Mastodawn

Jerry 🦙💝🦙

8 years on, Mastodon is still failing because it’s so hard to use https://v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-interview

(For clarity, mastodon is not failing - that was my apparently bad attempt at sarcasm. Please see my response to this post for more details)

Mastodon Exit Interview

I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media.

Rob’s Posts

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 16, 2025

Note that I agree with a lot of this person’s complaints.

-> @haileys.quest Apr 16, 2025

@jerry The one thing I disagree with is that he thinks 100 bot posts isn't "noise." If I cared to know what time the sun was rising in Tokyo I'd look it up, or add a homescreen widget or something. I don't need that in a feed of posts I expect to be from people.

Rob Shearer Apr 18, 2025

@blake @jerry So don't follow the bot. The cultural problem I highlight is that conflation of "that doesn't interest me" with "that content shouldn't be available to anyone".

-> @haileys.quest Apr 19, 2025

@rvcx @jerry The problem is it flooding the global/local timelines, not just my home feed.

Rob Shearer Apr 19, 2025

@blake @jerry On an instance with 150,000 accounts, that concern is, and feel free to block me for this, idiotic.

But you got what you wanted. As soon as the admin told me they weren't acceptable, I shut them down.

-> @haileys.quest Apr 19, 2025

@rvcx @jerry See this is where botsin.space was really great. If you wanted to follow a bot (and I have!) it's a directory and timeline that gives you all the bots you could ever dream of. Centering that traffic on bot-specific instances also makes it easy to filter that out of other timelines, so it's there and easy to find if you look for it, out of your way when you're not.

There are possibly technological improvements -- one from Bluesky is its feeds and discovery system; you don't get the firehose, generally, it all gets filtered through various customizable feeds. But yeah, the culture here is absolutely rancid about everything. I can't say I'm an exception....

Adriano Apr 16, 2025

@jerry There are bits that seem to have written in anger. Understandable anger, perhaps, but when he writes

"but apparently its very open speech policy led to an association with Nazis (or something) and many other instances blocked it."

Come the fuck on, "Eh, nazis, maybe, but nothing to do with me, the actual problem is that I lost my posts" certainly a way to describe that situation *when you're talking about global moderation*.

Adriano Apr 16, 2025

@jerry I will say that getting to see my posts as ephemeral (in many more ways than just 'they don't follow you if you move instances') is something that in my case has been a net positive, but I understand people who don't want that.

rakoo Apr 16, 2025

@jerry

Yeah, Mastodon the software isn't built for the everyone sees everyone mindset of Twitter, Facebook and all centralized systems. That's explicitely how BS was built and why it is still subject to central authorities. Mastodon-as-a-network doesn't target that usecase, perhaps a bit late now, but it's good that it's becoming clearer

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 16, 2025

to clarify, my comment about mastodon failing is sarcasm - there have been sooo many articles written in the years I’ve been here about mastodon failing, and yet here we all are.

All that said, there are some real issues I agree with in the post, and there is some whiny entitled person stuff I don’t agree with.

The Mastodon team continues to make improvements all the time. I cannot tell you how much better mastodon is today than it was when I first started infosec.exchange over 8 years ago. Huge difference! They are a very small team and have constrained resources. So, if we want to see changes, we have to help them out. The best way, by the way, is donating to the Mastodon organization to support their development (see joinmastodon.org for details)

Newk Apr 16, 2025

Buy the damn Mastodon plush toy, people! On good days you can hug it, on bad days you can hug it, too! It's multipurpose!

greyllama Apr 16, 2025

@jerry not to be confused with johnmastodon.org

Dr Know Apr 16, 2025

@jerry The best way to help out is writing code.

Cybarbie Apr 16, 2025

@jerry idk there is no logical reason for the UI to be such utter dogshit that it is.

Its gotten far worse in the 8 years and is a huge barrier to me. very difficult and annoying to use. It has absolutely nothing to do with being a small team either. Clearly they have opinions - really bad ones.🤷‍♀️

On the bright side uptime and response is good.

I implore everyone to donate to their instance admins who are often and unaccepatbly left out of pocket.

Katy Swain Apr 17, 2025

@jerry I've been on the Fediverse since 2008: pre-Mastodon, pre-ActivityPub. Legitimate issues with flaws in this or that client notwithstanding, the common complaint over those years can be paraphrased as:

"I don't understand the concepts of friends or community, and I'm not interested. I want reach and engagement."

Fine. Go to BlueSky. That's what it's optimised for. The Fediverse has different priorities. You don't have to justify anything.

Dave Dugal 🔒

@jerry I try to advocate for Mastodon in most arenas where I roam, but it's definitely an "also ran" at this point :(

-> @haileys.quest Apr 16, 2025

It is difficult to imagine any of the substantive discussions of the Gaza war that happen on Bluesky surviving on Mastodon.Yeah..... it may not be the "anti-semitic" angle, but more likely it'll be the "please hide this unpleasant thing so I don't have to think about it" -- valid for US politics, not valid for an ongoing genocide or accounts of oppression [accounts meaning talking about it, not a user-account]. Sometimes you need to know, or need to be reminded, whether or not you want to be. Especially when you don't want to be.

@jerry I'm not sure about the "scolding, censorious tone" from my POV here, but he raises some very good architectural points.

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 16, 2025

@davep as a moderator, I can definitely relate to the scolding point.

@jerry Yikes. I guess you have to see a lot of the less desirable stuff than your average user though, be they content or reports.

Paul Houle Apr 16, 2025

@jerry i think private messages are a bug not a feature; any service that offers them gets flooded with creepy 'girls' who say 'hey!' who probably work for Chinese nationals in Myanmar

anti-viral is fine with me, if anything I think chronological feeds + boosting is a toxic algorithm; I have a lot of fun on Mastodon but can't stand the "Explore" feed on mastodon.social

Paul Houle Apr 16, 2025

@jerry for that matter I think it makes no sense to be on any Mastodon sever other than "mastodon.social" but I'm not one of those people who can't make up their mind over whether they want to be visible or invisible

Personally I post first to Mastodon, enjoy the chance to edit, then I copy some posts over to Bluesky later.

Paul Houle Apr 16, 2025

@jerry I think engagement quality for me on Mastodon is good but if I hadn't done a lot of work to keep antiresilient people away I would not be enjoying Mastodon

joy larkin 🌺✨Apr 16, 2025

Somewhat relatedly from Twitter...

Joseph Hanson Apr 16, 2025

@jerry first bluesky instance?

Joseph Hanson Apr 16, 2025

@jerry took a look at what it’d take to put a bluesky instance up a while ago and it was more work for a single node than an HA mastodon setup lol

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 16, 2025

@jahanson yeah, maybe if I were still making the big CISO dollars, I’d consider it more. But I just can’t afford that.

hal8999 Apr 16, 2025

@jerry While the complaints about individual use are valid, I also have to think....one more mindless bot (or a hundred) are dead? Good riddance.

Don't let the exit interview hit you in the ass on the way out.

Rob Shearer Apr 18, 2025

@hal8999 @jerry "I'm glad this content I never noticed is no longer available to the thousands of people who chose to make it part of their day" vibes are common. 🤷

hal8999 Apr 18, 2025

@rvcx Rob, the bot craze makes the human:non-human ratio ridiculous.

I don't notice thousands of bad drivers on the roads around the world. But I am annoyed and endangered by the ones near me.

So, yeah, I'd still be happy if thousands of bad drivers disappeared. Even if they weren't near me.

Maybe your bots were nice. Or non-obtrusive. Or only notif on request/subscribption. But, overall, IMO, automated non-human posting is more noise and litter than actual 'social' interaction. YMMV.

Rob Shearer Apr 18, 2025

@hal8999 Questionable analogy aside, there is very literally a piece of metadata on every single account—and every single post—to say whether it's from a bot. Kinda seems like if "no bots" is what you want, your software is seriously letting you down not to offer it.

hal8999 Apr 18, 2025

@rvcx My application is sub-par through ignorance: web browser with an empty filter page.

I'll do some homework to see how to trap a metadata tag for self-proclaimed bots.

I do appreciate your human response.

Rob Shearer Apr 18, 2025

@hal8999 Good luck with that. Mastodon's development wrt filters has been as stalled out as everything else. I know a dev community with no momentum when I see one. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/8293

Add an option to hide bots' posts · Issue #8293 · mastodon/mastodon

I think it should be useful to add an option to the local and global timelines to not display posts made by bots (aka. users who have the "service" Actor type). EDIT: Actually, it may be good to ha...

GitHub

hal8999 Apr 18, 2025

@rvcx yep, you see the same circle of 4-5 issues linking to each other...none of them really resolved.

Rob Shearer Apr 19, 2025

@hal8999 I know mastodon peeps get defensive about all this, and all I can tell you is that I don't harbor any real animosity. I picked an instance with an *explicit* policy of allowing bots, with *very* clear rules about how often they can post. I set up all the metadata, including making sure the *same* agent url was used on every post to allow filtering across all accounts. And then "we hate bots here, but we've avoided implementing even the simplest features for SEVEN YEARS, so f*** you"

Rob Shearer Apr 19, 2025

@hal8999 If you notice I'm called out by name in the issue I linked. Because that guy sent me an anonymous email—not just no Mastodon handle but not even a name, signature, or greeting—calling me an asshole and demanding that I change my bots immediately. I traded a half-dozen emails with this guy and he refused to give a name or explain what his interest was in this at all.

Rob Shearer Apr 19, 2025

@hal8999 It's fine. This was never a "side hustle"; just a lark. One that I have also received a bunch of very nice messages about. After certain disastrous political events, I receive a handful of "sometimes it means a lot to be reminded the sun will rise tomorrow" messages. And I feel a little guilty abandoning those people. But why on earth would I want to put up with the headache of injecting myself into a "community" that doesn't want me? A community whose identity is based on exclusion?

hal8999 Apr 22, 2025

@rvcx

I hear what you're saying. My comment to the effect of 'good riddance' was tongue-in-cheek to bots in general. Not to humans like you.

In this server, there is a rule to self-identify as a bot. But, no way to filter out all bots. Strange technical connundrum.

Those two hurdles would make Mastodon a better place. 1. honorable creators who label their account as a bot 2. the ability of users to filter bots as a category, instead of account-by-account.

That makes subscriptions to a feed seem more in control of the user.

The younger folk just tell me to scroll past. But when a feed is 90% automated posts...that gets old. I'm the kind of old geezer who would read the Sunday newspaper for hours. I enjoy human-created that speaks to other humans.

I'm a dying breed of consumer according to the internet. :(

Don't stop creating because of rude dudes like me. If your bots are bringing value to peoples' feeds, then keep feeding them. It's good to know there's a human behind the things.

Tom Bortels Apr 16, 2025

The message (paraphrasing) of "I'm annoyed my bot posting things 99.99% of users find useless and didn't sign up to follow isn't propagating to servers where nobody has expressed an interest in seeing them" is a weird flex.

Rob Shearer Apr 18, 2025

@tbortels @jerry I find a bizarre contradiction between "virality is bad" and "any content that appeals to only very small populations is bad", both of which are pretty central to Mastodon culture.

Tom Bortels Apr 18, 2025

Another weird take.

Virality isn't bad - but it's not a goal. The need to be popular and feel seen isn't a mastodon design goal. Places you can go and be popular already exist.

The second is even weirder. I'm on a server that focuses on infosec. It's dry and mostly boring and we don't feel the need to force anyone to see it - which is why we're not polluting mastodon.social with that content. It's not that the content is bad - it's actually quite useful - we're just realistic about who it has utility for. Anyone seeking it out can join the server or follow individuals, but to push it on an uninterested population would be rude.

I'm sorry mastodon isn't what you expected it would be, and I'm happy you decided going to another service is best for you. But I am unconvinced this represents some sort of flaw in design or implementation. Nor am I asking to be enlightened.

Rob Shearer Apr 18, 2025

@tbortels @jerry But in what way is the mere existence of something "pushing it" on anyone? I simply don't understand the mindset. You really believe that on a server with 150,000 users, every user is obliged to make everything they post of wide interest to everyone else on that instance?

You're worried that hosting your infosec account on mastodon.social would "pollute" that instance's timeline?

This is insane!

Tom Bortels Apr 18, 2025

pot, kettle.

Bye.

Fritz Adalis Apr 16, 2025

@jerry
What a petulant child. His thread with Trumpet was enlightening.

🅱🅻🆄🅴🅱️Apr 16, 2025

You should signal the sarcasm with an emoji.

I read it serious.

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 16, 2025

@BlueBee sorry 😞

🅱🅻🆄🅴🅱️Apr 16, 2025

@jerry how dare you 😊

Mike Apr 16, 2025

@jerry Nothing wants to work anymore 😉

@jerry it's frustrating that this person is quite right

Jimmothy Baggins Apr 16, 2025

@jerry Mastoson is and maybe always will be a harder place to make a business and make money. Especially solely through exposure. Especially in a small amount of time. But in a few ways I think that’s what I like most about Mastodon. It’s very hard to turn someone like me (not a business) into a cash cow. I don’t want to be a cash cow. I don’t want to be someone’s revenue model. I am here to nerd out, complain and boost anything I find cool without being scanned or charged.

Nonya Bidniss Apr 16, 2025

@jerry Dude seems mad. He lists some common complaints but in my own little experience I just really haven't found them problematic to deal with. 🤷 With Mastodon, YMMV

dumpster_fire_gif

Torge Rosendahl Apr 16, 2025

Reading this article really shows me why I like mastodon. There is no other place where I feel like I have this much impact on my feed. Where people jokingly say "I spent so much time building my Tiktok feed", that is actually the case on mastodon! And for me, having chosen an instance that compiles posts relevant to me, the explore feed is unbelievably useful and interesting!!

(thanks @leuchtturm for running it <3)

Jimmothy Baggins Apr 16, 2025

@jerry I also imagine the Majority of peoples complaints will be resolved once the official mastodon app adds a firehouse feed. I see it on Trunks and many other apps have it just not the one the majority of people will be using

Josh Sutphin Apr 16, 2025

@jerry TBH most of this reads to me like "my bot accounts aren't doing viral numbers and I'm going to make that Mastodon's fault".

Overall, this person seems to want something very different from social media than what Mastodon is made for: they seem to want bots, viral trends, and "reach", where the rest of us just want some humans talking to each other.

Martin Seeger Apr 16, 2025

@jerry Mastodon may be niche, but it is my niche 😁

[nate@social0 ~]$

@jerry So... the article does shine light on a few issues that mastodon does have that sort of prohibit it from growing like larger social platforms.

I do have trouble finding anyone to talk to about more that just a select set of topics. we don't have celebrity presences.

finding content from folks you haven't already interacted with is sometimes hard. Sometimes i can't tell if the topic isn't here or if i'm just not federated with any instances that talk about it

and there is... or maybe was, definitely a gate-keepey feel making it hard for new users.

I sometimes wonder how many instances here block my instance just because i don't habitually use cw's (maybe it's none, but how do i know?).

And as much as i love the decentralized nature. it does make it confusing for newbies.

Martijn Faassen has moved Apr 17, 2025

@jerry
But it doesn't work he says so 7 times at least, so it doesn't work

it doesn't work! for anyone anywhere, it just doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, it doesn't work and damnit I can't add in the five letters "for me"

it doesn't work i wrote on mastodon

"it doesn't work" if i say it enough it will stop being annoying and become true

"it
doesn't
work" oh yeah that bit doesn't work either

*I counted "for me" as 4 letters like a freaking LLM before