mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
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Olivier Simard-Casanova 🦋

Now that has banned Xitter, where are Brazilian people going?

Based on Google Trends, they’re mostly interested in , and to a (much) lesser extent, in

is nowhere to be found, which should immensely worry pro-Fedi people

1/4

has been losing users for a long time

Many of us warned that the app was too complicated, the culture too toxic, the economic model not strong enough to sustain a fast-paced development

In just a few months, shipped DMs, major moderation features, third-party moderation, and will soon ship video

The last major Mastodon update was 11 *months* ago. An eternity.

2/4

It pains me to see in such a dire state

Meta is building and growing quickly, and Mastodon can only acts as a powerful counterweight if the platform itself is in good shape

Today, it is not

It’s not catastrophic, but the writing is on the wall

And what’s virtually certain is that Mastodon has definitely missed the unique window that Elon Musk opened when he bought Twitter

Such a window won’t reopen soon, and possibly will never happen again

3/4

All of this should be a wake up call for as a community

I’m not super optimistic to be honest, which is why I’ve basically deserted the platform and I’m spending my time on these days

The silver lining of today’s events in Brazil is that even if Mastodon is left out of the equation, another open platform is benefiting from this mess

4/4

@o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social bluesky stats have not looked all that great recently either but it is good if they can get a significant numbers of users from this Brazil affair and keep them because it will help avoid things getting too centered around Threads.

@vetehinen Bluesky’s user base wasn’t shrinking, and definitely won’t after today’s events

@o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social if you look at https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.dev/bsky_users_total.html BSky MAU has been mostly shrinking. Recent slight uptick that cut the decline for a moment was from the UK thing and now this inflow from Brazil looks like it will be more significant.

bskycharts.edavis.devbsky users total (Munin :: edavis.dev :: bskycharts.edavis.dev :: bsky users total)

@vetehinen No, it hasn’t

The peak was after Bluesky opened to the public, it’s perfectly normal to have a decrease in user counts afterwards

@o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social the fact is there has been a decline that has lasted for months and months. Maybe that is perfectly normal but it is nevertheless a decline.

@vetehinen And even if Bluesky’s stats were as bad as Mastodon’s, it’s completely irrelevant as my main point is about Mastodon, not Bluesky

@o_simardcasanova I agree with everything you’re saying. But I don’t think Mastadon can compete with the resources of Meta or the VC backing of Bluesky. I think Mastodon is 3 engineers? It is what it is

@wonkothesane I agree with all of that

But I also think some of these wounds are self-inflicted, ie many design choices or the wide prevalence of a particularly toxic culture

@o_simardcasanova Oh yea, for sure. But I think a lot of those design decision were baked in before Musk took over Twitter and it was too late to pivot (even if the team wanted to). The culture is a result of a lot of trust and safety issues taking a back seat to other priorities. But it’s also part of the decentralized nature. Which as it turns out, real people don’t care about, and so don’t mind the centralized nature of Bluesky (despite what it may claim)

@wonkothesane I’m not so sure if real people don’t care about decentralization, I’m wondering if instead, the lesson to draw from Mastodon could be that real people don’t care about the kind of decentralization Mastodon offers

Mastodon puts *a lot* of its decentralization in the end user experience, with very unclear benefits. The end result is a complicated and convoluted UX.

@wonkothesane Bluesky abstracts a lot of the decentralization in the backend, with the explicit intent to deliver more easily its benefits

I’m not sure if Bluesky’s take on decentralization will appeal to users, it’s too soon to tell yet

But it could, which would validate that users are receptive to certain types of decentralization

@wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova Nailed it.
1. 99% of the world couldn't care less about decentralization, fediverse, openness & all the typical soapboxing Mastodon/Fedi advocates break out.

2. Twitter for all its evil & stupidity, continues to grow while Mastodon MAU is shrinking. I stay because while there are some absolute nutjobs here, I love Mastodon & the few connections I've made.

I have also concluded that I nothing in common with the LCD community on Threads & BlueSky is a ghost town.

@kurtsh @wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova yep, this sums it up. I’m fine here for now but I don’t expect others to be totally uninhibited by the complexity (and if you don’t think it’s complex then you’re delusional).

@trisweb @wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova "Well, if you don't like it, you can always set up your own instance."

I literally got that response when I said the average user won't like the onboarding experience.

@kurtsh @wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova well, to be fair, it’s a reasonable attitude to have if you never want anyone to use it. 😂

@o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane Not sure what you mean by “toxic culture” - people here have been very nice by and large. As a Reddit refugee I don’t want to be on a platform run or owned by billionaire assholes. If that means that this platform is not Xitter or bluesky or heaven forbid whatever Zuck has cucked up, then that is for the good

@o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane yes, like amplifying toxic accounts, fluff and #tripe, which I know have sent many decent people away.
Why can't social media amplify #substance instead of #toxicity and help heal the world instead of run it down like #xitter #facebook #Instagram and the rest.

@wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova Do a lot of fedi people WANT it to compete head to head? Because a whole bunch of us don’t want that future.

If my mastodon feed ever starts resembling the feed on Threads or Bluesky, then I’m moving on anyway.

@rscottjones @wonkothesane Probably not, but if Mastodon can’t compete, it won’t have the chance to live up to its ambition to offer a different way to do social media

Offering this allegedly superior experience to only a very small fraction of the user base being the literal definition of elitism

@o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane It can’t be a different way of doing social media if it does the same thing the others do.

It’s not elitist, literally *anyone* can participate and even run their own server.

@rscottjones @wonkothesane I’m sorry but this is wishful thinking

As a start, the overwhelming majority of people don’t want and/or don’t know how to run their instance

And even if they wanted to, properly running an instance is actually very complicated. Trust me, I tried.

It’s not, never was, and will never be, a realistic answer

Once again, I’m sorry but yes, this is textbook elitism to suggest a solution the overwhelming majority of people can’t really use

@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane And it's also a fairly bad experience even if you can handle the complicated, because of how the underlying architecture works…

(Example: those likes/faves on those few comments in this thread that I made, I did by pressing the "…" button on each separate comment, then selecting "Copy link to post", switching to another tab, pasting the URL into the search, waiting a second and then pressing the like button…)

@mackuba @rscottjones @wonkothesane Yeah, the architecture is too complicated in my opinion

I remember listening to a bunch of *tech podcasts* where literal app developers said they were confused by the way Mastodon works

Now that I’m using Bluesky a lot more, I can see all the frictions I got used to but that only exist on Mastodon (and possibly on other AP platforms)

@mackuba @o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane On activitypub, interactions like these are the most confusing part when it doesn't have to be for new users. I wouldn't be surprised as more users try, give up and then go to Bluesky or even Nostr

@mackuba
Huh. I press the star button to like a post. Pretty easy, really. If I had to guess, I'd say you're making things unnecessarily complicated to support your argument.
@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane

@dragonvalley @o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane Yes, because you're on an instance that has 2.6K users, I'm on an instance that has 1 user. This part of the thread was a response to a mention that anyone can run their own server, so I'm describing how it is to run your own server.

@mackuba @dragonvalley @rscottjones @wonkothesane Look at you Kuba, inadvertently validating my decision to *not* host my own instance 😬

@o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane Oh please. It’s as easy as Bluesky to sign up.

And I’m not techie at all and run two instances via masto.host and it takes fewer clicks than an Amazon order. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s not a requirement. But it wouldn’t take much to run your own friends-first instance.

But again, your definition of “success” might be much, *much* different than what many existing users here want. That’s not elitism, it’s just a different way of being.

@rscottjones @o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane

Talking out loud here but maybe the fixated dweebs about Masto becoming social media hegemon exude a kind of social anti gravity.

@rscottjones @o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane That’s dishonest and filled with cope. It’s not as easy as Bluesky onboarding. Also, it’s not just what users want. The creator of mastodon has come out and said he wants 100 million mastodon users. So their perspective is very in line when you factor in what the creator is aiming for

@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane I've found that there is a fundamental disagreement about the critical importance of adoption & usage.

Despite usage & adoption being the universal metric for social network value, Fediverse flagwavers in a fit of wishful thinking, love to say that "active usage isn't important" & "quality of experience is what matters".

This armchair analysis isn't simply not useful - it's patently wrong. Ask any social network researcher. Usage + Adoption = Value.

@kurtsh @o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane who cares? AP is a loosely coupled group of volunteer run software projects and communities

who cares if the gold standard kpi is usage+adoption

the value of a foss project is measured by those volunteers. and time and again those people have prioritized building the product they care about

@glassresistor @o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane I care. And I suspect anyone interested in the long term success of Mastodon probably cares.

I personally would like to see increasing value from a solution I invest in & an architecture I see as potentially valuable as email or the web itself.

And social network value is directly proportional to adoption. So yeah, you may not care about network value because your priorities are different. But I do.

@rscottjones @o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane weird how Oliver called YOU elitist for not playing the capitalism game, then cried “mastodon is toxic” and left.

@cferdinandi @rscottjones @wonkothesane This is literally not what I did and said, but fine

I’m assuming completely misrepresenting what a complete stranger said and did to achieve God knows what doesn’t fuel any sort of toxicity whatsoever 🫠

@cferdinandi @rscottjones @wonkothesane Misrepresenting facts has nothing to do with disagreeing

Same goes with strawmaning people, which apparently is also one of your specialty

@cferdinandi @rscottjones @wonkothesane My name isn’t Oliver but Olivier

Once again, misrepresenting an easily verifiable fact

Good streak, keep up with the good work

@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane Want to talk facts, though? Look at Mastodon "losing". Oh wait, what's that? Users are going UP? Oh snap, my bad.

mastodon.social/@mastodonuserc

@cferdinandi @rscottjones @wonkothesane @mastodonusercount There’s literally no visible spike in the past three days

Trend hasn’t moved, numbers are overall constant

Apparently, you also don’t know how to read a plot correctly

This is becoming increasingly embarrassing honestly

But you do you, it’s your public image, not mine

@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane @mastodonusercount i’m starting to think the reason you think mastodon is toxic is because you’re a giant asshole

@o_simardcasanova

Bluesky is only theoretically decentralized. Same with Threads. They both have an extremely simple onboarding process because of this. Get back to me when it's a fair competition.

@wjmaggos This is completely false, Bluesky is already widely decentralized

Get back to me when you will have your basic facts straight

@o_simardcasanova

maybe I'm wrong then. how are these Brazilians joining up?

@wjmaggos Not "maybe", you absolutely are

The overwhelming majority of algorithmic feeds aren’t run by Bluesky, there exists dozens of moderation labelers, and thousands of users already self-host their PDSes

Sure, there’s no alternative relays or AppViews, but the underlying protocol has only been capable of accepting federation for six months

@o_simardcasanova

I understand but percentage wise, it's extremely centralized. just like if mastodon decided to do something shitty, it would really hurt the overall fedi and AP. except bluesky has much more influence over the AT protocol. similarly, defaulting everybody to mastodon dot social helped our onboarding process. it's a trade-off for growth vs the larger goal of empowering users and you're being a bit disingenuous not acknowledging this.

@wjmaggos@liberal.city @o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social last I checked it was hundreds of users on their own PDSes and even if it is now a few thousand this is in contrast to millions on that are on the Bluesky-hosted ones...

@vetehinen @wjmaggos Self-hosted PDSes is kind of new and is still a work in progress

Bluesky plans to make much easier to self-host, which should increase usage

But most people won’t self-host, mostly because they don’t care

@wjmaggos Bluesky is more centralized because it’s literally by design

Which doesn’t mean there’s no decentralization. It’s just a different model of decentralization.

It’s not disingenuous to say that a protocol works exactly how it was designed to work

Also, users are a lot more empowered on Bluesky than on Mastodon: they can choose their own algorithmic feeds, or use a chronological one. They can gate replies and quotes. They can choose their moderation. Mastodon has none of this.

@o_simardcasanova @wjmaggos AP literally allows all of those things and having 1 relay makes it not decentralized

@o_simardcasanova @wjmaggos Eh, it's not thousands, not counting Bridgy there's a few hundreds of PDSes / few hundreds of accounst on them, and less than 100 actively post from there AFAIK. Those thousands you might see e.g. on my site are mostly just Bridgy. So it is decentralize-able, but I think the tools being too much work-in-progress right now limits it too much so far (e.g. Shreyan breaking his PDS a couple of times).

@mackuba @wjmaggos I stand by what I said: what Bluesky currently advertises as decentralized, i.e. feeds and moderation, is already massively decentralized, especially feeds

I stand corrected on the number of PDSes, but AFAIK, it’s still not a stable feature (and I think Bluesky’s themselves discourage to self-host?)

@o_simardcasanova @wjmaggos I'd say they encourage to self-host, discourage to host for other people, and emphasize that this is still an early phase

@o_simardcasanova I don't understand your insistence that this is a three-way horse race in which Mastodon bears responsibilities that you have decided to assign it. Criticizing Mastodon for not being the thing you want it to be is fair when evaluating your options. OTOH, shouting the end is near without discussing the fundamental changes upon which the social web is predicated is bound to earn you shrugs or blank looks. 1/