I don’t like the clickbait title at all – Mastodon’s clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it outlives Xitter.
Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn’t stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.
Personally, I just don’t enjoy that Twitter-like format. I never used Twitter so I find it… Awkward? To me its kinda like a platformer with bad controls, everything else about the game might be great but if it doesnt feel satisfying to play, I’ll skip.
I still have my account and Megalodon on my phone but I just can’t get into it.
I’m with you on the Twitter style format. Reddit / Lemmy is nice because you can have actual conversations. Twitter you are basically shouting into the void and sometimes it shouts back.
That format was pretty good for “Come see us live at the Sodbury Theatre in Glurpfortshire, Feb 32nd @9PM!”
I remember an instance where a Cracked.com article pointed out something like “5 creepy places on the internet” one of which was a dicussion forum in which one account was posting over and over, many times a day, about public appearances and such of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and readers showed up en masse to harass this person. Turns out she was off-label using a forum engine as her own little microtwitter to publish alerts to a fan club. But when the Cracked author rejected that context and substituted his own, it smelled a lot like Humanbeing151.
But yes in general I find discussion boards to be more useful; I think it’s why they were invented first; Reddit and Lemmy are basically just different approaches to implementing Usenet.
I use mastodon every day and I’m glad it’s not dominate. It’s not a vc funded a shit hole looking for a growth market. I use mastodon because not every one is there, is a nice little niche place where I can play with my friends in peace
Mastodon is the only place where I don’t get triggered, and instead get inspired and/or informed.
Good moderation, no bots, no fascists, no “famous, because stupid” idiots. Just a nice bunch of people sharing cool, interesting shit. I absolutely love it.
Let’s see:
Network effect hits Mastodon specially hard as it competes not just with Twitter, but also Threads and Bluesky. In those situations, a smaller userbase means that people will outright ignore you as an option.
The way that federation was implemented; as linearchaos mentioned in another thread, if you settle in a smaller instance (the “right” thing to do), you won’t get “good collections of off node traffic”. So it creates a situation where, if you know how federation works you’ll avoid big instances, and worsen your own experience; and if you don’t, well, Mastodon’s big selling point goes down the drain.
Federation itself introduces a complexity cost. That’s unavoidable and the benefits of federation outweigh the cost by far; however, the cost is concrete while the bigger benefit is far more abstract.
Branding issues. Other users already mentioned it, but you don’t sell a novel tech named after an extinct animal.
And this is just conjecture from my part, but I think that microblogging is becoming less popular than it used to be; people who like short content would rather go watch a TikTok video, and people who want well-thought content already would rather read a “proper” blog instead.
On a lighter side: the very fact that we’re using the ActivityPub now helps Mastodon, even if we’re in different platforms (like Lemmy, MBin, PieFed, SubLinks). Due to how federation works, you’re bound to see someone in Mastodon sharing content with those forums and vice versa; it could be a bit less clunky but it’s still more content for both sides.
On the text: I think that the author reached the right conclusion through the wrong reasoning. The activity peaks don’t matter that much, when there’s a huge influx of users you’re bound to see some leaving five minutes later. The reason why Mastodon is struggling is this:
See those slopes down? They show that the stable userbase is shrinking. Even users engaged enough with the platform are slowly leaving, but newbies who could fill their place aren’t popping up.
you don’t sell a novel tech named after an extinct animal
They didn’t, Mastodon is named after the metal band (which is named after the extinct animal) 🙂
Either way, back in 2008 I bet people were making fun of Twitter for being named after bird sounds, so.
They created a name clash with the band on purpose? Because they’re fans? That’s rich.
“He”, not “they” — if I understand correctly this was way back when Eugene Rochko was the sole developer — but yes. Same as Lemmy being named after Lemmy Kilmister, and Debian major versions after Toy story characters.
I don’t see what’s “rich” about that, it’s just developers having personal tastes outside of coding.
Exactly copying a name is a bit strange to me. I have always been under impression that whoever named the social network has been unaware of the band.
Lemmy and Debian are not the same.
I wasn’t aware of the connection with the band - thanks for the info! Still, people are bound to associate “mastodon” first and foremost with the critter.
Either way, back in 2008 I bet people were making fun of Twitter for being named after bird sounds, so.
I don’t remember but you’re likely correct. There’s a difference though - Twitter didn’t need to capitalise on every single tiny advantage, Mastodon does it, and while the role of branding might be small it still gives you (or your competitors) some edge.
Half the users of the initial peek are still active?
Doesn’t sound too bad if there would be events that bring new users from time to time.
Yeah, the peaks themselves and the quick (~2m) drop after them are not the big deal. The big deal is to slowly bleed users. It’s really problematic in the long term; by no means “MASTADON IS DOOMED!”, but more like “Mastodon, you need to step your game up.”
I disagree with your and the author’s conclusions.
I have made my own long comment about it in thread, so here I am going to focus on your chart.
First, I will accept the data of the chart at face value, it seems resonably accurate and I don’t have any other data to work off of.
My point is that you are interpreting it wrong.
To me the declining slopes after the sruges are not relevant to any long term conclusions, they follow a highly predictable curve and doesn’t mean much.
If you look at the end of the graphs you can even see it growing slightly, that is obviously not evidence of anything yet, but to me it is an indication of either a start of another surge, or stability.
I believe you are too quick at spreading doom for Mastodon, give it half a year and look at the stats then, we won’t see a meteoric rise of active users any time soon, just accept it and work with more realistic expectations.
First, I will accept the data of the chart at face value, it seems resonably accurate and I don’t have any other data to work off of.
If you do find another source of data, please post it. Relying on a single source (like the Fediverse Observer) is problematic, I know.
To me the declining slopes after the sruges are not relevant to any long term conclusions, they follow a highly predictable curve and doesn’t mean much.
You’re conflating the sharp drops after the surges with the declining slopes.
The sharp drops (like MAU from 12/2022 to 02/2023) go as you said, they don’t mean much. However, the declining slopes are relevant - they span across multiple months (up to ten), and show that Mastodon userbase has a consistent tendency to shrink.
If you look at the end of the graphs you can even see it growing slightly, that is obviously not evidence of anything yet, but to me it is an indication of either a start of another surge, or stability.
We’ll only know if it’s an indication of a surge (sudden influx of new users), or growth (slow influx), or stability in the future. For now it’s an isolated data point.
I believe you are too quick at spreading doom for Mastodon
I’m saying that Mastodon is struggling. I did not say that Mastodon is doomed.
The difference is important here because a struggling network can be still saved, while a doomed one can’t.
The slopes you meassure are still tied to the preceeding surges, so I can’t treat them as any indication of success/failure.
To me it kinda looks like we are in the trough of disillusionment, which is a normal period of any new tech/system.
With improvements to the network we soon hit the slope of enlightenment.
Context for other users - the user above is likely referring to the Gartner cycle:
As anyone here can see, it looks nothing like that pattern that I’ve highlighted.
If the success condition for Mastodon is “to become a long-term viable and attractive alternative to corporate-owned microblogging”, then improvements of the platform are necessary.
To be clear on my opinion in this matter: I want to see Mastodon to succeed, I want to see X and Threads closing down, and IDGAF about Bluesky. However I’m not too eager to engage in wishful belief and pretend that everything is fine - because acknowledging the problem is always the first step to solve it.
You are absolutely right that I am refering to the Gartner cycle.
It doesn’t fit exactly, but the general pattern fit very well with the first half.
The Mastodon graph just happens to have two hype sections.
A model that explains well half of the data is as useful as a coin toss. But let’s roll with it, and pretend that we got two superimposed Gartner cycles here.
The trough would be reached after a sharp drop after the peak, and based on the first peak it would be ~2 months long. That would explain only the period between 2023-07 and 2023-09; the rest of what I’ve pointed out in red is clearly something else, the nearest of what they look like would be a sick version of the “slope of enlightenment” - going down instead of up.
Yeah, the model doesn’t work.
A better way to approach this is to consider three things:
- The main selling point is federation.
- Federation is only perceived as useful for your typical user when a competitor abuses power.
- Mastodon has the drawbacks already mentioned all the time, not just when the competitors fuck it up.
Once you notice those things, it gets really easy to explain what’s happening:
- the peaks are caused by Musk’s acquisition of Reddit and Threads being released (as it brought a lot of discussion about federation up)
- overexcitable people take 1~2 months to realise that Mastodon is not just “Twitter minus Musk”.
- the drawbacks are always there, so Mastodon slowly bleeds users, while only gathering new ones when Musk/Zuckenberg/etc. do something shitty.
By analysing the data this way, not just we’re describing it better, but we can also see where Mastodon needs to improve:
- It needs killer features that are clearly visible for everyone, regardless of federation or “Musk pissed off users”
- It needs to be promoted better. Even among non-Twitter/Bluesky/Threads users.
- Federation itself needs to be promoted better, with simple words, showing why leaving Twitter for yet another walled garden won’t solve shite in the long run.
What I’m saying also partially applies to the “Fediverse link aggregators”, like Lemmy. Lemmy does show some tendency to bleed users, but in smaller degree than Mastodon; but it’s in a better position because there’s only one big competitor, and it keeps fucking it up over and over.
I never liked the microblog format so while I’ve had acouple masto accounts since 2016 I never used it. But i also never used twitter.
Mastodon was around for a while, slowly being built up until 2022 when the big twitter surge happened. They had the perfect foundation to make it the next big thing and all they had to do was keep the people who joined, make it slightly easier to join, and develop a few features like quote posts.
- They banned and defederated everyone who wasn’t in a very narrow sliver of political and technological opinions.
Mastodon lost it’s momentum, but had a second shot a year or two later. Threads joined the network offering a massive user base that could talk with Mastodon users. Then Bluesky blew up and that was bridged so Mastodon could talk with those people too. Mastodon may not have been the center of things anymore, but it could be fully integrated into the other two.
- Most servers defederated with threads and bridges.
There are other things that I’m sure play a roll as well. Luck, discoverability, easiness to join, people getting board, people looking at the next shiny thing, you name it. But it does look to be in many ways self inflicted.
Also, let Mastodon shrink if that means that the “market share” of other native Fediverse server apps grows.
The fewer people think the Fediverse is Mastodon, and the more exposure the other stuff in the Fediverse gets and what features it has over Mastodon, the better.
Decentralisation and having multiple instances isn’t even that much of an issue. 99.999% of all Twitter refugees were railroaded to Mastodon and what seems like 99% of these straight to mastodon.social. They genuinely thought mastodon.social was “the Mastodon website”, just like twitter.com was the Twitter website. It took many of them months to even notice that Mastodon is decentralised. And it took some of them even longer to notice that the Fediverse is, in fact, more than just Mastodon while half of them think that Fediverse = Mastodon after almost two years.
No, the biggest issue is: What they were looking for was not something radically different from Twitter, now that Twitter sucked. They were looking for a Twitter without Musk. Like, a drop-in replacement that doesn’t require them to adjust in any way. A 1:1, 100% identical clone of Twitter how it was the day before Musk took over with the same UI and the same UX and the same culture.
When they were railroaded to mastodon.social, they were told that Mastodon is “literally Twitter without Musk”. And they took it as literally. By face value. And then they ended up on something that looked and felt nothing like Twitter. No matter how many of Twitter’s limitations Gargron arbitrarily and unnecessarily implemented into Mastodon, he never got close enough to Twitter itself.
People would stick around because Mastodon felt like the only alternative to Twitter there was. Of course, they kept using Mastodon exactly like Twitter, not adopting to Mastodon’s culture and relying on their toots being delivered to people by an algorithm that Mastodon simply doesn’t have. Hashtag? Fuck hashtags, I didn’t need no hashtags on Twitter, so I ain’t gonna use none on Mastodon. And then they wondered why so few people discovered them and their content.
They didn’t want to adapt. They were waiting for Mastodon to finally “fix the bugs” that made it different from Twitter. Which it didn’t.
Instead, Mastodon developed its own culture (which is a story of its own). And they were pressured to adopt Mastodon’s culture. CWs for sensitive content for any definition of “sensitive”. Twitter ain’t got no CW field. Alt-texts for all images, and it had to be actually useful and informative. They ain’t never done no alt-texts on Twitter. Of course, the right hashtags. See above.
Also, Mastodon-the-app is lack-lustre. Whereas the official apps for just about everything else are fully-featured, the Mastodon mobile app is only there for there to be a mobile app named “Mastodon” for those people who join a new online service by grabbing their iPhones and loading the app with the same name as the service from the App Store. Especially newbies often can’t wrap their minds around using an online service with an app that doesn’t have the same name. But the official Mastodon app is actually just about the worst Mastodon app out there. At the same time, for many Mastodon users, this app IS Mastodon. They’ve never seen the Web interface. What the app can’t do, Mastodon can’t do.
Lastly, Mastodon was probably also way too techy. Like, you had people talking about Linux and Open Source and Web design and whatnot all over the place, something that they themselves knew nothing about and weren’t interested in. On top came those people with their weird-looking monster posts that said the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, and they were posting from something that is not and has never even been affiliated with Mastodon.
And then Bluesky came along. And Bluesky looked exactly like what they’ve been wanting all the time: a 1:1 Twitter clone. One big reason for Bluesky’s success is that it shamelessly ripped off the UI of immediately-pre-Musk-takeover Twitter, both the website and the mobile app. A fully-featured, well-polished mobile app with all the same features as the website. And at first glance, it feels like the same monolithic walled-garden silo as Twitter with the same kinds of users as Twitter, minus the Nazis. At least not as ripe with übergeeks as Mastodon.
Also, Bluesky grew faster and quickly had more users than Mastodon. Which sounded like more followers in less time. Exactly what all those famewhores that brag about their Twitter follower counts were craving.
People wanted a pre-Musk Twitter clone. Mastodon isn’t one. Everything else in the Fediverse is one even less. Bluesky is just that. Bluesky is what people had wanted all the time.
Mastodon has a larger percentage of the fediverse audience than any other agent, so not sure how you can equate that to struggling to survive. It is somewhat polluted with former Twatter left wing retards but that is just because it’s resemblance to Twatter lead to it’s adoption by a lot of former twatter twits when Musk took Twatter over.
Fwiw, a lot of people here call it Xhitter. Bc it sounds like Shitter, which is what the site has become (I wouldn’t know personally, I didn’t have an account there even before the Musk took it over:-).
@OpenStars I would argue that it hasn’t become that, it was that well before Musks takeover.
I think because when it comes to Instagram or Twitter type social media more people probably use it only to follow accounts and have no interest in being involved in it. So closer to treating it like a rss reader than something like lemmy or reddit. And conversation feed sucks in general.
I use squawker for Twitter. Can’t comment, like, sub, or whatever and account follows are just local feeds like Stealth for Reddit or NewPipe or Freetube. And that’s all I need from it.
Both Intsagram and Twitter will fill your feed with random people / brands you don’t follow.
It’s all about the dopamine hit.
Not with squawker for Twitter. Displays only people you follow and in chronological order. There’s no recommendations or ads.
When you say “people…”, assume that most use the native app.
Regular people likely care more about being able to follow who they follow than ads, which they are more likely to put up with even for basic browsing. Last bit was just how I use it.
I’m just saying, that they are really, really inefficient as RSS for everyday people since the are more posts you didn’t subscribe to, than the ones you subscribed to.
Hence saying that it’s what people use them for IMO , genedally, is incorrect.
Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.
Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks. It’s become obvious. That Twitter was mostly algorithm hype and FOMO.
Mastodon tries to be healthier but I’m not convinced that microblogs in general are that useful, especially to a techie audience who knows RSS and other publishing formats.
@dragontamer @thenexusofprivacy
“short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks”
I agree and that’s why the first site I put up was friendica, but I find on friendica, even though people have the space to express their thoughts in depth and eloquently, few do so, so perhaps Mastodon is so successful because it appeals to people who are incapable of effective self expression. At any rate, it is a reality that it is, so I do run one of those also.
short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks.
I 100% agree with this sentiment.
Jaron Lanier has a great book called You Are Not A Gadget, where he talks about the way we design and interact with systems, and he has some thoughts I think reflect this sentiment very well:
“When [people] design an internet service that is edited by a vast anonymous crowd, they are suggesting that a random crowd of humans is an organism with a legitimate point of view.” (This is in reference to Wikis like Wikipedia)
“Different media designs stimulate different potentials in human nature.”
He talks about how when a system becomes popular enough, it can “lock in” a design, when others build upon it as standard. Such as how the very concept of a “file” is one we created, and nearly every system now uses it. Non-file based computing is a highly unexplored design space.
And the key part, which I think is relevant to Mastodon, the fediverse, and social media more broadly, is this quote:
“A design that share’s Twitter’s feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter’s adoration of fragments.”
Fragments, of course, meaning the limited, microblogging style of communication the platform allows for. I’ve seen some Mastodon instances that help with this, by not imposing character limits anywhere near where most instances would, opting for tens of thousands of characters long. But of course, there is still a limit. Another design feature by Twitter that is now locked in.
But of course, people are used to that style of social media. It’s what feels normal, inevitable even. Changing it would mean having to reconceptualize social media as a concept, and might be something people aren’t interested in, since they’re too used to the original design. We can’t exactly tell.
As Lanier puts it,
“We don’t really know, because it is an unexplored design space.”
Non-file based computing is a highly unexplored design space.
No it isn’t; that’s what databases are.
That’s what some databases are. Most databases you’ll see today still inevitably store the whole contents of the DB within a file with its own format, metadata, file extension, etc, or store the contents of the database within a file tree.
The notion of “lock in” being used here doesn’t necessarily mean that alternatives don’t or can’t exist, but that comparatively, investment into development, and usage, of those systems, is drastically lower.
Think of how many modern computing systems involve filesystems as a core component of their operation, from databases, to video games, to the structure of URLs, which are essentially usually just ways to access a file tree. Now think of how many systems are in use that don’t utilize files as a concept.
The very notion of files as an idea is so locked-in, that we can rarely fathom, let alone construct a system that doesn’t utilize them as a part of its function.
Regardless, the files example specifically wasn’t exactly meant to be a direct commentary on the state of microblogging platforms, or of all technology, but more an example for analogy purposes than anything else.
What social media platforms don’t have some kind of character limit?
What platforms don’t use a feed?
What platforms don’t use a like button?
What platforms don’t have some kind of hashtags?
All of these things are locked-in, not necessarily technologically, but socially.
Would more people from Reddit have switched to Lemmy if it didn’t have upvotes and downvotes? Are there any benefits or tradeoffs to including or not including the Save button on Lemmy, and other social media sites? We don’t really know, because it’s substantially less explored as a concept.
The very notion of federated communities on Lemmy being instance-specific, instead of, say, instances all collectively downloading and redistributing any posts to a specific keyword acting as a sort of global community not specific to any one instance, is another instance of lock-in, adapted from the fediverse’s general design around instance-specific hosting and connection.
In the world of social media, alternative platforms, such as Minus exist, that explore unique design decisions not available on other platforms, like limited total post counts, vague timestamps, and a lack of likes, but compared to all the other sites in the social media landscape, it’s a drop in the bucket.
The broader point I was trying to make was just that the very way microblogging developed as a core part of social media’s design means that any shift away from it likely won’t actually gain traction with a mainstream audience, because of the social side of the lock-in.
Wow!
“Minus is a finite social network where you get 100 posts—for life.”
@grue @ArchRecord An example of a database that doesn’t keep it’s data in files?
I’m not a big expert on database technology, but I am aware of there being at least a few database systems (“In-Memory”) that use the RAM of the computer for transient storage, and since RAM doesn’t use files as a concept in the same way, the data stored there isn’t exactly inside a “file,” so to speak.
That said, they are absolutely dwarfed by the majority of databases, which use some kind of file as a means to store the database, or the contents within it.
Obviously, that’s not to say using files is bad in any way, but the possibilities for how database software could have developed, had we not used files as a core computing concept during their inception, are now closed off. We simply don’t know what databases could have looked like, because of “lock-in.”
Memory is still structured like a file and referenced over addresses, we just call it something else.
Bluesky certainly provides another option … when Apartheid Clyde led to Twitter getting shut down in Brazil, there was a small bump in Mastodon’s numbers, but a much bigger influx to Bluesky. Then again Bluesky’s addressed a lot of problems people coming to Mastodon in 2022 had, and Mastodon hasn’t, so if everybody had come to Mastodon instead the pattern would likely have repeated itself and most of them wouldn’t have stuck around.
What are some of the issues you’d like to see addressed? I don’t use mastodon as much so I’m not familiar with what has / hasn’t been done.
ex. I hear they’ve been working on content discovery, such as with the recommended accounts carousel
https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt is a good overview (not by me!) of issues that the November 2022 wave ran into. What’s frustrating is that so many of these are very similar to the issues the April 2017 wave ran into!
Release 4.3 did some work on the recommended accounts, that’s good, but the problems start even before that. What instance to sign up to? Most people have better experiences on smaller instances that match either their interests or their geography … but how to find them? mastodon.social is (for most people) kind of meh – certainly not the worst, but it’s not all that well-moderated, and it’s big enough that the local feed isn’t useful for finding interesting people or stuff – and that’s now the default. Also it took over a year to get 4.3 out; I get it, they’re a small team, some stuff turned out to be a lot harder than expected, and they had to deal with a bunch of security patches in the interim … still, that means progress is frustratingly slow.
The fact that like an rethreads are not federated is I pretty big issue. Like if you come from a small instance, you’ll see most global posts at 0 likes, which makes the platform look dead.
Thank you!
@otter @thenexusofprivacy I personally find the three-pane design a bit “busy”.
They are in competition with Mastodon, and have a marketing budget.
Five years from now, those platforms will become enshittified as their budgets dry up. They will need to milk the users for revenue. Well see another surge in a few years, until they learn that Mastodon is actually better.
Then the next Billionaire with a massive ego and huge budget comes out and makes another one.
Or we get Jack Dorsey making a new company for a 3rd time.
Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.
why is that though?
Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks
Your post could fit on Mastodon
My post above is 376 characters, which would have required three tweets under the original 140 character limit.
Mastodon, for better or worse, has captured a bunch of people who are hooked on the original super-short posting style, which I feel is a form of Newspeak / 1984-style dumbing down of language and discussion that removed nuance. Yes, Mastodon has removed the limit and we have better abilities to discuss today, but that doesn’t change the years of training (erm… untraining?) we need to do to de-program people off of this toxic style.
Especially when Mastodon is trying to cater to people who are used to tweets.
Your post could fit on Mastodon
EDIT: and second, Mastodon doesn’t have the toxic-FOMO effect that hooks people into Twitter (or Threads, or Bluesky).
People post not because short sentences are good. They post and doom-scroll because they don’t want to feel left out of something. Mastodon is healthier for you, but also less intoxicating / less pushy. Its somewhat doomed to failure, as the very point of these short posts / short-engagement stuff is basically crowd manipulation, FOMO and algorithmic manipulation.
Without that kind of manipulation, we won’t get the kinds of engagement on Mastodon (or Lemmy for that matter).
My Mastodon instance uses a 500 character limit
How is mastodon healthier? Please provide examples. Healthier for whom? As there’s an extensive list of people harmed that absolutely do not find mastodon “healthy” let alone “healthier” particularly Black and Brown folks. Bluesky defaults to the same way feeds are presented as Mastodon does, so your statement is false
Microblogging is definitely useful for many things, short and quick thoughts, links to news articles, jokes, memes etc. You can also comment and share things easily. Microblogging actually resembles instant messaging in a lot of ways, just with an undefined ’group chat’ size.
I find it kinda funny that Twitter has become so toxic that people start thinking there must be something wrong with the format.
Also RSS clearly can’t replicate a big chunk of the desirable properties of microblogging (eg. easy sharing and commenting).
because its name is Mastodon, something that when people google it pulls up a band.
Also because it’s trying to be a hot fresh new thing but it’s literally named after an animal that’s extinct.
If it had a catchier and more unique name it probably would have caught on more.
I hear “Twitter” is available again
ZING!
And dipshit elon literally argued in court that “twitter doesn’t exist anymore”
HMMM MAYBE SOMEBODY SHOULD INVENT IT
🤔
Yeah, lemmy suffered from this too, SEO is completely neglected when picking name.
I think a better title & question would be, “Why is Mastodon struggling to thrive?”
It’s surviving no problem, but it’s not thriving for a multitude of reasons. Some are pretty well covered across comments here & in the linked discussion, and are more or less reiterations of prior discussions on the matter.
Ultimately I think as much as many of those reasons are correct, the biggest reason is the same as ever: network effects. All the jank and technical details could be endured and adjusted to if there was sufficient value to be had in doing so, i.e. following accounts of interest/entertainment, connecting with friends, etc. That’s proven to varying degrees by those that have stuck with Mastodon. In turn, however, it’s also clear by how many bounce off that for many there’s still insufficient value to be found across Mastodon instances to justify dealing with all the rough edges.
If Mastodon had enough broadly appealing/interesting people/accounts across its instances, people might deal with the various technical and cultural rough spots the same way they deal with similar on other social networks they may complain about yet won’t leave. There still aren’t enough of those sorts on there for many though, so Mastodon simply survives but doesn’t thrive.
Agreed, that would have been a much better title. There’s a lot of negativity around Mastodon – the Twitter migration in 2022 is often described as a “failure”. It certainly wasn’t a success, but I see it much more as a missed opportunity.
Network effects are certainly a big deal but every social network has to deal with the issue, and some succeed. Addressing some of the reasons for bouncing not only improves retention, but makes it more likely that people recommend it to their friends. So many of the problems from July 2023’s Mastodon Is Easy and Fun Except When It Isn’t were problems back in 2017 as well … how much progress has Mastodon made? Fortunately other fediverse software’s making more progress, but it’s still frustrating.
I don’t see the point. It’s like twitter. Never saw the point of that either instead of lemmy or Reddit honestly
There’s just not many people on there. And I already never used Twitter except to read in-time updates from people and companies, so naturally with many of them being on Threads or Bluesky, that’s where I’d go to get that information.
I mean it’s just normal to have a “social” part to social media, no?
This is a baffling comment. There are tons of people on mastodon, more than I could ever hope to keep up with. I have a couple hundred accounts on follow and never manage to keep up. Honestly it could use some sorting.
I don’t want to follow random people though? Twitter was useful as a way to follow specific companies and people to know when say, a service goes down or an update is released.
These people and companies aren’t on Mastodon.
This is the thing a lot of Mastodon users seem to miss. I was on Twitter because of specific people and companies. They aren’t on Mastodon, so I have no use for it.
There are a lot of companies on the flipboard side, which as far as I know, most servers haven’t defederated
Because no one is on it. I don’t do twitter/facebook-like social media to interact exclusively with random people. I have no family or friends on Mastodon and couldn’t tell you if any “content creators,” for the lack of a better term, that I follow elsewhere are on it to follow.
