Mastodawn

Threads passed Mastodon's entire user count in 7 hours https://www.macstories.net/news/users-join-threads-in-droves/

Users Join Threads in Droves

Last night, by the time I called it quits and went to bed Threads, Meta’s new social network, had hit 2 million users in 2 hours. As I write this, Meta’s Adam Mosseri says the count has now surpassed 10 million in 7 hours, which exceeds Mastodon’s user base. Currently, Threads is a pretty barebones

sellitman™️ :unverified:Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton How sad.

Bart Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton proves that the masses still does not care about privacy that much.

I still think it's a win. People that find privacy important are free to use Mastadon and are still able to interact with the majority.

Rod Hilton Jul 6, 2023

@BartInTheField what do you mean "able to interact with the majority"?

Bart Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton I think most mainstream media or non tech savvy friends and family, will use Threads but would never consider a platform like Mastodon

Rod Hilton Jul 6, 2023

@BartInTheField alright - it sort of read like you were saying that people who value privacy can use Mastodon and interact with folks on Threads. That's currently not the case as they went live without ActivityPub support, and it's very much up in the air if they're ever going to support it.

Bart Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton Ah no that is what I meant, I thought that eventually Threads was going to connect. Maybe I'm misinformed about that.

Rod Hilton Jul 6, 2023

@BartInTheField they were going to but went live without it. Still on the road map but I have to imagine it's less of a priority given how much of the fediverse banded together to preemptively block them from federation, plus they surpassed the entire Mastodon user base in less than 12 hours.

Dawid Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton @BartInTheField IMHO they will implement ActivityPub for simple reason: monopoly. If they would kill Twitter they would have almost all biggest social media in their hand. And to not get split by regulators, they will try to say "hey, we don't have monopoly, you can interact with our users from Fediverse". And it doesn't really matter that all fedi is a fraction of a percent of all Meta users.

Rod Hilton Jul 6, 2023

@BartInTheField they were going to but went live without it. Still on the road map but I have to imagine it's less of a priority given how much of the fediverse banded together to preemptively block them from federation, plus they surpassed the entire Mastodon user base in less than 12 hours.

Bart Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton I hope they will go through with it, when registering (out of curiosity) it still mentioned they would connect to the frediverse eventually.

Jim Jones Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton I heard NPR talking about whether it would last or not and they mentioned something called "The Annoying Uncle Problem". The context was that Threads being able to easily leverage its audiences in Instagram and Facebook is both its strength and its Achilles Heel. On the one hand, you can keep your networks, but your online activity is also easily visible to your annoying uncle.

Not sure if it is true, but I found it a funny update to the Eternal September from back in the day.

Felix 🇨🇦 🇩🇪 🇺🇦Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton How sad. Looks like people are drawn to these mega centralized platforms.

Rod Hilton Jul 6, 2023

@fst people largely don't care about centralized VS decentralized, I think.

And to whatever extent they are even aware of it, decentralization represents more friction and usability issues.

People just want to talk to their friends. To whatever extent the technology and culture get in the way of that, they suck.

Felix 🇨🇦 🇩🇪 🇺🇦Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton I also think that lots of people simply want to check out if it's a viable alternative for Twitter

a8e Jul 6, 2023

@rodhilton But these might be users that were already on Meta, like FB and Insta. Does Mastodon currently loose active users?