Gabe RiveraAssorted thoughts on Mastodon and the Fediverse. (Thought I'd offer them up here for people to tell me I'm wrong before recycling them on T*itter):
👍 Some "communities" are rather well-represented here. Some unsurprising tech crowds present in large numbers: future-of-web types, people into open source and open standards, and industry-skeptic/social-justicey folks. The infosec crowd is fairly-well-represented here too. And as I said before, basically every notable blogger from the year 2005 is here!
👎 Startup/venture folks are not here in large numbers. (Yes, @hunterwalk and @mgsiegler are present!) Overall the chicken/egg problem is not cracked for these folks.
😂 Meanwhile, it's kinda funny how crypto people are entirely absent in the Fediverse, given their professed love of decentralization. (Perhaps they were not not so much into decentralization but rather recentralization of wealth around themselves!)
👍 Engagement per follower seems multiple orders of magnitude higher than on Twitter. If you're into engagement, this is the place for you. 😉 (Some of it can feel "reply guy" at times but a lot of it is quite good.)
👉 Anyone who likes Techmeme or Mediagazer linking to their tweets should probably start posting here ASAP. (Due to Twitter's unfortunate API changes and other factors.)
👉 I personally recommend cross-posting here, even if it's the same content posted to Twitter, and even if you're not prepared to engage much. It's good to give people the option to read you.
👉 Fediverse search (opt-in) needs to happen. Fight the naysayers. People are stumbling around in the dark here.
👎 UI issues surrounding following people on other instances continues to be a ***major*** pain point for the fediverse-curious and I hope developers will overcome this soon. 🙏
.
.
👍 Mastodon's APIs are very developer-friendly. I think more nerds would be exploring this place if they realized that.
🥰 That's it for now. Happy Valentine's day. I love you all! 😉
Ottimo Go🥷@gaberivera agree with your opinion
marca56@gaberivera sign me up! I love @ivory on iOS...
herid@gaberivera the 100%. the lack of good search tools on Mastodon is one of the reasons I still use twitter.
David Slifka@herid @gaberivera what sorts of things do you want to search for please?
@davidslifka @herid
1. show me toots linking to [some url]
2. show me latest toots mentioning [some product, place, or person]
1. show me toots linking to [some url]
2. show me latest toots mentioning [some product, place, or person]
@davidslifka @gaberivera any kind of thing. at ALL. I see a news article mentioning a term or some post mentioning something. or a name. almost completely useless to search on mastodon unless it's a single word and made into a hashtag. most search queries are not single words and even those must be made into hashtags in order to be found. most people done bother unless it's some well established topic.
Paul Wilde 
:dontpanic_nobg:@gaberivera huge technical hurdle here... wouldn't really work well with federation unless there was a centralised database of all fediverse instances which would go against the decentralised nature of it all.
I know what you mean though, but it's a bit like the training level on a video game... once you get familiar with it you can literally find anyone/anything
I know what you mean though, but it's a bit like the training level on a video game... once you get familiar with it you can literally find anyone/anything
Rich Stein (he/him)@gaberivera Have you tried Tootfinder https://tootfinder.ch/ by @buercher Opt-in search in prototype. Currently searches two weeks worth of toots. Pretty handy! #feditips #search
@RichStein @buercher Yep, thanks. Needs more people opting in but I'm happy to see that!
@gaberivera @buercher Need to boost -- with hashtags, etc.
InfrogmationFediverse search (opt-in) is already in the process of happening! https://www.tootfinder.ch/
(Also new people need to know you can search for and *follow* hash tags!)
System IV, Building K@gaberivera Agree!
And then you get the inevitable “oh my god, my 10 Masto followers engaged me way more than my 500 Twitter followers, and were smarter and more thoughtful about it”
All I’d ask is that one not *link* to there. Please post a screenshot or copy/paste the actual text. Let’s not drive traffic back to a billionaire sociopath.
Dan Goodin@gaberivera Sad that they only start encouraging people to move over AFTER the bird site changes the API rather than earlier because the bird site is run by a sociopathic megalomaniac who is a threat to democracy.
suldrew 🚲🏳️🌈@gaberivera thank god
Ev WilliamsI talked to one crypto-centric friend who doesn’t like the fediverse because it’s not the *right* way to decentralize from a technical perspective. 🤷♂️
@ev Yeah, I mean, sure, it involves centralization at a smaller scale, but, the advantages should be clear too, and it's tentatively working!
Proxima Centauri@gaberivera @ev Crypto people are now in Nostr:
https://mstdn.social/@proximacentauri/109791758852631025
They HATE Mastodon, Jack uses the wording "Mastodon't".
(Why can't I insert my same images to new posts in Mastodon)
Proxima Centauri (@[email protected])
Attached: 2 images AS @[email protected] SCHEMES WITH #Mastodon #JACK is planning to kill Twitter with Nostr Game ON!
Dan York@gaberivera @ev Well, I think some of the crypto-centric folks don’t like Mastodon because… there’s no #cryptocurrency involved! 🤣
I mean… they’ve been going on and on about how everything needs to be decentralized.. but their implication has always been that #cryptocurrencies would be at the heart of that #decentralization.
And here the Fediverse is showing VERY clearly that you CAN have decentralization… *WITHOUT* cryptocurrencies! 😀
(So maybe they’re wrong?🤦♂️)
caranatar@gaberivera as much as I hate to start a sentence with this phrase... to be fair to the crypto people, I think there are a lot of them, but
1. A lot of general purpose instances kick them off
2. They congregate on crypto specific instances because of 1
3. A lot of non crypto instances defederate with the instances from 2 because why would you federate with welovescams dot social or whatever
1. A lot of general purpose instances kick them off
2. They congregate on crypto specific instances because of 1
3. A lot of non crypto instances defederate with the instances from 2 because why would you federate with welovescams dot social or whatever
Tom W Wolf@gaberivera some crypto bros are on mastadon, but without the algorithm they rely on the rest of us to boost.
Personally - if i see crypto (or MAGA) in a profile - i just block them defensively.
I suspect i am not alone, and that is some of what you are seeing.
@tomwwolf Yeah, my statement was an overstatment!
Tim Staines@gaberivera as noted in another comment, many servers (like mine) explicitly make anti-crypto rules.
Patrick Hund@gaberivera they aren't absent, there's loads of them on dedicated instances but they tend to get instance blocked by admins pretty quickly so they dont filter into the nice part of the fedi 😄
Christina Warren@gaberivera don’t jinx it, Gabe!
Justinmwhitaker@gaberivera it is telling.
Probably shouldn't give them any ideas though.
Drew McManus@gaberivera Lots of crypto spam and BS on Nostr.
Shane Joseph 🐘@gaberivera seems the crypto/web3 type is going all in on Nostr
Leon Cowle@gaberivera @film_girl Crypto VCs have bored of it (now that everyone is realizing it was/is just a giant pyramid scheme and/or recentralization of wealth to them) and are now chasing the new & latest shiny money toy: AI!
@leoncowle @gaberivera which is frustrating b/c AI really is the next wave (imho) and not some fly-by-night fad.
coard@gaberivera just because the grifters aren’t here doesn’t mean “crypto people” are “entirely absent”.
Jovica Popovic@gaberivera
Well, not entirely. 👋
But yes, broadly speaking, most of crypto Twitter is still over there. I would guess it's because crypto peeps mostly were backing Elmo, thinking 'one of us'.
tvler@gaberivera an interesting outlier is the creator of ethereum Vitalik Buterin (@vbuterin) who used Mastodon in good faith to gather poll information for an essay (https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/12/30/institutions.html). He also has his profile listed in his official social media profiles list https://vitalik.ca/files/misc_files/socials.txt
Kevan@gaberivera this one puzzles me—especially as someone working in web3. I am one of the only people I know in the space that has an active Mastodon presence.
As you say, perhaps lots are recentralizers, though I suspect audience size is also problematic a la your vc comment for groups like Solana Foundation. I’d like to see them and others lead by example.
Darren@gaberivera They're all over on Nostr, where all they can talk about is Nostr.
@darrsil I think I'll check in on Nostr once a month or so as the concept is appealing, but right not it's a big No(str), for reasons you alluded to!
@gaberivera It's a lot of people saying it's the future, but in the end it's all crypto-bros bragging about their sats, or whatever else.
There's very little to no discussion on it outside of anything crypto related.
Until they start talking about other topics it will never be able to stand on its own.
Not to mention how hard it is to get it set up - if people thought Mastodon was difficult, forget about Nostr.