Can Mastodon seize the moment from Twitter?
Can Mastodon seize the moment from Twitter?
How Mastodon was prepared for Elon Musk’s Twitter to fail.
Eugen Rochko is the CEO of Mastodon — the open-source decentralized competitor to Twitter. It’s where a lot of Twitter users have gone in our post-Elon Musk era.
The idea of Mastodon is that you don’t join a single platform that one company controls. You join a server, and that server can show you content from users across the entire network. If you decide you don’t like the people who run your server or you think they’re moderating content too strictly, you can leave and take your followers and social graph with you. Think about it like email, and you’ll get it. If you don’t like Gmail, you can switch to something else, but you don’t have to quit email entirely as a concept.
It's not Twitter that Mastodon has to seize the moment from. It's all the other commercial offerings that will inevitably pop up in its place as Twitter crashes and burns.
Agreed. I think the headline was more to catch the attention of your average social media user but Eugen does mention the way those services tend to fade away so hopefully it's just a matter of time before more people make the leap.
I think he's a bit over-hopeful at the fediverse's prospects, sadly. People will give up so much (like all of their privacy!) for a small amount of convenience.
Interesting revelation from #gargron in recent interview on server choices for newcomers (https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter)
“However, I think that possibly going forward, we might rework the onboarding user experience into presenting a default option as well as an advanced option, where all that stuff with choosing a server would basically be hidden away from the people who get intimidated by choice.
Also Another statement about groups (which isn’t new to me)
“What’s next for Mastodon? What should people be on the lookout for next?
Groups, probably. That’s a big feature that’s coming. Well, it’s what you would expect. Facebook has groups, Twitter has communities, and Mastodon will have groups as well.”
@maegul @SteveKLord Groups in Mastodon, especially if they're interoperable with Lemmy, would be a great thing to see in my book.
The added bonus is there's already a number of groups in the Fediverse on the day the feature goes live.
Yeah I'm definitely interested in how it will play out and think it could be great. Interoperability should always be the goal, increasingly so. I'd like to see more of that and Eugen working with the designers of Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc more cooperatively. Yeah it seems like he realizes now is the time to make changes while there's interest but before the next big leap off of centralized social media.
I wonder how compatible groups will be with other applications.
Isn't that a very big risk of... Centralization ? (Maybe he talks about it in the interview - weirdly, I can't access it)
Edit : sorry, just read the article, Lemmy app was fucking up the link for me. Well, I can understand the argument of people starting on default server and then moving on, but I'm afraid it mostly applies now and would probably reduce with broader adoption.
Yeah I'm curious what form the groups will take. There are are group channels now to a small extent but they're hardly noticleable. It seems like he wants to win over people from facebook next. I'm a little concerned about the impact that will have on the the culture of Mastodon since when the last boost from Twitter happened due to Elon's takeover, some people brought attitudes you'd expect on Twitter.
I don't always agree with Eugen's decisions but it's interesting to see the Fediverse get more press at least and he did a pretty good job of explaining it to those who are totally new to it.
There is a pull request up for groups in Mastodon, but it hasnt been updated in a long time. It is also completely incompatible with Lemmy.
Twitter also apparently has groups of some sort, though I don't know how that works. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, groups exist in the fediverse outside of Mastodon, including here but also Friendica and Hubzilla, with which Mastodon users can and do interact.
Beyond that, there's also been a good deal of talk about how useful groups are outside of the idea of luring facebook people over, especially in relation to allowing people to find others of similar interests etc. Personally, I find this rather convincing from a Mastodon perspective and hope that that's part of Eugen's reasoning, because I think a grouping structure plus a freeform chatting/microblogging structure are a complementary pairing.
@SteveKLord
To be honest…
The question is do we want the trolls of Twitter here?
It's more relaxed here, calmer and nicer.
I'm still on Twitter, you can be on multiple platforms.
I see completely different things on Twitter and use Twitter differently.That's definitely an important question. The culture on Twitter can be far less respectful than Mastodon so we definitely don't want that here but the moderation options give users more control when dealing with bad actors so eventually it balances out to some extent.
I got rid of Twitter when Musk took over and brought actual fascists back while getting rid of anti-fascists but I agree you can use different services and expect different things from them. The Fediverse is more inherently built to last and for I feel increasingly more inclined to post on those services, though.