Federated platforms are definitely relevant right now, as a direct result of the current very public mismanagement of Twitter and resulting public freakout. I've heard Mastodon mentioned at work (where it's not a competitor) and in several different social circles. Maybe you just aren't tapped in?
Maybe I'm just not in with the cool kids but it feels like social media in general is just kind of dying in a lot of circles, outside of content platforms like YouTube and TikTok at least. Direct group chats via Discord, Telegram, Signal, etc are the main ways of communicating and beyond those do you really need - or have any desire - to communicate with random strangers?
It seems the like vanity and excitement of the early internet is dying out and more normal social circles are being established.
Your mainstream user doesn’t care about the underlying technology behind a product. They care about good UX/UI, good content, who’s on it and a supply of dopamine to keep the “must check social media” cycle going. There’s a separate group of people who use social platforms to stay up to date with the news. Think Twitter/HN. It’s not so much about dopamine but necessity to stay up to date on things/discovery. There’s really no shortage of platforms out there. I don’t know if we want to bundle general chat applications like Discord/WhatsApp into this as they’re more closer to SMS than Instagram or TikTok. All the talk about “federated” or “decentralized” infrastructure matters little to people outside tech people and the tech enthusiast crowd. Programmers wanting widespread adoption on a platform should be focusing on the product itself and value to content creators versus the nuts and bolts around the product.
I think you might be conflating what are the most profitable social media business models with what people actually want. It's the difference between a lucrative something that addicts or traps, and something people genuinely enjoy or believe in.
I think there is a growing amount of people who want to get out of the social media Skinner box, and there are also growing amounts of people who believe in new and alternative technology like this.
Sure, these platforms might not appeal to someone who uses Facebook like you would a slot machine, but I know plenty of non-tech people who use things like Linux, Firefox, Android/LineageOS/GrapheneOS, etc for moral and ideologically appealing reasons.
The problem is that there is also a steady supply of people coming in who don't give much of a damn about any of this, and just want to do what their friend group does. They might get more aware later, but by then there's already a new generation out there making the same mistakes.
Unless we can push ethical (and FOSS) software over the point of critical mass, it's a never-ending losing battle. And even if we get there, the battle for daily attention is much fiercer than, say, Blender or Godot permanently winning mindshare among professionals. Trends are fickle and even just by not being the next best thing, we can lose the masses to the next best Skinner box.
I think you're misreading the comment. It's not saying it's becoming relevant because it's Foss, just that mastodon is more culturally relevant and is Foss.
> as a direct result of the current very public mismanagement of Twitter and resulting public freakout.
I have to admit I don't fully get this. What part of Twitter is mismanaged?
If management thinks that 7000+ aren't needed to make single page web-app, is reducing the work-force mismanagement? I'd consider it a healthy step towards creating an actually profitable company. I mean, who benefits from the company going bankrupt? Certainly not the employees.
Is allowing more people get to exercise freedom of speech mismanagement? Or that the new management polls the actual twitter user-base instead of listening to a select few people, seemingly only on one side of the political spectrum?
Also, since the new ownership came in place, supposedly 90%+ of sexual-abuse material and tags has been cleaned out and banned, something which was allowed to go on for years during old twitter management. That's a good change, right?
Is all this just about some people you don't like being un-banned? If so, you can still individually ignore them or block them, and just move on with your life, right?
I really, honestly don't get what all this hysteria is about.
Musk founded SpaceX and bought Tesla when it had like 6 employees, so everyone working in those two companies is used to his management style.
Twitter was a huge and sort-of stagnant company, they must feel as if they were hit by a hurricane, and this filters out to all sorts of media including HN.
Also, Twitter is all about publicity. We don't see what's happening within SpaceX, but we all watch whatever happens within Twitter in real time.
Someone necro’d a facebook comment reply by me from 3 years ago. They were asking for a social network that allows you to uglyf… "improve it" like MySpace used to and I recommended Mastodon which they now remembered ;)
Outside my techie and Elon haters contacts I have not seen interest to the fediverse. It is as what is happening with people promoting Signal for "privacy" alternatives to Telegram (which I believe it is now more akin to Discord) or Matrix as an alternative to Discord. And as other social media platforms, no need to move to the fediverse until more than 50% of my friends and communities move in.
Outside my techie and Elon haters contacts I have not seen interest to the fediverse. It is as what is happening with people promoting Signal for "privacy" alternatives to Telegram (which I believe it is nor more akin to Discord) or Matrix as an alternative to Discord. And as other social media platforms, no need to move to the fediverse until more than 50% of my friends and communities move in.
Its the second stage of social implants. First get society to communicate through a plattform, that allows for moderation, self-moderation and upholding of civilization even when states break down via panopticon effects. (Also show some adds, vision may be compromised)
Then make certain that hostile, powerfull actors can not capture those platforms and use them for surveilance, while the very same platform can not be used to coordinate violence.
Its all scenario-tree root hardening, basically not a investment into a specific future, but a increasing of all chances to recover should the branch your current scenario resides on give and you root back to a past-scenario with reduced capabilities.
Welcome to a disability-friendly planet, redesigned for your very special human needs, preventing self destructive riots when the good times end. All dangerous toys are removed, to prevent you blowing up nuclear power plants during times of strife. Its super depressing, but then so is the state in which we are.
A unmodified, unadapted primal creature, that by the use of tools has squeezed itself between a rock and a hard place. A technology roof, that if fully explored, ever amplifies the unstable individual until everyone has a red button. Meanwhile the facade of civilization does not even survive a day without those advances. Sucks to be a zookeeper right now.
