• MyOpinion@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Mastodon is the most stable social network I have used in a long time. Love it!

      • filister@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Who are obsessed with endless growth ideas and introducing subscription models so that you end up with countless of subscriptions.

        • damnYouSun
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          1 year ago

          There’s only a certain number of people in the world, and only a subset of them have easy access to the internet, and only a subset of them have disposable income.

          Yet infinite profits are the expectation somehow.

  • Lazylazycat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Can someone tell me what Mastodon is like please, I have social network fatigue and can’t be bothered to try another one? 😅

    • Nyaa@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Microblogging Fediverse app, Lemmy/kbin is to Reddit as Mastodon is to Twitter

        • Nuuskis9@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          I think the most enjoyable feature is that there is no algorithm in Fediverse. And decentralization means that if you host your own server for Pixelfed (instagram equivalent) for example, your data will go offline at the moment you disconnect your server from the internet.

          Lemmy is great alternative for Reddit especially if you’re into tech.

          • Lazylazycat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            What do you mean by “no algorithm”? There must be something controlling the order of “hot” vs “new”? Or do you mean the kind of algorithm that shows you suggested communities?

              • Sheltac@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                mathematically simple

                And, as far as I can see, neutral. Doesn’t put you in a bubble like other social networks do, because it’s not trying to milk you for engagement.

              • Mike D.@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                the user feed is just made up of posts from people you follow in chrono order.

                You can also follow hashtags, block hashtags, and block words/phrases.

                The Local Timeline shows posts from everyone on your instance. The Federated Timeline is a fire hose. It shows all posts in chronological order (as received by your instance).

          • tcj@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I think there’s a lot of value to the algorithm, but it needs to be based on real engagement rather than arbitrary bullshit that a soulless corporation wants to promote.

            I subscribe to a lot of people, but not all of their content is worth seeing. Having it curated down to just the stuff that’s actually popular can be nice. It’s definitely tricky to make that work in a fair and useful way though.

            • biddy@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              The nice thing is, if an instance wanted to put in the effort they could totally make an algorithm. We will have to grow a lot before it’s worth the bother to make a good one, but it’s totally possible.

          • Vittelius@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            And thanks to activityPub there is interoperability between services. I only have a Mastodon account, but I can follow people on pixelfed without problem. It moves the focus back onto communicating rather than being on the platform

    • LostCause@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It‘s like Twitter basically, but since it‘s also in the fediverse there is a bit of overlap where Mastodon people can comment on Lemmy/kbin stuff too anyway. Usually they have something like @LostCause and hashtags like #mastodon and so on in their comments, that‘s how I typically spot them.

      So their growth is relevant for us, but you don‘t need to make an account there.

    • Eisenhowever@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Just like twitter except what you see on your feed is reliant on what #’s or people you follow. So you essentially have more control over what you see and you wont get any posts from some rando like twitter does

    • flipthetube@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s like twitter but without the bullshit. I’ve never used twitter so not interested in Mastodon, but I’m glad it’s out there.

    • Scanzy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Mastodon is hard to get into because at first you only really see what is coming from your own instance. You have to really look around and find the people and topics you want to see in your feed. It’s a much more carefully curated set of content than you get from Twitter, which just bombards you with hot takes and garbage all the time.

    • pizzahoe@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s really interesting… i gave it a shot a few days back. You’ve to follow stuff or hashtags you’re interested in for things to show up… after that take it slow and follow more things… I’ve found some really good music playlists, art, programming discussions on there. There’s also an explore section which shows trending topics and posts. I can recommend it as the users are mature and in my experience not toxic.

    • ██████████@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not like here at all. No shitposts. Only people who use their real name and work for some non profit sharing their highly intelligent news bulletins. I haven’t found any memes

    • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think there’s any advertising budget being spent on these fedi platforms, which makes it impressive they’ve grown so much from media exposure and word of mouth.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The fediverse isn’t driven by profit, so growth for the sake of growth isn’t necessary. Word of mouth will let the fediverse platforms grow naturally and sustainably

      • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        It would be a mistake to not realise that they operate in the same virtual space as profit driven corporations though. They should still be professionally run with proper pr and marketing. Whether that is volunteer led, or alternative funding like Wikipedia or charging corporate clients etc.

        Personally, I’d like corporate integration to fund the free part, but with no additional benefit. Just the same access that private users get for free. Otherwise it’s a slippery slope.

        Hard to regulate though. How woukd you verify, who would verify? Could be like fair trade products, whereby there is a certifying body. User instances could decide to only federate with corporate instances that are registered with this non profit. They would pay for their access, like Reddit is asking from their apps, except actually reasonable costs. This could be disbursed to large instances with over X amounts of users to fund their computing needs.

        • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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          1 year ago

          Given the fediverse is a not for profit, any advertising campaigns would have to be fronted by someone who wants to pay for it. It’s not that we can’t do advertising campaigns, it’s just we can’t use the money people dontate to keep the servers running for marketing, because people expect that money to be used in making sure the server exists into the future - it would have to be a separate donation soley for marketing it, or maybe some rich person could decide to pay for marketing in full.

          On top of that, we can’t let sign ups exceed to amount we get from donations - that would kill the server or force the server owner to shut down sign ups and, worst case if they happened way too fast- the owner remove some of the more recent signups, which would reflect badly on said owner.

          In other words, if you want to advertise it, go ahead but don’t expect anyone else to contribute cash to help as marketing a open and donation based system like this could have its consequences.

          • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            Oh, I completely agree. What I mean is that a not for profit can still live in the commercial world of it wants.

            Not for profits still need stuff. Like offices or servers or staff. How the funding comes about without compromising the mission is the question.

            Look at cancer charities fund raising. Look at Wikipedia. Look at Firefox.

            The funding model doesn’t have to be the same for every instance. Some could be just volunteer funded or donated by the admins as a cost of their hobby.

            However, the broader community will not tolerate a social media space that is not professionally run with uptime and lack of errors and downtime. The only way the commercial ones die is if the free ones are better. Look at piracy. It’s not a cost problem in music versus movies versus games, it’s a service problem.

            • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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              1 year ago

              I’ll agree with you that a server needs moderation or administration staff in proportion to its size. Wether those staff are all volunteers or paid depends on the overall budget of the server.

              But I don’t think office space really makes any sense For a decentralized platform like this one - the only place that makes sense is for the actual lead developers of the software that the platform runs. And even then with the WFH culture of today I think even that is not likely to exist.

              As for server administration, the most I could really see is a regular online meeting to keep interests aligned as well as a staff audit log for the server owner to review. And Lemmy already keeps a public audit log anyway.

              As for your last point I wholly agree with you. The whole point of federated systems like mastodon and Lemmy is to move away from the for profit system so we can avoid enshittification. It’s meant to be a method of spreading the cost across multiple smaller nonprofit organisations. And hopefully we can avoid it and therefore make the platform better.

              That being said, the only thing that prevents a corporate entity from joining in is the instances and their federation policies themselves.

              The only other way I see parts of the fediverse become for profit is if an existing non profit turns for profit, which is really only a big deal if it’s one of the larger instances. And as for how the rest of the fediverse deals with that. Well it’s again up to individual server owners, and the collective decision they may or may not make.

              I’ve always said a social system that isn’t socialised is not a social system - I mean it’s in the name! And the fediverse is really one of the first major attempts at doing that. Wether it lasts or not we’re sure to learn a lot and if it fails, we can take those lessons and try again.

    • ijeff@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      Do they really? I prefer quality over quantity. We don’t really need a massive influx of users, just steady growth.

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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        But quantity drives quality. Many big names join platforms specifically for the outreach they provide. That’s by far the biggest reason that there’s still so many big names on Twitter and co that haven’t migrated.

        Especially for the many people who need to make a living and thus need that outreach. The vast, vast majority of viewers will never pay for a picture they see on the internet or a streamer who makes them laugh. For a platform to be financially viable for creative types to make a living, they need a ton of viewers.

        • ijeff@lemdro.id
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          1 year ago

          While generally true, moderator tools really aren’t there yet on Lemmy. Growth will need to be more measured until work on that front catches up. There are also massive gaps that need filling in terms of the potential for spam. Keeping spam in check was challenging enough on reddit with various tools at our disposal - it’ll be even more difficult here.

      • BitingChaos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I say keep the flow coming, because the good shit eventually floats to the top.

        The more people here, the more attractive it becomes to bigger-names, which will then bring their audience over.

    • Venomnik0@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Advertising requires money. Its a slippery slope that’ll lead us down the same path as Reddit again. We’re better than that.

  • Jeze3D@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Mastodon is where the intelligent people are filtered to from Twitter. The idiots end up on Threads.

    • Anarch157a@lemmy.world
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      No matter how much FaceMeta disgusts me, at least Threads has some semblance of moderation to keep the MAGA fascists under control. I rather have to deal with idiots than with the far-right cesspool that Twitter is turning into.

      Thankfully, we have Mastodon, so I don’t have to deal with either. They’re both blocked on my PiHole, so I just get a DNS error when I accidentally click on links.

      • ThoranTW@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Always a bit of a sobering experience in the rare instance that I end up in Twitter. The fact that some of them are willing to be so blatant about being a PoS is a little concerning to say the least.

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          When the owner themself doesn’t hide what kind of PoS they are, this is what you get. I have no love for Zuckerberg, but if I can criticize him based on what he does and how he does it and the effects his decisions have on society, any one with brains could without having to resort to low brow insults of measuring contests. That’s basically the difference, one service is managed by someone who, despite all his flaws, is an adult, the other isn’t.

          BTW, I used neutral pronouns for the “chief twitt” and not for Zuck just to spite him and make the point that one doesn’t have to lower the level bellow a certain threshold to provoke, all considering how they hate “woke” stuff…

  • Josh@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    let’s gooo 👏🏼 the fediverse is getting bigger!

  • snor10@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Wow, two million users, congratulations Mastodon!

    Threads is at 100 million, so if they federate they will still be completely drowned out.

    • mochi@lemdit.com
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      I spent some time on Threads to see how it was and it’s a fucking cesspool of like-mongering and look at me oneupsmanship bullshit that was so fucking tiring to look at that I deleted the app after 4 days.

    • chakan2@lemmy.world
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      Threads has 100m phantom accounts. A lot of them are bots. Who knows how many of those are real users.

      • snor10@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        This is true, 100m is probably hyperbole. Still, I believe them to have significantly more than 2m active users.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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      Well, it would best to compare apples to apples, there are 8M total Mastodon accounts to 108M Threads accounts.

      For active users if we assume the same active ratio (probably not, but I couldn’t find any data for Threads on that from a 1 minute search), then it would be 2 million to 27 million, which is small but it wouldn’t “completely” drown out Mastodon.

    • Joseph Haddon@lemmy.sdf.org
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      And our communities will remain strong. The people growing and caring for a free and open Internet will always be here as the minority to large corporations and lowest common denominators of society.

      I believe it was the official mastodon blog that compared Meta advising xmpp the way they’ll abuse the fediverse but we will stand strong.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      Threads created a shadow account for every user on Instagram, so, I dunno. I’m guessing most of those are just dummy accounts that will remain forever inactive.

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        That number obviously doesn’t include those, because Instagram has over 2 BILLION users. It’s also easy to see how Threads can quickly get to 100M when that means you just have to convince 5% of your users to try your new platform that they don’t even have to sign up for.

        Again, that’s billion with a B. Instagram is unfathomably huge. They only needed 0.1% of their users to rival all of Mastodon.

    • MyFairJulia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If i remember correctly, Threads just uses your pre-existing Instagram account so 108 million is a veeeery theoretical number. We will see how many users actually move to Threads and whether our instances don’t block Threads instances.

      • Aardonyx@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        You still need to sign up to/log into Threads (via Instagram) to have a Threads account or be active on there though, so what makes it theoretical? If they counted all Instagram accounts as Threads accounts it’d instantly be in the billions surely.

        • MyFairJulia@lemmy.world
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          According to some users, Threads made a bunch of bot accounts to reach 108 million users. However i don’t have proof, nor do i know why it’s 108 million bots (or copied profiles) instead of around 2 billions.

  • Sl00k@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    This is great! But generally can’t see Mastadon overtaking any other major social platforms until it introduces an equivalent of For you feed from Twitter. The days of following specific people and hashtags is over, it’s tedious and I don’t give a shit about 3/4s of the feed.

    2017-2020 Twitter was absolutely peak Twitter algorithm wise and thousands of users want that exact experience back, yet nobody will provide it.

    • AugustMetronome@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      You gotta follow some people, and also hashtags. Following hashtags made a huge difference populating my feed. There’s no algorithm so you get to/have to choose what you want to see.

      I also use the ice cubes app for mastodon, which has a trending option also for when I want to see what’s gaining traction outside of my follows.

      • ZenobiaVayne@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Also don’t be afraid to use filters to block keywords if you need a break from certain topics. It’s amazing how calm and actually interesting the feed is if you block all mentions of Twitter and Threads and US politics

        • cvozbosher@lemmy.ml
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          Wow, you and the commenter above really sold me on it. That’s the way the internet was meant to be used. You go and search for shit. Not shit getting fed to you because “it totally matches up with other things you like”. I’ve hated these algorithms for so long. And for me personally completely misses the mark on what actually excites me. Instead it intentionally shows me bullshit that I will scroll through for hours or plaster my face in front of the second I have exactly 30 seconds of free time in my day. It’s fucking junk food.

    • daniskarma@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My feed doesn’t stop. It’s more active that my old Twitter feed.

      I just follow lots of active people.

    • NebLem@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Follow your friends, check out your instance’s federated feed and follow some people there (if you aren’t self hosting), follow some tags, and follow a trending bot like @[email protected]