I say this as someone who likes fediverse microblogging (Mastodon, MissKey, etc) it will never be Mastodon. Mastodon and its maintainers are staunchly against all the things that would make it a viable replacement to Twitter.
They don’t like algorithms. They want you to select which content you see.
That’s all I’ve got. Mastodon is a better, more open tech. And it’s pretty easy to get set up, relatively. It’s insane that companies haven’t jumped on it.
You don’t even have to quit Twitter. You can just post to more than one place and give people the option.
Threads (for better or worse) demonstrates that that’s not a fundamental obstacle for fediverse microblogging.
If someone wanted to launch a Mastodon fork with algorithm-driven content discovery, they could do. Just as with Lemmy/kbin/mbin, the beauty of the fediverse is that different servers can take quite different approaches to use experience design whilst still maintaining compatibility with the rest of the community.
Mastodon is, like, fine, but it has one gaping flaw that makes it utterly unusable for me.
Basically, the issue is you cannot be assured that any particular instance contains the entire conversation thread/replies, because they’re not necessarily sent to every server participating in the conversation.
Bluesky fixes that by the ‘firehose’ feeds federating out to the PDSes and providing complete reply chains, which just flat out makes it a better experience since you can actually see what everyone is saying, not just what people on servers you might be following already are saying.
It’s a giant stupid flaw in Mastodon (since other AP based platforms such as, for example, Lemmy don’t have it) and really should be addressed since it makes the platform darn near useless since why am I following people to only get half of what might be a useful thread?
Yeah, it makes federation, especially if you run your own server and don’t have a large user base, largely broken.
You’ll end up getting a shockingly small amount of replies to people you follow’s posts, which (for me) is the whole reason I’m here.
It almost forces you onto a larger server if you want a reasonable experience (or you have to start ingesting huge amounts of data via relays), but I mean, at that point why not just use bluesky instead?
But it’s not fragmented. Mastodon is still the odd “vegan” option while BlueSky is becoming the main Twitterlike platform. Mastodon is still coming out the other end mostly the same.
I somewhat agree, but it’s not going to happen. If Bluesky wins this battle, they’re just going to be the dominant platform. It’s not going to spread out. It’s just going to migrate. A federated alternative would at least be spread out by design, though connected still.
that’s not how the modern internet works and unfortunately i am forced to be on facebook because all 4 of my hobbies no longer exists outside of it.
if people moved to the fediverse instead of bluesky or such, then we’d actually be able to have a fragmented internet again - due to how the fediverse interconnects through federation.
which i think is the best selling point the fediverse have - no longer would users need to be on multiple services, they could just be on one, and still interact with the services across the fediverse. but unless there is a mass-migration of one single service to the fediverse, such as people choosing mastodon over bluesky, to be the dominant service - it’s just never going to happen.
Bummer that isn’t mastodon but any inconvenience to musk is appreciated
I say this as someone who likes fediverse microblogging (Mastodon, MissKey, etc) it will never be Mastodon. Mastodon and its maintainers are staunchly against all the things that would make it a viable replacement to Twitter.
could you elaborate for people who don’t use it?
They don’t like algorithms. They want you to select which content you see.
That’s all I’ve got. Mastodon is a better, more open tech. And it’s pretty easy to get set up, relatively. It’s insane that companies haven’t jumped on it.
You don’t even have to quit Twitter. You can just post to more than one place and give people the option.
This is what happens when someone can’t put themselves into their user’s shoes and then wonder why a product isn’t doing as well as it is.
They proclaim the product is great, it’s everyone else that’s the problem
Threads (for better or worse) demonstrates that that’s not a fundamental obstacle for fediverse microblogging.
If someone wanted to launch a Mastodon fork with algorithm-driven content discovery, they could do. Just as with Lemmy/kbin/mbin, the beauty of the fediverse is that different servers can take quite different approaches to use experience design whilst still maintaining compatibility with the rest of the community.
Mastodon is, like, fine, but it has one gaping flaw that makes it utterly unusable for me.
Basically, the issue is you cannot be assured that any particular instance contains the entire conversation thread/replies, because they’re not necessarily sent to every server participating in the conversation.
Bluesky fixes that by the ‘firehose’ feeds federating out to the PDSes and providing complete reply chains, which just flat out makes it a better experience since you can actually see what everyone is saying, not just what people on servers you might be following already are saying.
It’s a giant stupid flaw in Mastodon (since other AP based platforms such as, for example, Lemmy don’t have it) and really should be addressed since it makes the platform darn near useless since why am I following people to only get half of what might be a useful thread?
that sounds crazy. that makes the idea of federation pointless imo… thank you for the response
Yeah, it makes federation, especially if you run your own server and don’t have a large user base, largely broken.
You’ll end up getting a shockingly small amount of replies to people you follow’s posts, which (for me) is the whole reason I’m here.
It almost forces you onto a larger server if you want a reasonable experience (or you have to start ingesting huge amounts of data via relays), but I mean, at that point why not just use bluesky instead?
Actually not a bummer in my opinion, let people sort into different platforms based on their interests like we used to do with forums.
A fragmented internet is a better internet
I’m going to quote that at every opportunity.
Actually feel kinda proud of myself for that one haha
But it’s not fragmented. Mastodon is still the odd “vegan” option while BlueSky is becoming the main Twitterlike platform. Mastodon is still coming out the other end mostly the same.
Yeah, and that’s a good thing specially for the reason I just mentioned
I somewhat agree, but it’s not going to happen. If Bluesky wins this battle, they’re just going to be the dominant platform. It’s not going to spread out. It’s just going to migrate. A federated alternative would at least be spread out by design, though connected still.
So, a Splinternet?
that’s not how the modern internet works and unfortunately i am forced to be on facebook because all 4 of my hobbies no longer exists outside of it.
if people moved to the fediverse instead of bluesky or such, then we’d actually be able to have a fragmented internet again - due to how the fediverse interconnects through federation.
which i think is the best selling point the fediverse have - no longer would users need to be on multiple services, they could just be on one, and still interact with the services across the fediverse. but unless there is a mass-migration of one single service to the fediverse, such as people choosing mastodon over bluesky, to be the dominant service - it’s just never going to happen.