reading a bunch of comments about Mastodon on tech news sites about how it "will never succeed" or will go extinct. Problem is, that defines Mastodon's success in the metrics of Silicon Valley VC. The point of Mastodon does not appear to be a growth -> exit -> brand vehicle strategy that Twitter has been struggling with.
I'm having a good time here. Isn't that success enough?
@PolymerWitch Yeah, it'd be nice to see something work through people power instead of VC cash / IPO expectations. Just once?
@PolymerWitch kind of. the valley gets scared once social networks move to public ownership ofc :).
@PolymerWitch Mastodon being decentralized means that even after an initial boom dies down, there will still be diehard users keeping the service alive. It's hard to think dollars and cents when that's not the goal of the project in the first place, and that's the trap most media falls into I think.
@PolymerWitch Looks like Amaroq is decent: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amaroq-for-mastodon/id1214116200?mt=8
@PolymerWitch I left ello because it was boring as shit. This has a different vibe.
@PolymerWitch You are right, the tech news is fundamentally focused on the 'winner-take-all' mentality of the Valley. Mastodon feels like the farmers market / local co-op to the Wal-Mart of Twitter. The two just fundamentally serve different functions right now.
@PolymerWitch @oneoffsuit EXCELLENT analogy. The challenge will be in ensuring it stays that way. Corporatists are going to fight to monetize it and it will be on us and those who run the instances to push back and disallow it.
@PolymerWitch its a very cool social experiment. what even is the success its being judged by? i love this thing its great
@PolymerWitch yep, unlike twitter, mastodon is not about brand and marketing :-)
@PolymerWitch thye are freaked because libre open source success means the death of silicon valley and its stupid patents and its shitty, maniacal VCs (No offense to those wh oare actually ill), and its foolish egotistical IOT bullshit and one of the strongest pillars of sillicon valley is social media platforms and the trade of customer data.
@PolymerWitch i in this kind of cases I would translate "it will never succeed" for "they don't want to succeed". This one looks very good.
@PolymerWitch companies aren't allowed to succeed without VC approval ;P
@PolymerWitch I have been slowly moving away from Twitter...I do Diaspora* and now Mastadon. The hope is to be completely on distributed social media ONLY by the time it is done. I am genuinely bored with corporate media telling me what is successful, fun, etc...
@PolymerWitch Still trying to get the hang of it, but love the concept of decentralized/open source/DIY social media!
@PolymerWitch sorry, no, it isn't quantifiable nor cash in the bank :P
@PolymerWitch That's the thing, if there are only two users on a single instance left, you can't say Mastodon is extinct. So what's the fail state they imagine, it not being sold to some media conglomerate for a profit?
@PolymerWitch Yeah, the whole reason I've gotten sucked in since last week is there were pleasant, funny, smart people here. MAKING A NOTE HERE: HUGE SUCCESS
@lmorchard The reason I think this site is a win is because it makes *finding* and *interacting* with said people very easy.
@PolymerWitch This makes me think about relationships. Is a relationship not successful / good because it eventually ends?
We used to have a lot more turn-over on websites. I.e. they were there, then we moved on to the next thing.
But now we've gotten "used to" being stuck in one place. Being "owned", but thinking we're invested. When we're just the product.
I think that the site is a great success in it's own right, because it's bringing federation to the people!
@PolymerWitch :thumbsup:
@PolymerWitch Absolutely! A failure by SV's model (like Ello or G+) is a success by the standards of the community, and success by SV's model would be a failure for the users.
@PolymerWitch Yes! Yes it is ^_^
@PolymerWitch Having an ecosystem of community/volunteer run servers in this fediverse seems to be something that is very baffling to a lot of people. "No ads, so it'll die" is something I have seen a lot too.
@PolymerWitch People decry ads, but then defend services that harvest info and shove them in our face. It's so strange. xD
@PolymerWitch Also, there's no small irony there if they're using Twitter as a "successful" comparison...
@PolymerWitch This is a Good Toot.
(Every post about "is this doomed to be the next Ello"—not individually, but cumulatively—sets my teeth on edge. Because, no? It's a basement operation to make GNU Social more accessible to folks who've felt burned by Twitter? In that regard it's gloriously successful? More successful than Jabber in the early '00s?)
@PolymerWitch I think speculating on the project's potential for long-term success is fine, even great—I love that energy! I love the cautious optimism!—but it's ultimately misguided, if only because, as you correctly point out, it's basing "success" and "value" on a metric that isn't valuable to the end-user at all
I think I tooted about this two months ago (and I may well have articulated it better back then), but here goes aaagain:
To reiterate @sinders's "bar analogy" (there's a NowThis video, but I can't find it!): In any given real-world "public space," we still tend to have discrete, semi-private discussions, as well as one-on-one conversations. In the real world, millions of people are not all simultaneously privy to the animated conversation you might be having with friends in a restaurant booth.
The purpose and worth of the "bar analogy" is to help a layperson visualize real-world interactions; simply by making online interactions more like "real-world" ones, we can mitigate some (not all, obvs) of the opportunities for harassment or other social clashes.
Mastodon is *already* a huge success, if it's interpreted as a ground-up realization, a proof-of-concept of @sinders's "bar analogy."
And although granular privacy settings for each individual "toot" is not necessarily the draw for every user here (yet!), the larger theory about simulating real-world -type interactions has already been considered, is already baked in.
Twitter could almost certainly never implement the same exacting privacy controls—they'd probably have to rebuild the platform completely—but also, they wouldn't WANT to implement those settings...!
Twitter worked for so long for so many people, and then stopped "working," precisely *because* it's predicated on "let's shove millions of people into the same room and let them jockey for space and presence." The platform doesn't necessarily WANT the average user to switch their account to "private" and be removed from certain interactions or conversations.
So early questions like "Will Mastodon last?" seem misguided?? It doesn't have to "last." It just needs to prove granular privacy works
Actually, I guess the Mashable article hit this point early, well, and in a single sentence—"Individual toots can be marked as private, meaning you don't have to choose between a public or a private account like on Twitter."
I hated having to make that choice, but a public Twitter account—which had once been crucial for making professional contacts—had become totally unusable to me. But as a "locked" account (with 25k followers!), I could no longer contribute to public convos with "strangers"
behaviors that run rampant on the "other" platform Show more
in conclusion, Mastodon has a lot of value to me *personally*, and I think it's sure to hold the same value for others. A smaller, intimate, decentralized Internet, as its founders (?) intended
@PolymerWitch Diaspora had similar coverage back in the day. What's interesting about Mastodon is that it has an implementation that can mostly keep up with the hype.
@PolymerWitch Also no matter what happens, like, even if literally everyone leaves... Something good has been made, and it's free and open source, so the next time someone wants to make something like this, they can pick up where mastodon left off. There is no real fail
@PolymerWitch yes, precisely, thank you
@PolymerWitch This model would never have made the code that runs the Internet or the phone I am using. So it's probably not a complete understanding of possible tech ecosystems.
Are there stats to show how the platform is doing? I'm interested to see it's growth @PolymerWitch
I came to GNU Social last February and I really enjoy it. It has its ups and downs and rough edges, but that's the classic open source experience.
@PolymerWitch I think for plenty of people there it has been a while since they did not see humans and their culture just as a mean to an end.
@PolymerWitch Exactly, an open source service that's not profit driven will exist as long as there are people interested in using it.
@PolymerWitch As long as users enjoy the service and servers stay sustained its more than enough :)