His grand vision remains to leave Mastodon users in control of the social network, making their own decisions about what content is allowed or what appears in their timelines.
I don’t use Mastadon cause I don’t care for micro-blogging, but nevertheless, I like this.
We should not expect greatness from the men who create these corporations, they are not great men, they are not even good or especially intelligent men. They fell into their position by luck, the one in a million triers for whom circumstance clicked into position. The only thing that sets them apart and perhaps accounts for their success is how they are so consistently open to sycophancy and manipulation by the pack of cold and savage business graduates that flock to any form of success. When a person is against type, as seemingly is the case here, they stand out and just once in a while are capable of real greatness.
Just like what happened with Ecosia. We need more humble people in the world!
Please enlighten me as to what happened with ecosia?
The founder stepped down in ownership and made sure he couldn’t sell it.
What does ceding control even mean? Mastodon, just like Lemmy, is federated - each instance has its own governance. It was never controlled by a single person to begin with.
He can cede control of the GitHub repository, I guess, but:
- That’s giving the controls to the contributors, not the users.
- The article does not even hint at the existence of source code, and the announcement itself doesn’t talk about changes in that aspect either, so I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.
In as much as FOSS can be forked, it’s not really completely controlled (and there are a number of active mastodon forks that federate fine with standard mastodon servers)
Of course you can fork it, but you can’t call it Mastodon. That’s trademarked. Just like how you can fork Firefox but have to call it Waterfox or Iceweasel or Librewolf.
The confusion here is between Mastodon the company and Mastodon the software and instances of the running software. Eugen Rochko owns the first two. He also owns the instances mastodon.social and mastodon.online. Everything else is outside of his control.
Someone is still in charge of the git account. No matter how many commits there are being made, unless the owner of the repo approves to merge them, it’s not happening.
And sure, someone could create a fork that includes their changes if they aren’t being merged, but then this separate fork might at some point lose compatibility with the original software. And on a purely semantic note, this fork wouldn’t be the original mastodon either.
its an org, it can have multiple owners.
Once it is an organization, yes, that’s the whole point. Right now it is still an individual, that’s the point I was trying to make.
no it’s not? https://github.com/orgs/mastodon/people
unless we’re talking about different things?
That’s a virtual structure in github, not a legal construct. Those organisations have owners (minimum 2), but if they collude and go rogue, they can do quite a lot of harm. (See also https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/managing-peoples-access-to-your-organization-with-roles/roles-in-an-organization).
A formally incorporated nonprofit organization has statutes, organs, supervisory boards and all that by which they must adhere, so once set up properly, the software would be fully protected from malicious intent on a legal level.
…but you were talking about the git project in the parent comment? the rest of the thread is about company structure.
Noj profit does not have owners per se, but it is still controlled by somebody
I was thinking specifically about the github.
Ain’t he putting it under a non profit structure?
I’m not sure what the practicals of doing something like this will be, but it speaks a lot to who Eugen Rochko is.
He might also be an obtuse dick. I’ve gotten that vibe too. Still, good for him.
Good people are allowed to get annoyed when there’s a ton of people complaining about non issues. From what I’ve heard Mastodon users are somewhat insufferable.
Why is there this very loud chorus of people touting bluesky as alternative to twitter instead of the far superior Mastodon?
Bluesky you are basically swapping a tyrant against a benevolent dictator, that dictator can become corrupted or sell bluesky to Musk Elon later on… That is not a solution that is more like procrastination.
Mastodon’s interface creates a self-selection bias of more technically inclined people, and is too dissimilar to twitter for the average user to want to invest time in learning it.
It has more features, and most people don’t know why Matson might be better. The average person doesn’t even know what a server is.
Mastodon has far more features. What it doesn’t have is centralization.
What features?
Lots of little things that add up. Some of the better include temporary muting, hashtags, and hashtag subscriptions. Plus it is resilient with no single point of failure.
Bluesky has had a very fast development cycle and now already has features it didnt have 6 months ago. Mastodon’s main problem IMO is how long it takes for features to make their way into the live version. There are features on their github ready to be merged in for 2 years and when asked, no one on the development team was able to find out why it had not been merged.
Mastodon’s main problem IMO is how long it takes for features to make their way into the live version.
Bluesky’s main problem IMO is how it is fundamentally a profit driven venture that cannot tolerate slow and steady growth and how fundamentally, no matter what anyone including the CEO says, Bluesky must and always will unflinchingly support the interests of its investors over the interest of its users, period. To really spell things out here, the continued employment of anyone at Bluesky is fundamentally predicated on their ability and desire to do this very thing.
Bluesky is a business, after all
I’m pretty sure Bluesky has hashtags. Subscribing to a hashtag and muting someone temporarily is nice. I think the main feature Mastadon is missing is discovery algorithms. Most people use that heavily on social media, whether they admit they value it or not.
What is this, then? It’s on the front page of a Mastodon server before you log in and afterwards the discovery section with posts, hashtags, people etc. is on the search page after login. Bluesky was far harder to get a decent feed going on till people started building lists (and those are pretty flawed in that you only follow the individuals - not the list - so it doesn’t update for subscribers).
Oh cool, I didn’t realize they added that. I tried Mastadon a while ago and couldn’t find anything interesting. I don’t use any micro blogging apps.
bluesky has more funding for self-promotion.
I keep hammering this point every time this is brought up, PR and NAMES matter! BlueSky is a nice non threatening name, Mastadon is an awful name for an app. It sounds way too close to mastrubate.
Lol, I guess we all make different connections, but to me “mastodon” doesn’t sound like “masterbate” any more than “blue sky” sounds like “blue balls” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think it is because Bluesky is simpler and easier to understand, as well as more familiar to use than mastodon. My favorite streamer said he is reluctant to move to the fediverse because of how different it is and the learning curve it has to it. I’m also, like, EXTREMELY new here and understand but once you start to get used to it, its easy to see how the fediverse and this “New Social” wave is far superior; the only hard part is getting “normies” to try it long enough to build enough familiarity to see that.
Is it just the choosing-a-home-server thing, or something else?
That and finding relevant things or anything at all sometimes; also I hear that people want to see everything like a friendica environment but don’t like the differences from the social medias they know already. I’m not sure if it is all valid or relevant because I am extremely new to the fediverse in general myself.
I guess I don’t understand. Why would someone want to “find” microblogs of people they don’t already know about from elsewhere? It’s like wanting to find someone’s email to me.
Not sure; I guess as a new person, I’d like to find micro blogs about topics and things that I might agree with? I was never really into twitter or micro-blogging; I don’t really understand the appeal but I figure since it is a social media, you might want to find similar people with like-minded blogs or whatever? Like I found a new up-coming political streamer that I like from another. Maybe that isn’t what micro-blogging is for and I’m off base.
I see microblogging as a way of following the thoughts of someone you’re already interested in. Maybe a friend, maybe a famous person. But it’s not a way to get deeper understanding. Nothing profound has ever been conveyed in a tweet. So I don’t know why I would look for the tweets of strangers. It’s more of a event tracking or relationship-maintaining kind of communication tool.
Fair enough, I just figured that as a social network, part of the goal is to connect new people together. You can look at Facebook in the same way you described it. That’s what its original purpose was. To just connect with people you already know, but I feel like social networking in general has since evolved from this. We can look at things like Facebook groups for example where it is more on the lines of what I’m thinking, people join groups that interest them and interact with like minded people that they have likely never met before.
I find the idea of using hashtags as the same.
Mastodon could definitely do with some more discovery methods. Hopefully something like bluesky’s starter packs get implemented eventually (but I understand why they aren’t rushing it, there are abuse risks).
Best approach for now on mastodon is to follow all the hash tags you’re interested in, and then follow everyone in your feed who posts anything interesting. Takes a few weeks to ramp up, I guess. My feed got good once I was following around 1k users. You can always unfollow if someone’s annoying.
Thanks for the tip – new to fediverse altogether and my most annoying challenge is the social aspect of finding people to connect with and making an interesting feed! Lemmy has been the easiest; right above friendica!
Yeah, Lemmy is good because of the topic and threading focus. Mastodon seems better for exploring lots of issues. I’m finding them fairly complementary, they cover different bases.
Still need something I can pull my IRL friends in with though. Pixelfed might work for people who are used to Instagram, but I think it’s probably still a bit sparse content wise.
I’m starting to realize that too. I might be more active on one than the other but it’s nice to have them all because it seems like a fuller experience; I am starting to see how they are complimentary.
I think either mastodon or pixelfed. I’m sure we are due to get a specific crowd — just from the political climate at the moment.
I can’t speak for others, but when I joined I was definitely confused by instances, federated internet, moderation variances, and how to operate the various ~ 4 beta apps I downloaded at the same time.
I’m definitely not a tech normie, but it was still unfamiliar and I would never have migrated if I hadn’t been fed up with Reddit.
Most people don’t want to have to look up guides to figure out how a system works, they just want to download an app that their friends all use and move on with their day. Blocking instances you don’t like? Doing research to find a “home” instance? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but how did you choose an email provider, or a phone service? How do you block spam? Those are basically identical questions, and yeah, they can be annoying, but I don’t think anyone finds them that hard to comprehend.
It’s absolutely insane to hear that a streamer, of all types of people, said there’s a learning curve to it. Twitch is/was bewildering to me, just as a user, much less a streamer who would need to learn to configure and use OBS, etc. SMH.
Very valid! This guy is like 38 though so I think he has gotten to the age where he has streamed for so long that it’s second nature but using a new social media that isn’t familiar enough seems like a hassle I guess? I feel those closer to my age, people in their 20’s, are either a bit intimidated by it or feel that there is a lack of people and content because it’s hard to find relevant “tweets” (or whatever the equivalent is called). That was my biggest thing when I first tried it a few years ago. I had this “so… what now…?” Feeling. It felt like the social was missing from it. I’m a little bit better at finding things to engage with; such as now, but I can somewhat remember the feeling I had that originally deterred me till now.
Because Bluesky has a marketing budget.
“We need to get away from these billionaire-ran social media sites! Ooh, a new billionaire-ran social media site!”
Same with the people who fled reddit and set their communities up on Discord…
You just got the answer in the headline and you answered yourself.
Because BlueSky has designers and Mastodon is a nightmare for new users. Same reason a lot of “superior” open source apps never take off. Devs are rarely also good designers. Until we start caring about normal people it will stay that way.
Mastodon has an early days of Twitter feel to it.
Nightmare is massively overstating it. Mastodon’s UI/UX is neither a nightmare nor difficult to use. People who say this stuff leave me scratching my head.
In my view, the only legitimate criticism of Mastodon is about the lack of an algorithm that’s constantly bubbling content to the top, but that’s a valid design choice that many people prefer over the toxic algos over at X/Twitter.
Apparently not nearly as many people as those who prefer Bluesky’s approach.
Most new users want to easily see feeds related to the things they’re into and that’s objectively more difficult with Mastodon unless you already have a list of accounts to follow. I want Mastodon to succeed and grow but it won’t if it only caters to tech heads.
Sure, this is legitimate as well, and I believe I’ve heard that they’re working on this feature.
Genie’s out of the bottle now though. The casual-attracting features needed to be in place before twitter exploded. They weren’t. Bluesky’s were. Casuals don’t care about what-ifs or principles, it’s a miracle Musk let Twitter get so terrible that the casuals even noticed. It’ll take a monumental event now to get the casuals to switch again from the blueskys they just made and got invested in.
I hear what you’re saying and think you have a good point. It’s very likely that Mastodon will stay a minor player, but I also think it will live on as a viable alternative to the major social networks. There are a lot of people dedicated to developing, running, posting, etc. to keep it lively. There is also the factor that Mastodon will always be there if (when) X or BlueSky stumble and make a mistake that will send another chunk of users over.
There’s also just the naming problem. Social media works best when its name sounds like a place and its verbs sound like normal actions. Mastodon is a three syllable elephant (or a metal band), versus a sky or a book (note: this isn’t a hard and fast rule, since Twitter and Instagram pulled it off). And they call their posts toots. Officially, too, unlike the user-made meme of “Skeets”. Toots are farts. No politician or business professional is going to say “retoot” with a straight face.
This is a good point. Success isn’t a zero sum game here and maybe the era of giant social networks is changing to smaller communities again.
“Why can’t the algo find me better content?”
Motherfucker, it’s social media. You have to get social with people. Make a fucking friend, right?
Like, I fixed that shit by following George Takei and Mark Hamill and some reporters. The algo shouldn’t be finding things for you. You should be finding people.
Yeah, scratching my head just the same. My only problem with Mastodon is the same I had with StumbleUpon. It’s way too good about putting neat people and conversations in front of me and I feel bad not rising to the occasion more when I just want to deadbrain.
Following hashtags is also a great way to find content you’re interested in.
Bluesky has the USP of people being able to choose from multiple algorithms or even use multiple ones at the same time; and that certainly has resonated with a lot of people.
That’s actually a fair point. I’ve seen it in the UI but I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it seems like there’s communities to moderate and curate and you can simply enable them to moderate your feed, if I’m understanding it right. If so, it sounds like a really good way to compartmentalize that stuff to allow users to sort it themselves.
That sounds pretty neat. Are all the algos developed by Bluesky (i.e., corporate/billionaire/VC-driven) though?
No, anyone is able to create a “feed”
Cool, thanks.
no, but the various algorithms that control and construct these “user customized feeds” is precisely the part of bluesky that is architecturely a bottleneck, and it isn’t a bug, the ceo of bluesky has gone on record that bluesky hasn’t ruled out using this intentional centralization point to force ads on the system
Is this actually true? The UIs don’t seem very different to me. What is it about mastodon’s design that’s bad?
Just the UX rather than the UI. It’s also missing some features like quote tweets. But it can be confusing to onboard either your own instance and know that your discoverable or to join an instance and know how discoverable you are.
Like I am a career man in IT, servers, and networking. I have no idea if I were to run my own instance, who exactly on the network would be able to see my public posts
I think the lack of quote tweets is a feature and not a bug. They facilitate a lot of antisocial behavior on other microblogging sites as I recall.
I think Mastodon changed their mind about it due to user feedback, and “Quote Posts” is on the current Mastodon roadmap. Not sure when it will be added - maybe sometime in 2025?
Oh dang. I’m sure users wanted it, but it’s too effective as a mobbing tool. I don’t think it’ll help the protocol.
I think they decided on an opt in feature.
An app I use for Mastodon (Called Mona) allows quote toots.
Thats a good example of the UX issues, when only 1 specific app supports a feature.
Apparently it’s either become or will become a Mastodon feature.
That is called freedom of choice, apparently people are used to totalitarian system where everything should look the same and perfect for masses.
Bluesky literally allows people to finetune controls on things like allowing quote posts and replies. Thats way more freedom that the average social media platform gives to a user.
I agree but that isn’t gonna help normies get onboard at all. If we ever realize the semantic web then those different features will be amazing. Right now it’s confusing because the other apps can’t understand the data.
Anyone who is on a server that houses any other user that follows you. Not that hard to find out…
But also I don’t really see how that matters in practice for most pleb users, since 95% or them will join a large server, which means the practical answer is “nearly everyone on the fediverse, if they want to”.
That part I understand, but how can I get those first followers? And if I am just going to join the flagship instance, why wouldn’t I just join bluesky since it has more users.
Just trying to give a reason why people might shun mastodon for blue sky, this isn’t supposed to be a real argument against Mastodon. I’m on it and love it
Follow people and hashtags and interact with them and you’ll get followers. I barely post, just a few replies a day, and I have over 800 followers. I have a pinned post on my account to that effect.
I would join mastodon over bluesky because bluesky seems to be on the same mesh it to fixation trajectory as any other VC backed social network. But yeah, I get that most people won’t see that for another couple of years… Oh well. At least people are bailing twitter. And when bluesky goes to shit mastodon will still be there, and the rationale should be a lot clearer.
Follow people and hashtags and interact with them and you’ll get followers.
That sounds like a convoluted method of self promotion, almost like SEO fake engagement, just to be discoverable. And if everyone on the network had to do this to be discoverable, how can I trust the discovery methods to find people worth following?
And if the cross instance discoverability has these kinds of hurdles, then the promise of federation isn’t going to pan out.
At least with Lemmy the nature of the platforms, users following a smaller universe of potential communities, makes each community much more easily discoverable for people who don’t necessarily want to be active posters. Mastodon’s user-focused follow is much more limited in seamless federation.
More UX than UI. The entire on-boarding process is hard on Mastodon. Who is on there? How do we find them, etc. it’s all rather nebulous. BlueSky has been innovative with some of their ideas. Things like starter packs are simple but greatly help new users get going. It’s shocking other social networks have not thought of them.
deleted by creator
As someone who had never used corporate social media like FB and Twitter (for my own reasons), when I found out about Mastodon back in 2017-18, I decided to join it because of its philosophy and it not being a corporate-owned walled garden. It has its flaws of course. But since I didn’t have any preconceptions, I mostly liked Mastodon as it was and didn’t find it confusing at all. That’s probably because I read up on Mastodon first to decide whether I’d want to try it, so I knew what to expect.
So I can understand how people who had been using Twitter and had their expectations shaped by it would assume that Mastodon was just a Twitter clone, not having learned anything about it beforehand. That’s why they were confused and disappointed to find that it was its own thing with its own philosophy, and had existing communities aligned with that philosophy.
Some (not all) of those who saw the differences as flaws, complained that Mastodon was crap for not having certain Twitter features, and some (not all) existing communities didn’t take kindly to demands that Mastodon abandon its philosophy and transform itself into a Twitter clone, so there were conflicts as well, and those new people didn’t stick around.
OTOH, many other new people found that they liked the different philosophy and those people did stick around, so Mastodon has grown. But IMO since most people like the Twitter-style algorithms and “broadcast/consume” culture (as opposed to Mastodon’s more personal interaction culture), Mastodon will always be a much smaller thing. But its existence is an important and good thing, like the quiet room away from the riotous street party, where you can hear each other speak.
I also joined around 2017, but I was using twitter beforehand. Totally agree with everything you’ve said.
I do think that mastodon could benefit from some simple, transparent/open algos (not black box ad-focused ones), such as the ability to sort replies based on favourites, and a per-hashtag recently popular view. Some of those are already requested and maybe on the cards.
Why is there this very loud chorus of people touting bluesky as alternative to twitter instead of the far superior Mastodon?
What makes you assume Mastodon is superior as a solution for the people who are flocking to Bluesky in droves?
Considering the people pushing bluesky are the same ones usually praising government surveillance, I don’t trust it for one second. Smells like a psyop honeypot.
Can you show me an example of that? Of the people pushing Bluesky also praising government surveillance?
The Washington Post published a guide encouraging and teaching users how to migrate to the platform.
But don’t take my word for it. Jump on and look around. It’s as crowded with neoliberals as Truth Social is with Red MAGAs.
Kinda depends on what you’re filling your feed with. Mine is filled with naked gay men, and I’m pretty pleased with that.
But do the naked gay men have an exhibition fetish, especially by government agents?
Do a bunch of men who post nudes on the internet in a very public forum for free have an exhibition fetish? The world may never know…
I’m just trying to extrapolate to being supportive of government surveillance, and proving that other commenter right.
At least this provides more time for mastodon to become better for even wider use. Hopefully bluesky wont go to shit too soon.
You can’t pry people away from their AI algorithms
Chris Titus on YouTube had a decent break down of some the technical points he liked more about it.
The sad fact is that I will follow the writers and creatives where they migrate to. William Gibson moved to Bluesky so did I.
Russian talking points already filtering down to the average user.
Your u/n pretty much sums up the delivery of your comment
Someone (probably bluesky) almost definitely spent a large sum of money on marketing/astroturfing for Bluesky
It just feels more like Classic Twitter, and I can imagine some users like that vibe, despite Mastodon perhaps having the better technicals to keep social media federated. I use both and they have their audience. There are services that allow crossposting too, so I’ve got a BlueSky instance out there copying my Mastodon into that feed. Just to reach out.
Bluesky has jack dorsey, Twitter founder, in its DNA. Dorsey cheered musk on and they call each other friends. Bluesky is not the win people want it to be, it’s just a bandaid for your conscience with the same infected wound under the surface.
Same here. I still try to use it once every day in support but I don’t like having such a low limit (or any limit at all, really) on how many characters I’m allowed to use for my posts or response. I am more of a macro-blogger as I tend to be very verbose; especially posting online. I do, however, think it is important to create accounts, use and donate to the project that is mastodon; as they are leading by example in this “New Social” era or movement we are all apart of. It would be a shame that something like this isn’t able to continue, let alone expand, because not enough people supported the project – even though such project is giving the people exactly what they wanted and asked for. Let’s all try to show our support behind such a bold and selfless decision.
I don’t like having such a low limit (or any limit at all, really)
Instead we should see value in opinionated software, when the alternative is software that tries to do everything for everyone.
There are different Mastodon instances with different post character limits. You could also use an ActivityPub based macroblog (like write.as / WriteFreely(?)).
Nice to know! I think lemmy has been meeting my needs pretty well, as there are no limits that I’m aware of here. What would be compelling for something like write.as and writefreely?
His grand vision remains to leave Mastodon users in control of the social network, making their own decisions about what content is allowed or what appears in their timelines.
So uh… Mastodon will not have a moderation team?
I mean this makes sense, but how exactly is after-stopping-moderation Meta different then?
Interesting way to say you don’t understand federalisation. While using a federalised platform.
Interesting way to be wrong. While thinking you’re being correct.
I think you know what they meant. “Mastodon” is not a platform, it is essentially a protocol. You cannot have a moderation team for Mastodon by design. The individual instances of Mastodon CAN have moderation and many of them do. That’s why you pick an instance to register an account under instead of going to “mastodon.com” and signing up on the front page.
The article and move isn’t about moderation of the content, it’s about development of the platform itself.
Do you think Eugen has been personally moderating all Mastodon instances up until now?
He hasn’t. Obviously the moderation system has nothing to do with what is being discussed here.
152k to 1.5 milhouse is definitely an astronomical increase. Where does that number come from? For that matter…has he been funding all of this on his own up until this point?
I agree that 1.5 milhouse is quite a lot.
everything’s coming up thrillho
I’m amazed, he actually stopped corruption before it started
I heard of Mastodon a couple of years ago. I was still on Twitter and Facebook. I am not really tech savvy, so I didn’t bother to go over to Mastodon. It was until just recent, I thought I would give it a try.
Long story short, I am on Mastodon, and I decided to ditch both Twitter and Facebook. Because, I like the layout and the format much better than the two. I even joined Friendica (open source platform like Facebook). So, as I started getting used to these open source social media platforms. They are much better and I would support Mastodon with some donations from time to time.
I mean, why pay $8 to Elon Musk, when you can do pretty much the same things on Mastodon? I wasn’t going to throw in my 8 bucks just to get a stupid tweetdeck. Mastodon has its own deck, and it’s totally free!
I am still investigating other various social media (open source) sites. I may even join Pixelfeed (alternative to Instagram).
I know you have to make money…but for a guy like Elon Musk, who owns Tesla, Space X, and a few others…why does he really need to charge people money to use his platform? I mean, I know he can do whatever he wants…but he has the money to keep the site going…without charging people 8 bucks to get “Premium” service.
The only thing Mastodon doesn’t have that X (Formerly Twitter) has, is the fact that you can watch (or upload) live streaming.
Maybe, in the future Mastodon will do that?
I think it’s unlikely that Mastodon (or other federated short form blogging platforms e.g. Pelorama) will integrate live-streaming as it’s pretty far outside of the normal content they are built for. There is a project that does support live streaming and is federated though: Peertube https://joinpeertube.org/
yould like for it to pickup - it is a google killer app
I believe that since Tiktok is about to be banned - if no buyer is sought by Sunday, January 19; that a lot of people will flock to Red Note. Another Chinese-owned social media. Having said that, more and more people will start to try new alternative places. I like the idea of open source sites. I wished I have known this much sooner.
I like Odysee - an open source to Rumble - minus the ads. Unlike Rumble, you don’t have to pay to remove ads (among other features). Odysee never has ads on their platform. Which I like a lot.
I am also on Pixelfed. That site is pretty cool!
WebRTC could be used to provide peer-to-peer streaming. The load on the servers would be very minimal since the feeds would be sent directly from the host to the viewers. A lot of live streaming and video conferencing apps already use it to keep their hosting costs down.
The downside is that the IP address of the viewers will be exposed, even over a VPN unless precautions are taken by the user or the application.
I am not really tech savvy
I think you’ll find that a lot of things you think aren’t for you because of that phrase are more accessible than you realize. Look at you go!
Wasn’t this same ceo criticizing Zuckerberg last week for shutting down fact checking?
Getting really mixed signals here. What’s with the back and forth on this guy’s approach to centralized authority?
Isn’t it decentralized authority since every instance controls what they allow, not the CEO of mastodon?
As I understand it. It’s just weird that this same guy was praising centralized authority at Facebook last week. Something seems off.
I would think there is a priority order in his mind. Decentralized fact checking, centralized fact checking, no fact checking. His actions fit well with that. Also, I believe zuck wasn’t using only one asset to do the checking. He was using multiple fact checking sources. So it was kinda decentralized. I would expect this guy would rather see the user choose the fact checking source for content they see.
Using multiple sources that support the same pro-western narratives means little. It doesn’t make a lie peddled by the IDF any better by delivering it through multiple outlets.
uh… ok? So now it’ll be controlled by someone who DOES want to be the next Musk or Zuckerberg?
No it is the opposite, this is the first paragraph in the article:
Mastodon announced Monday that it’s shifting its structure over the next six months to become wholly owned by a European nonprofit organization—“affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”
Can anyone savvy to the nuance here please let me know how this is any different from Altman and ChatGPT?
As o followed along lightly, my read was that they used non-profit foundation structure to win public trust and calm initial opposition to them creating an unethical product that will ultimately destroy us all and then they fired all the people focused on ethics and codified the non-profit status.
Is this meaningfully different, or likely a similar tactic?
I am no professional but:
https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/21/openai-governance-structure-explainer/
This is what I have found about the governmance structure of OpenAI. It’s complicated but basically the working company is a for-profit controlled by a non-profit, controlled by employees and other investors, the non-profit is also controlled by a board of driectors. Also it’s all based in the US.
The Mastodon model is probably going to be a lot simpler and will probably not allow big investors to take ownership of the company. Also they are looking for a suitable country in the EU that will enforce the non-profit’s obligations to the people. Being based in the EU is in itself a huge difference, and by choice. They have not set anything in stone yet so it’s all specualtion essentialy.
Also there is the trust thing: OpenAI does not need trust from people, other AI companies are for profit too and work just fine. Mastodon is build around the fact that it is different from things like twitter. If they start doing maliciuos stuff, they will loose trust and in turn their main selling point. Also openness.
Also it is open source is it not? So any progress they have made can be used to create a competitor. Basically the whole business model is different.
I haven’t seen their governance structure yet, but I don’t think it will ever be like Altman and OpenAI. Eugen just doesn’t have that cult of personality around him, and there’s not that much money in a free and open-source platform that doesn’t lock people in.
The Internet needs fewer Stalins and Hitlers and more George Washingtons.
Yeah, it’s refreshing to see someone not be an Absolute Dick™ on the internet for profit.
More slave owners it is then!
It is an imperfect system, but my comment was more about leaders not clinging to power to the detriment of society.
I was just kidding. I understand what you meant. Monkey paw wish. Lol
Fuck yeah RTJ
Even having ceded control, they will go down in history as a legend. More positively viewed then the likes of… other social media founders.
Will anyone be better than Tom?
Became everyone’s friend, became a millionaire, retired, (so far?) avoided falling off the right wing conspiracy cliff. Kind of just a quiet dude.
The foil of Notch?
Notch was primed for that shit long before Minecraft took off. He posted early builds to 4chan, and was an active shitposter there.
The money just made him stop paying attention to anything else.
(so far?) avoided falling off the right wing conspiracy cliff
People’s views typically tend to move slowly but what’s the current progressive position tends to move much faster, so if he’s young enough he’ll probably eventually fall off the progressive treadmill.
Goals, for sure. The guy just does whatever he wants at this point. I think he’s doing photography now?
I read this as pornography, and was like I can believe that, this is the type of thing super rich bastards do. But then I googled it and realized that I got it wrong.
Lmaooo. I forgot about Tom. Which shows how good of a tech founder he was. Memorable, but not in the headlines every other day.
Weird man, had no idea that rupert murdock bought MySpace?
