Never said it was useless. Just don't buy it's the revolution supporters (like the author of the article) want it to be... I think that has a lot more to do with the lukewarm reaction than "you just don't get it, man". Seems to me a good chance it simply exacerbates the bubbles we already find ourselves in if only those who are savvy enough to work with it sign up.

BTW, I know some like sort by new, but I find it's mostly trash (except maybe in small communities). I actually want something to sort through the dregs and promote the good stuff. Likes and attention is a terrible metric to use for that but it's all we've got so far. I want something better that starts encouraging healthy discourse for all, not just those who can figure it out... don't really know what that is, but mastadon ain't it.

For now, we'll see if that scales. Not sure how many people can cover operating costs at the scale of Twitter, even decentralized. I notice you didn't offer to foot the bill...

Besides, seems the corporate profits argument just shifts to hosting services at that point.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for there to be better, ethical social media, it just doesn't seem like mastadon is the revolution supporters want it to be.

Yeah we're taking past each other. I'm not suggesting it has to solves all problems, but everyone is acting like it does... and even the problems it does proport to solve still needs proving at large scale. I mean there's a reason you don't see that many open source platforms becoming mainstream... money talks.

I have my doubts it's going to scale like people seem to think it will... and it doesn't solve the problems inherent to social media, so yeah, forgive me if I fail to get excited about it. The original article was trying to suggest tech writers just don't get mastodon... seems to be like it's just reasonable scepticism that this is going to be all that revolutionary.

Anyway, there isn't much more to say. Cheers.

Cool, so mastadon solves the problem for you and people who are like you (more tech savvy)... but what about all the people who don't have the know how or don't want to do that? Will you let them freeload on your server driving up your costs? Or will they go to the billionaire's free server?

1. That's asking for users to take an action... majority of user base would ask why should I care it doesn't affect my service? I wish more people cared about it, but reality is people just want something that works.

2. Hosting isn't free, who pays for it? What happens when the billionaire provides the most stable instance because they can afford it? Crowd funding can get you so far, but it's hard to keep going.

> There’s really no reason to put as much thought into which instance you sign up for as what people think,

Why not? How do I know the server I sign up for isn't going to harvest my data and sell it on the side? Or that it's run by lunatics that promote crazy content? Or that it will collapse because the hoster can't afford hosting? Or that it's going to get hacked?

Every concern you could raise about centralized social media could be raised about an individual server. Yeah, I'm sure you could migrate to a new server if you find out the one you picked sucks, but that's extra work grandma isn't going to want to do... she just wants something that works.

So mastadon kinda addresses a couple problems (like centralized profit) but doesn't do anything to address deeper issues with current social media... all in a package that is objectively more complicated than current offerings. Bringing it back to the article, that seems like a good reason why reaction has been lukewarm to mastodon... not because "tech writers can't understand it".

And people gravitate to their own tribe.... it's human nature. It's naive to think that people are going to a better job "without algorithms" to not create echo chambers.

But I also think you're using "algorithm" as a bit of a boggy man here... I mean how does mastadon know what to show you if not for an algorithm? It'd be like sorting by "new" on Reddit... yeah that works for some people but it's like taking a firehose of data. Most people want something a little more curated, which means something has to do that sorting

Algorithms aren't the problem, the incentives are. What we need are algorithms that have incentives encouraging positive discourse. Attention and likes are fine for your puppy and cat pictures that really don't mean anything, but if you want to talk about anything meaningful popularity is not the way.

Not sure what point you're trying to make.... I don't think people put as much thought into which email clients to use as you're implying. She picks the most popular, easy to use one which typically is going to be a giant corporation who can make a slick feature rich interface for low cost/free because they have the money to do so, possibly by harvesting and selling your data.

I mean how many open source/"ethical" email clients do you see in the top lists: https://www.litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-february-2022/

I'm all for the shift to move away from free=good, but that's a big social shift that's going to take more than decentralization to do that. Saying you have so many choices now kinda misses the point... people like choices to be easy and that's one of the allures of a centralized service.

Encryption doesn't tell you wheter you can trust the source, just that you are who you say you are. A conspiracy theorist can get an encryption key.

How do you tell grandma which server to pick? Either you ask grandma to trust someone or make her do her own (likely uninformed) research.

That sounds like the definition of an echo chamber...

Yeah, I have to disagree. The article is kinda missing what the problem is. There are already exist things like the concept of mastadon... take their example of email interoperability, where do those standards come from? This is where organizations W3C or IETF are formed.

Mastadon basically aims to be that standards body which isn't really anything new... but in order for those to exist you need weight behind it (ie time and money). Right now maybe that's okay with crowd funding, but unless you shift people's minds away from "likes" and "attention" I kinda doubt they'll have the resources to scale for the masses or beyond anything more than just Twitter clones.

Right now mastadon probably feels better than Twitter because of the barrier to entry... would that hold up at the scale of Twitter? If it does get mass adoption I think you'll either get some servers that end up being dominant or people get pushed into echo chambers. That doesn't solve anything.

How is any of that solved by decentralization? Now instead of one service you don't know whether you can trust you have hundreds. Unless there is a way to encourage "good" content and discourage "bad" content built in to the platform (which it doesn't) it's going to have all the same problems. Just like sub Reddits or discord servers it's going to depend a hell of a lot on quality of moderation. I'm sure some Mastedon servers will rise above the rest in that regard, but I fail to see how that would not result in either re-centralizing on the "good" servers or just pushing people farther into echo chambers of servers they "like".

The problem with social media is not the centralization, its the perverse incentives we put on "likes" and "attention" that preys on our human nature, which then companies have learned to turn into profit. You have to solve the first part if you want to have better online discourse and I don't see anyone doing that and mastedon is only focused on the profit side of things... and I'm not sure it's user friendly enough for mass adoption. It's like telling everyone to just build their own website... try telling that to grandma.

Edit: or maybe more aptly, it's like telling grandma to go look at a bunch of existing websites to find one they like and if they don't find one to build their own. That's too much choice for the average person.