Have you downloaded Threads?

Have you downloaded Threads?

  • Yes

    Votes: 32 16.9%

  • No - I will stick to X

    Votes: 68 36.0%

  • I have neither Threads or X

    Votes: 73 38.6%

  • Other

    Votes: 16 8.5%
  • Total voters
    189
Twitter/X is a cesspit of imbecility and rampant regardation, so I stay away from it and anything else like it.
 
ShaunSA said:
Is that still a thing?
Click to expand...

Oh yes. It continues to grow from strength to strength. I like that it's a lot like early Twitter, with no algorithms or ads: just a reverse-chronological list of posts and boosts from people you follow.

Also because of all the different instances, makes the network as a whole impossible for it to every be controlled by a megalomaniac billionaire (individual instances could, I suppose, but then you could just move to a different one).

I'm on mastodon.africa. :-)
 
Nocturne said:
Oh yes. It continues to grow from strength to strength. I like that it's a lot like early Twitter, with no algorithms or ads: just a reverse-chronological list of posts and boosts from people you follow.

Also because of all the different instances, makes the network as a whole impossible for it to every be controlled by a megalomaniac billionaire (individual instances could, I suppose, but then you could just move to a different one).

I'm on mastodon.africa. :)
Click to expand...

Strength to strength indeed :ROFL: :ROFL: :ROFL:

mastodon-analytics.com

Mastodon Analytics

How many users, active users, servers are on Mastodon?
mastodon-analytics.com
 
ShaunSA said:
Strength to strength indeed :ROFL: :ROFL: :ROFL:

mastodon-analytics.com

Mastodon Analytics

How many users, active users, servers are on Mastodon?
mastodon-analytics.com
Click to expand...
Yeah. I think one of the side effects of Mastodon being a collection of thousands of instances, is that it can be quite difficult to get an accurate read on the total number of users or MAU, because not all trackers know about all instances, and some instances may block certain trackers. I use https://fedidb.com/, which tracks the entire Fediverse, including Mastodon. But even that's not foolproof.

It does concur, though, that while total number of accounts is growing "from strength to strength", the MAU is dropping. So I take your point.

I guess people are getting wooed away by the big corporate-owned networks with big marketing budgets. Being completely open source and ad-free, with no actual way of monetising the network (which is by design, by the way), it's always going to be difficult to compete with the enshittified, advertising-driven, profit-mongering social networks.

But I like it there. :-)
 
ShaunSA said:
That you know of? You should take more care on the internet. Big Brother always watches
Click to expand...
That they do. :)

So, on the one hand, they say that moderation is *better* on Mastodon than on the centralised networks, because every moderator is a human being, and with all these different instances, you're free to choose the one that gels with you the most, and if you report posts and users and things, those reports get to your local instance's moderators first, and then to the target user's instance's moderators.

There's also the thing where you can block entire instances if you want to, and that's happened in the past with instances that have sprung up specifically for nazis or other far-right people or even (I hear) pedophiles and other people with illegal or questionable kinks, etc.

In practice, though, moderation can be a little fragmented. For one thing, your choice of instance carries a little more importance than you might immediately think (although it's still true that you can always jump to a different instance if the one you're on turns out to be not ideal).

Also, ironically, the privacy controls can actually make it more difficult. There have been reports of people from minority groups getting basically pushed off the Fediverse because they post something and a hundred people pile on them in the replies, making racist or sexist or transphobic slurs or whatever... but all of those replies are "Private Replies" (meaning they're only visible to the people explicitly mentioned in them), so nobody else can see. :(

I guess no system is perfect, and there are pros and cons to everything. You just gotta be careful, wherever you go online, as you say.... :/
 
Nocturne said:
That they do. :)

So, on the one hand, they say that moderation is *better* on Mastodon than on the centralised networks, because every moderator is a human being, and with all these different instances, you're free to choose the one that gels with you the most, and if you report posts and users and things, those reports get to your local instance's moderators first, and then to the target user's instance's moderators.

There's also the thing where you can block entire instances if you want to, and that's happened in the past with instances that have sprung up specifically for nazis or other far-right people or even (I hear) pedophiles and other people with illegal or questionable kinks, etc.

In practice, though, moderation can be a little fragmented. For one thing, your choice of instance carries a little more importance than you might immediately think (although it's still true that you can always jump to a different instance if the one you're on turns out to be not ideal).

Also, ironically, the privacy controls can actually make it more difficult. There have been reports of people from minority groups getting basically pushed off the Fediverse because they post something and a hundred people pile on them in the replies, making racist or sexist or transphobic slurs or whatever... but all of those replies are "Private Replies" (meaning they're only visible to the people explicitly mentioned in them), so nobody else can see. :(

I guess no system is perfect, and there are pros and cons to everything. You just gotta be careful, wherever you go online, as you say.... :/
Click to expand...

That's a very long-winded way of saying it's still full of pedos and everyone else ran back to X
 
ShaunSA said:
That's a very long-winded way of saying it's still full of pedos and everyone else ran back to X
Click to expand...
I haven't been on X in quite some time. I'd been getting disillusioned with them long before Musk bought it, with the algorithms and the fact that it kept forgetting my setting to view the "Following" tab by default.

I think the last straw was probably when they decided to make TweetDeck a "Blue Only" feature, because honestly, TweetDeck was the only thing that made it bearable. The way I used it was the same as I use Mastodon now: no algorithms, and just a reverse-chronological list of what your followees posted and boosted.

That was the biggest draw for me to join Mastodon. I joined in November 2022, but I stuck around on both Twitter/X and Mastodon until one day when I realised I just wasn't having any fun on X anymore.

Also the fact that the Mastodon API is still completely free and open (again, like early Twitter), so anyone can write clients and bots... And in fact, I've written a few bots myself.

X is just so... icky. Mastodon is just more my groove. I think if Bluesky had been around back in November 2022, when I was looking for an alternative to Twitter, I think I might've gone there instead. I don't feel like I'm missing much, though; because of the Fediverse<->Bluesky bridge, I follow and am followed by quite a few Bluesky people.

Of course, there's nothing to say you can't be on multiple networks at once. And not all networks are for everyone (although we Fedivrsians like to believe that the Fediverse IS for everyone, sometimes). You got to go where you're feeling the most fulfilled and having the most fun. For me, that's Mastodon. :-)
 
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