For now Mastodon is pretty nice, although it does have issues with transphobic speech on a couple servers and people getting their panties in a twist about POC mentioning racism exists (full disclosure). It doesn’t have an algorithm to show you stuff to get you worked up all the time, uh, “promote engagement,” and people who troll around get frozen out very fast.

Mastodon won’t catch on. It’s too techy for the masses.

As in difficult to use? Or is the current culture just very tech focused?

The fact that it’s decentralized with so many servers means it’ll cater to a niche, much like Discord does today. It’s not that our culture can’t deal with tech, since we continue to add more tech into our culture without much issue. It’s about ease of use. How do I easily get my older extended family onto Mastadon where we can all share cat photos? Do you have to explain the client server model to each person? Are they going to know which server their account was created on? I can’t ever remember which server I created my own account on without looking it up.

It’s not really that hard. If you can deal with using Discord where you can be on different servers and have different names and pictures for them, you can deal with Mastodon.

Ah, so it's a less intuitive.
Thank you for the clear answer!

Your older family members probably write their passwords down in a little notebook or something. They can write it down in the same notebook. Are you just trying to keep your parents off it or something? LOL

I'm 41 and I've worked in tech for over 20 years. I've done everything from sales, support, engineer, director of engineering, to where I am now as a solutions engineer for a large datacenter. Decentralized servers such as Mastadon have been around forever (see IRC, etc) but ease of use has always been a concern.

I'll use Mastadon, but I don't suspect people I care to follow like say, Stephen King, would also use Mastadon. However, I would love to be proved wrong.

When I first started there, not a lot of prominent people were on there, but now with Musk’s shenanigans on Twitter there are a lot of big names moving there. All the big news services are posting there too. Government agencies are starting to post there.

King isn’t there yet but there is an account that reposts his Tweets there.

Also if you are in a tech field you are likely to find a lot of prominent people in your field there. I did and it’s actually a lot better for keeping up with my professional stuff than Twitter ever was. There’s a lot less clutter and things trying to advertise at me.

Neil Gaiman is on it (@neilhimself@mastodon.social), as is George Takei (@georgetakei@universeodon.com) and Paul Graham (@paulg@mas.to).

Remember Newsgroups?

I think Firefox is the best browser out there, and while i mostly approve of their goals, i find most of Mozilla's side projects to be weird shots in the dark with mixed results. So i guess i'm... interested? Although not excited until i get a clearer picture of what they want to do.

The problem isn’t social media. The problem is people.

I don't have to make an account for every server I'm interested in and it's easy to switch between servers with the sidebar on discord

You don’t make an account for every server you’re interested in on Mastodon either, who told you you had to do that? You just follow servers you’re interested in to see what’s being posted there. Or individual accounts like on Twitter.

Soylent Green is people!

also server admins can read all your DMs

Just give me my friends and some cool threads and picture options. No ads. No “connect with old friends you met 30 years ago”. No news. Just a simple UI.

Your DMs aren’t protected on Twitter either.

So, not necessarily.

The problem is "perverse incentives" (aka the Cobra effect)

Social Media is free. This means it needs to be paid by ads. This means that the algorithm, the service, and all the content is designed ground-up to further that objective. Keep people doomscrolling, sell ads, make money.

If there were a subscription based model, the algorithm could be engineered to... respect your time, deliver you content quickly, and fact check the content.

Social media thats core value is advertising feature algorithms that feed people the same shit creating echo chambers. Humans are of course part of the problem but the problem is enabled by social media algorithms

Grandma ain't gonna host a server.

Of course but the main difference I'd say is the server admin can be anyone VS the people reading your DMs on Twitter is safety and trust team or the government.

When I tried to post on multiple servers I had to create an account on every one of them.

Dude you use it like Twitter, you post on your own timeline or in reply to other people. What’s this about trying to post on other servers.

There’s no trust and safety team at Twitter anymore!

Also if you are on Reddit all the people moderating the subs are Just Some Guy, it’s pretty much the same.

Mods can't read or access DMs tho

The algorithms give people what they want. If they didn’t want trash, it wouldn’t give them trash.

I assume that unless I am using a secure messaging app or using iMessage with the new feature where you can lock everything down, then anybody could be reading my “private” messages on anything. It’s in the fine print.

But I work in cybersecurity. So I just don’t make the distinction the way other people do.

For example, I'm a person who likes hip-hop music, technology, and programming just to name a few but I want those themes to be separated. On discord, I can be on 3 servers about those themes, on Reddit on multiple subs, and on Facebook on multiple groups with a single account on each of those platforms.

So it sounds like you use different social media platforms for different things. Why would you need another one to do everything for you, especially one that works mostly like Twitter?

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:shrug: I don't know how to fix it then. If the company lifeblood comes from adverts, then eventually the system will optimize in this direction.

Make it tax-funded?

No such thing. As soon as people are involved it’ll turn unhealthy.

r/wholesome would like a word

I would argue that the problem is not that it is free but that it is run for profit. Our data has value, services could pay for themselves if they were co-owned by the users. If we didn't have the incentive to maximize profit at the expense of the user but instead to provide user data for a fee with reasonable privacy controls we could all be better off.

It wasn't this way before. Something something telecommutication act ..

Fresh air and sunshine?

You’re not going to get enough people subscribing without the juice. It’s gonna be the A&E model of social media. You’ll start out with An Evening at The Improv and Pulaski and end with Swamp People and Duck Dynasty because that’s what people want.

Social media gives people what they want. It’s peoples’ desires that are the problem.

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When it comes down to it, the only truly engaging medium for socializing that fully encompasses nuance, body language, intent, and etiquette norms is in person. If you remove any of those elements, you compromise the message in various ways.

Given that, social media is flawed by its very nature. Talking on the phone itself had drawbacks…but texting and interacting by typing at each other are a whole other level of compromised. Add commercialization and political influences and it’s become quite a cesspool.

It’s still a useful medium, but it needs to be a tertiary form of connecting…not a primary one in any way. Families need to emphasize actual human interaction over ‘face in screen’. As things are, what I observe is a gradual degradation in everyone’s ability to interact with one another.

Yeah but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Your world view of what is and isn’t trash is different to another. Social media feeds you your world view.

I’m pretty sad they stopped actively maintaining Thunderbird because that is the strongest evidence that Mozilla can do side projects to compete with complacent market leaders with a vengeance.

Stephen Fry too (https://mastodonapp.uk/@stephenfry)

Well, people use emails. Isn't like it's a new concept for people.

The problem is that algorithms are authors/editors and need to be regulated.

The right wing went bonkers in 2010 and Congress hasn't functioned since.

Once that's fixed...

>Social Media is free. This means it needs to be paid by ads. This means that the algorithm, the service, and all the content is designed ground-up to further that objective. Keep people doomscrolling, sell ads, make money.

Interestingly that seems to a short term way to succeed in the space. Facebook is finding out the very hard way that the old adage "if you're not paying for the service you're the product" was a really dumb take and a horrible way to run their business for long term success.

> If there were a subscription based model, the algorithm could be engineered to... respect your time, deliver you content quickly, and fact check the content.

If only you hadn't just added a paywall to using it. Social media works as it does because you're free to sign up and use it as you will. Make someone pay and now you've just added a monthly cost that they will have to consider.

The right wing had an echo chamber since the early 90s. What changed was that the left got one.

Look, someone just create a new version of Stumble Upon, that is paid for through subscriptions, has no ads at all, and has a few social elements like chatting with your friends.

no ads is tough unless you’re cool with a subscription model. ultimately if this gets adopted at scale, someone’s gotta pay for all those servers

Mastodon is simply a decentralized version of Twitter.

It solved none of the problems that made Twitter toxic and given enough time and users, it too will descend into toxicity.

Also, since so many Mastodon servers are run by individuals, organizations, and non-profits, decentralization doesn’t mean you can’t be deplatformed.

Give it a few years and it’ll be like the email spam lists that many of the big email providers share amongst themselves.

If you get kicked off the Mozilla Mastodon server, what’s keeping them from publishing a list of users they’ve banned and all the other Mastodon servers refuse to allow accounts from people that were banned on Mozilla’s servers?

To me, a new era of social media platforms should:

Allow users to curate their own feeds. No more mystery algorithms. No more shoving content at you in the hopes of enraging you and making you comment to increase the platform’s engagement metrics.

I would love to see a platform that lets me pick to only see updates from Aunt Susan about life events instead of having to choose between reading her MAGA rants and blocking her.

Likewise, I think any future platform needs to have a social scoring system. No, not like the Chinese. I’m talking more like, someone with a PhD in physics should get more weight in a discussion about physics than some rando.

Also, people who are deemed helpful are given more weight than people who drive lots of rage engagement.

This would effectively kill trolling.

Like, on Reddit, why can’t I filter out all posts and comments by people with negative or low karma?

And why can’t I do that with all content. Why can’t I say, “You know what Reddit, I’m done hearing about Elon Musk’s latest Twitter drama, filter out all mentions of Elon Musk”?

It would allow everyone to choose to shadow ban trolls and toxic behavior.

Again, why can’t I say that I don’t want to see comments from anyone that is also a member of X, Y, And Z toxic subs?

Isn’t this how things sort of work in the real world?

If Timmy is a dick, people just quit inviting Timmy to social events.

And Timmy has to make a choice, quit being a dick or wallow at home alone because he’s a dick.

It's anti-social media.

Aren’t they about to drop a new version with a major redesign?

The answer is to make it donation- and grant-based, like Wikipedia.

To quickly interject here: the fact that you two are even having this exchange points to the reality of the issue being discussed.

Big if true. I hate their really old layout and themes but will give their new UI a try if it's more modern.

...Twitter has already been incredibly famous without whatever it is you're talking about. Following people rather than topics is honestly more natural

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There is most definitely a problem with social media. There is an Adderall shortage from the attention damage

The only reason your data has value is because it can be used to affect your behavior for someone else’s benefit. It’s not free to pay with your data.

Figuring out how to get into a Mastodon server that doesn't offer its own instant verified account creation directly is enough of a painful and confusing process without seeking outside help, it would not surprise me in the least if families had a really hard time getting into Mastadon without a lot of work.

To pay for that, maybe they could sell spaces on the main page that people can pay to post? Maybe have it run on a monthly model etc?

Yes they are

I just started using BeReal and it's kind of nice. A picture a day at most (which you can skip, obviously) and it's just you and your friends.

isn't the idea behind a decentralised, federated social media that whoever hosts that instance pays for the server?

Hot take: the problem with a lot of social media is they don't add value. Unless it has a specific reason for existing, it will always devolve into nonsense.

LinkedIn makes sense. People use it to manage work connections and get jobs. Is there crap on there? Sure. But (for now) the gains outweigh the crap.

A really good real world example of this is NPR’s website. If you check that daily and compare it to any other news website you’ll notice a massive difference. No clickbait, no junk articles, just information that’s useful.

If they pander to the easily offended new age 'liberals' and cancel culture, constant censoring, etc, it's best that they don't bother. The current landscape has that already covered.

I’m not buying that human nature is the problem. People have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by profit incentives, which is where you get algorithms that are engineered to pray on addictiveness and encourage unhappiness. Before social media got so profit driven social media was a lot nicer experience.

I wouldn’t mind a subscription model if it just connected me in ways that I wanted and didn’t try to engineer my experience to squeeze every cent out of me.

My skepticism says tho that you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Well the problem is very simple

I use social media to reach out friends/build community that can be reached by everyone I want/find interesting information

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You use social media to showel all possible advertisements to me....

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Thats the problem, your product serves no interest for me, nor to everybody I know who use it. 99,9% use Facebook, because it has chat option. Thats all.

Yea, someone is still paying at the end of the day

And once it gets big enough they’ll have to rely on donations

And once they get even bigger they will have the advertisers knocking on their door with bags of cash

And once they get even bigger the feds and copyright holders will be knocking on their door for all the unmoderated content that’s on the platform

I understand what you are saying but I would argue that there is a huge difference between selling your data to advertisers to try to target you with ads, the traditional approach, vs try to feed you extremist posts to drive your engagement with the platform by making you a more upset person.

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This may be on to something, though Wikipedia has its own issues with some of the page curators behavior and power.

I think this could work in theory though.

I can handle ads. It's the intrusive nature of the ads and the fact they track me anywhere that bothers me. I'd be happy to provide a few key data points (age, gender, home state/region) and that can target ads at my demographic while I'm on there site to pay for servers.

Advertisers have been very successful for years on less and I'm sure if it became the norm they'd be successful again.

I suppose it's not that it would require a subscription necessarily, just that you would need to find a way to make the income stream align with positive end user outcomes.

At the end of the day, money runs companies, and keeps employees well, employed. If their month-to-month goals and KPIs internally revolve around "how do we make the most money via ads and selling user data"... that's what got us here. It's a very "road to hell is paved with good intentions" situation. The individual contributors, the actual coders, didn't sit down to architect this exploitative mental health mess that social media became. It got built slowly commit by commit, due to the profit focus being what it is.

Change to goals, change to outcome. Make the money come from delivering a superior customer experience, and the app will trend in that direction.

I just want a privacy focused discord.

If social media was not monetised it would be much better.

Meta social media doesn't give me what I want, the signal to noise is so high on Facebook and insta they're unusable.

I want forums that are Google-able.

I never was a fan of Twitter. I like to be able to follow both people and topics,

out of the social media i've tried, reddit seems to be the healthier media option.

all the ones with pics and likes turn out to be a fake-fest.

this one attracts healthy discussion.

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even though there are some mob mentality posts out there where simply holding an alternate viewpoint, or even one which isn't alternate - you just simply don't hold the mob mentality - gets you crucified.

Basically like text message groups with some extra features.

let's all go back to IRC

You mean like discord?

Try cinny?

I thought this said GodZilla and the thumbnail seemed to back up this idea.

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>spaces on the main page that people can pay to post?

You mean ads?

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I like that name

But seems too short

Perhaps....

Advertisment?

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Every company looking to tackle this problem that I seem to use Reddit for daily 🤷‍♂️

RemindME! 1 year “gloat if Stephen King is on Mastodon”

"I just want a great service for free"

Google+ did that, and people killed it because they couldn't be anonymous assholes on YouTube anymore.

Myspace. Just give us Myspace.

Hate to break it to you but that’s pretty much what Facebook started as. A way to connect with fellow peers on a college campus virtually. Then it pivoted to keeping in touch and connecting with old friends, a fantastic idea really. But then they needed to become profitable and every corporation felt the need to have a page and advertise

Yeah, I always loved it in concept but the UI felt like some godawful early 2000s deal. The redesign looks dope

Reddit is a perfect example of what federation tech could be used for... Each subreddit an independently owned and operated instance of something.

No more powermods or admins with cross-subreddit authority...

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