Mastodon has taken the strategic decision not to accept venture capital investments for growth, but rather restructure to a European non-profit organization
Evolving the Team
Good choice.
A great move made with reason. Not that common these days!
The common thing to do is start non-profit, then spawn for-profit subsidiaries
Great news ! Everything should be a non-profit, honestly.
I kinda wish I liked Mastodon, but I think the very format of Twitter-like social media was a bad idea from the start. Mastodon just feels like the least bad version of it.
I don’t think humans do well with access to a stream unfiltered, nearly-contextless random thoughts from other people.
"profit" is such an inherently wrong concept.
if something costs X to make (including wages), why shouldn't it be sold at X price, rather than taking advantage of scarcity (mostly manufactured) to make more?
all profit are based on Underpaying, decrease in quality, artificial scarcity...
I kinda wish I liked Mastodon, but I think the very format of Twitter-like social media was a bad idea from the start. Mastodon just feels like the least bad version of it.
I kind of agree, I think it would serve a good purpose as a way to post quick ideas about something but I absolutely don't want to be bombarded by that from everyone and their mother's. I'm just starting on mastodon and micro blogging in general, so I don't have a strong opinion on it yet.
I don’t think humans do well with access to a stream unfiltered, nearly-contextless random thoughts from other people.
Yeah, I'd really like someplace where all the people doing things post about the doing of things, so I can keep up with what's going on and get involved, while also not being subjected to randos posting inane slop. Which I can't see happening while also allowing anyone the opportunity to be heard.
I never had a Twitter account because I felt it was full of just thoughtless statements by people who wanted attention, but I did make a Mastodon account because I do want to get the short random posts by people who are doing the things I'm interested in that Twitter did make popular. I think the barrier of entry for Mastodon is just high enough, and the popularity is low enough that a lot of people who just want attention don't go there, yet.
I remember learning about Twitter from penny arcade. It sounded moronic then and it remains moronic now.
I want to enjoy Mastodon so much, but I just never see that much discussion. It just feels empty.
Who knew, taking away algorithm-fed drama and rage bait doesn't really excite the brain. But it can be a nice replacement for Twitter, when someone had withdrawal effects.
I follow a lot of hashtags, and interact with a lot of people. It may seem more quiet if you're not engaging on the platform and adding content to your feed by following people and topics. We are working on the Fediscovery project to help to surface more discussions across platforms, as well.
Microblogging is honestly just a bad concept. Mastodon has like 20x the amount of MAUs as lemmy, but it feels empty because all those users are so spread out.
Here its easy for people to group around a topic, but on microblogging platforms that dont use algorithmic recommendations, you will not find new "content" unless you actively look at 3rd party lists or the discover feed.
Bluesky has done something important, which is subscription lists that you can import into your account to automatically follow a bunch of people that fit the criteria of that list. Mastodon will need to add things like this or people will always just look at the platform and think "There is nothing here".
I personally like having a minimalistic feed that only shows me things that i actually care about, but others just want a stream of stuff to keep them entertained. The latter might not be a good goal to strive for, but i think it could be achieved with mastodon while preserving user choice.
The problem with microblogging platforms is they revolve around following users and not topics.
Mastodon has tried to change that by encouraging following hashtags but with limited success.
They are great platforms for people who are already (internet) famous and want a soapbox. But for ordinary folk tooting or tweeting or whatever else it’s called is just shouting into the void. There’s no discussion because nobody ever sees what others post.
I like Mastodon but it seems it can’t escape the inherent problems of the platform model itself.
I swear, my follow feed is only super active because I follow someone who I swear is chronically on there, posting and boosting other posts seemingly all the time somehow.
I have the opposite problem, my feed is so overwhelming and I never feel like I've hit the important or interesting posts. I'd love the ability to sort by boosts or favourites.
I think it depends a lot on who you're following or what instance you're on. The ones I have are pretty active. That's a problem they're trying to solve, they did a nice conference about it at Fosdem.
Same here. It's a better platform in several ideological ways to Bluesky, but the initial hype seems to have died off a bit and it's pretty quiet there.
I'm really hoping it can take off though. I would love it to surge in popularity and become the biggest social media app/site of that type. I guess part of that is being the change you wish for in the world.
Gotta build up your timeline, follow hashtags, or maybe check out the local timeline for a server. Another comment here has some accounts to get started. My tl is pretty busy
I don't like how the federation is implemented.
Sometimes I don't see all the posts of a user unless i opened that user on their original instance.
I lost faith in Mastodon. The restructuring should enforce EU laws on it which might reduce the levels of disrespect on the platform but it will remain federated which means different instances will always disrespect and hate each other. That's just how people are nowadays.
What you are describing isn't "always disrespect", it's the messy work we all to have to do and tolerate for democracy & equity (vs 'the ease of a central dictatorship').
It's what has to stay at all times for us to remain free (& for some chance of equality in the long run).
I think we just have very different morals and views. What you consider "free" I consider a disrespectful and toxic place.
I understand the natural drawbacks of the federated system but pretty much all of the instances have the same issues. That means different views are defederated immediately which makes the whole system lose one of its advertised advantages that is lack of a biased algorithm. You don't need an algorithm if your instance only federates with pretty much the same ones. In fact, it's probably even worse. This makes any federated system basically only suitable for opinionated closed forums. The only difference is all the same ones are federated which increases convenience and engagement.
There's a compromise between a controlled social media and a federated system - a self-hostable system without federation support (Revolt uses it for example). One instance will always be the main one but anyone can create their own ones for both opinionated and general purpose communities. However the issue with that is low engagement on the less popular instances.
So ultimately a real social media service that is not a "central dictatorship" is practically impossible.
Disrespect is always going to be a thing, get over it. Governments shouldn't try to police nonviolent disagreement because they will never get it "right" unless you are the monarch.
Honestly imo people with such views should stay away from the internet, especially if they claim to support respect to everyone at the same time.
Also my country does police disrespect.
