for the past 4 years reddit (and most other community activities across the web) has already bled to fb groups. any google result of reddit content are on average 4-7 years old now, marking the date of when things began to change. the blackout was the beginning of the end though and there is no way they will recover now that the api is for all intents and purposes in permanent lockdown.
not sure about now but the original swede handling the issue in EU was openly corrupt. which is only a crime if you’re a social democrat or further left.
that…sounds super healthy? where’s the downside? lol
it’s an improvement in a way. today marketing for most businesses is 80% google ads, 20% facebook ads. google is massively manipulating google ads to practically steal money because they’re the only player in town. if adspace is spread thinner, google is fucked, and small business owners actually stand a chance against the big behemoths with infinite pockets.
delta chat. solves this problem as it uses the email protocol with pgp (when available), so from your end it’s a chat client and from their end it’s an email from you.
if they find it too annoying to reply by email they could just install the delta chat “email client”, too ;)
Enlighten me.
I mean, yes, addiction is hell of a drug? Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what users crave, just why they keep coming back for more. But users used to come back for genuine content too, before algorithms were built to optimize ragebait engagement for maximum advertisement profits.
The reason given is always about features that already exists.
There are a lot of reasons why. Mastodon apps are not pretty. The logo is not attractive. Ivory is more or less Tweetbot for Mastodon which is miles ahead of any other client for either platform as far as visuals go. Logo is is debatable.
The signup where you need to pick the server for some reason is confusing. Only “confusing” on many of the open source offerings since they weren’t made with general users in mind.
The reputation Mastodon already has among the general public, that it’s the place for Linux enthusiasts, is not doing it any more favors. ?
You say that the algorithms have ruined everything but it’s just not true. When was the last time you heard someone embrace hate on the internet? The whole point of algorithms is to fuel engagement which is done best with controversial content targeting polar opposites.
The platform doesn’t suggest me any new people to follow. It does, you have the initial list which features popular users like eugen, george takei, etc. in the recommended users carousel. You can also go to explore people to see recommendations based on who you follow and who those you follow follow. Perhaps I should have been clear that the problem users feel is content algorithms trying to bait engagement, which is something Mastodon, unlike every other platform out there, doesn’t do - because it’s psychological hell fueled entirely by hatred and while it drives addiction it entirely removes any rich content, constructive debate or interests, which I’d assume was the MAIN reason people wanted to be on social media in the first place, but you can’t have that if you want an addictive platform.
I’ve been trying to keep my Mastodon account active for two years and I’ve been posting some random shit the same way I did on Twitter. I’ve been looking for some fun idiots but there are none, it’s all uptight serious people who are honestly pretty insufferable to read. I deleted my Mastodon account half a year ago and the one thing I appreciate is how easy it was — just a couple of clicks and you’re done. So it’s a you problem. If you haven’t setup any hashtags or accounts then obviously you’re not going to see any relevant content to your interests. I’m not sure what you mean by fun idiots but I’ve blocked plenty of both hashtags and users on Mastodon because they’re the type of individual who thrive on hostility, so there’s plenty of that shit if that’s what you like. Just gotta go look for it.
this is the only argument repeated and no one ever comes up with exactly how it’s not for the general public, only that it isn’t.
and don’t say algorithms. the general public constantly laments about how algorithms have ruined everything.
they are basically running a huge marketing campaign and a few halfwits on the fediverse are promoting a ‘competing’ platform.
nothing new under the sun.
doubtful. they replaced trident (in house engine) with chromium for edge because of the cost of maintenance.
apple has, on mobile.
i’ve heard defenestration only happens in russia.
in my opinion facebook and microsoft are worse because you can’t optionally avoid them. no matter what you do, you’re still paying for microsoft products through your taxes with money that should go into domestic development. facebook is so insideous that in some countries it is the de-facto internet (because it’s free to use without a paid internet plan/subscription); all hobby communities that i’m aware of now exclusively live on facebook, and forget your grandma having any other means of contact than through facebook messenger and certain companies and services offer facebook messenger only live support. and as a business owner? you don’t have a choice on the matter, facebook (and google) is the only means to advertise nowadays that have actual measurable results on the campaign budget.
twitter? unless you’re a creative or a connoisseur of creatives, it actually has a lot less relevance than the current drama suggests, otherwise the big alternative platforms wouldn’t have actual relevance and upwards mobility, which they currently do.
how dare you suggest a cure instead of a bandaid?!
bluesky isn’t decentralized and never will be. the only reason they would ever consider federating with other servers would be for the purpose of cannibalizing them. they are a for-profit company and as all for-profit companies have done in the past (XMPP) and are doing today (email), the goal is always to kill competition through forced lockouts.
afaik there are several of those offers and they are all now defunct. and as they are shabby work-arounds they do not offer anything in terms of technical group management, administration or data indexing, so it’s essentially worse than the already crappy state of facebook groups. not to mention, it’s i.e. not something your average 50+ year old dove fancier will use in place of facebook groups for their club activities. it’s unreasonable to try convince users to go from a bad solution to a worse solution. it would be better to just setup a traditional forum in that case; but everyone left those for facebook for a reason.
And they never will. That’s not their focus or goal. They don’t care about “gaining momentum” and explosive growth, and I wouldn’t want them to. While it’s not their goal, it should be. Social media is all about momentum, without momentum you disappear. There are hundreds of exhibits for how there can “only be one” in the social media space. The reason for that is simple; people want a means to access all their communities at one access point, it’s why facebook groups had killed 99% of the hobby forums out there by 2020, starting in 2015. This is why the fediverse would in theory actually work, but it can’t because of certain limitations in the fediverse space, and the lack of group management. Yes, friendica is sort-of like facebook, but people don’t actually want facebook. likewise, facebook groups is a terrible replacement for traditional forums, it’s like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver, because it’s designed for absorbing algorithm pushed junk information, not for having a healthy discussion, which basically means people just see the same questions asked every single day and there is rarely ever any discussions and when there are, the facebook search index doesn’t work well enough for people to find the information nor is the information possible to index, which is all by design, to maximize engagement at the cost of literally everything else. the problem with people is that they want both a junk information stream, and a means to enjoy rich engagement with their community. in every club i’m in, people are screaming at how they hate facebook because meta takes liberties to update their policies which directly harms the clubs activities and it just makes it impossible to manage information and the same questions are being asked every single day. the lack of active focus engagement is also causing the clubs to bleed paid membership and thus budget for national events etc. it’s really a downward spiral and it will kill a lot of hobbies before long. i’m not saying that friendica couldn’t be a good replacement, because literally ANY federated space with a means to organize club activities would do just fine (mobilizion would probably be the best), if only it had enough critical mass to let the users engage with all their communities at one single platform (spread comes after the fact), and because of the stability, ui, and condensed information stream with high activity already existing on mastodon, it is the hands down best place on the web for an exodus of all the clubs currently locked in on facebook - IF they finish their groups feature.
i mean, since when did stock value reflect reality lol.
and while anecdotal, the few times i’ve been exposed to fresh reddit content the top comments have been ai.
regardless, people were already migrating to mastodon.social en masse with millions of signups within the first week aka the first attempted exodus from twitter upon musks acquisition, but the mastodon team then blocked new signups to mastodon.social arguing that it will be better for federation if all these new users signed up with other servers which triggered the whole “servers are too complicated” articles all over the web followed by the journalists complaining about reblogging and mastodon devs saying it’s not a feature they want to add. of course the hype died down fast when the two things necessary for continued growth through critical mass was actively prevented by the dev team.
this isn’t the first time mastodon devs has acted against their own best interest. when facebook shut down their free internet service in india mastodon had a massive surge of users and instead of capitalizing on it they went on a witch hunt to shut down any official government users “to protect their users free speech”.
the exodus from reddit had a similar problem; there was a shit ton of people condemning lemmy and pushing people towards kbin by slandering the lemmy team. kbin wasn’t ready and the developer dropped out early on so it basically acted to split the community and push people back towards reddit, because “who wants to be on a service developed and maintained by russian sympathizers”.
it sure seems like a lot of people are determined to make sure the fediverse does not succeed, including the devs themselves. just look at how many on fucking lemmy is promoting bluesky over mastodon. and it wouldn’t shock me if all this nonsense will die down in a few weeks too. like turning off a switch. just like all the political misinformation during every election.