@atomicpoet There isn't a proprietary API, but parts of the fediverse community, especially on Mastodon, seems to be very against certain kinds of features. Search, quote tweets, non-chronological feeds -- pretty much anything that isn't the pared-down Twitter clone that Mastodon currently is seems to be off-limits.

That isn't necessarily all bad -- I think it's good that people consider what *should* be done, and not just what *could* be done. However, I feel like a lot of fediverse/mastodon old-timers aren't really thinking about what's the actual problem with certain things, and instead have a knee jerk "Twitter did that, and Mastodon doesn't, so therefore it must be bad".

In any case, I fell like saying "the sky is the limit in how they can innovate" isn't entirely accurate. There are many things Twitter apps could do that at least some people on the fediverse wouldn't tolerate.

@xenomachina @atomicpoet Old-school Mastodon users are either outnumbered by Twitter refugees at this point or will be in short order.

I’ve seen the resistance you speak of, but if Mastodon keeps growing I expect the needs of those new people to inform and influence changes over the long run.

That’s not to say that they’ll always get their way (nor should they necessarily), but they’ll definitely have a seat at the table, so to speak.

@jeff @xenomachina Many of those new accounts have quickly acclimated to the old culture, though there have been changes.

Less people want a 1:1 reproduction of Twitter.

But hey, there's nothing stopping a developer from attempting to do it.

@atomicpoet @xenomachina If they acclimate so quickly, I think, then that may well be a case where the old guard got it right.

What I want to see is a lot of experimentation (with Mastodon and the Fediverse at large), and I’m cautiously hopeful that we’ll see it. Because right now I’m not sure we even know what all the possibilities are.

There are things that I’d like to see make the jump from Twitter, but I also think we can do better than a 1:1 reproduction.

@jeff @atomicpoet I completely agree.

I'd like to see a lot of experimentation too, but I'm concerned that the fediverse is not as welcoming to experimentation as it should be.

I want to reiterate that I'm not trying to say that all pushback is bad, however. On the contrary, I think it's a huge improvement that there is a lot more thought put into things like user safety, and I do agree that sometimes that means certain features shouldn't exist, or should at least be different. I also don't want a 1:1 Twitter reproduction; Twitter did a lot wrong, even before the new ownership.

Anyway, my point in replying to this thread was just that the fediverse isn't really "sky's the limit". It has constraints, they are just different constraints from Twitter's.

@xenomachina @jeff You have yet to name what these specific constraints are.

You have also yet to name any of the people who supposedly are constraining you.

I suspect you're making this up.

@atomicpoet @jeff

In the last several months there have been several fediverse search engines that popped up, and they all seemed to get shot down within days. I don't remember the names of all of them, but the most recent example I know of was searchtodon, which seems like it was quite careful to avoid a lot of the dangers with global search.

From https://searchtodon.social/Adventures-in-Mastoland.html

"... folks commented and criticised things that didn’t match reality, or only confirmed their preconceived notions. Some folks have a reflex to react negatively when hearing “mastodon” and “search” in the same sentence without actually evaluating what is proposed. Names were called."

@xenomachina @atomicpoet You quoted the bit about "reflexive" knee jerk reaction people, but it's not clear that was the main reason the experiment was ended.

What I took from that section is those reactions were just the cherry on top, so to speak - not the primary impetus for the experiment ending.

I'd LOVE to see Twitter-like search functionality, myself, but the issues mentioned earlier in that section would keep me from wanting _this particular implementation_ to move forward as-is.

@jeff @atomicpoet

If those reactions were just the cherry on top, what do you see as being the main reason(s) the experiment ended?