The fragmentation among friends that follows Twitter’s collapse is exactly the kind of problem that Mastodon and the social web solves for. Imagine that you don’t have to pick and choose which new platform to adopt, or make and maintain a million accounts—because you can follow anyone regardless of which platform they’re on. That’s our reality.
@Gargron — I need the Mastodon Primer that might explain the entire Fediverse for a GenXer who wants to encourage the collapse of FB, X, Reddit etc. how does it all work? How can I set up a server to host some?
@Gargron I’m grateful for what you’ve built, but with all due respect, it is famously difficult to discover and follow people on Mastodon servers that are different from your own. Articles have been written about this in the news. It is a deterrent to new adopters. I recognize that this is intentional in some ways but the Fediverse is far more fragmented than most other social networks
@Gargron
I once described Twitter to my parents as public telegrams.
Mastodon is trying to create “social media” protocols like those underpinning phone calls, email and texts. Not just “read” but “respond.”
Today no corporations are pushing for interoperability due to paying for multiple email providers (eg, MCI mail, Compuserve, Prodigy) so employees could email folks outside the company.
Note: It would be 20+ years between SMTP (1981) and Gmail (2004).
@Gargron A better point of reference to me personally is how 15 years ago, even though not all of my friends were on the same IM platforms I could just use a multiprotocol messenger like Trillian to keep tabs on all of them instead of having to install 30 different clients.
@Gargron eh, I disagree. I think we will always devolve to this problem and that's okay. We have to be willing not to be centralized around a single platform or a single standard, and ready to move as soon as the time comes. I think the age of tech that "just works" has made us a little too comfortable with relying on inherently unreliable systems.
@Gargron
On both Twitter and Counter.Social I saw interesting posts from people, and felt a sense of engagement with and by other users. (Twitter has turned to utter garbage, and Counter.Social is intolerant/ban happy - banning anyone who wants to share ideas that are discomforting to the group)
Here, I feel like I'm in a void, like I've been placed in a quarantine and muted. This is such a lonely/empty/dead feeling space - maybe if you're a celebrity or something, it doesn't feel that way?
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