this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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I wonder why people aren’t going for mastodon.
Mastadon (and the Fediverse in general, to some extent) has problems with discoverability and the average user finds federation confusing. People tend to either use microblogging to see what's going on with people they're interested in or to broadcast their activities to a large group of people, and Mastadon currently doesn't fit that niche very well.
Pretty much this. It's why I love it for my use case (microblogging journal that only I can see), but it's definitely not for everyone else.
It's why if your average influencer or news consumer wants a Twitter alternative, it's likely Threads or perhaps BlueSky, not Mastodon.
The same reason people aren't going for Lemmy.
Aside from the fact that the Fediverse is an incredibly confusing concept to the average user, those same users are entrenched and connected to everyone they already want to be connected to on the same platform. Until they are essentially forced to move, they'll stay on Twitter. The people on Lemmy and Mastodon right now are a tiny but vocal minority compared to the massive userbases of the platforms they abandoned.
Yeah there really needs to be a rethink of how the Fediverse works.
I don't want to have to subscribe to 8 different "Games" subs each with under 3000 users.
It really should be like "topics" more than "sublemmys" (or whatever) where every post on the Fediverse tagged "games" will appear on your feed when you subscribe to the topic.
The topics still get moderated by the local instance topic moderators and instances can defederate from troubled instances, but discoverability would improve exponentially.
Maybe how it could work is sublemmies could agree to link up and share posts so for example the posts from one games sub would appear in the other games sub and vice versa.
It seems the limitation with the topics idea is who would decide what the topics are? Would there just be a list of like 20 topics baked into Lemmy and people that create sublemmies would tag their sub with a topic? I think the only limitation with that is there would be so many niche subs that don't fit cleanly into one topic, or will be drowned out by the big subs in there maybe. Maybe it could work though if anybody could create new topics, then there could be a Fallout for example with the Fallout subs being in that rather than having to be in the games topic and being drowned out
Yeah it sorta needs to be back to hashtags to tag content so that it can all be in a community despite being in different instances and subs. It's really disjointed and currently the fediverse feels like we went back to AOL chat rooms where it's a lot of people waiting in their own room for someone to come in and talk to them.
It doesn't work and it doesn't really inspire conversation anymore.
Yeah it is like that unfortunately. I mean the larger subs are fine but the niche ones just aren't working on Lemmy atm and some way of addressing the sub splintering would help a lot. And yeah hashtags would probably be a solid way of addressing it.
How did the average user ever figure out email?
They are as well!
Was a open source platform run on donations entirely ever be a competition for something huge like Twitter? This is a first afaik.
I’d say Bitcoin is a bigger example.
yeah but like yesn't. bitcoin isn't a good example imo
How so? A decentralized open source platform with no owner which has a 500B market cap and 220 millions users.
I feel like that’s exactly what we are talking about. I understand the negative sentiment over crypto, but this is a fact.
Or maybe the difference is that it hasn’t stifled some competitor platform yet. I can agree with that because it’s not a parallel in that it’s competing with nothing.
Do people either make money or think they'll make money simply by using the Fediverse? One can certainly advertise via guerrilla marketing on a Fediverse platform but it's far more lucrative to advertise on mainstream social media.
Are you saying brands don't want to come to the fediverse to market their products? I mean if that's true that seems like a good thing, and even if it wasn't I'm sure they would once Lemmy/Mastadon are big enough
No I'm pointing out why the comparison to Bitcoin is inaccurate. It's like saying that your open-source software project will work because the Linux kernel worked. The sole point of similarity has little relevance.
The Fediverse isn't asset speculation, Bitcoin is.
I'm on there, but I use Twitter and mastodon as a follower, I don't post. So until most of the 40ish people I follow move I'm stuck with Twitter if I want to see their posts. And I do.
depending on how popular the user is on Twitter, you may be able to follow them on Mastodon via https://bird.makeup/. I use it to follow things like larger content creators, NHL teams, stuff like that.
Oh interesting. I was unaware.
different features and scalability
When someone links me the backend code of mastodan I'll join. Till then it's just another Facebook. I'll stick with my own website tiblur
Whut? https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
Congratulations of joining mastodon today. 😆
Not only is it open, but you can check it out yourself and install right from source if you really want to get under the hood.
I've seen folks out there running a 1-person masto instance, just so they can partake in the fedi from their own fully sovereign platform. Bit extreme for me, but cool that it's an option. Definitely not just another FB in other words
EDIT: Oh dang there's a one-click app on DO even.
Have you at all attempted to look? It's open source.
This is why it's not being downloaded. It has terrible reviews it's a 3.5 out of 5. You don't think it but people care about that.
I have never tried Mastadon. Normally if a company is good it has great marketing as well as great direction, even if it's a nonprofit. For instance, federation can never work for growth because it's like operating a franchise. The owner of Mastadon doesn't give his franchisees any cut. If he did they would bend over for him to grow their instance. It's actually a new concept that is pretty smart but not executed well. Think I will copy it for Tiblur.com. Right now Mastodon is just a non profit version of McDonalds which all but ensures instance owners will lose their shirt if something bad happens on their instance and they are sued. Corporate structure is the only way. Just don't build a shitty company. Also, why isn't mastodon homie asking for peoples contacts, that's how any app grows. You can do what FaceBook and Instagram do but just dont be a shit.
What is why it is not being "downloaded"? It seems you don't actually understand how it works. You realize we are talking on a federated network right now, yeah? You must be trolling.
It's on the android store I'm looking at the reviews right now.
Since you appear to be talking about a Mastodon mobile app and not the Mastodon network a fair bit of negative reviews are about many of the mobile apps blocking access to Gab. Gab switched to a Mastodon back end back in 2019 or so and several of the apps started to blacklist using that instance at the app level as a consequence. Usually negative reviews about that will refer to "the largest Mastodon instance", which Gab actually was by sheer numbers.
There was even an issue request to hardcode blacklisting Gab into the backend, though they were basically told no in no uncertain terms.
Oh boy, I'm looking through the code for Mastodon right now. Already located one zero day after reading 300 lines of code. Who wrote this app...
Point it out and share it with everyone. That's what FOSS is all about. I bet you won't.
Of course they won't. They're shilling their own product which is a competitor to Mastodon.
I'm not going to entertain your buffoonery.
but it is under the: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 Permissions of this strongest copyleft license are conditioned on making available complete source code of licensed works and modifications, which include larger works using a licensed work, under the same license. Copyright and license notices must be preserved. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights. When a modified version is used to provide a service over a network, the complete source code of the modified version must be made available.
So he cant revoke anyone of using the software he contributes
It seems like you're deliberately misrepresenting, but I'll explain anyway because I know that some people might be confused.
The Mastodon app is a client on your phone which accesses servers in the network.
The network consists of multiple servers that are interconnected to each other. Content from one server is automatically cross-hosted to other servers when it is discovered on those other servers. That's how Federation works. I know it's probably an oversimplification of how activitypub works, but it's generally good enough for most people, and the important part is really that content is present and visible on other servers.
When you sign up to a server your account is stored on that server, the posts that you make are stored on that server, as well as automatically cross hosted to other servers which have people following you.
If the owner of a server pulls the plug for whatever reason the content on that server will no longer be directly accessible, if your account is there you will lose your account. The copies on other servers will remain as they have been copied. The rest of the network will continue operating without that server and the accounts that were hosted on it.
About asking whether or not an instance owner can sue instances they don't like, that sounds like absolute nonsense and I'm not even going to bother trying to understand whatever point you're trying to make with this.
Im on a computer not a phone. People like apps not browsers.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon