Post AVDaFsni6ECSZ9csbo by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AVDK7hSKnSFZnVhhVQ by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T14:17:28Z
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Only a matter of time before someone wrote an “Anti-Mastodon/Pro-Bluesky” blog post. @kissane did just that. Much of her criticism is legit. However a lot of it suffers from “shiny object syndrome” and doesn’t acknowledge that Bluesky is not decentralized yet. To which she’ll probably accuse me of being a “Linux on the desktop” guy. But Mastodon’s problems may become Bluesky’s problems because of decentralization 🙃https://erinkissane.com/blue-skies-over-mastodon@fediversenews
(DIR) Post #AVDK7iyd8rg6Vxp0U4 by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T14:23:12Z
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First off, @kissane compares Mastodon to people who eat disgusting things because they’re ideologues who hate deviants that eat junk food. She doesn’t exactly explain what the “junk food” is, and I feel this analogy goes nowhere.
(DIR) Post #AVDK7kYpFmE1QVlQXY by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T14:30:20Z
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What @kissane doesn’t acknowledge is that these are all very good reasons to critique Bluesky. Jack Dorsey has a bad track record, and people are right to be skeptical of him. Bluesky’s incompleteness probably means they should shut down registrations for the time being. Bluesky’s insistence of using AT protocol really does mean that the decentralized vote is split, and we’re now in a VHS vs. Beta situation. She presents these critiques as silly but they’re not.
(DIR) Post #AVDKoZitQIpgGZtSL2 by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T14:34:32Z
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Here @kissane’s defense of Bluesky is that a Nazi showed up an mods did something.Yes, in that situation—because a whole lot of eyes made sure something would happen. But Jay Graber has also said—publicly, I might add, that the Bluesky team is not equipped to moderate right now since they’re focused on building features. Therefore most moderation will be kicked over to algorithms in the meantime. And as I’ve been showing with numerous examples last week, that doesn’t work.
(DIR) Post #AVDKoaMb2gakFiTADw by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T14:41:16Z
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Some might call me a “Mastodon fan”—but for a fan, I tend to critique it a lot. Nevertheless, let me give my perspective on my “defensive maneuvering”.Bluesky has a better onboarding experience. User friendliness, not so much. But most people forgive this because it’s in “closed beta”. The real unease is that Bluesky is VC-funded, is following the Silicon Valley hype machine by the book, and still hasn’t decentralized. Yeah, I’m leery. So are many others.
(DIR) Post #AVDLRPpu7HEStdh3a4 by walkerb@infosec.exchange
2023-05-01T14:48:15Z
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@atomicpoet I wouldn't even call it a closed beta.That would presume a beta signup, which from experience I can say does nothing (other than possibly give them a mailing list).All of the invites I've seen have been douchy influencer types, who have zero interest in the AT protocol or federation.They are running the VC playbook to the letter, creating buzz by manufactured scarcity, and only letting high value accounts in the club.
(DIR) Post #AVDQAHqR4gp6xXasN6 by kissane@mstdn.social
2023-05-01T15:37:40Z
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@atomicpoet I feel like this post and the one you maybe deleted (my client shows it but replies glitch, idk) are pretty reductive and bad-faith, but I’ll just say this:I’m not “anti-Mastodon,” and I talk about how much I myself like this place. I’m not “pro-Bluesky,” and I talk about how way it’s too early to know what will happen there. I hope that Mastodon can learn and get better. I hope Bluesky works out to because I want more things to be good for more people.
(DIR) Post #AVDQAIWGZAHf3HAHZY by walkerb@infosec.exchange
2023-05-01T15:39:38Z
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@kissane @atomicpoet maybe I'd believe that if they weren't running the VC capital playbook to the letter with manufactured scarcity and only high value accounts allowed in the club...Right now they definitely look bad-faith.
(DIR) Post #AVDQBUlkVWddKiygym by bici@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T15:39:11Z
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@atomicpoet @kissane Dorsey fooled me once , he won’t fool me again. #bluesky cowpie 🥧
(DIR) Post #AVDQPgKuIY31GJBgJc by mailtodevnull@mstdn.ca
2023-05-01T14:46:12Z
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@atomicpoet I don't understand why people continue to think that Mastodon can't resolve its UX issues... it's not like it's tied to this interface forever, no?
(DIR) Post #AVDQZucC44aSRW9RHU by harmonicarichard@techhub.social
2023-05-01T14:43:50Z
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@atomicpoet One of the key flaws of BlueSky is that people follow, without conversing first. It reminds me of Plurk. It's a network where you get your ego stroked by follows, but end up feeling lonely because interactions are rare. I don't want followers, I want conversations.
(DIR) Post #AVDQabYoOWQpdTtqTo by spamless@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T15:34:37Z
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@atomicpoet @atomicpoet The real issue is that Bluesky has no policy or mechanism in place to rein in trolls, Internet criminals, or other bad actors.
(DIR) Post #AVDQcCkbbjgpGjBA6i by objectinspace@freeradical.zone
2023-05-01T15:34:34Z
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@atomicpoet @kissane @fediversenews I also don't agree with:"there are absolutely people trying to do the work, but they’re dependent on the choke-point of what Mastodon-the-company decides is valuable. (Almost like something…centralized?)"If enough people don't like what the Mastodon foundation is doing (and believe me there are loads of them, on Mastodon even) they can and have built alternatives that can federate back to Mastodon. Calky (SP?) and Pluroma are a couple examples.
(DIR) Post #AVDRXzxxIaKAPhyurQ by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T15:49:55Z
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When I read this from @kissane, I agree with her.But also the words, “For now” pop into my brain over and over again. Bluesky is easy to find people… for now.Bluesky is easy to follow people… for now. Bluesky is easy to participate in conversations… for now. What happens when federation is turned on, and search has to crawl through 25,000 nodes?We don’t know that because without federation, Bluesky’s usability should be taken with a grain of salt.
(DIR) Post #AVDRY1fEz8XhgFEzy4 by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T15:55:20Z
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Later in her post, @kissane addresses this. But she doesn’t acknowledge that few open source projects ever see the mass uptick in users that Mastodon had, it’s developed by a small team, and Eugen has spent a lot of time putting out fires and hiring new developers. There’s lots of “could haves” but this was the hand that Mastodon was dealt.
(DIR) Post #AVDSPmruDA5FQhnfwe by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:02:38Z
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This critique of Mastodon @kissane is not just unfair, it’s completely wrong. It’s not that Mastodon devs don’t do much. It’s that they do too much. In addition to developing Mastodon, they run the two flagship servers—which amounts to 1.5 million accounts. They had to fight DDoS attacks. And they had to deal with big servers going down because of—get this—Harry Potter. In the meantime, new feature additions to Mastodon have slowed to a crawl.
(DIR) Post #AVDSfn3ZHOqEe8szqa by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T15:37:10Z
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(mastodon.social was down for an hour, so the continuation of this thread was delayed.)
(DIR) Post #AVDSfnfqz3SyYsnZWS by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T15:42:00Z
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This absolutely happened, but I think @kissane needs to acknowledge there was a big difference between the November Twitter Migration to Mastodon, and Bluesky’s current closed beta. For one thing, Mastodon was already decentralized and people were rushing to any server with open registrations. Meanwhile, you have to be invited to Bluesky—and it hasn’t decentralized yet. But also, how will Bluesky avoid this problem once it decentralizes? We don’t know.
(DIR) Post #AVDUqmlusW1srD05Ng by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:12:10Z
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You know what? I agree with @kissane point here. Mastodon is not user-friendly. Some of the design decisions are befuddling. For example, DMs. I’ve never seen a more confusing implementation of that feature. However, here’s a further problem. Every time I try to recommend a more user-friendly Fediverse app for newbies, I get, “But Mastodon is the standard.”The problem with the Fediverse for the past 6 months has been myopia. Everything is focused on Mastodon.
(DIR) Post #AVDUqnKIofXEZr5Xyi by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:17:07Z
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And here, @kissane provides another legit critique of Mastodon that I actually agree emphatically about. But once Bluesky decentralizes, how will they solve this problem?Because the core of the problem is gated communities. Once anyone can set up a server that federates with Bluesky, I guarantee that the gated communities will come. Maybe Bluesky can learn from Mastodon’s misstep—but we don’t know until decentralization happens.
(DIR) Post #AVDWWrWngXCJj0YdDk by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:35:42Z
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Next, @kissane acknowledges why there’s a significant backlash to Bluesky. She agrees this is a reasonable reaction and it’s fair. Ironically, I think this is the weakest part of the anti-Bluesky backlash as I believe, even if Bluesky is terrible, the protocol is free and we can use it if it has something to offer. Nobody has to use Bluesky, but we can benefit from what they build.
(DIR) Post #AVDWWsDL8NE1qwSbWi by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:41:55Z
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This is the part of @kissane’s blog post that frustrates me the most. People have tried to make more welcoming and more user friendly alternatives. They’ve made alternative front ends like @elk. They’ve made clients like @ivory. And people have made alternatives to Mastodon itself, such as #Akkoma and #Calckey. But the choke point isn’t Mastodon. It’s that people who write blog posts like this don’t acknowledge the Fediverse beyond Mastodon.
(DIR) Post #AVDXhpbrG3KCuliYC0 by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:54:18Z
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I have the opposite opinion of @kissane. I believe Mastodon has been product designed to death. I’m not alone. There’s reason Eugen Rochko is often called “website boy”. His product designs often result in the rest of the Fediverse being invisible to Mastodon. For example, people don’t known when someone from Friendica sends them a post because Mastodon presents their posts as “Mastodon”.This is not an oversight. It’s a design decision.
(DIR) Post #AVDXhqJ6fFv54tx5bU by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:01:50Z
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Oh boy, I’m not sure if @kissane saw previous developments with Mastodon.But some of the quirkiest product decisions are because Mastodon—perhaps too much—listened to user feedback about what would make the service “better”. One thing I’ve learned about Eugen is that he’s more than willing to change Mastodon if he’s faced with criticism. Last year, he wanted to remove DMs because people were complaining that admins could read them.
(DIR) Post #AVDZcQQle2TfHg51G4 by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:05:38Z
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On this point, I think @kissane is too kind. Mastodon should absolutely implement full-text search and Twitter-style quote posts. I suspect Eugen would agree as well. But I also feel that these quirky product decisions happened in the first place because Mastodon did what their users wanted at the time. And if Mastodon does a complete 180 degree turn here, it will alienate some of those old users.
(DIR) Post #AVDZcRAqshLBabdp5c by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:15:52Z
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So @kissane has spent the bulk of her post criticizing Mastodon’s product design, talking about how Bluesky—a company with million in sees money—does it better, even though Bluesky is in beta and not nearly finished. Now she expresses empathy for Mastodon, and the work Eugen has done over the past 6 years. And well, I keep wondering: what would @kissane have done different if she were in Eugen’s shoes?
(DIR) Post #AVDZcRua8fv7sR2LMu by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:21:52Z
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Here @kissane has recommendations for how Mastodon can be better. Personally, I believe that Eugen has done the best that he can considering the circumstances. Nobody could have been prepared for November’s Twitter migration. But I agree that maybe it’s time for him to give up the “Benevolent Dictator For Life” thing. Mastodon now needs to scale for the next 90 million users, and that means needing to delegate authority.
(DIR) Post #AVDaFsni6ECSZ9csbo by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:34:29Z
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Charitably, @kissane extends an olive branch. And she hopes that organizations will step up to find the project. But let’s be honest.Now that the new shiny thing has shown up, with VC money, Mastodon has the deck stacked against it. One thing I’ve learned from Twitter is that while people may say they don’t like corporations, their wallet says otherwise. I, too, hope Mastodon can survive.
(DIR) Post #AVDaXCNcYdU0DFgD3I by AlisonW@fedimon.uk
2023-05-01T17:26:49Z
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@atomicpoet @kissane It's the age-old question. Is a program/app/system created to server the users or because that's how the develop wanted it to be. Especially difficult with FLOSS because people need to be interested and involved enough to not only maintain it but also develop on it, and without the latter you don't get the former.
(DIR) Post #AVDaaGXnX2WBzpu1IG by KelsonV@wandering.shop
2023-05-01T15:43:46Z
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@objectinspace @atomicpoet @kissane @fediversenews Thats true to some extent. I've tried out both Calckey and Akkoma recently and they both have a lot of capabilities that Mastodon should learn from, and I'm seriously considering moving to a self-hosted GoToSocial solo instance once it's closer to complete (it's currently in alpha).At the same time, Mastodon is where the bulk of the attention & users are, which means it's got most of the inertia.
(DIR) Post #AVDaaHDH2phA4TJ8wS by objectinspace@freeradical.zone
2023-05-01T16:51:50Z
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@KelsonV @atomicpoet @kissane @fediversenews This is esentially the same argument for staying on twitter: "everyone is there so that's where change needs to happen." which made sense right up until people started leaving twitter in droves. If someone builds a thing and it's better and people like it, they can vote with their feet. If all of the energy goes into turning one thing into an end-all-be-all for everyone (which is a doomed enterprise anyway IMO), those alternatives never materialize.
(DIR) Post #AVDaaHpYkUJtzDDicK by objectinspace@freeradical.zone
2023-05-01T17:02:24Z
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@KelsonV @atomicpoet @kissane @fediversenews Furthermore (though I can't prove this of course) I feel pretty confident that the whole reason we are now getting things like search and QT's on the roadmap for mastodon is not because a bunch of people were asking (which had been happening for a while) but because alternatives built them and were gaining traction. This is actually a pretty normal progression for mastodon features like poles and post editting.
(DIR) Post #AVDaaIcTobS4Qw6mrw by KelsonV@wandering.shop
2023-05-01T17:20:15Z
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@objectinspace @atomicpoet @kissane @fediversenews That's basically what I think she was saying: lots of improvements/innovation on the other projects, but they don't get to the bulk of users until the people running the Mastodon project decide to incorporate them.
(DIR) Post #AVDaaJFTTcdyNsLveK by objectinspace@freeradical.zone
2023-05-01T17:33:13Z
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@KelsonV @atomicpoet @kissane @fediversenews Ah gotcha. I think this is okay! A lot of people on mastodon like things the way they are and don't like change, I think that's valid. Folks who want to try different things can choose that and remain on the fedi so everyone can interact with them. Then mainline can implement things "the right way" once thee use case is clear. This cycle is much slower, though, than software development at a twitter or Facebook. Which is a huge problem!
(DIR) Post #AVDbZWhM5MrtlJaHU8 by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:41:28Z
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Finally, we have @kissane’s TL;DR. First she says that Mastodon tastes bad, comparing it to soysage and unsalted soup. The she says she wants Mastodon to be better. I agree with many of her points. However, her blog post is entitled “Blue skies over Mastodon”. As per the title, it’s supposed to compare Bluesky with Mastodon. Is this comparison fair?I don’t think so. For all of Mastodon’s flaws, how will Bluesky actually better than it? We don’t know! It’s in beta and not federated!
(DIR) Post #AVDgjDpVangJuQqAXQ by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T17:48:26Z
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Some people believe my opinion of @kissane’s opinion is unfair. Yet I’ve given a point-by-point response to everything she’s written. We agree on many things. Disagree with others. I enjoyed having this dialogue. But again, I got to ask: is it worth comparing a social network that is federated and available for everyone to join with a social network that isn’t federated and requires an invite?I don’t think so. I think we should let the dust settle first.
(DIR) Post #AVDgjEUH9EI7wruj56 by Samir@m.tweepsmap.com
2023-05-01T18:11:57Z
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@atomicpoet @kissaneWhile it's true that Bluesky hasn't federated yet, their implementation is better:1. Your ID doesn't change (I know you already know this with your DID toot the other day)2. Account portability is not limited to followers, and doesn't require your source server to be up and runningI hope Mastodon can fix those two things (the first is not easy to fix), but perhaps we can extend ActivityPub to support this, or even better, have an Atprotocol and ActivityPub be compatible
(DIR) Post #AVDgjFDIRqIuCUygFs by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T18:12:43Z
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@Samir @kissane Those things are great in theory. Let's see what happens in reality.
(DIR) Post #AVDgjFvxlm26R1sLsO by Npars01@mstdn.social
2023-05-01T18:26:13Z
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@atomicpoet @Samir @kissane Jack Dorsey's response to a post about the private sale of companies says it all.He'll build Bluesky and sell it to another wannabe despot funding a fascist movement. And there's nothing that can be done, is Dorsey's point.Dorsey's view is "I got mine, heck with the rest of you" and ignore the attack on democracy by Twitter.Dorsey's actions are "Sure! I'll take oil industry VC funding, heck with a frying planet."
(DIR) Post #AVDi3SaaWkU1Qk4khU by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:21:58Z
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Here @kissane finally acknowledges the elephant in the room. Right now Bluesky seems nice. Its onboarding experience is better. Search works. The community seems friendly. But let’s not forget that Bluesky’s main purpose is to decentralize, and on that point, they haven’t done so. Comparing Bluesky to Mastodon is almost frivolous until Bluesky goes public and allows multiple nodes to connect.
(DIR) Post #AVDi3TMndV31qGdFqa by atomicpoet@mastodon.social
2023-05-01T16:29:33Z
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This is an interesting take from @kissane. I believe more nuance is needed. What people on Mastodon are seeing is everyone leaving to go hop on the new shiny thing. Enthusiasm for ActivityPub is being sucked out of the room in favour of something that hasn’t left beta and hasn’t proven to scale for federation. And knowing what we know about Dorsey, VC funds, and hype cycles, people perceive this an existential threat to the Fediverse.
(DIR) Post #AVDi8etsBNEh3nZhSq by moffintosh@berserker.town
2023-05-01T19:03:43Z
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@atomicpoet @kissane The good new is that with the net economic crash (ie quite soon), VC funding for bluesky is likely to evaporate, at which point we'll see if it has enough community to keep going
(DIR) Post #AVDiQC0WLNQifC2rEu by moffintosh@berserker.town
2023-05-01T19:06:53Z
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@atomicpoet @kissane To which the solution is to seize the above corporations