The flight from Musk's Twitter to the "free" fediverse never really took off.

I’ve been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey—I’m just going to use “Mastodon” as shorthand here; purists can bite me) for over a year now and have been doing so full time for about six months, following Elon Musk buying Twitter (since on principle, I decline to give Elon Musk money or attention). This latter part coincided with the “November 2022 influx,” when lots of new people joined Mastodon for similar reasons. A lot of that influx has not stuck around. Everyone is very aware at this point that active user numbers of Mastodon have dropped off a cliff…

What do you think about this article? Have you perceived anything similar?

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝English
    3•1 year ago

    As it exists at the moment, Mastodon functions essentially as Twitter did in around 2008. In some ways, that’s nice. The userbase is calmer, and the DiscourseTM does not get spun up as easily.

    But the thing is, functionality-wise, Twitter in 2008 existed in 2008. We are now in 2023, when someone can use the Twitter of 2023. From a functionality standpoint, Twitter in 2023 is quite good, with some of the alternative Twitter-style frontends (e.g., Misskey and Calckey) being at about parity.

    …

    There are less computationally intensive server packages—Pleroma, Calckey and Misskey—but Mastodon is now, for better or for worse, the standard. It’s what people expect, and its feature set and API are the key driving forces behind the feature sets and APIs of the others.)

    My takeaway from that is that, even compared to other Fediverse microblogging services, Mastodon is worse in both the front and back end.

    Like a lot of people, I joined Mastodon in November 2022 then didn’t do much with it. Thanks to Lemmy, I am much more enthusiastic about the Fediverse and want to add a microblogging platform into the mix but I am wondering if I should try Calckey before I commit to one.

    • ZiroEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      I genuinely would like to know: what is the appeal of microblogging, such as Twitter and Mastodon? How does one get the most out of it?

      • @HeastesEnglish
        10•1 year ago

        I think generally speaking, you can make the distinction between something like lemmy/reddit and something like mastodon/twitter as putting interest/community first or putting the individual first.

        Lemmy/Reddit is great if you want to follow a specific topic and don’t necessarily care about what the individual users think. I don’t know about you, but I barely ever read or acknowledge someone’s username on those platforms.

        Mastodon/Twitter is great if you want to follow specific people for their opinions. Like seeing what certain politicians or analysts have to say about developments in Ukraine. Things that might be interesting but not quite newsworthy, or putting news into a different context.
        For any given interest you have, there are probably some voices who you care about hearing from more than others, be it just because you know them personally or because they are experts in their respective fields. Microblogging platforms are built to support that individual-first approach.

        • ZiroEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Wow. Thank you for your thorough response. It really added to my understanding of microblogging (which was essentially nothing). I really appreciate it.