thumperI’m over here now, too. I’m an equal opportunity “let’s get the fuck off Twitter” kind of guy.
SunLocked@thumper Honest question, because I am also frustrated with the current situation: We got screwed by Tumblr, by Twitter, by WordPress.com… Is there any hope that another commercial platform will be any different?
Personally, I don’t trust any of them anymore. That’s why I will stay here until I find something, which is both, better and free (uncommercial).
@SunLocked Bluesky’s not commercial. They’re trying to create a protocol like Mastodon (and also compatible with Mastodon). But it’s easier to use and way more laid back than Mastodon. I dunno what’s going to happen but people simply aren’t coming here and they are (as fast as the invites allow) going to Bluesky. So we’ll see.
@thumper I agree that they say they only develop the open protocol. But with seed investors pouring millions of $$$ into the company, they must believe there is money to be made.
Maybe they will play by the (open) rules. For now. But at some point someone will try to make more money out of it.
Too often, have we seen open source champions becoming (half-)closed in order to make more money, .e.g.
MariaDB, Red Hat (IBM),...
I would be surprised if the same was not happening with BlueSky in a few years.
Some references:
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109213/open-source-uproar-as-mariadb-goes-commercial.html
@SunLocked That’s all fine but Mastodon isn’t going to be the next thing. It’s not getting traction due, IMO, to too much friction. It’s too hard to sign up, to hard to post, too hard to find and follow, too hard to discover content, and the user base makes all of it harder. Fact is, Twitter’s biggest problem right now is it’s owned by a wannabe Nazi. The content kinky and sex positive folks want to post is perfectly fine there as it’s always been. I doubt that’ll change ever. So being commercial is not the problem at all. That’s a red herring, imo.
ctrledboy@thumper @SunLocked Honestly I think a lot of people just want a Twitter replacement. Mastodon is not that and if that is all you want you are probably going to be disappointed.
I’m here because I wanted social media that isn’t at the whims of one person (or a handful). With that comes some compromises. I’m tired of moving every few years.
@ctrledboy @SunLocked But we *are* at the whims of one person (or a handful) here. Namely, the person (or handful) who owns and runs the kinky.business instance (or whichever other server we want to move to). Mastodon is like web forums from the early aughts run by a (hopefully) benevolant dictator mod, expcet they all talk to one another. There is no such thing as a social platform that isn't under someone's control. Otherwise, I agree with you. Masto is too different from Twitter to succeed as its replacement. BlueSky is way more what people expect from “new Twitter.” New Twitter is what I want, tbh.
@thumper @SunLocked Yes but no. I can move my account and my social graph to another instance but not my posts. I could decide to run my own instance just for me. I can choose to block instances that my admin doesn’t. If my admin (or me if I run my own instance) doesn’t like something the developers change they can choose to patch it out. I can backup all my posts and graph so if this instance dies or bans me I can quickly rebuild elsewhere.
Right now if Bluesky PBLLC makes a decision I’m stuck with it except to find some other social media network. Where I will have to build a whole new social graph from scratch. If they let bigots post I have to block them one by one. Currently I have zero option to run my own instance. Not sure if they have any sort of backup of posts, backup of the social graph is pointless now.
@thumper @SunLocked I never wanted to go to Twitter. It just seemed like the best option after Tumblr. Mostly because all the other options were niche or didn’t allow adult content. Now that I’ve seen what happened with Twitter and Reddit, I’m never using a social media network that isn’t meaningfully distributed.
Part of my doubts about Bluesky is they say they want the distributed features I want but are quickly absorbing the Twitter users who don’t want the complexity it brings. They will either compromise to keep those users or bleed users who decide they don’t like the changes. So the increased interest there isn’t likely to pay off in the long term.
@thumper You are right: Commercial or not is not the main question. But business model is.
Mastodon is not so much different from e.g E-Mail. I shy Gmail because I deeply mistrust Google. I rather pay a web/mail hoster for providing this service, including basic features such as anti-spam. This could work for the Fediverse, too. A hoster offering your private but managed instance.
And yes, Mastodon has its fair share of issues. But without having looked into the details, I have the impression that the underlying ActivityPub protocol could be the basis for many more solutions. Maybe even for a new Twitter replacement. With the benefit that that future solution could immediately tap into the network that the Fediverse already is. Hoping…