Been playing around with Bluesky a bit & it’s pretty interesting. They have an easier consumer experience (signup/discovery/UI works like Twitter) and it all feels very snappy. I like how they use domain names (or subdomains) instead of what look like funky email addresses. By far the biggest problem Jay & co face is that Jack Dorsey has effectively poisoned the well on everything from people assuming it’s a crypto platform (it’s not) to assuming (understandably) that be bad at trust & safety.
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Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 16:37:41 JST Anil Dash
- Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 16:37:40 JST Eugen Rochko
@anildash Sign-up and discovery is much easier when you only have one node!
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Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 22:42:08 JST Anil Dash
I don’t think we need another protocol or whatever really, but I do think there should be an open-web platform that prioritizes building a consumer-grade experience that is suitable for orgs & institutions. I think a lot of cultural barriers make that harder to do in the fediverse (especially in the mastodon sphere), but I’m agnostic as to whether it happens on ActivityPub or the (as-yet-unproven) AT Protocol. Glad to see cool, open stuff being made.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:11:30 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@anildash People don’t care about who runs it, they care about social interactions being easy.
Mastodon specifically was designed to make social interactions harder; replies aren’t guaranteed to show up (especially on small servers) and there’s no quoting; aka the most basic conversation features are deeply broken.
I’m also convinced that the makers of Mastodon don’t actually use it, other than occasionally announcing something. The BlueSky devs are extremely available, and use it actively. -
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Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:11:31 JST Anil Dash
To be clear, I love the fediverse and Mastodon, and that’s why I’ve been here from the start. I think it’s been a great evolution from the RSS era to Atom to ActivityPub to Mastodon API (which is a defacto standard on top of all of that) but I also appreciate learning from other systems & seeing what’s good about them. I’m not going anywhere, but I am pushing for this entire ecosystem to interoperate and grow to accommodate as many different use cases as possible.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:20:21 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@anildash You’re free to disagree, but broken replies and no quote posting are facts, not opinions.
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Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:20:22 JST Anil Dash
@thomasfuchs Disagree with a lot of these assertions, but I understand why you feel that way.
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Scott N. :verified_flashing: (scottnasello@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:27:59 JST Scott N. :verified_flashing:
@anildash @thomasfuchs i'm happy to kick the tires on bluesky, just need a code :heart_cyber:
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:29:40 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@pmonks You can disagree with it, but it’s a fact that the overwhelming majority of people don’t care about the leadership or ownership. Never have, never will.
The reason (some) people are leaving Twitter is that the site and experience is more and more broken (e.g. missing tweets and content being pushed in front of people they don’t like), not the dislike of the person running it.
The way you get people to use your software isn’t by promoting ideological niceties.
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pmonks (330ppm) (pmonks@sfba.social)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:29:41 JST pmonks (330ppm)
@thomasfuchs fwiw I strongly disagree with your first claim: “People don’t care about who runs it” and perhaps, like me, it was that sweeping generalisation that @anildash was responding to.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:37:08 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@anildash Btw I 100% agree with you that Dorsey is a huge issue.
After using Mastodon for 5, going on 6 years—I can tell you that without working replies, quote posts and a completely overhauled user interface it will just stay a niche thing. (Doesn’t matter if there’s third-party apps that fix things, most people don’t use them.)
I think this artifical exclusivity is bad and unnecessary.
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Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:37:09 JST Anil Dash
@thomasfuchs I have quote posts in the client I use, so you're being reductive. You're also comparing to another system for which parity is a non-goal for Mastodon. Perhaps it _should_ be, but it's silly to contrast with something that's not supposed to be an equivalent experience.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:39:17 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@pmonks it’s not scientific, but I’ve seen many posts on BlueSky which specially said they don’t understand Mastodon and felt unwelcome (mixture of lacking features, and lecturing by old guard people on Mastodon).
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pmonks (330ppm) (pmonks@sfba.social)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:39:18 JST pmonks (330ppm)
@thomasfuchs genuinely curious here: do you have evidence to support that claim? All I have to support the opposite position are my own social circles, which is clearly just anecdotal evidence (albeit for an N of one or two hundred).
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Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:39:37 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:
@thomasfuchs Replies don't work? News to me. -
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:42:39 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@jon_harbert @anildash You only see replies to posts from servers your server is federating with.
E.g. if someone form server X replies to your post as well (you’re in a different server than I am), and no one on my server follows anyone on server X—I will never see the reply.
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Jon Harbert (jon_harbert@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:42:40 JST Jon Harbert
@thomasfuchs
Thomas, What do you mean by broken replies? Are you talking about conversation threading?
@anildash -
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:43:59 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@Migueldeicaza @tk If I’m on server A and look at a post from server B, I only see replies from people on servers that my server A is federating with.
If someone from server C is replying, and no one on server A is following anyone on server C, I don’t see the reply.
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Miguel de Icaza (migueldeicaza@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:44:00 JST Miguel de Icaza
@tk @thomasfuchs you don’t see all the replies, depending on some details I can’t recall.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:44:47 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@pmonks How many people who aren’t into tech do you know that run Linux on the desktop?
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pmonks (330ppm) (pmonks@sfba.social)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:44:48 JST pmonks (330ppm)
@thomasfuchs sounds like all we have is anecdotal evidence then.
And to be clear: I’m not some uncritical Mastodon / Fediverse fanboy. I have my own concerns about the technology. I just happen to have a lot more faith *generally* in open source/standards/protocols than I do in *any* corporation or techbro “luminary” (whether that’s someone who seems relatively harmless, like Jack Dorsey, or someone who seems seriously unhinged, like Elon Musk).
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Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: (tk@bbs.kawa-kun.com)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:45:37 JST Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem:
@thomasfuchs @Migueldeicaza I'm sure a lot of people like this since they won't see replies from servers they don't like. (See also: fediblock) -
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 23:49:04 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@tk @Migueldeicaza Blocking domains is a completely different feature and has nothing to do with the missing replies.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Apr-2023 00:25:54 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@jonhendry @Migueldeicaza @tk No, it's not. It's a flaw in the protocol.
Blocking servers and defederation is a completely different feature.
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Jonathan Hendry (jonhendry@iosdev.space)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Apr-2023 00:25:55 JST Jonathan Hendry
@thomasfuchs @Migueldeicaza @tk
Which is part of the mechanism for avoiding participation by servers full of trolls.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Apr-2023 05:00:57 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@raineer It’s not in bad faith. It is, by design, literally impossible to quote posts on here, and, also by design (the protocol supports it but Mastodon doesn’t) many people don’t see all replies on posts (even from servers you don’t block).
This is the definition of making social interactions harder. It’s also unexpected for users (see the many replies to my post of people who are unaware and surprised by this; if you can see the replies, that is).
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Michael Miller :blobrdm: 🦆 (raineer@frontrange.co)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Apr-2023 05:00:58 JST Michael Miller :blobrdm: 🦆
@anildash @thomasfuchs I check out of the argument at “mastodon was designed to make social interactions harder”. This is wholly inaccurate and just shared in bad faith. I’m getting tired of people spending so much effort on this platform just to shit on it and advertise others.
Mastodon is designed to allow me to choose who I interact with. Not getting replies from a server I don’t federate with is a feature, not a bug.
The “quote toot” thing is just a tired argument. Yes - the first decade of the place, the authors didn’t want it, and they had their reasons (and I defend them, even though I want quote-toots). BUT, welcome to the open web, where there are now clients with quote-toots, so this is now an outdated view. And, even now, Eugene has said that he’s changing his mind on it.