Okay here's a real toot that you can actually boost without people looking at you like you're crazy.
https://medium.com/@alliethehart/gameingers-are-dead-and-so-is-mastodon-705b535ed616
The past few weeks (okay, ever since the schism) I've felt kind of disenchanted by Mastodon and especially its development environment, and I wrote an essay about why that is. It's long, but if you're interested in Mastodon's history or politics you should give it a read.
I briefly go into detail about a lot of history stuff that we don't really talk about anymore, although it's not necessarily the focus and there's more to say. Mastodon's history has been one of a LOT of turmoil and I swear it seemed like every two weeks there would be shit going down and people complaining and either leaving or getting run off the site. Nobody talks about that so much anymore, or ever really did.
For a long time, people who stuck with Mastodon through all that did so because they were a part of the community and felt represented by it and they were hopeful that things would get better and change. And a lot of things HAVE improved. But I think some of that hope is dying out and proving to be a little naïve.
Anyway, you can read the article for more. Sorry about the length lol.
@u2764 thanks for writing this; I'm afraid my worst fears have been realized
@Eve @plsburydoughboy I feel bad for being such a downer but I also feel like that's the only way to make change happen… ._. :fingers_crossed_emoji:
@plsburydoughboy @Eve It was really hard because it was like… this is Eugen's project… but I don't want to just write a 4000-word callout post lol. I really think most of the problem is just how the cards happened to fall and not necessarily anyone's fault, but also that's not to say there aren't things to be done.
@u2764 @plsburydoughboy totally. The situation couldn't have been controlled for as things scale up so quickly and with such a total lack of common purpose (esp some of new Japanese instances who are pretty much completely oblivious to all this as far as I can tell in general) but there's a real and pressing need for tools to save and preserve important aspects of the original community that are its real point for a lot of us
@u2764 @plsburydoughboy seriously thank you for putting all this on everyone's table ❤️❤️❤️
@u2764 @plsburydoughboy @Eve
The original Mastodon Project community was the healthiest social atmosphere I've ever been in. In addition to all the labor and advocacy and work that the queer community poured into this project, I've found space to ask questions of myself as a person that were unthinkable as of October 2016.
I strongly suspect forking is necessary, and the recreation and reunification of that community is possible. Fuck, the PRs are done already.
@twryst @plsburydoughboy @Eve I've been tentatively behind every fork I've heard about but I hesitate because a fork is only helpful if it actually fixes the problem. If we're going to repeat the same mistakes might as well stay with master ^^;;
I want to be hopeful. I just don't generally trust people lol.
@bob @Eve @u2764 @plsburydoughboy
The original medium post by Allie
https://medium.com/@alliethehart/gameingers-are-dead-and-so-is-mastodon-705b535ed616
well captures the dynamics that have pushed many formerly-very-active queer and/or leftist contributors out of the development of the platform.
Here's the announcement toot
https://icosahedron.website/users/u2764/updates/36061
@u2764 @Eve @plsburydoughboy Hey I read that article. It was good and a bit of a bummer. What do you think should be done to change the trajectory you outlined? Do you think it could have been different or better if someone other than Eugen had started the project, i.e. someone who is an actual member of the community you described, or do you think these problems are just inherent in dealing with the kind of growth that has happened here?
@Anarchist586 @plsburydoughboy @Eve Personally I think a lot of the problem is tied up in the revenue stream (which all goes to Gargron) and the fact that the project has always (ime) been treated as his personal project rather than a community effort. Mastodon needs better organization and administration and ideally a funding model. But it's hard to make that happen when we're all mostly volunteers.
@u2764 @Eve @plsburydoughboy Hmm. So right now Eugen basically is Mastodon, and maybe wouldn't survive his involvment? But if he could change the way the site is run so that Mastodon could be an entity of it's own separate from him (including the patreon money) some of these issues might improve? I'm not a programmer of any kind so I feel a bit out of my depth here.
@Anarchist586 @plsburydoughboy @Eve This is very much not on the table quite yet, but if Mastodon is successful enough it's possible that a nonprofit like Mozilla might step in and help set it up as a more lasting project, and depending on how that did or didn't happen that might help. Eugen's a good dev but he's a dev not a project manager. What we need is a Mastodon Foundation.
@u2764 @Anarchist586 @Eve Oh yeah, if you look at this as a scalability problem, the only logical conclusion is to arrange so that Eugen does not have to take 100 % of the responsibility. The same arrangement as Linus Torvalds and the Linux Foundation as is with the Mozilla Foundation
@plsburydoughboy @u2764 this article is very depressing. I fear you're right and I really hope you're wrong. Thank you for writing this.