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Top-level
 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. 19 comments
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 |
Gregory's Server
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.