Ali AlkhatibFeb 12, 2023

the framing of mastodon having attrition problems bafflingly misses what's interesting here

mastodon's new user retention rate being as high as it is, despite there being no UX team designing shady psychological tricks into the service/apps to keep you coming back, is a pretty big deal

like, let's be honest, there's very little about mastodon that's making us want to return here compulsively or addictively the way so many for-profit services implicitly aim for

it's pretty much just the people

Show threadsam
@ali also it’s not actually a commercial enterprise so at some level who cares what the monthly active user rate is
Feb 12, 2023 at 5:14pmWeb
Show threadCassandrichFeb 13, 2023

@sam @ali "...who cares...?"

People who value the effects on society this is supposed to have.

Show threadsamFeb 13, 2023
@dalias @ali of course it matters that people use fediverse tools and find value in them but the traditional focus on monthly active users in the private sector is because it’s more or less directly coupled to revenue and thus ability to continue operating. Being run almost entirely by volunteers the fediverse doesn’t have this problem and therefore short term fluctuations in usage just aren’t as important as people are accustomed to when observing commercial social media