Whatisgoingon
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Happy ninth Mastodon Won't Survive Day to all who celebrate!
https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive
I blogged about that last year:
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/114284660479008679
To his credit, Lance Ulanoff admitted then he was wrong about fedi:
https://mastodon.social/@Lance_Ulanoff/114285108628269898
Today more time has passed since the Mastodon Won't Survive piece got published than there is left until the AI bubble pops. 
Feeling old yet? 
Cheerios de Bergerac@rysiek what if Mastodon didn't survive and this is all limbo?
I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑🔥
ARGVMI~1.PIF@argv_minus_one @rysiek cause it's limbo, not heaven
Quinn Norton@rysiek it has shrunk a lot which i am sad about, but what people need to remember is that foss shit never goes away, even when you want it to 😂
@quinn I don't think growth for growth's sake is the way to go, and while it does provide *a* signal, it is not *the* signal so to speak.
I fully expect Bluesky to start enshittifying, because of course they will with their cryptocurrency bro overlords looking for payout eventually.
Meanwhile fedi is doing its thing, getting more resilient, easier to join, dealing with some long-term issues around moderation and so on. And will be there, better prepared than ever, for the next wave.
Jules 🍺@rysiek not many of my non geeky friends are here, and none of the communities I am trying to reach out to 😔
deutrino@quinn @rysiek Diaspora* is proof positive of that. I log in like once every 3 years at this point and it's all still there.
I'm interested to hear your perception that fedi is shrinking, I don't share it (despite knowing that "Mastodon" MAUs - however they're tracked - are down from peak) but I also think I have a sort of bottom-up approach to finding ppl to follow after being here almost 10 years and also being distrustful of Firstname Lastname clearly-has-a-mortgage accounts who post Takes.
@deutrino @quinn yeah. I used to be pretty active there, years and years ago.
The sad thing is Diaspora* used to be the biggest of the FLOSS federated social networks, and they kinda acted up because of this. Never properly documented their protocol, I believe, and were definitely not interested in implementing any other protocol.
It's a sad irony that at some point Mastodon and broader ActivityPub-verse grew way larger than they've ever been and now they're kinda in a pickle.
Scott Murray 
Benjamin@rysiek *casually reading '8 years ago', not really believing it, looking at the calendar and groaning*
Kalshann@xinit @BenjaminNelan @rysiek I have to admit, it does sometimes feel like the 00s, 10s and 20s have been a slowly worsening series of time loops as everything slow crashes. So maybe it's only been 10 long time whimy years.
@Kalshann I have been watching old Law & Order TV shows, and then the 90s feel like the 1890s. I don't remember having hair or clothes like this.
Hi_Kitsune@rysiek 🥹🥹 yeah I miss the old days even tho I am around 20s I can feel back pain ehehe 😅😅
marcink
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even twitter may died. 
✨ 💫
#VivaMastodon 💪 😁
derptron@rysiek Hopefully he's learned a bit more than that because WOW!
I honestly thought AI wrote it and hallucinated the whole time. Something trained on rage bait from middle schoolers. Wasn't a coherent argument in it anywhere.
"The logo is cute, but the service right now stinks almost as badly as a thawing woolly mammoth."
Even if mastodon had face planted, this article wouldn't be relevant to anyone but the guy who wrote it...and maybe Shatner because it's got him in it.
Alberto Cottica@rysiek that's a masterclass in passive-aggression, Michal. Well played!
Dark Phoenix 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇵🇦🇵🇸🏳️🌈
*_jߍyrope
Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen@rysiek "William Shatner couldn't find me on Mastodon. This was a problem." oh is it
Roy Howard 🧉@RoyHorace @rysiek far better George Takei than William Shatner in this particular case!
foundseed@mxchara @RoyHorace @rysiek I for one am not glad to have the abusive Trekkie still on this platform. Shatner is an asshole but at least he's not an accused sex pest.
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKI think its George Takei's social media team rather than him directly, but one thing I've noticed since 2017 is whilst I was initially one of the oldest on my Fedi group, now there are *many* folk on Fedi easily old enough to be my parents (and I'm 54!) and a lot who aren't from tech backgrounds, which shows the network has become accessible and usable for older people..
Mike 🇬🇧 🇪🇺@vfrmedia @RoyHorace @mxchara @rysiek
I suppose that includes me.
I'm 71 and although I have worked extensively with computers during my career, IT was never part of my core job.
I do have a very early paper published where I'm a joint author on the development of an HTML 'database' which I'm proud to say has now morphed into a fully maintained international web resource.
Does that make me techie? 🤔😁
@MikeFromLFE @RoyHorace @mxchara @rysiek
I think you have tech-related interests and hobbies, but what you put together tends to be considered "shadow IT" in the industry (even though its now more widely used).
I suspect a lot of those aged 50-70+ do now have greater tech skills than younger generations as they *had* to learn a bit more about how the computer works (such as file and directory structures) and until 1990s computers with GUI weren't that commonplace..
@vfrmedia @RoyHorace @mxchara @rysiek
Shadow IT - I like that!
Yes, I could program a Commodore PET computer in Basic and a ZX-something-or-other.
The PET was at work in about 1981 and we used it to print laboratory results onto labels which avoided the errors from our nasty handwriting!
The HTML stuff was on a Mac of some shape and I was given a lot of encouragement by one of our consultant pathologists. In that job I also had to learn how to fettle a big DEC thingy with tape cartridges that ran a medium sized network.
At home I had a Prestel terminal and a home PC that I was happy to get into the insides of. (The first of those was an Amstrad PC1512 that's still in the loft)
So, yes, lots of IT background but none of it •directly• relevant to the 21st century.
@MikeFromLFE @vfrmedia @RoyHorace @rysiek That all sounds very comfy and familiar. Surely there's a place for those of us with a more 20th century-oriented view of technology?
@mxchara @MikeFromLFE @RoyHorace @rysiek
I think that *is* the Fedi? There's literally loads of people on here who fondly remember (or even still use) 20th century tech (only a few weeks ago I tested a new VOIP telephone system by connecting a British Telecom 8746 dial telephone to it (via an ATA) to make a test call..
And yet so very, very relevant. Experience with those old machines taught you a great deal about how computers in general work, modern ones included. They still have the CPU, RAM, video frame buffer, keyboard, and so on. Some details are different, but the fundamentals mostly aren't.
You wouldn't get that knowledge so easily from operating a modern computer because everything's so polished and user-friendly now.
D Ingram@vfrmedia @MikeFromLFE @RoyHorace @mxchara @rysiek "Moonshine IT" or "feral IT" are terms for shadow IT that's used here. A former colleague did his later-in-life PhD on it, and I was one of his case studies. https://doi.org/10.25907/00258
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦yes. you’re an OG.
Ramses Revengeday 
@rysiek sad Lance Ulanoff noises
@revengeday I will say he admitted he was wrong, here on fed, last year under my thread about it:
https://mastodon.social/@Lance_Ulanoff/114285108628269898
https://mastodon.social/@Lance_Ulanoff/114285108628269898
@rysiek Oh lol, respect+ 
@rysiek
"This is no BlueSky"
Said like it's a bad thing to not be scraping everything for ai, or to be beholden to crypto bros.
@revengeday
liquidlamp@xinit @rysiek @revengeday his comment is a year old, when bluesky's nefarious pivot was signposted, but less clear.
@liquidlamp
Fair, but we all knew they were going to have to bring VC money in. Even in the early days of Twitter, it was pretty obvious to many that there needed to be a way to generate revenue to pay for infrastructure and salaries. Monetize or die, more or less.
@rysiek @revengeday
Fair, but we all knew they were going to have to bring VC money in. Even in the early days of Twitter, it was pretty obvious to many that there needed to be a way to generate revenue to pay for infrastructure and salaries. Monetize or die, more or less.
@rysiek @revengeday
Raphael Albert@rysiek
Almost funny how years later Mastodon is alive and well, while anything else on the web is increasingly drowning in slop.
Almost funny how years later Mastodon is alive and well, while anything else on the web is increasingly drowning in slop.
MarkAssPandi@rysiek 6 reasons:
1. dumb name
2. i dont get what federated means
3. dumb name
4. i dont know how handles work
5. valid concern
6. valid concern
33.3% grade
1. dumb name
2. i dont get what federated means
3. dumb name
4. i dont know how handles work
5. valid concern
6. valid concern
33.3% grade
L'égrégore André ꕭꕬ@MarkAssPandi @rysiek The apps one is kinda strange though. Half of it's kinda valid ("no one knows how many instances there are and there's no list"), but just the fact that there's more apps than the official one? That's just weird (and deliberately forgetting the plethora of twitter apps there used to be before they shut that possibility down).
(Edit: autocorrect)
Dec [{(
)}]@Mabande @MarkAssPandi @rysiek
I had 3 different mobile Twitter apps in the Before Times, not counting the (very bad and totally overrated) official app.
Can't even remember the names of them now.
I had 3 different mobile Twitter apps in the Before Times, not counting the (very bad and totally overrated) official app.
Can't even remember the names of them now.
Ed@dec23k @Mabande @MarkAssPandi @rysiek
Alternate Twitter apps were so popular Twitter had to close off their API just to get people onto the official one.
@dec23k @Mabande @MarkAssPandi @rysiek oh gawd yes. I remember it affecting a buddy of mine who Twitter had approached to make an app for the Palm Pre. He did, only to have the APIs yanked out from under him.
Why would I *need* a list of all the instances?
Yes, listing them is largely impossible. Most of them are probably single-user servers in somebody's homelab. But so what? I'm not the Federation Police.