Happy ninth Mastodon Won't Survive Day to all who celebrate!
https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive

#Fediverse #Mastodon

Six reasons Mastodon won't survive

The hot new thing in social media has some big problems.

Mashable

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? 

@rysiek what if Mastodon didn't survive and this is all limbo?

@sexybenfranklin

Then why do I still have to pay for rent, food, and taxes?

@rysiek

@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.

@rysiek @quinn what do you mean by payback eventually?
They will want it now if not yesterday!
@rysiek not many of my non geeky friends are here, and none of the communities I am trying to reach out to 😔
@rysiek there's a lot of good people saying important things on Twitter still, too. People I respect and people I care about. Network effects are crucial.
@quinn sure. and it's to some extent on us to create the network effects we want to see in the world.

@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.

@quinn @rysiek (and to be clear I'm not saying such users are your main circle, but I'm guessing you might engage with them more than I do and I'm also guessing that those might account for a lot of the shrinkage.)
@deutrino @rysiek I literally have no idea what that is. 🤷

@quinn @rysiek it's one of the old-skool FOSS social networks which just won't die, been persisting for 15 years now with a few thousand users

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

Diaspora (social network) - Wikipedia

@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.

@rysiek *casually reading '8 years ago', not really believing it, looking at the calendar and groaning*
@BenjaminNelan
1990 was ten years ago, and you can't convince me otherwise.
@rysiek
@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.

@BenjaminNelan @rysiek

@rysiek 🥹🥹 yeah I miss the old days even tho I am around 20s I can feel back pain ehehe 😅😅
@rysiek I’m feeling somewhat motivated to make the 10th anniversary a party.
@marcink yeah, something fun needs to happen for sure!

@rysiek

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even twitter may died.  ✨ 💫

#VivaMastodon 💪 😁

@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.

@rysiek that's a masterclass in passive-aggression, Michal. Well played!
@rysiek At least he's a good sport about it.

@rysiek Ulanoff got stuck and can NOT evolve past his scant understanding of the "internet", beyond Web2.0

He never had a single tech opinion that was not handed to him, with a check, by some corporate PR douchebag.

Always consider your sources.

@rysiek look at a typical gem from his sharp mind.

Zero opinions that did not come with a check by some corpo doucho.

He couldn't get out of vim, if he found himself there, if we gave him another computer to look it up.

@rysiek 2 Problems and the #answer below:

1/ The weakness is in people / their learning curve / energy + tolerance needed to figure it out. Iit's always going be the problem / challenge initially.

2/ Sometimes just better to install a new operating system / app + account FOR grandma etc *instead of understanding the install *

Allowing " #dualboot " (both commercial and #FOSS version to play around / migrate instead of just one or the other which probably good for learning curve.

@rysiek
The #ANSWER: (Continuing post... )

People need more active help on #Mastodon (a #helpdesk)

Not having help limits adoption.

Without commercial partners (for the good) etc it's less / not as actively good / not as practical.

Only for #techies obviously / mostly...

We need a constant team or #helpline to be like the #commercial teams (and #convert people to the good *more actively / personally*.

(E.G.) The addressing or people of same names etc is not easy.

#CollectiveTruth #Truth

@rysiek "William Shatner couldn't find me on Mastodon. This was a problem." oh is it
@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

@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

@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
@rysiek
Almost funny how years later Mastodon is alive and well, while anything else on the web is increasingly drowning in slop.
@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

@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)

@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.

@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.

@EdCates @Mabande @MarkAssPandi @rysiek
Yes, and that happened years before the 2022 buyout.
@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.

@Mabande

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.

@MarkAssPandi @rysiek

@rysiek oh I’ve been here for nine years? Damn time flies.
@rysiek reading this article gave me a brain aneurysm
@rysiek best in this article is the missing tweet from twitter.com
@sturmsucht yes, this is truly what brings it up a notch, from great to glorious.

@sturmsucht

To be fair, there are plenty of missing toots on Mastodon, too.

The other day, on a whim, I decided to go through my Mastodon archive, pick some random toots I boosted once upon a time, and view them again. Many of them were 404.

Probably because a fair number of people here use the auto-delete feature.

Nothing on social media---any social media—is permanent. Not unless you save a copy of it on your own computer (and have good backups of said computer).

@rysiek

@rysiek
John Mastodon brought me a rumpled paper bag full of chocolate-style ovoids! He also ate all the leftovers in my fridge and rifled through my closets, but you take the good, you take the bad.