will accept the data of the chart at face value, it seems resonably accurate and I don't have any other data to work off of.
My point is that you are interpreting it wrong.
To me the declining slopes after the sruges are not relevant to any long term conclusions, they follow a highly predictable curve and doesn't mean much.
If you look at the end of the graphs you can even see it growing slightly, that is obviously not evidence of anything yet, but to me it is an indication of either a start of another surge, or stability.
I believe you are too quick at spreading doom for Mastodon, give it half a year and look at the stats then, we won't see a meteoric rise of active users any time soon, just accept it and work with more realistic expectations.
First, I will accept the data of the chart at face value, it seems resonably accurate and I donβt have any other data to work off of.
If you do find another source of data, please post it. Relying on a single source (like the Fediverse Observer) is problematic, I know.
To me the declining slopes after the sruges are not relevant to any long term conclusions, they follow a highly predictable curve and doesnβt mean much.
You're conflating the sharp drops after the surges with the declining slopes.
The sharp drops (like MAU from 12/2022 to 02/2023) go as you said, they don't mean much. However, the declining slopes are relevant - they span across multiple months (up to ten), and show that Mastodon userbase has a consistent tendency to shrink.
If you look at the end of the graphs you can even see it growing slightly, that is obviously not evidence of anything yet, but to me it is an indication of either a start of another surge, or stability.
We'll only know if it's an indication of a surge (sudden influx of new users), or growth (slow influx), or stability in the future. For now it's an isolated data point.
I believe you are too quick at spreading doom for Mastodon
I'm saying that Mastodon is struggling. I did not say that Mastodon is doomed.
The difference is important here because a struggling network can be still saved, while a doomed one can't.
The slopes you meassure are still tied to the preceeding surges, so I can't treat them as any indication of success/failure.
To me it kinda looks like we are in the trough of disillusionment, which is a normal period of any new tech/system.
With improvements to the network we soon hit the slope of enlightenment.
Context for other users - the user above is likely referring to the Gartner cycle:
As anyone here can see, it looks nothing like that pattern that I've highlighted.
If the success condition for Mastodon is "to become a long-term viable and attractive alternative to corporate-owned microblogging", then improvements of the platform are necessary.
To be clear on my opinion in this matter: I want to see Mastodon to succeed, I want to see X and Threads closing down, and IDGAF about Bluesky. However I'm not too eager to engage in wishful belief and pretend that everything is fine - because acknowledging the problem is always the first step to solve it.
You are absolutely right that I am refering to the Gartner cycle.
It doesn't fit exactly, but the general pattern fit very well with the first half.
The Mastodon graph just happens to have two hype sections.
A model that explains well half of the data is as useful as a coin toss. But let's roll with it, and pretend that we got two superimposed Gartner cycles here.
The trough would be reached after a sharp drop after the peak, and based on the first peak it would be ~2 months long. That would explain only the period between 2023-07 and 2023-09; the rest of what I've pointed out in red is clearly something else, the nearest of what they look like would be a sick version of the "slope of enlightenment" - going down instead of up.
Yeah, the model doesn't work.
A better way to approach this is to consider three things:
Once you notice those things, it gets really easy to explain what's happening:
By analysing the data this way, not just we're describing it better, but we can also see where Mastodon needs to improve:
What I'm saying also partially applies to the "Fediverse link aggregators", like Lemmy. Lemmy does show some tendency to bleed users, but in smaller degree than Mastodon; but it's in a better position because there's only one big competitor, and it keeps fucking it up over and over.
Half the users of the initial peek are still active?
Doesn't sound too bad if there would be events that bring new users from time to time.
you donβt sell a novel tech named after an extinct animal
They didn't, Mastodon is named after the metal band (which is named after the extinct animal) π
Either way, back in 2008 I bet people were making fun of Twitter for being named after bird sounds, so.
I wasn't aware of the connection with the band - thanks for the info! Still, people are bound to associate "mastodon" first and foremost with the critter.
Either way, back in 2008 I bet people were making fun of Twitter for being named after bird sounds, so.
I don't remember but you're likely correct. There's a difference though - Twitter didn't need to capitalise on every single tiny advantage, Mastodon does it, and while the role of branding might be small it still gives you (or your competitors) some edge.
"He", not "they" β if I understand correctly this was way back when Eugene Rochko was the sole developer β but yes. Same as Lemmy being named after Lemmy Kilmister, and Debian major versions after Toy story characters.
I don't see what's "rich" about that, it's just developers having personal tastes outside of coding.
Exactly copying a name is a bit strange to me. I have always been under impression that whoever named the social network has been unaware of the band.
Lemmy and Debian are not the same.
Lemmy and Debian are not the same.
Specifically Lemmy is exactly the same β a direct namedrop in tribute of a known musician or band. It's really no weirder than a band naming itself after archduke Franz Ferdinand, or after Nikolai Gogol π€·
"Pubcrawl" is what you're looking for. Probably not the best SEO optimized name if you don't know it by name, but works well afaik.
Mastodon is not struggling.
Looking at two surges of new users seeing the vast majority not stick around and missing that a sizable chunk still stayed is missing the point.
This article would never have been written if the user increase didn't have temporary surges, that result would be the same number of users, but less brand recognition.
Mastodon is also not driven by the same kind of metrics as a centralized system, plenty of people can just run their own instance just for the fun of it, they don't need constant growth.
So calm down, and take it slow.
Don't sell Mastodon short.
But the issue is that the temporary surges are not even followed by stability, they're followed by decline. That's not a recipe for sustainability.
Donβt sell Mastodon short.
Alternative analysis: it doesn't help it to pretend there's not a problem.
But the issue is that the temporary surges are not even followed by stability, theyβre followed by decline. Thatβs not a recipe for sustainability.
You mean after a surge there's less active users than before?
On the very end of the graph you can see it sort of beginning to stabalize, there was even a small uptick in the second to last point, and sure, the last point shows a small decrease again.
My point is that it is too early to call out for danger regarding mastodon, that is too alarmist and may scare new users from the platform, speeding up the end of Mastodon.
So untill we have a period of time without surges it is hard to determine user growth
I tried to replace Twitter by Mastodon but, in the end, I just left Twitter and donβt use Mastodon at all. The main reason I think is because the Β« onboarding Β» is painful. I never succeeded to find interesting people to follow. I faced many ghost accounts from people posting once a month or stopped a few years ago.
If you donβt find people by yourself, no one is going to see your posts and so, you wonβt be able to find new people to follow by posting.
I donβt like what Twitter became, but the base principle of the algorithm (before it became X with the paid subscriptions) was working great for me. I was constantly adding new people to the mix, and removing inactive ones every month.
If I struggled this much with Mastodon, I am not surprised many people create an account and leave a few days / weeks later.
I tried to replace Twitter by Mastodon but, in the end, I just left Twitter and donβt use Mastodon at all.
This is me, I left Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. I reduced my online time a lot and it is better for my mental health and I have more time for my hobbies.
Mastodon made it clear to me how much algorithms steer me and keep me online, when I don't need that, don't profit from it. When I had to search for content on Mastodon that was for me it felt not worth the effort while being fed by an algorithm on Twitter /Facebook / Reddit kept me endlessly scrolling.
So I am very thankful to Mastodon for opening my eyes, but I will not use it anymore. Tchncs (world news, tech news and ~~cat~~ owl pictures) , Grouvee (gaming forum, keeping track of my games) and German Tagesschau ( tv news of my country) is enough to stay up to date and I feel freed from a burden that social media became for me.
Also my phone stays in my bag now and I am more in the moment wherever I am - I have used it 99% less than before and my next smart phone will be a cheap one with the only must haves being the newest Android version and a replacable battery so it will last me for long.
Definently had the feeling of walking into a gay bar and not knowing anyone, like the article says.
I thought it was pretty cool personally because I never interact with gay people (afaik) in real life. And we have computer tech as a common interest, that's why we are on mastadon... But for people who are not into tech, I guess it's not so much to talk about maybe.
While I agree with the article and a lot of comments, I am still active on my Mastodon account and I am enjoying it more than ever.
Disclaimer: I'm a white male westerner working in IT. π
A friend of mine works in linguistics and education. He was an avid Twitter user and has since migrated to Bluesky and Mastodon. He says, Mastodon is quite complex and clunky but on Bluesky there's not much happening in his bubble.
For me, the quality of the conversation and the regional character of my local instance is a big plus on Madison. On Lemmy, I read a lot on international and tech topics, but on Mastodon, the conversation is related more to my countries politics and my region.
So, maybe they lost a lot of users. But the 14% that stayed are a good start for quite a vivid community.
If anyone has questions on how to get something out of Mastodon, ask away or follow me here: mateng@nrw.social.
I have a mastodon account, I still check it occasionally and I've tried making it work a year ago, being active on it and following either people or hashtags. I also tried other networks like bsky and cara, or mastodon through kbin integration. None of them really worked out.
I didn't have an issue with the technical side as much as with the community and its mentality. They all have this persecution complex where everyone is out to get them and destroy their way of living. They simultaneously claim it's better and more morally superior than twitter while also responding to any questions or feedback with "if you don't like it GTFO". Most of the posts I've seen on mastodon seemed masturbatory and/or talking about other social networks and why are they bad than why is mastodon actually good. In many ways it was more toxic and negative than my carefully curated twitter feed. There's also as much doom and gloom as on twitter, if not more, when it comes to politics (or at least, it's harder to hide it).
The content in general was bad and boring but I don't know if this is because of the type of people that are on it or just because the lack of algorithm means I will see any random person's ramblings next to the biggest breaking news that I'm actually interested in. There is a lack of innovation in this area and it makes discoverability and content curation terrible, I don't need an algorithm to read my mind but at the very least I wish it could separate trash from actual popular topics.
I found some interesting niches when it comes to FOSS developers and tech but I found next to no actual game devs, artists or content creators on it and even the usual "copy content from twitter" bots were unreliable and uncommon.
TL;DR Mastodon seems very very niche and is not currently viable as a general replacement for other social networks, and IMHO due to the community culture there it's never going to grow into anything else either.
The first rule of Mastodon is "filter the term 'Mastodon'".
While you're at it, filter out mentions of any other social media you can think of. All of that metadiscourse is apparently important for people to get off their chests, buy it's numbing to read.
I'm fairly happy using Mastodon, but the lack of algorithms made it necessary to curate my feed very strictly. I turned off boosts/reposts in my app, too, and I now have a slow-moving, low-drama newsfeed that doesn't stress me out just opening it.
I have a Mastodon account and now on my fourth, fifth instance. I instance hop a lot, which helped me find my people.
I dont agree with a huge chunk of what was said in the post. But I understand where the white people in Bali reference comes from. I am an Asian woman in tech and took me awhile to find people that I can actually connect with. What I like about Mastodon is the fact that I can find niche topics that I wont see in other social media. Also, want to flag that I no longer have accounts in proprietary social media since 2017 which probably helped my drive to find an online community.
In saying so, I have faced some crazy level of stalking (one person only so I guess its isolated?) to the point that this person messaged me on Linkedin and emailed me to tell me I was being impersonated on Mastodon. Because he didnt believe that I am myself??? He went on saying, Hi Miss, I saw youre being impersonated blah blah.
But I also want to mention that I have met so many amazing people through Mastodon.
Its a weird space, but I am weird so I guess I belong there. Loo
There's just not many people on there. And I already never used Twitter except to read in-time updates from people and companies, so naturally with many of them being on Threads or Bluesky, that's where I'd go to get that information.
I mean it's just normal to have a "social" part to social media, no?
I don't want to follow random people though? Twitter was useful as a way to follow specific companies and people to know when say, a service goes down or an update is released.
These people and companies aren't on Mastodon.
Yeah, chicken and egg. Unfortunate twitter has now locked down feeds so you have to be logged in, so also fuck them on that point.
It's a tradeoff. I am so disgusted by twitter that I chose to give that up and leave.
I agree with top comment.
I'm Indonesian. Most of trending fediverse are Western related topics which It's not relevant to me.
There's one time when I randomly post about my country politics, and people on Mastodon just assume or comment using Western mindset.
Other than this Lemmy account, I mostly stick with hobby-related fediverse that mostly East Asian and Southeast Asian people (mostly Misskey instance)
Also, Indonesian is currently the highest user on Twitter, recently bypassed Brazil. People still use it as our local feed is... well localized. No Western-related discussion and much more comfy.
So, I've just kinda got a stream of random tidbits here that'll hopefully sorta surmise my thoughts.
The good:
First off, it's shrunk but it's by no means dead. Things grow and shrink and grow again, if it was a straight line with no variation I'd assume it was fake.
Also, Mastodon is not all of activity pub. Threads has brought a lot if people onto the protocol, and while it's still in development it seems to be intended to work interoperably and the devs said they plan to let people migrate out and take their following/followers with them. I expect this to really supercharge the ecosystem.
The indifferent:
This isn't 2020 anymore, and there's more protocols out there. Nostr, in my opinion, is leagues better in the decentralization and user options/customizations department. AT (Bluesky) is leagues better in the end user was of use department. Both of those protocols are also much, much, lighter to host.
Activity pub also has it's advantages of course. Being the oldest and also being great for communities are two quite big ones.
Some people have chosen to either leave Activity Pub for those protocols, or joined the decentralized ecosystem directly into one of the other two. It's indifferent, though, because it's a decentralized ecosystem. All three can chat with each other, so Mastodon & Activity Pub may have shrunk - but the amount of people you can communicate with on them has risen exponentially thanks to bridges.
The ugly:
Federation is a mess. You can have a dozen friends on Activity Pub, a dozen on other protocols connected via bridges or threads and find you can only talk to two or three. That's a problem; most would give up before understanding why, and many more would likely figure out why and the decide it's not worth their time working around. After the Bluesky wave I've heard Mastodon be called some variation of "bickering fiefs" a couple dozen times.
There's also some toxicity within the space. Most people I've interacted with have been great, but it still rears it's head now and then. You can get nearly bullied off the platform if you suggest people be nice to Windows users. It was kinda funny to see that blog post shortly after I jokingly said "you guys would probably put a hit out on me if I said I was using Windows" in a similar thread. In a similar vein, while accessibility is great, I'd bet more people have left the protocol after being yelled at for not using alt text then there are users who rely on alt text.
My predictions:
I'd bet that all three protocols grow a lot in the future and that more platforms start integrating one or more of the three big protocols. It's a cheat code for new platforms to automatically have a bunch of content, and it's free platform software already built. Federation issues and fediverse specific toxicity issues will potentially be eternal septembered away. Most people won't care what OS you use and will want to be able to talk to their friends as apposed to having current federation. There might be a small splinter group of the older crowd using opt-in federation, but most of the ecosystem will change if it grows.
I'd also bet the three big protocols will continue to get closer. All three can already communicate, and heck, I, as an incompitant programmer, made a quick script that lets any Nostr client communicate with Mastodon &/or Bluesky. Throw some compitant devs at it and soon enough you probably won't even be able to tell at first glance what protocol the other person you're communicating with is on. Bluesky and Nostr in the mix bring Mastodon's ~800k monthly active users to like ~15 million. A more connected ecosystem make things better for everyone.
Yes but no. Due to architectural differences, federation under AuthTransfer protocol is simply different compared to ActivityPub. In its own terms it is federated as individuals' data is stored in personal data servers (PDSs) connected to a relay, which currently is only the Bluesky relay, that roughly speaking connects them to other personal data servers.
You can technically operate your own personal data server apart from those operated by Bluesky, but I think it's fair to say the vast majority on there don't. It's not clear yet, apart from fully holding your own data, how useful it is to operate your own given you only have one relay to use anyway at the moment.
So even in its own terms Bluesky really isn't federated in much of a meaningful sense yet. The problems are twofold: a major part of their pitch is making federation Just Workβ’, keeping the underlying tech out of mind to mitigate confusion, but you can't have your cake and eat it too here. Eventually, if you're really committed to meaningful federation, you have to teach people about the value of operating their own personal data servers, at minimum, otherwise what was the point in separating it out in the architecture?
Problem is, that goes against their pitch to their audience and spoils the appeal. It's telling a good joke only to kill it by explaining to the one person that went, "I don't get it."
Secondly, they've already upfront said that relays may be cost prohibitive for many people to operate, resulting in only a few ever being spun up. If that remains the case and is true, then even if a few were spun up, that's not any more federated or distributed than the rather consolidated web we see now. How much of a difference would it make if the social web was running on AuthTransfer and the major relays were owned and run by Meta/Facebook, Twitter/X, and Google?
Congrats you have your own data in a personal data server...But are you really the one running it, or did you just opt into the PDS entryway offered by Facebook/Twitter/Google/etc. because sorry, what's that about a server?
Bluesky runs many PDSs. Each PDS runs as a completely separate service in the network with its own identity. They federate with the rest of the network in the exact same manner that a non-Bluesky PDS would. These PDSs have hostnames such as morel.docs.bsky.app
Sorta/mostly. The protocol has a bit of a different model then Activity Pub, and it's in development so there are some limitations, but it's been opened and there's people hosting their own PDSs now (the part of Bluesky that hosts your account).
To my knowledge there's only two AT relays (the part that aggregates content from PDSs), Bluesky itself and very recently frontpage (a link aggregator). That makes the network fairly centralized right now, although BlueSky/AT has made a lot of progress in the last 9 months in terms of opening up so I expect it'll be a lot less centralized this time next year. I'm also betting that somebody will make an AT client that pulls posts directly from PDSs instead of going through a relay at some point.
Sure
Readme is overdue to actually be finished, but the script itself is working. Can be run locally on desktop or termux, though some clients on desktop need a custom host added since they don't like localhost and amethyst only uses it if you don't add it as a local relay.
A Nostr to AT (Bluesky) & Activity Pub local bridge - 0n4t3/nipy-bridgeGitHub
I made a Mastodon account during that blitz in '22. Yes, content wasn't there yet, but honestly, it was the interface for me. It's UI didn't feel simplistic enough to me as someone just getting started with it.
Lemmy may have faced a similar fate for me if it weren't for the smooth interface of Sync to be honest. I know many on here are leaps and bounds beyond my tech proficiency, but so many folks are still in the stone ages writing their passwords on post-it notes etc so to think that they'd adopt something like Mastodon over Twitter or Lemmy over Reddit seems like the bigger counterparts will always win just on sign-up flow and instant gratification.
It's not dead but it has one big and massive issue that prevents mass adoption - discovery. If I can't just write the name of my friends in search and find them no matter where they made their account - for an ordinary user, or one that comes from centralized services, this seems extremely alien and hostile.
And in the end, if you can't find your friends, you want to interact with, what is the point of using the service?
Luckily, Mastodon is working on a discorvery protocol that should offer a way to find people across the board, which will hopefully make the Fediverse "appear" centralized to the average Joe while maintaining all the benefits of decentralization to the advanced users.
You can put in their handle, with the domain they've signed up with
If you're looking for more wider fuzzy search for that; mastodon 4.4 is gonna implement independent search services, meaning that search will be expanded beyond one server, and you can find new accounts on other servers just by keywords
I know my friends name and surname and that must be more than enough.
I see. However; no.
Luckily, Mastodon is working on a discorvery protocol that should offer a way to find people across the board, which will hopefully make the Fediverse βappearβ centralized to the average Joe while maintaining all the benefits of decentralization to the advanced users.
I'd bet that this will be so proprietary and non-standard again that it'll only work within Mastodon, maybe plus a few of its own soft-forks, effectively ignoring 30% of the Fediverse.
Personally, I just don't enjoy that Twitter-like format. I never used Twitter so I find it... Awkward? To me its kinda like a platformer with bad controls, everything else about the game might be great but if it doesnt feel satisfying to play, I'll skip.
I still have my account and Megalodon on my phone but I just can't get into it.
That format was pretty good for "Come see us live at the Sodbury Theatre in Glurpfortshire, Feb 32nd @9PM!"
I remember an instance where a Cracked.com article pointed out something like "5 creepy places on the internet" one of which was a dicussion forum in which one account was posting over and over, many times a day, about public appearances and such of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and readers showed up en masse to harass this person. Turns out she was off-label using a forum engine as her own little microtwitter to publish alerts to a fan club. But when the Cracked author rejected that context and substituted his own, it smelled a lot like Humanbeing151.
But yes in general I find discussion boards to be more useful; I think it's why they were invented first; Reddit and Lemmy are basically just different approaches to implementing Usenet.
I personally didn't like mastodon's UI style, I found it tedious to use and more complicated then needed.
There's no real similar product(at least out of what I've used) so nothing to run muscle memory on, and it deep dived into federation to the point it was confusing too confusing to figure out
I stopped distro hopping and started hopping around Mastodon instances instead.
I currently have two active accounts. One is more established but the server goes down for days at a time.
The other is pretty robust but I'm still establishing myself there.
I echo the sentiment that there aren't a lot of Asian people on Mastodon. Although it seems that vivaldi.net is mostly Japanese people.
Mastodon is just like Threads : a hype , wait for the hype to end and you'll see that it doesn't offer something that would impress an ordinary person who isn't a nerd or tech savvy enough to continue using it...
What I'll say now is more like random thoughts about federation and it applies to any federated service but this post inspired my thoughts so ...
The two best features I can think of for Mastodon are :
* Open source: an excellent thing but it's probably not important for an ordinary person who still uses the products of big companies just because they are "convenient" and "common" even when his data is the cost
* federated: although it provides freedom to choose where you want to join, it creates a lot of confusion and inconvenience as well :
I personally have somewhat specific interests and I usually tend to avoid public instances dedicated to "everything", however, every time I decided to join a federated service I got the same confusion : "which instance should I choose?" , I had two accounts on Mastodon before I deleted one of them ( and I'll probably delete the other soon ) and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, I have two accounts on Lemmy and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, one account on Peertube and it's the same ( this was the most difficult of them honestly because Peertube's filters are very bad and whenever I could find an instance that I considered good, it turns out that registration is closed, or needs approval), the same confusion also happened when I created an account on Kbin/Mbin , the same on Pixelfeed , the same when I searched for an instance of friendica and it will be the same when I think in the future to repeat the experience on any other federated service...
Now, someone may come and say the famous sentence "it doesn't matter which instance you choose, at the end you can follow anything from any instance" and honestly this sentence is a pure myth imho because .. first : when you register an account in an instance, you will constantly notice the "local" section, which shows you what's happening on the instance you are in , and it'll form part of your experience in the instance depending on the instance itself and people on this instance , also , let's suppose that a large number of annoying users existed on a popular instance and the moderation of this instance couldn't solve the problem ( or didn't do anything about this in the first place) , what might happen is that moderation of other instances might decide to defederate with this instance, and this might affect an ordinary user who has done nothing but joined the instance - and any other person who isn't annoying but but ended up on this instance -, I know that this point is unreal currently but it might be real one day especially that some instances are known for not being tolerated with specific behaviors
* Another confusion that might happen ... I'll explain it with my own experience : when I was still using my first Mastodon account, I left the account for a few months and then decided to return ... but guess what happened ? I forgot which instance I signed up for in the first place ! fortunately, after two attempts in two different instances, I found the solution : I searched on a random instance for my Account (I still remember the username ) and was able to find it ... I was lucky in this, but I can't guarantee that everyone will be as lucky as me and will find a way to remember ( this is both a good and bad point for the federation , on the one hand I forgot where I registered because the instances are similar , and on the other hand I found the instance which I registered in using another instance )
I have an account that I use to read, but I've never posted on Mastodon. Decided to tweet after seeing this post and I see a privacy option called "Quiet Public - Fewer Algorithmic Fanfares".
Seriously, wtf is this? What does that even mean? If techie people like me can't figure out Mastodon then you can't expect the general public to do that. I'm not blaming this feature in particular, but Mastodon is quirky in all the wrong ways.
I think a better title & question would be, "Why is Mastodon struggling to thrive?"
It's surviving no problem, but it's not thriving for a multitude of reasons. Some are pretty well covered across comments here & in the linked discussion, and are more or less reiterations of prior discussions on the matter.
Ultimately I think as much as many of those reasons are correct, the biggest reason is the same as ever: network effects. All the jank and technical details could be endured and adjusted to if there was sufficient value to be had in doing so, i.e. following accounts of interest/entertainment, connecting with friends, etc. That's proven to varying degrees by those that have stuck with Mastodon. In turn, however, it's also clear by how many bounce off that for many there's still insufficient value to be found across Mastodon instances to justify dealing with all the rough edges.
If Mastodon had enough broadly appealing/interesting people/accounts across its instances, people might deal with the various technical and cultural rough spots the same way they deal with similar on other social networks they may complain about yet won't leave. There still aren't enough of those sorts on there for many though, so Mastodon simply survives but doesn't thrive.
Agreed, that would have been a much better title. There's a lot of negativity around Mastodon -- the Twitter migration in 2022 is often described as a "failure". It certainly wasn't a success, but I see it much more as a missed opportunity.
Network effects are certainly a big deal but every social network has to deal with the issue, and some succeed. Addressing some of the reasons for bouncing not only improves retention, but makes it more likely that people recommend it to their friends. So many of the problems from July 2023's Mastodon Is Easy and Fun Except When It Isnβt were problems back in 2017 as well ... how much progress has Mastodon made? Fortunately other fediverse software's making more progress, but it's still frustrating.
A very informal inquiry into why some people on the Bluesky network didn't have a great time when they tried using Mastodon in the period leading up to the summer of 2023.erinkissane.com
I'll say it again, the name sucks. It's not cute, it sounds like mastrubate compared to twitter, it just is not catchy.
TicTic, snapchat, the apps that make it have a stupid catchy name, mastadon ain't it.
Mastodon wasn't launched by a VC-backed Silicon Valley startup to become the phone app that replaces Twitter.
It was created by a German high school graduate and metalhead all alone as not much more than StatusNet with a different UI and some features cut for simplicity. It was designed by a nerd for nerds, nerds who didn't rely on phone apps for everything. At this level, and back in 2016, not even an official native iPhone app was mandatory.
Mastodon was around for a while, slowly being built up until 2022 when the big twitter surge happened. They had the perfect foundation to make it the next big thing and all they had to do was keep the people who joined, make it slightly easier to join, and develop a few features like quote posts.
Mastodon lost it's momentum, but had a second shot a year or two later. Threads joined the network offering a massive user base that could talk with Mastodon users. Then Bluesky blew up and that was bridged so Mastodon could talk with those people too. Mastodon may not have been the center of things anymore, but it could be fully integrated into the other two.
There are other things that I'm sure play a roll as well. Luck, discoverability, easiness to join, people getting board, people looking at the next shiny thing, you name it. But it does look to be in many ways self inflicted.
On the feature side, according to Mastodons recent 4.3 release post development is only 4 full time employees and a budget of under $500k annually. That is basically nothing in the realm of social media companies.
Improving Mastodons features requires money and resources, but Mastodons users are unwilling to pay for instances and unwillingly to fund development. Hell, the .world folks host a bunch of instances for collectively hundreds of thousands of users and they take in about $1k a month in donations. Iβm surprised that even covers hosting costs.
Soβ¦itβs no wonder that it isnβt going to be as polished as other social media in ways that would reduce the attrition.
Because it doesn't have $100s of millions to throw at marketing, or the name dropping of Twitter creators behind it.
It is what it is. You can either be alright with being small, or hurl money into it, but the people who hurl money into things tend to want it back at some point, and that means becoming a shitty business.
I'll throw my -opinion- in the ring here because no one else is saying it the same way.
I did try out Firefish and enjoyed that way more as it had a fun and engaging UI and lots of extra features, but it holds the same federation and discovery issues.
Then once signed up discovery was/is a pain. How do I find good accounts when they arenβt synced with the instance I am on? Fuck if I know, I never found an equivalent to lemmyverse.net for mastodon.
Feels like the A.1 issue of Mastadon as a platform. If person A on instance Q wants to follow person B on instance R, there's no straight line easy path to do that. Compared to Twitter or BlueSky or Threads, where its all one ecosystem and you just say "I'd like to follow @LieutenantDickweasel" and now you've got their posts in your stream, Mastadon is byzantine and not worth the effort to explore.
On the flip side, Truth Social is a Mastadon instance, and it's trading with a market cap of several billion dollars. Seems successful enough to me.
I think Iβm just falling out of favour with the idea of a microblogging platform with strangers
Generally speaking, you're not on these services to follow strangers per say. You're on there to interact with D-list celebrities and other highly niche personalities. Or you're on the system to self-promote and become a D-list celebrity/niche personality. Webcomics artists, semi-famous musicians, podcasters, and political bloggers are all over my feed. I'd never talk to these people IRL. And I'd never interact with them if they were even slightly more popular or famous. But in this space, its a cozy little "oh let's check in on what the author of AtomicRobo Comics is up to?" fan relationship that's fruitful and fun for everyone involved.
But Mastadon is shit at putting indie fans in touch with their focus of attention. After that, what am I using this for other than a stripped-down Discord or glorified group-SMS? Pointless.
One reason why Truth Social was able to work stemmed from the fact that it was a single magnetizing D-list celebrity that drew people in. But even then, you're talking about an audience in the... thousands? Even as a one-stop shop for all things Donald Trump, it's low energy and lame when compared to Twitter.
Feels like the A.1 issue of Mastadon as a platform. If person A on instance Q wants to follow person B on instance R, thereβs no straight line easy path to do that. Compared to Twitter or BlueSky or Threads, where its all one ecosystem and you just say βIβd like to follow @LieutenantDickweaselβ and now youβve got their posts in your stream, Mastadon is byzantine and not worth the effort to explore.
You do know that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon, Truth Social and the Threadiverse?
Search that covers 100% of the Fediverse is technologically impossible. Any Fediverse-wide search would need to know all of the Fediverse. All of it.
Like, let's suppose R is B's personal instance. Let's suppose B spins up the instance for the first time. Any all-encompassing Fediverse search would have to know about it immediately. The very millisecond Apache or nginx or whatever comes to life, that search would have to know it's there to be able to always cover exactly 100% of the Fediverse.
How's that supposed to work?
If it's one centralised search engine, it would have to be hard-coded into the source code of every last Fediverse project out there so all new instances can automatically announce their existence to the search engine.
And that's not four projects or so. It's over 100. Not only Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin and PieFed. It's also Ecko and Hometown and Glitch and many other Mastodon forks. And Pleroma and Akkoma and other Pleroma forks. And Misskey and Firefish and Iceshrimp and Iceshrimp.NET and Sharkey and CherryPick and Catodon and Meisskey and Tanukey and Neko and dozens upon dozens of other Misskey forks. And Mitra. And Socialhome. And GoToSocial. And micro.blog which, by the way, is closed-source. And Friendica and Hubzilla and the streams repository and Forte. And Pixelfed. And Funkwhale. And Bandwagon. And Castopod. And PeerTube. And Owncast. And Mobilizon. And Gancio. And BookWyrm. And Flohmarkt. And so forth.
It'd be even worse if it was supposed to be built into the Fediverse projects themself. Like, you could search the whole Fediverse from Lemmy's Web interface or any one Mastodon app.
That'd require each new instance to announce its instance to each running instance.
That'd require each new instance to know all running instances immediately.
That'd only be possible by building a list of 20,000++ Fediverse instances into every last Fediverse server software repository so that it's installed along with new instances.
And that list would always have to be up-to-date.
So when B spins up R, the following would have to happen:
git pulls the most recent version of the main branch of Mastodon's source code to have a most up-to-date list of active instances possible.Any Fediverse server out there would be able to hack into any Fediverse server code repository and manipulate the production code. Otherwise, this whole thing couldn't work.
Fediverse server code repositories would be flooded with automated pull requests plus mergers. Oh, and if Mastodon can add a new instance to a list in the Mastodon production source code, anything could remote-manipulate anything in the Mastodon production source code.
Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodonGitHub
I'm saying they are using it like a rss in the fact that they are mainly there just to follow and be fed content. It's where they go if they want direct content submissions from blank famous person.
You seem more fixated on arguing semantics.
I've been engaging with Lemmy more than Mastodon. Lemmy allows for more interactions through discussions. To me, it seems like Mastodon is slower to get interactions (for context, I have accounts on three different instances and used to post dark/gothic/satirical/surrealist poetry written by me daily, but I haven't posted in days because no one seems to be really engaging with it). Mastodon has a lot of potential, but I think few are really committed to stick to the fediverse and all its potential.
As for why people don't come back, maybe they're confused about which instance to use since there are thousands of different instances for different purposes, I'm not exactly sure.
Been more of a fan of long form discussion that can bring more insight
Me too. I don't like the 500 character limit. It forces us to use slangs and internet abbreviations. Also, it allows for less information when I post in Portuguese (I'm Brazilian, so it's my first language besides English) because Portuguese has all these long conjugations (differently from English). Some sentences are shorter in Portuguese (for example "O rato atravessou a rua" is shorter than "The rat crossed the street"), but they tend to be longer.
I read some of your comments and you seem like an interesting person
Thanks!
Iβd be grateful if you could share your poetry
I use the same handle/nickname as here (dsilverz) on Mastodon's main instance (mastodon.social). There's a mix of poetry types and genres (some are really dark, found under the "Content Warning" Mastodon feature), but all of them tries to fit the 500 character limitation. There are other instances as well (one where I post AI imagery illustrating the poetry I've written, other has a plus 500 character limit, where I posted storytelling but has no many posts because it's not well federated) I'm yet to find a Mastodon instance that both supports over 500 characters and has a reasonable federation and user activity (so that posts gets to readers).
Decentralisation and having multiple instances isn't even that much of an issue. 99.999% of all Twitter refugees were railroaded to Mastodon and what seems like 99% of these straight to mastodon.social. They genuinely thought mastodon.social was "the Mastodon website", just like twitter.com was the Twitter website. It took many of them months to even notice that Mastodon is decentralised. And it took some of them even longer to notice that the Fediverse is, in fact, more than just Mastodon while half of them think that Fediverse = Mastodon after almost two years.
No, the biggest issue is: What they were looking for was not something radically different from Twitter, now that Twitter sucked. They were looking for a Twitter without Musk. Like, a drop-in replacement that doesn't require them to adjust in any way. A 1:1, 100% identical clone of Twitter how it was the day before Musk took over with the same UI and the same UX and the same culture.
When they were railroaded to mastodon.social, they were told that Mastodon is "literally Twitter without Musk". And they took it as literally. By face value. And then they ended up on something that looked and felt nothing like Twitter. No matter how many of Twitter's limitations Gargron arbitrarily and unnecessarily implemented into Mastodon, he never got close enough to Twitter itself.
People would stick around because Mastodon felt like the only alternative to Twitter there was. Of course, they kept using Mastodon exactly like Twitter, not adopting to Mastodon's culture and relying on their toots being delivered to people by an algorithm that Mastodon simply doesn't have. Hashtag? Fuck hashtags, I didn't need no hashtags on Twitter, so I ain't gonna use none on Mastodon. And then they wondered why so few people discovered them and their content.
They didn't want to adapt. They were waiting for Mastodon to finally "fix the bugs" that made it different from Twitter. Which it didn't.
Instead, Mastodon developed its own culture (which is a story of its own). And they were pressured to adopt Mastodon's culture. CWs for sensitive content for any definition of "sensitive". Twitter ain't got no CW field. Alt-texts for all images, and it had to be actually useful and informative. They ain't never done no alt-texts on Twitter. Of course, the right hashtags. See above.
Also, Mastodon-the-app is lack-lustre. Whereas the official apps for just about everything else are fully-featured, the Mastodon mobile app is only there for there to be a mobile app named "Mastodon" for those people who join a new online service by grabbing their iPhones and loading the app with the same name as the service from the App Store. Especially newbies often can't wrap their minds around using an online service with an app that doesn't have the same name. But the official Mastodon app is actually just about the worst Mastodon app out there. At the same time, for many Mastodon users, this app IS Mastodon. They've never seen the Web interface. What the app can't do, Mastodon can't do.
Lastly, Mastodon was probably also way too techy. Like, you had people talking about Linux and Open Source and Web design and whatnot all over the place, something that they themselves knew nothing about and weren't interested in. On top came those people with their weird-looking monster posts that said the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, and they were posting from something that is not and has never even been affiliated with Mastodon.
And then Bluesky came along. And Bluesky looked exactly like what they've been wanting all the time: a 1:1 Twitter clone. One big reason for Bluesky's success is that it shamelessly ripped off the UI of immediately-pre-Musk-takeover Twitter, both the website and the mobile app. A fully-featured, well-polished mobile app with all the same features as the website. And at first glance, it feels like the same monolithic walled-garden silo as Twitter with the same kinds of users as Twitter, minus the Nazis. At least not as ripe with ΓΌbergeeks as Mastodon.
Also, Bluesky grew faster and quickly had more users than Mastodon. Which sounded like more followers in less time. Exactly what all those famewhores that brag about their Twitter follower counts were craving.
People wanted a pre-Musk Twitter clone. Mastodon isn't one. Everything else in the Fediverse is one even less. Bluesky is just that. Bluesky is what people had wanted all the time.
Also, let Mastodon shrink if that means that the "market share" of other native Fediverse server apps grows.
The fewer people think the Fediverse is Mastodon, and the more exposure the other stuff in the Fediverse gets and what features it has over Mastodon, the better.
