Mastodawn

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-on-the-current-post-twitter-diaspora-options/

People looking for a more neutral take on the state of various networks will probably get a lot out of this writeup from @mmasnick:

Six Months In: Thoughts On The Current Post-Twitter Diaspora Options

Today is six months since Elon took over Twitter and began this bizarre speedrun of the content moderation learning curve in which he seems to repeatedly… not learn a damn thing. Over and over agai…

Techdirt

Mastodon Migration Apr 30, 2023

@kissane @mmasnick Mike Masnick puts lot of faith in the promises of Bluesky CEO Jay Graber to clean up their ToS. I hope that he continues to monitor this situation. People put a lot of credence behind his recommendations.

#DataProtection

Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱May 1, 2023

@kissane @mmasnick As someone who has pretty strong “Bluesky antibodies” I went into your write-up prepared to strongly disagree with it, but came away largely in agreement.

Mastodon is in the big leagues now. This will necessitate change and openness to new ideas.

Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱May 1, 2023

@kissane @mmasnick The ‘80s meat substitute thing is particularly inspired, as it’s a perfect example of how ideologues can and often trip themselves up in achieving their goals when a different approach could actually make inroads.

Sometimes you just have to be willing to meet people halfway.

Lionel Mandrake

@jeff @kissane @mmasnick Or meat them halfway, on a case by casing basis. 🤦

I apologize. It was just sitting there and I couldn't help myself.

Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱May 1, 2023

@mandrakeOPE @kissane @mmasnick I was thinking of that before I posted that, actually, but had a moment of uncharacteristic self-control.

Thanks for not leaving it unsaid!

@jeff @mandrakeOPE

blocked and reported, all of you

Lionel Mandrake

@kissane @jeff I plead guilty and accept my pun-ishment. (omg, make it stop)

Lionel Mandrake

@jeff @kissane @mmasnick "Self-control"? I'm vaguely familiar with the concept, in a "darn, I missed the train again" kinda way. 😜 Cheers!

@jeff @mandrakeOPE @kissane @mmasnick

Wraithe May 1, 2023

Skyler Hawthorne

@jeff @kissane @mmasnick I agree, this is a pretty great piece. I feel like this is all best exemplified by the vitriol that exploded forth over people building indexers over the Fediverse. I don't rehash the whole issue, as I think there are big problems with how both sides of that debate went about it, but one thing that is crystal clear is that there is a massive unfulfilled need for discoverability.

Decentralization is great and all, but without a way to interact with the larger system, it's more like a bunch of tiny islands. Doing absolutely nothing about it is going to make it really easy for people to jump ship to the next big social platform that actually does meet their needs. And I don't think connectedness and privacy are necessarily in fundamental conflict with one another. It just takes effort and compromise.

Skyler Hawthorne

@jeff @kissane @mmasnick one issue I did have with the piece was this

>the longer Mastodon stays in Linux-on-the-desktop mode

I think this is a stereotype that isn't exactly serving the point of the story very well. Desktop Linux has made pretty big strides in user friendliness over the past decade. GNOME and KDE both offer an experience competitive with Windows and Mac these days, in my opinion.

@dead10ck @jeff @kissane @mmasnick

Rafi C May 1, 2023

The linux parallel is unintentionally appropriate here: Windows 11 has ads on the start menu that can't be turned off, it's constantly phoning home, and its consumer version has become surveillance-ware. Microsoft can do this because they make their money elsewhere (Office and Azure).

Linux today is an oasis compared to that.

I'm specifically referring to Windows here as that is what the majority of people in the world use. Not everyone can afford a Mac.

anothercultland May 1, 2023

@kissane shit, instead of working up my own post, I should've just boosted this post. 😖👍

Mark R. Stoneman May 2, 2023

@kissane I'm not sure how neutral this was. Useful, sure, but very much oriented toward those who believe social problems can be solved with tech alone. His use of scare quotes around "controversies" feels like something of a tell in this respect.

Derek Powazek 🐐Apr 30, 2023

@kissane such a good piece and I think quite even handed. Thank you for writing it.

@fraying Thank you! I look forward to being swarmed by angry dudes tomorrow when masto wakes up from the weekend 😬

Derek Powazek 🐐Apr 30, 2023

@kissane I hope you’re disappointed by that completely reasonable expectation.

@kissane glancing at my mentions proves you correct.

Sigh.

@fraying My favorite evasive maneuver here is when people class all discussion of Mastodon specifically as "erasing" other ActivityPub projects

@kissane
Me: a criticism of mastodon
Them: the fediverse is bigger than mastodon!
Me: yeah, I’m aware. Today we’re talking about mastodon.
Them: but activitypub!
Repeats forever.

@fraying @kissane I'm exhausted just watching this and i'm not even extremely online (anymore)

@amye on May 12 we can all escape into Hyrule

@fraying Already there

@amye I might go look for koroks myself.

@fraying i started over to get that first cut scene of a sunrise over Hyrule.

genehack May 1, 2023

@amye @fraying @kissane *side eye*

@genehack @fraying @kissane what. You can come to hyrule too. See you in lurelin.

William Pietri Apr 30, 2023

@kissane "smelled like nutritional mummy" and "tasted like macrame owl" have me laughing so hard I'm in literal tears. So very on the nose for a slice of my childhood.

William Pietri Apr 30, 2023

@kissane And now that I've made it all the way, thank you for an excellent and punchy piece. "Linux-on-the-desktop mode" seems spot on for my experience so far, and I hope we can change it.

@williampietri the general ambiance of wet vitamins in those years…

William Pietri Apr 30, 2023

@kissane I really wanted to like carob! But then I was a very earnest kid.

Mx. Aria Stewart May 1, 2023

@williampietri @kissane The cultural smells of my people!

Ethan Marcotte Apr 30, 2023

@kissane erin can i talk to you about the part of your very excellent essay that made me choke on my wine

@beep sorry sorry im trying to remove it

Amye Scavarda Perrin Apr 30, 2023

@kissane @beep no leave it it's perfect

Mark Llobrera May 1, 2023

@beep @kissane What is the German word for dying from excessive cackling

Jon (now at neuromatch.social)Apr 30, 2023

@kissane Great article. One thing I'd add, (related to your point that "The thing is, networks can recover from even big initial fuckups") is that Mastodon had a similar opportunity in April 2017 and collective reacted in a similar way (alienating a lot of the key early trans and queer early contributors in the process). So, it's hard to be optimistic about mainline Mastodon. On the other hand, the fediverse isn't just Mastodon. We shall see.

Andromeda Yelton Apr 30, 2023

@kissane (CAROB CHIPS oh my goodness my mom tried to sell me on that too and I was having none of it. But I know exactly the nutritional mummy type of store you mean.)

Sarah Glassmeyer Apr 30, 2023

@thatandromeda @kissane I went to a summer camp run by mennonites who made us very healthy food. One day we made vanilla ice cream and they had big bowls of what I THOUGHT was chocolate chips as a topping but was actually carob and it’s been 40 years and I’m still mad.

Andromeda Yelton May 1, 2023

@sglassmeyer @kissane a reasonable and proportionate response to that kind of betrayal

Sentence Grimes May 1, 2023

@thatandromeda @kissane I had an allergy to chocolate as a kid (which I thankfully out grew) so I grew up eating carob. I like it for what it is, but I can understand why someone who has tasted chocolate first wouldn't like it.

I expect looking to carob as a chocolate substitute is like expecting Postum to work as a coffee substitute.

Glenn Fleishman Apr 30, 2023

@kissane I was a beta tester for the Tofurky Thanksgiving dinner. (Verdict: everything but the gravy was pretty good.)

@glennf I love this

Glenn Fleishman May 1, 2023

@kissane my parents went all in on natural foods when I was 10! My dad later started and ran a granola company for a decade. (it was delicious)

@glennf my family later got goats and ran an organic dairy

I had my rumspringa in my 20s and now I eat a real specific diet to control autoimmune stuff and grow my own herbs and greens and make my own granola, I have fully reverted to type 🤦🏻

no goats, however. yet.

Steve Lieber May 1, 2023

@kissane Great piece. I've watched my entire industry bounce of off mastodon because of the UX.

Hundreds of my peers would like to leave twitter and have made accounts on one instance or another. But they left out of frustration that simple things like clicking a follow button would sometimes instead send them to a login page. And when they expressed concern or confusion about this, someone would helpfully tell them it's actually a feature of federation, that really it's like email.

Greg Pak May 1, 2023

@stevelieber @kissane Uff.

Greg Pak May 1, 2023

@stevelieber @kissane It's interesting because my onboarding experience with Mastodon -- back in 2017! -- was pretty smooth, and when I really started using it more than any other social network this year, the Elk and Ivory interfaces made it feel pretty great. But at the same time, this year I've really become aware of how tedious it can be to do something as simple as to follow people.

Greg Pak May 1, 2023

@stevelieber @kissane I still prefer Mastodon over every other alternative. But it's painful how many folks I'd LOVE to see on here who have been turned off by the interface friction.

G. Willow Wilson May 1, 2023

@gregpak @stevelieber @kissane I think it's crucial to understand that as we move further into the digital age, people are getting less tech savvy, not more so. Those of us who grew up with Linux had to learn some basic coding and programming principles. Ppl today are used to everything being hidden behind the UX. The UX is king. Mastodon is like asking ppl who are used to driverless cars to learn stick shift.

Extremely Jordan May 1, 2023

@GWillow @gregpak @stevelieber @kissane twitter has had the advantage of numerous iterative designs to its UX and that it’s already the main game in town that everyone will be compared to. Which sucks for us that want to leave twitter altogether

Jason Bergman May 1, 2023

@GWillow @gregpak @stevelieber @kissane

So true. So many people see computers as a permanently sealed box with magic inside.

El Duvelle May 1, 2023

@gregpak @stevelieber @kissane Same!

Micah May 1, 2023

@stevelieber @kissane yes! If you have explain why something is simple or good UX, it’s not good UX.

sam May 1, 2023

@stevelieber @kissane
no offence but i'm an archaeologist and i have no trouble using mastodon on desktop or mobile..its really not as difficult as you are making out..

sam May 1, 2023

@stevelieber @kissane
and i'm 44..so if me and my ancient computer skills can manage so can you

@allofmystudentsrunaway @stevelieber I’m older than you, but I try to listen when people explain what they need, and I care about the way things feel for people who aren’t like me. 🤷🏻

sam May 1, 2023

@kissane then i would say mastodon requires slightly more effort than most people are used to because there is no algorithm pushing stuff at you..so boost and comment the stuff you like, not stuff chosen for you by someone else based on what gets the most likes . welcome to mastodon, follow hashtags, boost people you like be prepared to have a wee chat sometimes.