[HN Gopher] A Twitter Off Ramp: A Tutorial for Getting on Mastodon
___________________________________________________________________
A Twitter Off Ramp: A Tutorial for Getting on Mastodon
Author : ingve
Score : 149 points
Date : 2022-11-19 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (patricia.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (patricia.no)
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's got to be a traumatic change for people that had real
| influence via Twitter and have now exiled themselves to a
| mastodon ghetto where they address a minuscule audience of
| diehards.
|
| Fwiw I haven't really noticed anything I follow on Twitter
| changing much other than various cracked out hysterics from time
| to time.
| taxman22 wrote:
| Part 7 - Go back to Twitter after getting no engagement on
| Mastadon
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ragebol wrote:
| There sure is critical mass now, at least for me. Engagement
| with my posts, especially from strangers, is actually much
| higher on Mastodon. And I keep seeing others report the same.
|
| This is a recent change though, wasn't the case, for me, a year
| ago.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The no engagement is kind of the point. Twitter is a massive
| rave, Mastodon is a quiet houseparty.
|
| If you follow lots of people, use hashtags, and the like;
| you'll get engagement but not virality - which is, IMO, a good
| thing.
| willio58 wrote:
| It's a good thing for conversation but a bad thing for the
| system we all find ourselves in, capitalism. Virality has
| economic value, so the masses will chase it.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| not for the journos and activists used to getting thousands
| of reactions to their hot takes
|
| I'm watching this with mild amusement, knowing that they will
| all be back, and they will all pay for the checkmark
| colpabar wrote:
| It's pretty funny that people think those journos/activists
| would even touch the fediverse after they indirectly turned
| it into twitter for people they got kicked off twitter.
| txru wrote:
| I think you think the fediverse is far more monolithic
| than it is. Gab is there, so are a bunch of trans
| activists. Their content don't intersect.
|
| I don't win if you're unfulfilled in friends and content,
| you don't lose if I have the most followers. Journalism
| broadcasting and sourcing is a model that might not work
| in mastodon, but mastodon doesn't have to be a 1-1
| mapping of the existing social uses of Twitter
| egypturnash wrote:
| An NYT writer set up "journa.host", got their face flamed
| off for unleashing a bunch of journalists into a world
| where there's a strong culture of putting a content
| warning on your politics, then got further flamed for
| saying "wow look how many sites block me now" by linking
| to a "what instances block my instance" site built by
| Kiwifarms people. And for hosting right-wing journalists
| under the aegis of "free speech", which a lot of Masto
| admins are used to seeing as code for "I will do nothing
| about letting right-wingers emit hate speech, please
| block my instance". There's also been news articles about
| this that have more calls for defederating journa.host
| resulting from decisions to quote Mastodon posts about
| this without asking for permission, in contravention of
| the TOS' of the instances those posts were made on.
|
| They would love to turn it into the new Twitter and it is
| both hilarious and intensely stressful to see the fights
| over whether this will happen.
|
| I think this was... Tuesday? The past month, and
| especially the past week has felt like about six hundred
| years.
| krapp wrote:
| Not everyone uses social media to maximize engagement.
| omoikane wrote:
| That's probably why we are seeing a bunch of these "how to use
| mastodon" posts now, because people are trying to drum up
| engagement. This one even recommends one specific server.
|
| I encourage everyone to try joining some mastodon server,
| usually the only cost is your time. But it is a very different
| social network and people should set their expectations
| accordingly.
| kramerger wrote:
| Maybe a bit off topic, but does anyone else have problem closing
| and deleting his Twitter account?
| egypturnash wrote:
| I just closed my eleven accounts this morning after seeing
| Musk's "should I let Trump back on" poll. I had to try twice
| for a couple but they all seem to be marked for deletion in
| thirty days, as promised.
|
| Whether the processes in charge of actually deleting them will
| still be running in thirty days, or whether _anything_ from
| Twitter will still be running in thirty days, is anybody 's
| guess.
|
| (yes, 11: main, locked, horny art, daily draw from my Tarot
| deck, and various side projects.)
| velcrovan wrote:
| his, you mean Elon's? Yeah, been trying for a couple weeks now
| but it's not easy.
| hintymad wrote:
| That we need a 6-part tutorial says a lot about Twitter's value.
| seydor wrote:
| I wonder when people will start acting like adults.
|
| Till then i will be watching the inevitable Mastodon drama from
| twitter i guess
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| What Mastodon drama? The only problems I've seen recently is
| server scaling to account for Twitter refugees.
| seydor wrote:
| Oh just wait, people have only just started promoting their
| own perfect Mastodon instances to their twitter followers.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm sure the drama will eclipse the minor scandal of Elon
| Musk buying Twitter for 44 billion dollars.
| lucasfcosta wrote:
| If a social media needs a tutorial for people to be able to sign
| up or use it, it has already failed.
| simplotek wrote:
| > If a social media needs a tutorial for people to be able to
| sign up or use it, it has already failed.
|
| You mean like this?
|
| https://help.twitter.com/en/resources/twitter-guide
|
| https://help.instagram.com/454502981253053
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| Well, you know, if onboarding remains technical enough,
| perhaps there it will remain an eternal haven, forever before
| the twilight of the Eternal September.
| slig wrote:
| People need to read that before using Instagram or Twitter?
| detaro wrote:
| They also don't "need" to read the tutorial linked.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I remember when there were actual vhs tapes on how to use email
| and the internet. I guess those should have failed too.
| Kye wrote:
| There were guides like this for every single new internet thing
| for as long as I can remember. People wrote books on how to use
| AOL.
| asim wrote:
| I set one up today for remote developers. Join us if interested.
| https://M3O.org
|
| Background: I've worked on open source for almost a decade. Prior
| to that startups and a stint at Google. For the past 7 years it's
| been mostly remote and solo with a period of VC backed efforts to
| commercialise the open source project.
|
| Why the background? To get an idea of who the admin of the server
| is. I'm looking to attract devs like me who are remote, have
| their hands in open source, etc and want to find a community of
| their own.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I did it today and... sigh. Just once I want FOSS to not feel
| like FOSS when it comes to UX.
|
| A lot of people have done a lot of hard work and free is free.
| That's all wonderful and credit is deserved. But that's not an
| aegis against criticism. Here's some of what I experienced in the
| first hour:
|
| - the app lists a bunch of servers and I tried five before I
| found one that's accepting new accounts.
|
| - I get a broken English note about the server not accepting new
| accounts
|
| - two servers kept timing out when I tried to make an account
|
| - I had to "request desktop site" to see a modal explaining why
| the "create account" button was redirecting me to a list of
| servers and not the one I was looking at.
|
| - That list was not searchable. I began googling "popular
| mastodon servers"
|
| - finally made an account but nothing would load. I couldn't
| subscribe to a friend.
|
| - deleted account (made me log in again, then complained that I
| can't log in without enabling cookies, which are enabled, then on
| refresh showed me as logged in)
|
| - made a new account on what I hoped was a better server,
| creation seemed fine. Email confirm went to spam (haven't had
| that in forever, it gave me some nostalgia)
|
| - am not able to see the followers of my friends on different
| servers, so I guess it does matter to pick a popular one
|
| - posting was easy
|
| - a server admin is the first person to interact with my toot,
| re-tooting it. That felt cozy and early Web.
|
| - I like that the feed seems to be a literal timeline of
| everything in my sphere. No junk added in by algorithm.
|
| - I kinda like not having 5000 followers anymore. This is more
| chill. I plan on keeping it chill.
|
| - I don't see any American politics being fed to my timeline.
| Thank the Maker.
|
| I think Mastodon is okay. It suffers from the classic FOSS issue
| where the first half of dev is fun and technically challenging,
| but nobody wants to do the second half because it's tedious and
| unsexy. Kinda makes me better appreciate why QA and Product are
| so tedious at the companies I've worked at.
|
| I'm patient and motivated and am likely to work through all this
| just like I do with Ubuntu and QGIS and GIMP, etc. But I no-
| longer feel I can ever suggest Mastodon to anyone who is non-
| technical.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Registration is closed on some instances and servers are
| choking because a quarter of a million people fled to Mastodon
| in less than 48 hours, around 10k/day prior to that. The
| servers and communities have never been under this kind of load
| before, not even close. Neither issue has anything to do with
| FOSS. Also, the "Mastodon" mobile app is known to be
| incomplete; this should be mentioned in guides. Use the web or
| another app and you'll be fine.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Ahhh so maybe some of these rough edges aren't standard
| experience. Good to know about the app. I assumed it would
| have been the best way to begin.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Neither issue has anything to do with FOSS
|
| I think part of the complaint is that the app should not be
| showing those servers front and center - or rather, it should
| be made obvious when an option is not going to work or if
| unavailable, and functional servers/choices should be front
| and center in the UI.
|
| It's the kind of polish that does matter for the common non-
| technical user, and the kind that is typically missing from
| FOSS apps in many ways because there's just so much of it to
| do. It's never-ending and there usually isn't enough
| development resources on an open source project to handle
| everything.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Sure but Mastodon the app isn't Mastodon. It didn't even
| exist until recently and has nothing to do with the website
| which has been the main thing. It would be a lot better if
| that mobile app wasn't released until it was ready, since
| the other ones, most people agree, are fine. Remember how
| Reddit existed long before its app? And how there were
| plenty of working non-official apps? This is like if Reddit
| had released their app in beta.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > am not able to see the followers of my friends on different
| servers, so I guess it does matter to pick a popular one
|
| If you go to their profile page, you can -- it's just _your_
| view of them on _your_ server that doesn 't show the list of
| followers. Yes, that's clunky, but at least there's a
| workaround.
|
| I'm pleasantly surprised so far, although I haven't gone all in
| yet. The web interface and general experience isn't
| significantly different from twitter, and the decentralised
| concept seems really nice once you 'get' it. I'm planning on
| switching server at some point, to a more 'focussed' one, so
| that will be the next big test.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Thanks for the tip but I can't make it work. In the iOS app,
| I tap their profile photo to get a profile screen that looks
| a lot like Twitter. If I click on Following or Followers, it
| says "followers from other servers are not displayed." Is
| there a different profile page I have to find my way to? I
| don't see any way to from the app.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is a mobile/desktop thing. On the web
| app, below that message, I get a link to view that person's
| profile on _their_ server, and I can then see the info you
| 're looking for.
|
| You might be able to do the same on mobile by copying their
| sever address, which you might have to reassemble from
| their username -- all sounds much fiddlier, though!
| cesarb wrote:
| > In the iOS app,
|
| I have seen several people saying that the experience in
| the "official" phone client (both the iOS one and the
| Android one) is not very good. I have also seen someone
| recommending opening the web site directly in the phone
| browser and installing it as a PWA, though I haven't tried
| that yet.
| xigoi wrote:
| > If you go to their profile page, you can -- it's just your
| view of them on your server that doesn't show the list of
| followers. Yes, that's clunky, but at least there's a
| workaround.
|
| But why does it have to be this way? Isn't the entire point
| of federation that different servers can interact seamlessly?
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| No idea. I suppose if I had to guess, maybe it's more
| efficient that way? I suppose looking at someone else's
| follower list isn't the most common use case.
| cpeterso wrote:
| This could be fixed on the client: when the user opens an
| account's follower list, ask the account's server for the
| list.
| bhouston wrote:
| I highly recommend the Toot! iOS app for Mastodon. It fixes
| pretty much all of the UI issues on iOS. I do not use the web
| interface unless I have to.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Great tip! I'm going to try that one out.
| toofy wrote:
| also check out Metatext on iOS. seems to have solved the
| strange quirks i had with the default app.
|
| disclaimer tho, 99% of my mastodoning hasn't been on phone
| app. mostly desktop on the advanced web page.
|
| after finding about 2/3rds of the people i followed on
| twitter i just rebuilt my lists again--using the advanced
| web and creating multiple columns from lists i had on
| twitter it's pretty close--maybe better considering
| conversations are happening without all of the
| confrontational/contradictory weirdos inserting themselves.
| huimang wrote:
| I think finding a server is the biggest flaw with the fediverse
| migration currently.
|
| It IS important what server you choose, due to the local
| community / timeline and having to trust the server operator.
| Normally people link instances.social [0] but there are just so
| many to choose from. I dislike that this blogpost just skips
| this entirely and says to join the vivaldi one.
|
| I think we need more of a curated list of servers with open
| registration that are active, sorted by what community / hobby
| is being targeted.
|
| 0: https://instances.social/
| pmarreck wrote:
| There are multiple web interfaces (having just looked at the
| Pleroma install docs). A server admin would have to switch them
| though. I'm considering tossing up a Pleroma instance somewhere
| chx wrote:
| If you want to be defederated quickly from any decent
| instance that's the way to go. To quote
|
| "neither GS nor Pleroma itself was born out of malice. It's
| just where the people who've always been stirring up shit
| go."
| pmarreck wrote:
| That's app-ist. The app doesn't care and has no morals;
| stereotyping based purely on the app implementation name is
| just as stupid, and frankly, the people that do that, I
| wouldn't want any part of, anyway, because they are idiots.
| This is no different than avoiding a race because it is the
| one believed to be predominantly associated with crime.
|
| The technology can literally handle 10-100x the amount of
| traffic on the same hardware; to exclude it based on a few
| bad actors is absolutely moronic.
|
| And frankly, shit NEEDS to be stirred up; everyone is
| fleeing to their comfy non-intellectually-challenging non-
| emotionally-challenging echo-chamber bullshit-echoing
| hidey-holes, and I don't want a world with people believing
| 2 completely different realities, because that's exactly
| where we're currently headed. In my experience, 90% of so-
| called "shit-stirring" is someone who can't tolerate a
| slightly different viewpoint that they could probably learn
| from, if they made the effort.
|
| https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/10/01/how-to-
| understand-g...
| PointyFluff wrote:
| It's open source.
|
| Put your code where your comment is.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My mother says no thanks, she'll stick with corporate social
| media.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Okay. She's probably not on HN either.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You might be surprised. She loves tech.
| colpabar wrote:
| I don't use twitter, so I don't really care about what happens to
| it. I stopped using it years ago because it was an awful
| experience and I don't know how anyone can enjoy it.
|
| But I've been wondering: why is everyone leaving? _Is_ everyone
| leaving? What has changed other than the verification thing?
| captainkrtek wrote:
| I'm not a big user, but in the last week it's become a lot
| slower and buggier.
|
| Sections of the site don't work reliably, searches spin
| loading, had the site not load at all multiple times, more
| spam, etc.
|
| Seems the site is just coasting and issues are slowly building
| up.
| ericsoderstrom wrote:
| Personally I've used it more in the past week than ever before.
| And if Elon's tweets are to be believed, DAU is also at an all-
| time high. So i guess the answer is: if people are in fact
| leaving twitter, more are joining
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I'm not sure if more are really joining -- a lot of people
| are gathering to watch to car crash, though. It's notable how
| much commentary _on_ twitter is _about_ twitter right now.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Lost me at 'if elons tweets are to be believed'. There is no
| reason I can think of where he would say DAUs are down. He
| just isn't trustworthy with these stats.
| paulgb wrote:
| I've also noticed a palpable increase in spam, especially DM
| spam.
|
| Besides that, I think it's just a loss of faith in Elon to run
| the place well. There's already been so many unforced
| errors[1], and it's only been a few weeks. People are trying to
| migrate their networks off now, because if they wait until the
| site is broken it may be too late.
|
| [1] laying people off and then asking them to come back,
| rolling out verification and then pausing it, forcing people
| back to the office and then locking them out of the office,
| losing the confidence of advertisers and blaming it on a woke
| mob, etc.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _But I've been wondering: why is everyone leaving? Is
| everyone leaving? What has changed other than the verification
| thing?_
|
| The calls for advertiser boycotts started as soon as the
| takeover was _announced_ , well before it actually went
| through. I think users threatening to leave and calling for
| other users to leave also started at the same time.
|
| I rather suspect that this is due to Musk being from a
| different pillar[1].
|
| (It's all gotten turned up to 11 now that he's _actually_ in
| charge and seems to be showing off his :tableflip: skills, but
| it was already started before that happened.)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation
| simplotek wrote:
| > The calls for advertiser boycotts started as soon as the
| takeover was announced (...)
|
| You're casually glancing over Elon Musk's reiterated
| announcements that he would eliminate Twitter's moderation,
| and you're completely ignoring marketing execs stating
| publicly and in no uncertain terms that Elon Musk's decision
| and actions were a liability in terms of "brand
| safety/suitability".
|
| https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The _very public_ reasons he initially tried to take over
| Twitter were disagreement with some of the political
| censorship decisions they made.
|
| AFAIK he's still banning trolls. Like for example that
| exchange regarding Alex Jones that got re-shared.
|
| .
|
| So, unless that meeting didn't match what's public, _why_
| would less political censorship be a "brand
| safety/suitability" issue?
| memish wrote:
| They're not. They hitting record level DAUs.
|
| I'm leaving Twitter is the new I'm moving to Canada.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Except you're very wrong. A quarter of a million people
| registered Mastodon accounts in the last 24, thousands per
| day prior to that... people are joining established
| communities and creating their own. And it's actually a lot
| nicer, in my experience (and I've heard the same from
| everyone else.)
| anonymousab wrote:
| Creating an account on another service doesn't mean you've
| left or are leaving the first one.
| guerrilla wrote:
| How many people deleted their own Myspace account? If
| critical mass is hit, critical mass is hit and there's no
| turning back.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Still it's a lot different from yelling "I'm leaving!"
| and then do nothing. They now are exposed to the
| "competition", which is dangerous from Twitter's point of
| view, because now all it needs to lose those users is a
| bigger enough users base that attracts them into
| Mastodon, and the more users migrate, the faster the
| migration becomes. In electronics that would be called an
| avalanche effect.
| cbeach wrote:
| People are declaring their tribal affiliation.
|
| Twitter used to be owned by the blue tribe.
|
| Now it's owned by a member of the red tribe.
|
| That's all there is to it.
| memish wrote:
| He's perceived as a traitor to the tribe, which is an
| unforgiveable offense. But he's not actually a member of any
| tribe.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Nothing has fundamentally changed but it has always mutated in
| very weird ways and still is.
|
| I've been on Twitter off and on since fall 2007. In the early
| 'fail whale' days they had a live stream that didn't move
| ridiculously fast(when it wasn't broken) of all tweets.
|
| It became a huge 'surveillance capitalism' data mining product
| that has had some issues around free speech and political bias
| meddling by the company and obviously the big media companies.
| The platform is plagued by bots and trolls, automated attack
| agents that are presumably programmed to append derogatory
| comments to tweets by unknown actors.
|
| Now the mysterious Musk is reorging the platform, maybe to
| emulate the 'WeChat' 'everything app' Chinese approach. Who
| knows...if it's free you are the product...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| For me, I had already reduced my Twitter usage specifically
| because of the awful experience, but I'd still occasionally
| check up on a handful of software developers (notably the Asahi
| Linux team) on there.
|
| I moved to Mastodon about a week ago mostly because the
| developers I was following did the same. No clue if everyone's
| leaving, I doubt it.
|
| As for what's actually changed:
|
| - Twitter Blue Verified was basically a satirists' _wet dream_
| and Musk wants to try it again
|
| - A number of high profile Twitter CxOs jumped ship, including
| their information security officer
|
| - Elon had every SWE in the company print out their code(?!)
| and physically deliver it to Musk, including an explanation of
| how much they wrote (presumably to try the old manager trick of
| rating projects on SLoC written)
|
| - Elon publicly blasted his own developers on Twitter for the
| performance of the Android app. When the head developer replied
| and explained what was actually wrong and how to fix it, he was
| fired by tweet.
|
| - Elon Musk issued a "Twitter 2.0" ultimatum to the remaining
| Twitter staff which were rejected by 75% of the company
| immediately resigning.
|
| I can boil these down further into two reasons why any software
| should jump ship immediately:
|
| 1. Data security & stability. Twitter is basically running on
| autopilot now since a large amount of people left or were
| fired. Expect basically all of your data on Twitter to get
| breached.
|
| 2. Solidarity. The Twitter 2.0 ultimatum is basically a demand
| for constant crunch time. This is very harmful to both Twitter
| and it's employees. Even if you don't work at Twitter and don't
| give a shit about the word "solidarity", you should still make
| an example out of the company anyway purely so that other
| boneheaded PHBs don't try the same trick.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Twitter is basically running on autopilot now since a large
| amount of people left or were fired.
|
| "Running on autopilot" is probably an even better analogy
| than you intended. There have been incidents of pilot
| incapacitation in aircraft, in which the aircraft continues
| flying for a long time following its programmed autopilot
| targets, until the fuel gets exhausted and it crashes. See
| for instance the 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash (https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_cras...), the
| 2000 Australia Beechcraft King Air crash (https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/2000_Australia_Beechcraft_King...), and a few
| others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompress
| ion#Gra...).
| seydor wrote:
| The media love twitter though. They hate it so much they can't
| stop talking about it
|
| I have noticed that, on mobile web, the notification thingy
| about new thingies while you are scrolling has become
| persistent.
| simplotek wrote:
| > The media love twitter though. They hate it so much they
| can't stop talking about it
|
| It's newsworthy. It's a leading social network which a
| billionaire was forced to purchase after trying to weasel
| himself out of the deal which he got into for dubious
| reasons, and now said billionaire is doing a corporate
| anihialation speedrun that threatens to evaporate 45 billion
| dollars.
|
| Not to mention the impact on other notorious companies such
| as Tesla and SpaceX.
|
| You require a massively disingenuous take on current events
| to come up to the conclusion that news coverage of Elon
| Musk's takeover of Twitter can only be explained in terms of
| irrational hate.
| seydor wrote:
| Twitter is ranking #15 in social networks, but all the
| journalists are on it so it's all you hear about. The media
| (specifically, TV) chose to prop up twitter, and they can
| bring it down too.
| dawnerd wrote:
| CBS has stopped using Twitter.
| abirch wrote:
| The Media listen to their customers no matter what. When they
| found that they got more eyeballs and revenue by talking
| about a certain former president, they covered him more.
|
| If you say Twitter and Elon you're going to get more clicks
| than if you were to say YCombinator and Paul Graham even
| though the later two are vastly more important and
| educational for me.
| seydor wrote:
| are people really interested in elon's buyout? would be
| interesting to see if those stories are really popular. but
| journalists are on twitter all day, so naturally they write
| about it more
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/trending/
| abirch wrote:
| I don't have the metrics. Maybe the journalists are on
| twitter all day, usually they have metrics that they have
| to hit.
| rconti wrote:
| It's awful. You often can't contact journalists or podcasters
| except on Twitter, which was one of my only use cases for it
| (that, and yelling at companies). The media constantly
| pretended like Twitter represented the average person, when
| it really represented the specific niche of people who like
| to play the attention game (being an expert, following
| experts, gathering a following).
| michelb wrote:
| I started using a thirdparty app several years ago and I see
| none of the crap that's on the web or in the twitter app. It's
| a night/day difference and lets me follow the people I want or
| follow real-time events. I'm not sure how many people are
| actually leaving, in my list it's about 30% at least. I think
| many people are leaving to not experience all the Elon stans
| get free reign and dunk on everyone in the name of free speech.
| I would hate for twitter to go away, but mastodon is such a
| trainwreck I think I will just cut out another social network
| if Musk tanks it.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > I'm not sure how many people are actually leaving, in my
| list it's about 30% at least.
|
| Wow. The people on your list are nuts. Musk hasn't even
| changed anything yet. The product is identical to what it was
| a month (or year) ago.
| toofy wrote:
| he's changed a lot... he's lost a massive chunk of the
| staff to run it. most of the moderation team is entirely
| gone. engineers have quit by the thousands. if you use two-
| factor authentication you were entirely locked out of your
| account. repeatedly i've seen entire sections of the
| website are either 5-10second waits or they just don't even
| load at all with nothing but vague error messages.
|
| the experience is absolutely not the same as it was a month
| or a year ago.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| I use 2FA and haven't been locked out once. I haven't
| seen the 5-10 second reloads or "vague error messages"
| you're claiming either. Can you share a link to a
| specific route where there's something broken?
| toofy wrote:
| the two-factor problem was widely reported. even
| twitter's support discussed it. [0][1][2][3][4][5][6]
|
| here's a screenshot attempting to load twitter.com/home
| just 3 minutes ago [7]. these intermittent failures to
| load have been increasingly happening for me on multiple
| computers on multiple different networks. if you have
| been digging into this as much as you imply, you've
| surely seen the many, many other people discussing this.
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-two-factor-sms-
| problems/
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/twitter-
| chaos-end...
|
| [2]
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/11/failures-
| in-t...
|
| [3] https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/15926186155
| 2149299...
|
| [4] https://www.techradar.com/news/live/live-blog-
| twitter-chaos-...
|
| [5] https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/twitter-two-factor-
| authenticati...
|
| [6] https://www.androidauthority.com/twitter-
| sms-2fa-3234698/
|
| [7] https://imgur.com/a/XHiA5ZL
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > if you have been digging into this as much as you
| imply,
|
| That's a dishonest characterization. I haven't been
| digging into it at all. I've just been using the site as
| normal and haven't seen any issues, which is why I'm
| asking more motivated people (such as yourself) who have
| been digging, for specifics.
|
| I have zero interest in the maelstrom of negative US
| media coverage, but seeing an actual broken part of the
| app would have been interesting if you'd been able to
| provide a link.
| toofy wrote:
| oh, my apologies. When i saw your comment...:
|
| > What has changed with either, as it impacts a user?
| I've looked hard but found zero change whatsoever.
|
| ...i mistook that to mean you had been looking hard.
| sorry bout that.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| I've carefully looked at the app _in my own usage_ , but
| I'm not going through google news or looking for media
| write-ups about it as you appear to have been.
|
| In the course of tweeting, reading tweets, etc, I've kept
| an eye open for any kind of breakages / downtime but
| haven't seen any.
|
| Have you personally been locked out of your account due
| to a 2FA problem or was that just something you read
| about?
| toofy wrote:
| i have personally experienced site reliability issues
| (see my screenshot above where it wouldn't even load the
| home timeline _at all_) and they seem to be getting more
| prevalent.
|
| i have personally experienced an increase in spam.
|
| i have personally experienced a drastic increase in
| trolls.
|
| i have personally seen a _dramatic_ increase of outright
| abusive accounts.
|
| unlike the vast majority of twitter's users, our
| organization uses physical hardware devices for our 2fa,
| but after we started seeing the reports, we didn't log
| out at all--at the time it wasn't clear exactly what was
| causing the failure, and obviously we didn't want to lose
| access.
|
| i am genuinely glad that you haven't noticed any of the
| sites problems tho. i truly do hope they can get it back
| to the sanity it was pre-october. im pretty skeptical on
| this tho, i tend to think he's set on turning it into
| some kind of "be shitty to each other" site, and that
| will obviously turn it into a ghost-town when compared to
| what it once was.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The verification change destroyed a significant amount of
| value for me.
|
| As well, there have been moderation changes that I disagree
| with.
|
| It's just not factually correct to say the product is
| identical to what it was a year ago. It's not.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit?
|
| What has changed with either, as it impacts a user? I've
| looked hard but found zero change whatsoever.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Sure. Lots of public figures that I've heard of, but
| don't follow, make statements on Twitter.
|
| When I come across those statements previously, if it
| says George Bush with a blue check, I just trusted that
| George Bush made that statement. Now, I don't. So, what
| used to be a fairly reliable way to get to a pretty solid
| primary source for plenty of statements has become
| unreliable. I'm not really worried about over the top
| parody, that's easy to spot, but more subtle
| impersonations really concern me.
|
| If, say, the Defense Minister of a foreign country posts
| something provocative, it's much harder for me to know if
| they really posted that or not.
|
| It doesn't impact me as a user who posts things, but it
| has a serious impact on me as a user who wants to
| validate that X person really did say Y.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Is there an account successfully impersonating George
| Bush now? Can you link to it?
|
| My experience has been that there have been a TON of
| impersonators over the past 5 years, and the largest
| number I've come across have been impersonating Elon Musk
| and Vitalik Buterin.
|
| Trusting all blue checks a year ago would have been a
| very, very foolish strategy. From what I've seen, the
| verification hasn't gotten at all worse in the last week.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > What has changed other than the verification thing?
|
| Nothing. People describing what has changed since Musk took
| over offer vaguer symptom lists than Morgellons sufferers. If
| anything, right-wingers who fell for the huge anti-Musk media
| campaign are getting upset because nothing at all seems to have
| changed other than the unfunny Babylon Bee getting their
| account back.
| kramerger wrote:
| You missed the part where he fired the people running the
| place so servers are now dog slow, 2FA stopped working and
| scamming is at all time high.
|
| It's not left vs right, it's a shitty platform getting worse
| after just a few days with Musk.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > You missed the part where he fired the people running the
| place
|
| Nope, saw that.
|
| > servers are now dog slow,
|
| Missed that.
|
| > 2FA stopped working
|
| That's bad, but remember how they just got sued for using
| as an excuse to harvest phone numbers? I feel like we were
| upset about that back in the old days two months ago.
|
| > scamming is at all time high.
|
| Missed that, too.
|
| > It's not left vs right
|
| It's not, it's oligarch vs. oligarch, and I don't care who
| wins other than the people who had it were poor stewards so
| I'm pro-change.
|
| > it's a shitty platform getting worse
|
| Infinitesimally worse, within the first few weeks of a
| hostile transition.
|
| > after just a few days with Musk.
|
| Maybe give him a few more days then. Your tweets won't get
| cold.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| > not left v. right
|
| The whole Twitter furore is so obviously at its base a
| political one that I have to take issue with your comment.
|
| From my observations the 'sky is falling', butt-hurt,
| desperate for Twitter to now fail group are very firmly on
| one end of the cultural-political spectrum. They're angry
| and affronted that "their guys" have lost control of it,
| because it's a very important thing to be in control of.
|
| We should stop dancing around it and acknowledge that
| there's a political aspect to this whole thing.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| (Disclaimer: Hate musk, disapprove of Mastodon's fundamental
| architecture)
|
| I haven't noticed anything get worse yet. As usual, I get about
| one spam DM per week. As usual, the app freezes or crashes
| about three times a week. As usual, the app takes seconds to
| load what I click on about 5% of clicks.
|
| I'm worried it's not sustainable, though. At this point the
| vast majority of employees have quit. Musk's attempts to retain
| them suggest he doesn't understand his employees' thinking,
| suggesting he'll continue to have problems.
|
| So I'm continuing to use Twitter while actively looking for
| alternatives.
|
| When I tried mastodon it completely failed to provide the basis
| functionality I expect. I think that's because it's technically
| decentralized, but they've then built a centralized service
| through social coordination on top of that. And that's the
| worst of both worlds.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > it's technically decentralized, but they've then built a
| centralized service through social coordination on top of
| that
|
| Can you describe that? Mastodon is Federated, much like _any
| other_ decentralized service you have the right to reject or
| block content from certain users or sites. That 's your
| privilege as a paying administrator of a Mastodon instance.
| If you disagree with the way a particular server is being
| run, you can find others who agree with you or host you own
| instance for less than the price of Twitter Blue.
|
| This is the case with IRC, Matrix, I2P, even Bittorrent. None
| of these protocols are living in "the worst of both worlds",
| they're merely taking their architecture seriously and
| deliberately choosing not to build their software like a
| product. If you take issue with the social coordination layer
| of Mastodon... maybe social media isn't for you?
| guerrilla wrote:
| > I think that's because it's technically decentralized, but
| they've then built a centralized service through social
| coordination on top of that.
|
| What do you mean by this? I think you may misunderstand the
| architecture if I'm interpreting you correctly. Mastodon is
| decentralized and there's no centralized service on top of
| it. You can just pick any instance you want and don't have to
| federate with any others (and in some cases can't due to
| blocking.)
| rconti wrote:
| I had a Twitter account (2, actually), and they had maybe 100
| tweets. I never found value from it, the timeline was
| impossible to manage, the UI for quoting/replying was bass-
| ackwards and impossible to follow. I didn't care about
| "influencers" or "industry experts", I just care about friends
| and family (which is why Facebook is generally a better fit for
| me).
|
| But Twitter was specifically bad and hard to use because the
| content, such as it was, was so diluted by ads and
| recommendations.
|
| Musk lighting the place on fire was the final straw to get me
| to delete my account, but I never would have considered myself
| a twitter user.
|
| Mastadon seems better already. Although it's hard to tell,
| looks like they still for some reason have threads that are
| hard to read.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| A lot of people who don't like Musk would like to use a
| different platform, and there's increasing concern that Twitter
| goes under now. But I don't think anyone is actually leaving.
| They are addicted to Twitter, and everybody seems to complain
| that Mastodon is hard to use, even the more tech savvy.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > But I don't think anyone is actually leaving. They are
| addicted to Twitter
|
| I can only speak for myself, obviously, but I've left. I was
| definitely over using Twitter before.
|
| > everyone seems to complain that Mastodon is hard to use
|
| I've had really no trouble at all with it? There's an upfront
| decision about which server to use, but, that's a social
| decision, not really a technical one. After that decision
| I've had no trouble at all
| abirch wrote:
| This is from George Takei
| https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/109370135755481726
|
| I don't understand why people think Mastodon is difficult.
| It seems pretty straightforward, and the separate servers
| are no biggie. I'm enjoying this fresh start here, like
| moving to a new apartment!
| Twinklebreeze wrote:
| I left, too. I don't really like social media, but I had
| just found the right mix of stupid but funny accounts to
| follow. I was checking Twitter every day. But I deactivated
| my account the day after the deal went through. I'd rather
| move on than patronize something owned by Musk.
| subpixel wrote:
| Why is it assumed an off-ramp needs a corresponding on-ramp?
|
| Does Twitter-the-format add something to the world that must be
| replicated?
|
| I'm not suggesting Twitter has no value, but I question whether
| it or something very much like it is the only place that value
| can be realized.
|
| What does Twitter do so we'll that we can't imagine doing without
| it?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > What does Twitter do so we'll that we can't imagine doing
| without it?
|
| It's a place that media whores love, and they're the ones who
| make all of the content. That's why we're hearing about it
| endlessly. One of the biggest media whores bought it, so it
| should really be considered an internal war that we're just
| bystanders to.
|
| > I'm not suggesting Twitter has no value, but I question
| whether it or something very much like it is the only place
| that value can be realized.
|
| I'm pretty sure that what we wanted was to be able to send
| public text messages that people could subscribe to, and to be
| able to subscribe to other people doing the same thing. Putting
| the right UI over group chats, and making every registered user
| a mod of a group chat that shares their account name would be
| _Twitter--_ i.e. an ideal replacement.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Perhaps expressing your opinion and dislike to a certain
| group of people in a minimally respectful way would fit
| better a public forum.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, I'll instead say exactly what I mean, and not disguise
| my biases in doubletalk. Calling Musk a media whore is the
| nicest thing I've ever said about him.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| A lot of artists post exclusively on Twitter and have stated
| their art will not be reposted elsewhere. It makes me worried
| for what's going to happen to all that content if there's a
| mass exodus of users.
| macintux wrote:
| For me it was a way to discover communities of technologists
| (Erlang, distributed systems), a way to interact with former
| co-workers, celebrate and commiserate major events... I doubt I
| would have found the best job I've ever had without it.
| etra0 wrote:
| I think of all social networks I've used, Twitter was the best
| at 'getting out of my echo chamber'.
|
| I was able to discover about multiple topics I got interested
| in, got to read about a lot more technical stuff that otherwise
| I wouldn't ever heard of it but it's interesting (and even
| useful to my job!).
|
| And I also found 2 jobs through twitter, that's two more jobs
| than through linkedin!
| Operative0198 wrote:
| > What does Twitter do so we'll that we can't imagine doing
| without it?
|
| It is assumed to be the best place to hang out on the internet.
| This assumption holds so much water that a multi billionaire
| paid $44B for it.
|
| There's also a lot to be said about shaming public
| officials/organizations (courtesy of the trending feature) into
| action.
| geraldyo wrote:
| The fact Elon paid 44b for it doesn't say anything about
| Twitter's actual value.
| Operative0198 wrote:
| Neither does your reply about Twitter's market value.
| 0F5 wrote:
| This is really the death of open source software as a mainstream
| thing. Here it is, the golden opportunity for decentralization
| and open source to solve a large societal problem. And it fails
| miserably. Open source can't survive in a world where computers
| and software aren't esoteric, mysterious, status-signaling to be
| a part of like they were in the late 90s onward. Computers are
| just mundane. There's no more reason for greyhound to go open
| source and be powered by volunteer labor than social media
| companies.
| ajross wrote:
| The bulk of the software _you literally just used to post that
| comment and get it to my eyeballs_ was open source. What on
| earth are you on about? The idea that all software is
| immediately-visible UX should have died in the 80 's. It wasn't
| even true then, but it was closer to true. Now, it's basically
| laughable.
|
| Open source will do just fine whether you know it's there or
| not. It's been a "mainstream thing" for decades. The war you
| imagine was won, long ago.
| 0F5 wrote:
| This is the same tired response I get every time I point this
| out. The Linux kernel exists, and with this single fact your
| entire argument is dismantled. It isn't. Linux is the last
| example of open source software that is good enough to
| compete in the market. As soon as Linux dies or retires,
| Linux will decline and eventually be replaced by a commercial
| product. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because
| computers were too new to be seen as viable by capital and
| businesspeople.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It's the same with Linux desktop. You need a 800lb Canonical
| gorilla to make things move in OSS. And then, they'll insert
| Amazon ads in your desktop search bar. So we're back to square
| one -- no different than Microsoft Windows shoving telemetary
| on users.
|
| I, for one, would love a sexy Linux desktop experience.
| Elementary OS is getting better but it is no match to macOS.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| I'm not a Twitter person so seeing this "Mastodon good, Twitter
| bad" again and again on HN is really tiring.
|
| Mastodon fails because of UX issues, this is not a FOSS issue. I
| love and support FOSS but Mastodon as a project is trying to
| provide a bubble as an alternative to another bubble. It does not
| make the situation better if people still are stressing out over
| ideologies of other users on the internet.
|
| I guess I'm too tired of social media in general, it's usually
| fueled by rage-bait, creating ideological bubbles and make people
| think the end is near just because there are people with
| different opinions and experiences.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Not all bubbles are bad though. Hacker News is very much a
| bubble. Mastodon looks like a collection of bubbles, some
| small, some big, with movement allowed between them.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| And you're absolutely right but the problem right now is,
| people aren't moving to Mastodon because it's a better
| service as far as UI and UX are considered (which are the
| hallmarks of a good product).
|
| They are moving to Mastodon because of disagreements with the
| owner of Twitter for the most part. I was on Mastodon before
| anybody knew what it was and I mostly found out niche
| communities and it was good for people who liked that sort of
| thing. But now, the move is based on hate towards the
| ideologies of certain people (in this case Elon Musk) instead
| of the incompetency of the software itself.
|
| I do not agree with Elon Musk's many ideas and I'm not much
| involved in the Twitter drama because I'm not a user either
| but as far as I can see, Mastodon's current popularity is
| based on the ability of people to hate Elon Musk, not
| Twitter.
| pmarreck wrote:
| If you want to erect your own fediverse server, Pleroma is an
| option, and arguably superior in many ways
|
| https://pleroma.social/
| jstgord wrote:
| Getting up and running on Mastodon went fine for me, I just
| signed up and tried it, with minimal hassle.
|
| Nova at hachyderm.io seems to be doing a great job managing the
| tsunami of signups, as people flee Twitter.
|
| I do like the social architecture of communities with their local
| flavor.
|
| imo, many of our systems are hyper-centralized and thus brittle -
| I guess Id seen adverts increase in Twitter and was going to move
| at some point.
|
| I dont want to be on a platform that can be killed due to a
| single entity [ be it rage-quit, selling out to ad revenue,
| government overreach, conservative religion etc ] I do worry
| about youtube and reddit for this reason. These things seem like
| societal infrastructure which should be at least partly 'owned'
| by the content creators / consumers.
|
| When I go back to poke around Twitter it just seems like a hot
| mess.. Im glad I left. I do feel some nostalgia towards it, they
| built a cool thing.
|
| Twitter is dead .. long live the internet.
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