jacobianJun 15, 2023

“Mastodon had its chance and it blew it”

I couldn’t agree with this post more. I had super high hopes, but I’m pretty convinced now that between the technical and social issues there’s not a good chance of mastodon being anything other than a tiny niche.

I’m unlikely to go back to Twitter, and BlueSky seems unlikely to be a place I wanna hang out, so I guess this is still home for me for now. But I’m pretty sad things here aren’t going in a different direction.

https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/06/12/why-did-the-twittermigration-fail/

Why did the #TwitterMigration fail? – Café Lob-On

Show threadBen

@jacob I don’t get it, who blew it? There’s no one in charge. That’s the whole point.

Also, many of the arguments are wrong:
- re 25% - that’s instances, not people. It’s a strength that it’s so easy to build your own that so many people experimented with it!
- selling point: is this about features? Marketing? What about: No ads?! Privacy if you like?
- decentralization: Redditors would love it. Also: the thing is interoperability.
- there’s no such thing as “the community”

Jun 15, 2023 at 10:17amWeb
Show threadBenJun 15, 2023

@jacob In the end this comes down to users. Of course it’d be funnier if more people were here. But it’s also clear that people behave differently when there’s less money to be made. What’s the problem? It’s ok to stay on Twitter for the politicians and the Gram for celebrities.

It’ll also be possible to build commercial platforms on this protocol. People will complain, sure, others not. But it’s always like that when you build something.

Show threadAlonJun 15, 2023
@b3n @jacob Re ads: they're a nice feature, but the Mastodon userbase is generally technically adept enough to be browsing the commercial web with ad blockers anyway. I don't really see ads on my desktop when I go on YouTube or when I used Birdsite. An ad-free environment for people who are less technical is precious, due to the problem @pluralistic complains about re scams and enshittification, but then the UI and onboarding need to be friendly to such users.