For all that it did right, Mastodon made a massive unforced error not realizing that the key to social media propagation was keeping journalists happy. Instead, it alienated 90% of them with grievances and brow beatings about how they were pesky interlopers. BlueSky and Threads merely had to toss them a handful of candy, and promise them others, and it was like flipping a switch that sucked them out of here like runaway ShopVac. But I am convinced that many can be brought back.
@shoq are you sure Bluesky is doing any better in this regard. It seems like lots of journalist accounts have gone dormant there as well when the initial hype died down.
Meanwhile Threads has probably been the most successful despite them at times seemingly working actively against the news media. I think it might be just a case of journalists following the big numbers.
@mmasnick always brings coherence to our social media dramas. Maybe now more will better understand why some of us remain excited for the potential of “protocols over platforms.”
“Bluesky Is Building The Decentralized Social Media Jack Dorsey Wants, Even If He Doesn’t Realize It.”
@shoq "competition is good" is one of those things that often gets repeated in our capitalist society but isn't some kind of an absolute that holds no matter the circumstances. Competition is good in some contexts but cooperation is better in some others.
@shoq Funny, I can easily come up with a few arguments and probably more if I gave it a little thought:
standards only happen when people agree to work together to make them instead of creating 20 competing ones (like in that XKCD strip)
splitting up a userbase in something where the network effect deeply matters might just hand your centralized and closed off competition the win so you probably should consider long and hard whether the benefits from doing it are worth it
limited resources are better spent working on something together rather than reinventing it many times
You don't have to agree but I find it very surprising that you're saying you can't even see it.
Internet Horrified at AI App for Cloning Dead Family Members
"It's unclear what kind of data Vera AI uses to teach its chatbots. A previous version of the app's Google Play page noted that the app has access to the "contents of your USB storage" including "photos, media, and files.""
It's brilliant that @snarfed.org@snarfed.org's bridge is now in beta. But now everyone has to activate their bridge. At the moment it's really hard to find people to follow on Bluesky...
@wjmaggos you're probably asking too early, I've seen basically no high profile ones (it is possible to browse the full list of people who are following the bridge bot directly on Bluesky)
@elCelio well the name of the list is obviously outdated (and was not really accurate to begin with since listed accounts even outside of threads are not all mastodon) but the good thing is that there's now all these big threads accounts that we can follow without having to use threads. I guess it also speaks for how large the threads userbase unfortunately is in comparison.
A lot of people have insisted #Meta isn't getting involved with the #Fediverse to embrace, extend and extinguish it...
... but even before fully implementing Fediverse interoperability in #Threads they're already talking openly about changing its protocols to add features like monetization. 🤔
Text in a screenshot reads as follows: McCue riffed on the idea that fediverse users could become creators where some of their content became available to subscribers only, similar to how Patreon works. For instance, fediverse advocate and co-editor of ActivityPub Evan Prodromou created a paid Mastodon account (@evanplus) that users could subscribe to for $5 per month to gain access. If he’s on board with paid content, surely others would follow. Cottle agreed that the model could work with the fediverse, too. He additionally suggested there are ways the fediverse could monetize beyond donations, which is what often powers various efforts today, like Mastodon. Cottle said someone might even make a fediverse experience that consumers would pay for, the way some fediverse client apps are paid today.
@tokyo_0 it seems like the quote post controls are probably something they've been coordinating with Mastodon, actually. I think it was @tchambers I saw say first that a very similar feature is coming for Mastodon and having followed the quote post discussions in the issue queues for Mastodon a bit I know these kinds of controls were extensively discussed there as a requirement for adding QPs in the past.
@mackuba what's your point? guessing this isn't that recent and I'm not sure 30% was a particularly unrealistic prediction considering most startups fail and we've already seen multiple twitter replacements fail too.
Good on Bluesky not having run out of money yet but I certainly don't think they've yet really found a good way to monetize or a big enough userbase so the clock is absolutely still ticking on that VC money requiring them to put up or shut it.
@mackuba also, I'm sure you know @evan has a non-threads fediverse account too even though he happened to post that message to threads so there is no need to ping him on threads only.
Co-founder of Twitter joins new Mastodon board of directors. Right, so federating with Threads wasn’t a mistake. This is just the direction Mastodon is going. Oh, well. Another Mozilla emerges.
@FinchHaven@aral what on earth makes you say they are raking in shit tons of money? That doesn't sound too likely for a team with the grand total of two full-time deveopers (to be increased to three now) so do you have something to back that with?
@Loukas@maegul I don't really see the issue with Lemmy being that the platforms are incompatible. It's more that there are solvable issues with the way they interoperate that have not been addressed and make the experience poor.
the way a #Lemmy community just shows up as boosts of all posts and replies to them is just not a great way to represent them here, I believe there are multiple ways this experience could be improved from either side. Already somewhat better with platforms/clients that always show the parent post that is being replied to
in order to post (a reply) to a Lemmy community from #Mastodon (etc.) you need to know you have to mention the community by name which doesn't happen automatically
for a top-level post in to a community there are formatting rules like making the first line of the content the title
Lemmy content discoverability is poor on Mastodon because hashtags aren't really a thing for it
Not all of these have to be fixed to make federation useful and to me it doesn't seem like the biggest issues are insurmountable at all... do you have others in mind or have reasons why these cannot be improved?
@Loukas Where we differ is that I don't think the issue is that it can't be usefully represented on here, just that it currently isn't. Why do you think it can't rather than isn't? @maegul
@Loukas@maegul well for me it could be as trivial as just being able to filter the replies from the top level posts when looking at a group's feed. Much more involved plans have also been drafted though, like this one: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/19059
I'm surprised to see so many folks still post links to X/twitter threads. (not common here but on other platforms/forums)
They obviously don't care about moral/ethical issues with X, but they also must not realize access to threaded replies is restricted to logged in users!
Many folks deleted their accounts long ago (🙋🏻♀️) & Nitter no longer works (right?) so I don't know how to see more than the first post of any X thread.
@ahimsa_pdx they definitely let you see more than X but threads actually prompts you to log in to see all replies so it's limited. Bluesky doesn't though... except maybe if the user has requested not to be public and even then there's always a way around it since everything on Bluesky has to be public.
I've been kinda neutral about Threads joining the Fediverse so far, but seeing how they treat usability from the Fediverse side, it's clear there is at least some malicious intent. :blobcatthink:
So, I saw new game - https://store.epicgames.com/pl/p/worshippers-of-cthulhu-0fd3a2?fbclid=IwAR3yt_mwO1ju5HEInJyte-ZWIkPiB7NQ81BxplTniFVINZfXhd0TkXRpSCU_aem_AWnENz3wLNsMYhhDXZrM9Y3xy50ON-bUyCzadulNGpPG4J9ks6ZbjrCduTqtdw7N4K_37i2M9xZqB_Jv72klpg85 . It looks very interesting. I am not sure if there were any strategy game based on...
@peterbutler@davemark if you find the default character limit on Mastodon to be overly restrictive you can just go to an instance that has increased it, there are ones with over 10k characters allowed per post. You'll also find higher limits on non-Mastodon instances.
@trumpet please stop blocking threads so that I can follow and boost @POTUS
This policy of blocking entire instances simply because you don't like who runs them is silly and detrimental to the Fediverse not to mention our democracy.
@schizanon@trumpet we're starting to see why the decision to block threads is a difficult one once federation is actually widespread. Many accounts people find important to have access to get blocked when it is done at the instance level. It was definitely smart for #fedipact to move on this early since a decision that's already been made is harder to reverse.
The good news is that you can always migrate if the instance doesn't make the choices you want.
Opinion: I think Threads is going to end up offering “Threads only” public posts if you are connected to the fediverse. In other words, yes, you can enable fedi share on your account, but then decide on a per post basis if you want it federated.
Hometown and some Forkeys already have a local only posts feature.
@box464 that is definitely possible since I already saw a Threads user suggest this. Threads lets you limit who can reply to a post so some users find it problematic there that this isn't possible with the Fediverse integration. Limiting to local on an individual post level would allow them to keep Fedi sharing on while also using the feature Threads has. That said, since it is impossible to really limit who can comment a post if it is public I'd rather see something that would offer implementation of this on the fediverse even if it isn't foolproof. #fediverse#threads
"Worshippers of Cthulhu" - Lovecraftian city builder
So, I saw new game - https://store.epicgames.com/pl/p/worshippers-of-cthulhu-0fd3a2?fbclid=IwAR3yt_mwO1ju5HEInJyte-ZWIkPiB7NQ81BxplTniFVINZfXhd0TkXRpSCU_aem_AWnENz3wLNsMYhhDXZrM9Y3xy50ON-bUyCzadulNGpPG4J9ks6ZbjrCduTqtdw7N4K_37i2M9xZqB_Jv72klpg85 . It looks very interesting. I am not sure if there were any strategy game based on...