Now that #Brazil has banned Xitter, where are Brazilian people going?
Based on Google Trends, they’re mostly interested in #Bluesky, and to a (much) lesser extent, in #Threads
[#]Mastodon is nowhere to be found, which should immensely worry pro-Fedi people
1/4
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[#]Mastodon 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, #Bluesky 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
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It pains me to see #Mastodon in such a dire state
Meta is building and growing #Threads 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
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All of this should be a wake up call for #Mastodon 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 #Bluesky 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
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@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
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@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
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@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)
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@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.
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@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
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@wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova Nailed it.
I have also concluded that I nothing in common with the LCD community on Threads & BlueSky is a ghost town.
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@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).
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@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. #jfc
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@kurtsh @wonkothesane @o_simardcasanova well, to be fair, it’s a reasonable attitude to have if you never want anyone to use it. 😂
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@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
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@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.
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@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
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@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.
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@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
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@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…)
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@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)
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@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
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@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
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@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.
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@mackuba @dragonvalley @rscottjones @wonkothesane Look at you Kuba, inadvertently validating my decision to not host my own instance 😬
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@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.
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@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.
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@rscottjones @o_simardcasanova @wonkothesane weird how Oliver called YOU elitist for not playing the capitalism game, then cried “mastodon is toxic” and left.
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@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 🫠
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@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane “people disagree with me. WOW this place is toxic.”
🙄
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@cferdinandi @rscottjones @wonkothesane Misrepresenting facts has nothing to do with disagreeing
Same goes with strawmaning people, which apparently is also one of your specialty
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@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane ok Oliver
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@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
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@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane OH MY GOD A TYPO!!! THE HORROR!
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@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane You did it, Olivier. You won the internet!
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@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.
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/113056520967749118
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@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
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@o_simardcasanova @rscottjones @wonkothesane @mastodonusercount i’m starting to think the reason you think mastodon is toxic is because you’re a giant asshole
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@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.
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@wjmaggos This is completely false, Bluesky is already widely decentralized
Get back to me when you will have your basic facts straight
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@o_simardcasanova
maybe I'm wrong then. how are these Brazilians joining up?
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@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
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@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.
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@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...
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@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
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@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.
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@o_simardcasanova @wjmaggos AP literally allows all of those things and having 1 relay makes it not decentralized
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@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).
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@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?)
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@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
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@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/
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@o_simardcasanova
(It doesn't help when you add negative generalizations about user cultures to the mix -- generalizations based on your particular experiences with a server, usage scenario, application[s], social contacts, and so on. ) 2/
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@o_simardcasanova If you want to make serious arguments in good faith, you need to address the underlying assumptions behind the protocol. You need to consider the ideas motivating the developers and companies who are helping to drive the social web forward.
For a crash course, there is the Dot Social podcast. https://dot-social.simplecast.com
3/
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@markstoneman I know Dot Social, I have listened to all its episodes
I have read the specs of both ActivityPub and AT Protocol, I have read multiple academic papers on both protocols, and I’ve been following this space very closely for the past two years
You also have no idea of the contacts I have with people directly involved in this space
Your patronizing tone and your completely unfounded assumptions on what I know don’t put you in any position to lecture me on making "serious arguments"
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@o_simardcasanova 😐
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@markstoneman dude has a lot of gall to call others patronizing,
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@o_simardcasanova FWIW, Bluesky might be using a different protocol, but there are already efforts to bridge the two protocols. There are also crossposting tools that make using multiple platforms possible. For ActivityPub there are integrations for blogs, newsletters, aggregators, you name it. This is the space where third parties can get involved and play. 4/
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@o_simardcasanova
Sure, many people will still think in terms of a choice between three places, and that's fine. Meanwhile, a different reality is emerging that users of any of these platforms will be able to leverage for their own purposes. 5//
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@markstoneman Is your lecture on a topic I know already well over?
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@markstoneman What makes you think I base my generalizations on my "particular experiences"?
You’re making a lot of completely unfounded assumptions here, and it’s only your second reply…
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@o_simardcasanova For starters, your server. Also, the way you argued with another person until they said good riddance and you could say, see, Mastodon users suck. Is that where this is headed. This question suggests as much.
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@markstoneman This is not "my insistence" but things Eugen Rochko has repeatedly said in various podcast interviews
I’m also literally not shouting that the end is near, and none of my posts are about my own use
I’ve virtually abandoned Mastodon, and I have no intention to come back
I’m just saying that Mastodon is on the dangerous path. If people don’t want to listen, it’s their right. I also genuinely don’t care if a platform I don’t use is on a dangerous path. I won’t be affected.
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@o_simardcasanova "dangerous path" is hyperbolic language
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@markstoneman No, it’s not
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