 Post re-affirms that it will be adding ActivityPub integration, making it cross compatible with Mastodon. However, that won’t be happening this year. And since Post is a start-up funded by Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), I’m skeptical about their intentions. Remember, a16z are the same folks that’s funded Big Social as well as crypto firms like Coinbase. They’re exploitative to the core. I suspect Post is just another walled garden. 39 comments
 Is there any indication that their monetization fantasies are working? Is anyone buying articles? @shoq Not really. The start-up world is built around speculation, and the way they talk about monetization is built on the premise that the web is “broken”. TechCrunch implies that “active” users are near par with Mastodon. However, there’s less conversation that happens on Post—so what does that really mean? Is the goal to discuss the news or just be another news reader? On both counts, it’s possible that @Flipboard might eat Post’s lunch. @atomicpoet It still astonishes me, that for all the caterwauling progressives engage in about corporate influence and surveillance capitalism, their leading influencers just oh so casually help projects like Post make the same mistakes all over again. Because choosing a server is so challenging. @atomicpoet @fediversenews and as was made clear this week, a16z are supplicants to the Saudi throne, much like Twitter, so any social media run by them will do so at the bidding of Prince Salman. if POST really cared about interoperability, they'd have started by building in the RSS/ATOM feed. That said, I don’t mind Post adding ActivityPub integration. Just acknowledging Mastodon means that their walled garden is compromised. And actually adding compatibility with the Fediverse means they need us to survive. Make no bones about it. As the Fediverse grows, it will be harder and harder for social media startups to build their network effect from scratch. Why do it when ~12 million people already use an ActivityPub compatible app? This is the audience that Post is missing out on. Post is already implying that their monthly active users (MAUs) are at near parity with Mastodon’s. However: 1. Due to decentralization, any report of Mastodon’s MAUs is speculative whereas due to centralization, Post’s are not 2. Whatever the stats on MAUs, there’s more conversation happening on the Fediverse than on Post Post’s MAUs are not comparable to Mastodon’s MAUs. So from a functional perspective, what does it matter how many people have a Post account? Most people on Post don’t say anything. Mass media conglomerates might like this about Post—since they generally don’t like it when the “riff raff” have opinions—but I don’t like so-called social media focused on consumption. Personally, I write to converse—not to feed “content” to a hypothetical lurker. Let’s call a spade a spade. If Post could exist without the Fediverse, their VC backers would be over the moon. It would mean that Post could subsist as a walled garden. But just in the last week, Mastodon added 300,000 new accounts. Momentum for ActivityPub isn’t slowing down, it’s picking up. At what point does the Fediverse become impossible to ignore? It amuses me how the likes of Post acknowledge that decentralization is the future of social media but they’re not going to adopt it yet because they don’t know which protocol will “win”. It doesn’t matter which protocol wins. It makes no difference if it’s ActivityPub or AT Protocol (Bluesky) or IMAP/SMTP. What matters is that a social media message gets treated as a message. Hence, interoperability. ActivityPub isn’t perfect but it offers interoperability right now.  @atomicpoet If a message gets treated as a message—specifically across disparate servers, clients, and apps—that means decentralization of social media is a success. If Post isn’t letting a message be a message on their platform, promises of Mastodon compatibility should be taken with a grain of salt. Currently, they are at odds with decentralization. I refuse to use their service. @atomicpoet I opened my Mastodon account at the end of October and opened a Post account shortly thereafter. I quit Twitter soon after that. I haven't looked at or posted anything on Post since at least December and tried to close my account, but apparently they aren't letting people close accounts, yet. I couldn't find any way to close my account. 😑 @atomicpoet The charlatans at Post don't care at all about protocols as long as their Trust Metric can filter and control audience behaviors to support their business model, which is to employ a micropayments scheme to break publishers' subscription dollars into pennies so Post can skim off the top. Their dream is a thousand Seth Abramsons under their banner. Unsustainanable and dishonest. Notably, a year into their bus dev push, only half a dozen publishers have signed on.  @atomicpoet :lol: at the idea of a single winning protocol in federated social. We can't even get one of POP or IMAP to die and it's been 50 years. @atomicpoet @atomicpoet When Muskito turns Twitter into the Doge meme and drives even more people away. When I read your discussions, I now am starting to understand more about how Mastodon operates. Sincerely, Monica Andrews  @atomicpoet I have a Post account. I even put a few bucks in it because I enjoyed giving random people 5 cents. But at some point I just stopped going. It might seem silly, but the reason was just the lack of vertical compression. When I scroll things on my phone I like it to be informationally dense. Post seems to like big previews, or big views of everyone's comments, so you only see one or two at a time. (I actually prefer mastodon on phone to tablet.)   @atomicpoet Post's internal numbers are speculative but us outside of Post only have their word for it and these companies often lie about that kind of thing. @atomicpoet @atomicpoet Silos suddenly promising they won’t be silos “soon” says a lot about the appeal of the Fediverse … while their lack of specificity suggests not an embrace of the Fediverse’s values but a hunger to somehow glom on to millions of users and/or disrupt this truly public square they can’t control @atomicpoet And not one that draws out discussion. It ‘feels’ more like a bulletin board. Post, leave, rinse, repeat. @atomicpoet @fediversenews I tried post, it was a shitshow, binned it off. Unfortunately it is owned by a sketchy twat & is just more of the same. Time for something different... @atomicpoet @fediversenews I signed up for both Post and Mastodon after Musk bought Twitter. Having had several months to try things out, I can say that Mastodon is the clear winner for me. I don’t find a lot to keep me interested at Post so spend very little time there now. When I finally (fully) abandoned Twitter in January, I signed up for Mastodon & Post in a rush--not knowing how either ran or who owned or created them. After learning about & using both places ... I ditched Post after just a couple of weeks. Some of my take-aways:  @atomicpoet @fediversenews Also they are investors in Twitter. I view Post, and arguably Spoutible (which has been coy about it's backing) are efforts to capture those who leave Twitter for later reabsorption when people cool off. Not to be trusted.  @atomicpoet @fediversenews I signed up for a Post account last November around the same time I came to Mastodon. By the time it was finally approved I was already getting plenty of news here. I don't even care enough to delete it.  @atomicpoet @fediversenews I say we welcome them with open arms, and if they try some EEE shenanigans we eat them 😋 But nothing scheduled for 2023 is tantamount to ‘likely never’ as far as I’m concerned. @atomicpoet @fediversenews only time will tail when people get on the baby wagon for sure  @atomicpoet @fediversenews also “integration with mastodon” <> freedom of exit with your social graph. Without that, any platform is just another Twitter waiting to happen. @atomicpoet @fediversenews How are they selling the absence of micro transactions via ActivityPub to their investors? Isn’t that the key to how Post.news will make money? (Personally I think microtransactions should be treated as radioactive, but what do I know, I’m not a big time Silicon Valley VC) |
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@atomicpoet I much more hope that Spoutible does. Post just seems more frustrating to use.