Jerry 🦙💝🦙Apr 16, 2025

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
Show threadJerry 🦙💝🦙

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)

Apr 16, 2025 at 4:27pmWeb
Show threadNewkApr 16, 2025

@jerry

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!

Show threadgreyllamaApr 16, 2025
@jerry not to be confused with johnmastodon.org
Show threadDr KnowApr 16, 2025
@jerry The best way to help out is writing code.
Show threadCybarbieApr 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.

Show threadKaty SwainApr 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.