It seems like due to the downfall of Twitter and Reddit, people will be moving to the Fediverse instead, and since there is not much here, people won’t be addicted to it anymore.
Additionally, it’s open-source and de-centralized as well, which omits censorship. What do you guys think?
Regarding Threads, It’s hard to see through the bullshit right now. End user reports are pretty abysmal, while media coverage remains glowing. Meta has clearly sunk a lot of money into promoting the launch, complete with a ton of astroturfing, paid endorsements, paid content creators, etc.
On the flip side, people have been absolutely desperate for a realistic Twitter alternative. Too many tried (and abandoned) Mastodon. It’s entirely possible that Threads will be a just-barely-good-enough Twitter alternative to abandon the Musk abuse.
I won’t even make a prediction on it until next month, at the earliest. Let the launch hype fade, and see if it has staying power.
What’s so bad about Mastodon that so many people gave up on it? Microblogging isn’t really my cup of tea, but I had a look out of curiosity and it seemed to have all the right ingredients, including several large media/celebrity accounts to follow.
It’s not that it’s bad per se. The whole federation thing is confusing enough that it’s a barrier to entry. There’s also the fact that change is hard. Mastodon has a different interface, with the associated learning curve. Beyond that, it’s not just having a certain number of celebrities/etc, but the right ones. That leads to a chicken and egg problem for a lot of users. Eventually enough people would sign up (and content creators posting to both) that it would trigger a mass migration, but that has not happened yet.
So, after all that, most users decide that Twitter is ok enough for now.
Oh, so it’s not Mastodon itself that was rejected, just that the network effect isn’t big enough yet. That makes a lot of sense.
Are end user reports abysmal? I’m having a lot of fun on there, and my colleagues and acquaintances all seem to be enjoying it too.