Gregory's ServerThe explosion in growth for Mastodon, including among mainstream, non-tech users, is genuinely exciting. That an open-source, interoperable, nonprofit-driven protocol could reach this kind of success is incredible. The future looks bright ❤️
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29 comments
 @tiffanycli It really is exciting, and it’s so refreshing to have this sense of optimism about something in tech again. It’s been a while! @samuel_wade @tiffanycli None of this would've happened without Space Karen and his antics. So, in a way, thanks, Elon! @samuel_wade @tiffanycli it's pretty hard to be optimistic overall (not to rain on your parade) but I do agree that I am feeling very good about at least about the new vertical scrolling animal app. So much less toxic than the bird place. The tech space overall is getting really dark and scary though, it must be said. I'm usually the furthest thing from an alarmist, but the world has also never felt so much like a Philip K. Dick novel, at least to me. @tiffanycli I know! One of those beautiful examples of what happens when certain for-profit models crumble. Makes me hopeful across the board. ♡ @tiffanycli It is certainly impressive. Akin to the revelation that we don't need to all use and share the one email provider, everybody can have a stake in this ecosystem :-) @rgesthuizen @tiffanycli I have questions about this. I feel like I have *less* of a stake here than on 🐦 because my admin could dislike my opinion or just go offline. I could start my own server (ha ha not really) but it could get banned for being too small or too big or being interested in politics. This whole space feels precarious and impermanent to me! Why are people optimistic? @SarahBreau @rgesthuizen @tiffanycli isn't everything (on the internet) precarious and impermanent? Big corporations give the illusion of stability but as E and the bird site now have proven it is just that, an illusion.  @tiffanycli I’d had enough of the aggression and hate on Twitter which was increasingly drowning out reasoned debate. There’s nothing stopping people agreeing disagreeably. @tiffanycli Mastodon feels surprisingly impoverished on exploration, and stumbling upon new people, sites, etc. Clicking Federated or Local produces rapid strings of mostly non-English toots that I can't engage with. Clicking #Explore is weirdly a very slow trickle. Hiding replies sort of kills conversation potential. It doesn't actually feel that *engaging*. I think this might be more viable on some instances or for some power users but...it doesn't actually replace twitter's UX "Clicking Federated or Local produces rapid strings of mostly non-English toots that I can't engage with." ---- I'm glad I'm not the only one with this experience. I personally solved this, by writing a python script that shows me a filtered version of explore. It just runs the toots through a language filter and eliminates everything that is not English or German. This usually reduces the 20 fetched explore toots to about 10. @samanthagodwin @tiffanycli @samanthagodwin I think it’s not really fun until you find a good number of people to follow, so your followed feed fills up. A lot of the folks we knew on twitter are here! Try the tools that auto-find the people you followed on twitter. Local feed depends on your instance. I’m now seeing a lot more relevant posts, using the Mastodon app. I think someone is hand-curating? Unsure. @tiffanycli Agreed that the future is bright, but the history of open-source, non-profit services in capitalist economies is hazardous. Wikipedia is one example of a survivor. @tiffanycli Definitely true ! We should thanks Elon for that ! Is he on Mastodon yet ? #sarcasm  @tiffanycli It's nothing new. Don't forget TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, and all the other protocols the Internet is built on.  @tiffanycli Well it's not the first time this has happened -- the entire internet runs on such protocols. But what's really reassuring is to see that it can *still* happen. We need to learn, after #twitter, #ElonMusk that keeping eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster. Some will learn and use a #mastodon instance and others will be doomed to repeating the same mistake. Like using #PostSocial. |
@tiffanycli We do have E to thank for that.