It's been eight years to the day since Lance Ulanoff, the storied Tech and Social Media Expert and an award-winning tech journalist, decided that Mastodon won't survive because William Shatner couldn't find him on here.
Eight years on, Mastodon stubbornly survives:
https://rys.io/en/177.html
Please join me in celebrating the annual Mastodon Won't Survive Day, right here on fedi. 
🧵
As it happens, one of the oldest Mastodon instances – octodon dot social – is going to close down very soon.
This is a sad milestone, but it also shows the resilience of the broader network – people migrated, and relations remain.
That tiny volunteer-run instance survived longer than Google+ – a gigantic behemoth of a social network, backed by one of the largest tech companies in the world, and pushed down on everyone and their dog through mandatory integration with YouTube.
2/🧵
I will probably never get tired of having a hearty laugh on Mastodon Won't Survive Day.
Ulanoff's piece is such a great example of "tech bubble journalism" – where anything that does not fit in the round hole of Silicon Valley VC-fueled business models must necessarily be outside of the realm of possibility (and imagination).
Not only he completely ignores the existence of broader fedi, but he also compares Mastodon to Peach – a centralized social network that quickly fizzled out.
3/🧵
Peach fizzled out because it was trying to replicate the monopoly-based walled-garden business model of already existing social networks.
The problem is: that space is already overcrowded. To really have a shot at that, one would need resources comparable to the resources of the biggest players in that space. And even if you do have such resources, this might still not be enough – as the fate of Google+ illustrates.
Fedi is playing a different game; decentralization is a superpower.
4/🧵
Because fedi is not VC-backed, it does not need to generate hockey stick growth, and it is not going to end up under immense pressure to enshittify when early investors start demanding their payouts.
Because it is decentralized, it can try all sorts of things all at once. You want shorter posts? Or longer posts? Or an experience focused on photos? Or short videos? You want quote posts, or do not want them?
There's an instance for that™.
5/🧵
This is not to say everything is honky-dory and our job here is done.
There are loads of things Mastodon-the-software-project needs fixed or implemented, there are loads of things other fedi software projects need.
And there is still the cultural problem of racism on fedi that drives Black and Brown people away. 
But all of this is fixable, and we all have agency here, in ways a VC-funded walled-garden ripe for enshittification is not.
So we have that going for us.
6/🧵/end
@wojslaw @rysiek
There's an entire "dark fedi" that exists largely disconnected from mainstream fedi. These are the major racist/spam instances that are blocked by everyone who stays up to date with their blocklists.
Check out the #GardenFence curated blocklist for an idea of how large the dark fedi is.
When an instance fails to implement these blocks, the nazis get through.
It’s absolutely real.
What I’ve seen several times:
- people sign up on m.social, the absolute largest server, federating with almost every other instance out there
- they get harassed by people on some small server: everyone can set one up easily
- others on instances that already block them or haven’t federated yet don’t get to see it
- new person on m.social doesn’t realise that, is appalled that nobody seems to support them
- leaves fedi
@wojslaw @rysiek You'd think, but unfortunately things like private messaging actually make it easier.
It's a big, chronic problem here, made worse by the fact that it's so easy to abuse people on the quiet. Well-meaning people get defensive and respond with a self-righteous "but I haven't seen any!" and now the target feels worse again.
That also makes it hard for allies to step up: you can't respond to what was hidden from you.
There is something about volunteer-run open infrastructure that keeps going even when corporations disappear. It can break through the limits of the profit motive.
For example, there's a tradition in the amateur radio community for helping in natural disasters, they have a parallel self-funded low-price communications infrastructure that doesn't need phone lines or internet or satellites or expensive gear (or even power lines if it's battery-operated). Corporations cannot provide this because it isn't profitable, so if the worst happens governments and communities often turn to amateurs.
IMO-> I don't claim mastodon will disappear, but it's fair to question adoption when users dropped from 1.2M to 341K in 2 years @ mastodon.social -> The '22 enthusiasm hasn't led to growth. Instead of storytelling, let's ask: what needs to change and why are people leaving the network? is anyone here interested in asking difficult questions. ? am i reading the numbers wrong? or do i have to turn the monitor upside down 👇 https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109300967725833789
@deep sure, this is a fair question to ask. And one important part of the answer is: it's the racism.
Seriously, fedi has a huge problem with racism, and that drove swaths of wonderfully creative Black and Brown people away. I was there, and I saw it.
If we can fix that, that's going to help a great deal.
The invisiblization of the global south on Mastodon, and on the rest of the Fediverse, is a huge issue.
🧵 on how #Mastodon, and the rest of the #Fediverse, invisiblize the #GlobalSouth. I have argued a few times that for all practical purposes, the global south does not exist for Mastodon, and for the rest of the Fediverse. But many people I interact with do not quite understand how this works in practice. This series of posts is an effort to illustrate that mechanism. (continues)
@rysiek If someone is lauding The Great Orange One trumpeting something either in a Rose Garden or at his latest meeting with the Kremlin, I ask that person "What does Putin's Dick taste like?" It worked wonders in my final days on Facebook and oldTwitter to clean out people in my timeline.
However, I wouldn't be so rude as to question this "tech" journalist's and ask about any of his kinks.
@rysiek when Google+ fizzled out, @dredmorbius, me and a bunch of others set out to figure out where to move. There was a wiki, and the spreadsheet can still be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14KPoeMOVo4Sr4y43kj01tdm4xi2wsuIh_HZxsfi92vA/edit?usp=sharing
Turns out that most of the central-instance-options are gone or totally enshittified, whereas as the fediverse options are still there and thriving and actually got at least a bit better on the parts that were marked as lacking in the spreadsheet.
@jollyorc @rysiek @dredmorbius
Damn, that's super cool to see (Diaspora* 😢 ). I'd love to see a "still active in 2025" column tacked on the end ;)
That Serendipity column is interesting. What were your metrics? Mastodon is market as yes, but in my experience, other than boosting, the serendipity is fairly low (the "who to follow" thing is next to useless, the explore feed is just popular accounts).
@jollyorc @rysiek @dredmorbius
True, true. I guess that's just a kind of diffuse, distributed recommender engine.
Somehow mastodon feels like it doesn't have subcultures in the way that twitter does. I wonder if part of Twitter's algorithm encouraged that?
Then again, I guess bubbles are the pathological form of subcultures..
Mastodon very much does have subcultures but in a different way than Twitter, and yes the absence of a single algorithmic feed has a lot to do with it. Here, Instances pay a bigger role here (especially with local-only posts) although it primarily relies on loose groupings of people many of whom follow each other.
@jdp23 @jollyorc @rysiek @dredmorbius
I would say that mastodon DOES have a single algorithmic feed - the explore feed. Of course it's calculated per instance, instead of Twitter's per user feed (and the algorithm is far simpler and more transparent than Twitter's), but that's part of what makes things feel more homogenous..
This is great
@jollyorc @rysiek @dredmorbius Somewhat similar to this spreadsheet, some students and I built an archive of alternative social media sites, with screenshots and terms of service statements, back in the mid-2010s:
@rysiek
Yeah, but social.tchncs.de is still alive (8 years and few months). 😊
Instances will disappear, but a lot of others will start and will be available for a long time.
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