After about 6 months hosting my own little private Mastodon instance, I can say the following things:
(1) Whoever cares about that but the atmosphere is nice, cozy, exciting and creative. Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with.
(2) Hosting is relatively easy. I think all kinds of organizations (e.g. sports clubs, media companies, private companies, schools, political parties, gov't agencies, etc.) should give it a shot hosting their own instances to take control of their social media identity.
They don't necessarily need to open registrations for everyone and start moderating "the masses". I only let few hand-picked people on my instance that I happen to know IRL and still have a happy life.
(3) I once saw a post from a German IT mag (heise, I think from November 2022) that claimed that they have more traffic through Mastodon than through any other Social Media thingy. Surely, their audience was a good fit but I think it's a matter of critical mass when more less-nerdy people would join the Fediverse.
In summary, I deleted my Twitter account ~2 months ago and don't regret it. Some things are a bit annoying (mostly bugs, finding and connecting with other people, not much interaction with my posts [maybe it's because my posts are sh*t]) but all in all it's a great resource for inspiration and digital interaction with other people.
"Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with."
So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don't see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation... sure, I could buy that line. A quick perusal on the front page of mastodon.social had only of either relatively neutral topics or various progressive tropes on the news of the day. No contrary views were there at all. Perhaps this is what you mean: it's your bubble, so it's cozy and non-toxic. A safe-space of sorts for all right minded people.
I do agree with you: Twitter is a digital hellscape. Of course, I deleted my account half a decade or so ago for this reason and to be fair, it's not changed. It might now have a different flavor with Musk, but still as toxic a place as it was before him. I can't see Mastodon as being much different and with that I'll do us both a favor a stay away from there as well.
ymmv. The mastodon.lol (which was a safe space instance) drama over Hogwarts Legacy [0] was a very good reminder that the platform doesn’t matter, its the people.
It's interesting how many Mastodon users talk about small groups as one of the main selling points, because it's something most platforms do very well actually, yes even Twitter. Discord is another very popular place for small groups to connect, and do so meaningfully and without drama.
The real problem, and where Mastodon has been tested numerous times on and failed, is scaling to larger groups. When people aren't under direct social pressure at all times to play nice and fair. There just aren't enough tools available to counteract this on Mastodon, most places just rely on shared blocklists. There are very good reasons why shadow banning became a thing, but that's a lesson to be learned down the line.
For now, the fact that Mastodon in general isn't all that widely used is its strongest asset. Everything else stems from this but will not last long.
Everyone online community can be perfect if group membership is small enough. Up until that point the underlying tech does not matter. I have been part of great hobby groups and discussions on niche subreddits, random Whatsapp groups, Usenet/IRC, even plain old email threads. So in that sense, yes, Mastadon can be great as well.
The real test is – can your community handle an influx of a billion of the worst users on the internet? People baiting for flame wars, bots, scammers, pedophiles. They are all out there, and will show up the second your service has a whiff of popularity.
> "Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with."
I find it curious and ironic that there are a number of recommended block lists of Mastodon instances with a "free speech" being a category under which many instances are blocked.
I'm all for free-association and eliminating those with whom you disagree but it would be a mistake to credit ActivityPub (of which Mastodon is merely ONE server type) with creating a non-toxic environment without noticing how that happened.
> Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world.
In other words, you've built yourself a tiny echo chamber. The only way you have "zero toxicity" is that the group is exceedingly small or you force group-think.
> (3) I once saw a post from a German IT mag (heise, I think from November 2022) that claimed that they have more traffic through Mastodon than through any other Social Media thingy.
That's not a good thing. It means that the german IT mag has no readers.
Its just takes the one person to ruin it all. Doesn't matter if he is fighting the good fight, just an ass, just a karen, or just a troll. If you find similar minded people, all the "negatives" are just accepted. Like in EU. Its 100% fine to be openly racist against the Turks, the Russinas, the Gypsies. Does that make it right? No. But is it a cozy atmosphere where everyone can agree that they can openly bash these people? Sure does.
Honestly I really tried to use the fediverse, but its not good enough.
Search is hot garbage, can't find anything useful, or what people are actually talking about, not that Twitters search is great by any measure.
Missing content when visiting external content, cuz why would anyone ever want to see or search old content.
Also most clients I have seen show replies in a really stupid way, you have to actively click to see what the person is replying to, its not visible in the timeline.
Outside of the English speaking indie-privacy-tech bubble (and germans seem to be very active on it too) its a ghost land.
In general I have been spending more time on hacker news and youtube than Twitter and fediverse, they aren't like pre-elon twitter.
Search is only hot garbage if you expect the fediverse to be a global public square, which it isn't. The search drills down into your personal interaction history, and that's great.
And many accounts are not active. I would hazard a guess that of these 10M accounts, less than 1M are active users--making the submission headline very misleading indeed.
This is the proper way to deal with almost ANY social media, unless it is literally one-purpose like HN; you should have various accounts for your various persona and they shouldn't cross.
Shameless plug: I created a browser extension to help transition to Mastodon[0]. If you don't yet feel like you can leave twitter.com, but want to explore alternatives it's a great way to get started. Essentially it injects Mastodon posts into your Twitter timeline, so you can retain your existing Twitter following while getting exposed to Mastodon.
I'm on Mastodon, but I find the experience extremely frustrating. The UI has all the annoyances of Twitter's (which I also dislike), and more besides. It's a fun enough place to mess around and post throwaway jokes, but using it for anything serious would be a mistake: federation means that often only some of the posts in a given thread make it to your server, so often bits of a conversation are silently missing. This can lead to all kinds of miscommunication, misunderstanding, unintentional offence, and talking at cross purposes. It is, to my mind, a massive design flaw.
(The fact that most servers have a fairly low character limit for posts, but allow chaining posts together to make threads is another problem, inherited from Twitter. It's harder to write; it's harder to read. It's harder to read even if all the posts in a chain federate to your server, which they may not. Individual posts in the middle of a chain may surface on the timeline out of context and make no sense. The entire structure is ridiculous, irritating, and pointlessly difficult to use.)
That ten million figure includes the many of us who created an account on some instance, had a browse around for a few minutes, realised it was a boring wasteland of a service, and never logged on again.
Let's see the data for active users, not just registrations.
Individual Mastodon instances have already begun exhibiting insane behavior, and relying on someone else's fiefdom isn't for me. Social media should give full control to the user on top of a credibly neutral layer.
Regardless of this horse race coverage, I’ve been having a really good time on Mastodon. It’s much less toxic than Twitter and it’s easy to get into interesting discussions with smart people.
I have been using https://streetpass.social/ to find more mastodon users - it uses the ‘verified domains’ thing in mastodon in reverse - you go to a website and if it is verifying a mastodon profile it gives you a link.
I’ve been very surprised how many people and organisations are on the fediverse.
I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. ~ Nelson Mandela
If you are considering self-hosting your instance, I’ll recommend Go To Social. It is still alpha quality software but all the basic functions work fine. But it’s a much lighter alternative to Mastodon.
I applied for mastodon, but never got an confirmation. I think the tech has some serious bugs, and afaict needs polish. When users cant sign up theres red flags going on.
Broadly, I think the best use of Mastodon IS to be a Twitter competitor; a noisy town square.
What I have seen is -- the disagreeable people on Twitter want to publically fight. They want to push their bad ideas and have everyone listen to them, and thus are willing to get into it.
The disagreeable people on Mastodon want to silence others. They're more block happy and don't want to be questioned at all.
That's why, presently, I prefer the disagreeable people over at Twitter; they're actually using the platform better (and you can possibly change their minds)
It's interesting that there are normally 10.000-40.000 [0] toots per hour and it skyrockets up to 8.000.000 toots per hour in this graph, how is this possible?
[+] [-] nforgerit|3 years ago|reply
(1) Whoever cares about that but the atmosphere is nice, cozy, exciting and creative. Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with.
(2) Hosting is relatively easy. I think all kinds of organizations (e.g. sports clubs, media companies, private companies, schools, political parties, gov't agencies, etc.) should give it a shot hosting their own instances to take control of their social media identity. They don't necessarily need to open registrations for everyone and start moderating "the masses". I only let few hand-picked people on my instance that I happen to know IRL and still have a happy life.
(3) I once saw a post from a German IT mag (heise, I think from November 2022) that claimed that they have more traffic through Mastodon than through any other Social Media thingy. Surely, their audience was a good fit but I think it's a matter of critical mass when more less-nerdy people would join the Fediverse.
In summary, I deleted my Twitter account ~2 months ago and don't regret it. Some things are a bit annoying (mostly bugs, finding and connecting with other people, not much interaction with my posts [maybe it's because my posts are sh*t]) but all in all it's a great resource for inspiration and digital interaction with other people.
[+] [-] sbuttgereit|3 years ago|reply
So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don't see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation... sure, I could buy that line. A quick perusal on the front page of mastodon.social had only of either relatively neutral topics or various progressive tropes on the news of the day. No contrary views were there at all. Perhaps this is what you mean: it's your bubble, so it's cozy and non-toxic. A safe-space of sorts for all right minded people.
I do agree with you: Twitter is a digital hellscape. Of course, I deleted my account half a decade or so ago for this reason and to be fair, it's not changed. It might now have a different flavor with Musk, but still as toxic a place as it was before him. I can't see Mastodon as being much different and with that I'll do us both a favor a stay away from there as well.
[+] [-] haunter|3 years ago|reply
ymmv. The mastodon.lol (which was a safe space instance) drama over Hogwarts Legacy [0] was a very good reminder that the platform doesn’t matter, its the people.
0, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195
[+] [-] waboremo|3 years ago|reply
The real problem, and where Mastodon has been tested numerous times on and failed, is scaling to larger groups. When people aren't under direct social pressure at all times to play nice and fair. There just aren't enough tools available to counteract this on Mastodon, most places just rely on shared blocklists. There are very good reasons why shadow banning became a thing, but that's a lesson to be learned down the line.
For now, the fact that Mastodon in general isn't all that widely used is its strongest asset. Everything else stems from this but will not last long.
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
The real test is – can your community handle an influx of a billion of the worst users on the internet? People baiting for flame wars, bots, scammers, pedophiles. They are all out there, and will show up the second your service has a whiff of popularity.
[+] [-] mikece|3 years ago|reply
I find it curious and ironic that there are a number of recommended block lists of Mastodon instances with a "free speech" being a category under which many instances are blocked.
I'm all for free-association and eliminating those with whom you disagree but it would be a mistake to credit ActivityPub (of which Mastodon is merely ONE server type) with creating a non-toxic environment without noticing how that happened.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] brwck|3 years ago|reply
In other words, you've built yourself a tiny echo chamber. The only way you have "zero toxicity" is that the group is exceedingly small or you force group-think.
> (3) I once saw a post from a German IT mag (heise, I think from November 2022) that claimed that they have more traffic through Mastodon than through any other Social Media thingy.
That's not a good thing. It means that the german IT mag has no readers.
[+] [-] chemmail|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacooper|3 years ago|reply
Search is hot garbage, can't find anything useful, or what people are actually talking about, not that Twitters search is great by any measure.
Missing content when visiting external content, cuz why would anyone ever want to see or search old content.
Also most clients I have seen show replies in a really stupid way, you have to actively click to see what the person is replying to, its not visible in the timeline.
Outside of the English speaking indie-privacy-tech bubble (and germans seem to be very active on it too) its a ghost land.
In general I have been spending more time on hacker news and youtube than Twitter and fediverse, they aren't like pre-elon twitter.
[+] [-] MisterSandman|3 years ago|reply
> Outside of the English speaking indie-privacy-tech bubble (and germans seem to be very active on it too) its a ghost land.
"Outside of the super-active communities using Mastodon everyday, it is a ghostland."
[+] [-] rapnie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmacho|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] app4soft|3 years ago|reply
Not a users, but accounts.
45% of 20 people that took part in my poll[0] has 2..4 accounts on various Mastodon servers (I has 3 accounts).
[0] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/109885069770027479
[+] [-] toomim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dom96|3 years ago|reply
[0] - https://chirper.picheta.me
[+] [-] TRiG_Ireland|3 years ago|reply
(The fact that most servers have a fairly low character limit for posts, but allow chaining posts together to make threads is another problem, inherited from Twitter. It's harder to write; it's harder to read. It's harder to read even if all the posts in a chain federate to your server, which they may not. Individual posts in the middle of a chain may surface on the timeline out of context and make no sense. The entire structure is ridiculous, irritating, and pointlessly difficult to use.)
[+] [-] rchaud|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swayvil|3 years ago|reply
It optimizes for something I'm sure. Maybe "conversation volume"
It's popular.
[+] [-] cogwheels|3 years ago|reply
Let's see the data for active users, not just registrations.
[+] [-] lazzlazzlazz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonystubblebine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EamonnMR|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Method-X|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxuz|3 years ago|reply
You have users, subreddits (servers), and mods.
Except everything is federated, so you also have the overhead of choosing your server or making a ton of alt accounts. Flashback to old MMO times.
[+] [-] jackvalentine|3 years ago|reply
I’ve been very surprised how many people and organisations are on the fediverse.
[+] [-] textread|3 years ago|reply
Twitter currently has ~400M users, 50% of them DAUs [1]
[1] https://backlinko.com/twitter-users
[+] [-] unpopularopp|3 years ago|reply
Edit: seems like they aren’t. So probably there are more users and the 10m have been passed long ago
[+] [-] davnicwil|3 years ago|reply
And has such an analysis been done to produce the numbers this account is reporting?
[+] [-] 6ak74rfy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phplovesong|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrm4|3 years ago|reply
Broadly, I think the best use of Mastodon IS to be a Twitter competitor; a noisy town square.
What I have seen is -- the disagreeable people on Twitter want to publically fight. They want to push their bad ideas and have everyone listen to them, and thus are willing to get into it.
The disagreeable people on Mastodon want to silence others. They're more block happy and don't want to be questioned at all.
That's why, presently, I prefer the disagreeable people over at Twitter; they're actually using the platform better (and you can possibly change their minds)
I do hope this changes.
[+] [-] starkparker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonas-w|3 years ago|reply
[0] based on a graph before these huge spikes https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/11003025216596297...