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cyrusm t1_j1mmq2z wrote

Reply to comment by bdy435 in Tech Journalism Doesn’t Know What to Do With Mastodon by psychothumbs

Yeah... but what's it do?

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mahatmakg t1_j1mz69n wrote

I mean, for me it's like Twitter with no ads. I think social media can be a pleasant an positive way to connect and reconnect with others if it's not fueled by ads and helmed by madmen.

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Article_Used t1_j1n2avw wrote

it’s twitter, except can’t be bought out and run by a billionaire. already open sourced, and federated so anyone can run a server. not another for-profit company trying to steal your attention

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cyrusm t1_j1n35pd wrote

Ah okay. That's all well and good, but Twitter has never been my jam, personally (I still can't see value to tweets, don't know why, seems silly). Thanks for the description!

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Cl1mh4224rd t1_j1ni49z wrote

>it’s twitter, except can’t be bought out and run by a billionaire.

This is a bit naive, though, isn't it?

What's to stop a corporation or billionaire from setting up a Mastodon server and accumulating users? Or multiple servers? What's to stop corporations buying up the most popular Mastodon servers and then merging them?

I mean, if a schmuck like me can do it, a billionaire can do it at a much larger scale.

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Article_Used t1_j1niccm wrote

nothing, but then what’s to stop the users from leaving for another, uncorrupted server? that’s the difference.

they’re also interoperable with other federated servers, so anyone can leave without losing their followers or who they follow. i can’t migrate off twitter until the people i want to follow do as well.

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B-Rock001 t1_j1nywec wrote

  1. That's asking for users to take an action... majority of user base would ask why should I care it doesn't affect my service? I wish more people cared about it, but reality is people just want something that works.

  2. Hosting isn't free, who pays for it? What happens when the billionaire provides the most stable instance because they can afford it? Crowd funding can get you so far, but it's hard to keep going.

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Article_Used t1_j1nz6si wrote

i don’t care if anyone else transitions, the key is that i’m able to, and easily. hosting is <$10/mo, so worst case i pay for my own instance, best case i split it with a thousand of my closest friends.

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B-Rock001 t1_j1nzsea wrote

Cool, so mastadon solves the problem for you and people who are like you (more tech savvy)... but what about all the people who don't have the know how or don't want to do that? Will you let them freeload on your server driving up your costs? Or will they go to the billionaire's free server?

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Article_Used t1_j1o1h4m wrote

you can see for yourself now, there are plenty of free mastodon servers being run currently, without the generosity of any billionaires.

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B-Rock001 t1_j1og6m9 wrote

For now, we'll see if that scales. Not sure how many people can cover operating costs at the scale of Twitter, even decentralized. I notice you didn't offer to foot the bill...

Besides, seems the corporate profits argument just shifts to hosting services at that point.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for there to be better, ethical social media, it just doesn't seem like mastadon is the revolution supporters want it to be.

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SawgrassSteve t1_j1njags wrote

It fills a niche for me. It's sort of like playing a casual game after getting the crap kicked out of you playing a hardcore MMORPG.

I go to Twitter if an article or post references a tweet. Otherwise, I ignore it.

I go to Reddit for sports, r/AskHistorians , learning stuff (that I have to fact-check elsewhere), irreverent takes, and references to office Space (among other things.) I reach a point where I get tired of the toxicity, the subreddits that attract people with low critical thinking skills and encourage trolls, and so on, I take a break.

I go to Mastadon to hang out in a place where I won't get upset by some jackass troll's hot takes. I have less chance of getting annoyed by unconscious racism, misogyny, or a complete lack of nuance related to geopolitical issues on Mastadon.

It's a good place to get random people's random thoughts. People try to compare it to Twitter because of the way it looks and somewhat the way people interact, but it's a different animal to me. It reminds me more of the early days of the internet where everything was a sandbox. You tell a joke and people share it or they don't. An amateur Mark Twain or two makes a keen observation on society every once in a while. Sulu's there, so that's a plus.

Once you figure out the hashtags that match your interests it becomes a little more fun and interesting. It definitely requires patience.

It's lower in vitriol (although the hatred for Elon Musk is palpable) and has fewer self-promoting people. Lots of cat photos, though.

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ghost103429 t1_j1nofio wrote

Basically it's if email and reddit had a baby. Get handles of people and content you like and it will appear in your feed.

The nice thing about it is it uses activity pub which means you'll be able to view content from other platforms and sites that decide to use it from a single portal and not just from maston servers. Right now it should be possible to view content from WordPress sites as posts you can comment and like.

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