Ask HN: What will it take to get more people using Mastodon more?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36598337

by colesantiago • 3 years ago

24 52 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Just as the title says, I am curious what would it take for people with large followings to move over and use Mastodon more so that the network effects benefits Mastodon better.

From the looks of it, it is happening already but not quite, some notable accounts such as Stephen Fry, George Takei, Paul Graham, Kathy Griffin, Professor Brian Cox, etc are using Mastodon sporadically.

How do we get people like Obama, AOC, Edward Snowden, Taylor Swift, John Carmack or Steve Wozniak to adopt Mastodon?

distcs2• 3 years ago

so that the network effects benefits Mastodon better

I think this premise is incorrect. Not many people remember but in the first few months after the launch of Twitter, it used to be a nice place for geeks to hang out and share the next interesting hack they were working on.

Then the network effects kicked in. Then celebrities came in. Then their followers came in. Twitter became a melting pot where every Tom and Harry now had a voice. Guess what that did to the platform. The place became full of noise, trolling, flame wars and spam.

Why do we want network effects for every new social media? Can't we leave them small and homely?

linusg789• 3 years ago

I like the Fediverse just the way it is already. Not every social media network needs to be excessively popular.

redog• 3 years ago

Nothing stays simple or small and it all converges on monopolistic.

A goal attained is no longer savory enough only by eliminating competition can flavor be restored /s

jasonvorhe• 3 years ago

Same. I don't want to see the Fediverse becoming just another influencer/thought leader/marketing drivel platform. We've had enough of that and I don't want to put the burden of supporting the needs of these actors on people who have to run instances out of their own pocket or by asking for donations.

Let the Fediverse grow slowly and with input from its users and the people running instances. Growth shouldn't matter here, as long as it isn't stagnant.

fragmede2• 3 years ago

I mean, you could comment on slashdot or your personal blog, but you chose to comment here. Why? I'm also commenting here, mind you, but part of the reason is the network effect.

It's a spectrum, and somewhere between one person, all alone, shouting into the void, and drinking telepathically from the firehose of all human thought, there's a happy medium place that isn't too noisy but also doesn't feel empty and desolate. Small and homely is also tiny and dying, with no conversations. Look at Lobste.rs. Even if I had an account there, the lack of conversation - I don't know that I'd comment there at all.

rbanffy• 3 years ago

I believe the UI might be the biggest issue for most users. Lack of engagement is not that much of a surprise, as Mastodon is not designed to create content addiction the way Twitter is.

As for making these people adopt it, maybe a multi-stream client would suffice - I still remember how convenient Blackberry's approach to transparently putting together multiple streams for multiple services was.

rmdes2• 3 years ago

the UI issue is being solved, both natively for/by mastodon itself, but most important, there is ELK which kind of put the whole UI of mastodon is not good several leaps forward.

What needs to change in terms of UI now is how any client interact with remote servers or how you can interact in your browser with the handle of someone else on his blog or any places that say "follow me on mastoodn", but really think that https://ELK.zone does a great job at improving mastodon UI already.

andyjohnson0• 3 years ago

This may seem trivial, but the name "Mastodon" never quite works for me. Compared to "Twitter" it is less descriptive and has an extra syllable. That might not seem important, but to achieve scale it might be off-putting to prospective users.

Also, anyone familiar with the term "mastodon" knows it refers to an extinct mamal, aka "a dinosaur". Possibly a not great look.

Whether a new name would even be possible at this point is not something that I have an informed opinion on.

Disclosure: I dont use Mastodon or Twitter, or basically any social media.

fragmede2• 3 years ago

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.

muzani2• 3 years ago

That's a "rose" though. We call the common lantana "chicken shit flower". I don't know what it smells like, but I'm biased against it.

I guess same goes for names like GIMP.

111111IIIIIII6• 3 years ago

Put differently: "I've never studied advertising, psychology, or the history of consumerism."

111111IIIIIII6• 3 years ago

Mastodon was absolutely doomed from the start due to the name alone.

I despise the superficiality of our society at least as much as anybody else, but I worked in advertising for 6 years and I'm under no delusions about what happens when you willfully ignore the repercussions of such a superficial society.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

Twitter was a bird, like a messenger pigeon, not exactly a fresh reference.

The name is not important. Twitter took off because news websites used footage of the 2009 protests in Iran, which were posted to Twitter first. Then came the 2011 Arab Spring and the 2012 US Pres election, which solidified its influence.

111111IIIIIII6• 3 years ago

Regardless Twitter's history, if you want to compete with Twitter then you are shooting yourself in the foot if you refuse to let branding people handle the branding. It would have been such a simple step to take, and the the only reason it wasn't taken is the same ignorance exhibited in your comment.

nathan_phoenix• 3 years ago

A nicer UI which is more like Twitter!

Honestly, what most non-tech people care about is how the app looks[1]. And not if it's decentralized, federate or whatever. That is also why most open source alternatives fail, they might have great tech ideas, but they either look ugly, are a pain to use or both. The tragedy of open source, I'd say...

[1]: and that it's free

rmdes2• 3 years ago

try https://elk.zone with your exisitng mastodon account, which is precisely that.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

Wow, that client is pretty fast. If I'm being honest, every fediverse client has been slow as balls so this was really surprising. Very cool!

GravitasFailure• 3 years ago

Do the developers and current users actually want to grow?

halfbrite2• 3 years ago

Do the developers and current users actually want to grow?

From casual observation, yes, Mastodon users generally want the platform to grow.

Bluesky users? Some incumbents can be extremely hostile towards the idea of new users, though are equally welcoming when they do arrive.

Lemmy? Oof.

dkobia• 3 years ago

Most users don’t care about decentralization and having to select a server is a major turn off for most. Then, once you’re on, the feature that adds to Twitters network effect - the “Quote Retweet” is deliberately left out of Mastodon [1], to make conversation more civil and muted.

[1] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/99662106175542726

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

It's coming: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/309

But not for a while, as doing it the way the project wants to do it (requiring consent) will require ActivityPub extensions AIUI.

Meanwhile, the community is reinventing it in various ways (this is also where quote-retweets came from on Twitter, btw; they didn't become a native feature for a long time)

TRiG_Ireland• 3 years ago

Mastodon is not profit-driven. It doesn't need growth. It does, perhaps, need enough people to keep it sustainable, but I suspect that it has that and more already.

toss1• 3 years ago

Implement the ability & willingness to police imposter accounts.

I know a noted author who tried to move to Mastadon. It was a disaster. He was promptly swarmed by a half dozen imposter accounts posting false content he'd never even think.

He made diligent efforts to report and get those accounts shut down and was basically told both that whatever org Mastadon has, has no inclination to manage imposters, and that even if they did, it would be structurally impossible to do so except by de-federating instances. So he left.

I also know of a Mastadon-based instance (Cointer-Social) that attempts to fight disinformation & trolling, with one measure being to ban all accounts from Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Because of this, CS is banned from federation by Mastadon.

The Mastadon org would need to fix these technical & philosophical flaws to attract any serious users and become a scaled-up 'town square' for serious high-profile people.

As it is, Mastadon is not, and will never be, fit for such a scaled-up purpose.

nottorp• 3 years ago

Implement the ability & willingness to police imposter accounts.

It's decentralized so that's impossible.

However the original question is wrong. Why should people move to Mastodon? Why should they move to Twitter or Facebook?

Is it illlegal to maintain a presence in more than one place?

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

It's decentralized so that's impossible.

Hmm, I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, but it does depend on users being aware of the possibility of impersonation.

You can "verify" a Mastodon account, in that you can demonstrate that it is connected to a domain that you control. This is better than post-Musk Twitter 'verification', which is, of course, not verification at all. The UX around all this is lacking, though.

Decabytes• 3 years ago

One things is the phone apps. My mastodon apps (tootle and mastodon) don’t work well. They lag and sometimes don’t show me my notifications. Tootle can’t display ‘ properly and I see words like it’s turn into it's. The Mastodon app doesn’t show my pinned post when I go to my profile.

I’ve been on mastodon for six years and it’s definitely got better, but still needs more polish. Also the performance of the site isn’t great, but that might just be because of it’s federated nature.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

There are some excellent phone apps available. I like Ivory a lot (but also I used to like Tweetbot a lot, to the point where I wouldn't use Twitter without it; they're basically the same app).

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

I think you've asked two separate questions.

What will it take to get more people using Mastodon more?

Simply wait for Elon Musk to do something stupid: https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount

I am curious what would it take for people with large followings to move over and use Mastodon more

I think that's a slightly different question, but possibly only a matter of degree; if Twitter stays in its current semi-broken state for long, some really big accounts are going to _have_ to look elsewhere, whether they want to or not. Mastodon is probably the most viable current alternative (the invite-only stuff is probably not much use if one happens to be Taylor Swift), though Facebook's Twitter-y thing may become that, depending on how much Facebook screw it up (never bet against Facebook in a screwing-things-up competition). Facebook's Twitter-y thing will apparently be ActivityPub-compatible, though, so... problem solved, kinda?

Of course, the other thing to consider is… is this desirable? Do mastodon users want mastodon to be another twitter, only less vulnerable to being bought by a weird billionaire? I’m sure some do, but I’m not sure it’d be a majority view.

NX9mqsSv8• 3 years ago

Get young people to use it.

MaxPengwing2• 3 years ago

People go to where they might be able to build an audience. This works exceptionally well on a centralised systems like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Soundcloud etc.

Mastodon has federation, and at this point just me saying those two words, have already went above the normal users head. They do not care about peer to peer, choosing servers, and whatever federation means. They care about Reach, Friends are there, and ease of use. Period.

Users care about how easy is it for me to use, does it get me the audience reach I need, and how easy is it for me to moderate my audience.

Companies, & freelancers need to know that they get the reach they need to build their businesses. Politicians, agencies and government agencies need to know that hey can reach out with their messaging. I mean Twitter is a tool for international diplomacy and disaster warnings in times of crisis.

Twitter can do that because they hav 500 million users. Facebook can do that because they have a billion users. WhatsApp has almost 3 billion users.

Mastodon official has 8 millon. https://mastodon-analytics.com/ Total fediverse number of users is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ lol I dunno.

THe way to "sell" Mastodon to power users and super influencers is that you tell them they can run their own instance and have greater control than what they have through twitter on moderation and who can interact, that makes it interesting to start running it as a side project.

111111IIIIIII6• 3 years ago

The way to "sell" Mastodon to power users and super influencers is that you tell them they can run their own instance and have greater control than what they have through twitter

I am not a salesperson, but I did work in advertising for a while and this strikes me as an excellent pitch. I still think easy onboarding and a rebrand would be necessary to reduce friction, but I think you're onto something.

MaxPengwing2• 3 years ago

Thanks! Easy onboarding is definitely needed. We're all technologists here and we don't mind wonky UX with lacking documentation.

The name Mastodon is unfortunate, Twitter is a better name as Tweeting became a verb, not sure how to verb Mastodon without it becoming a lewd euphemism. "Hey I Mastodonded about that" erhm... you did what now?

How would you go about a rebrand of Mastodon?

karif_ghannam• 3 years ago

Most important is the network effect. You wanna be where everybody else is. But I also think UI/UX can be better in Mastodon. It isn't terrible but Twitter etc has better and more modern UI (yes, I know there are different instances etc).

iguana_lawyer2• 3 years ago

The main thing holding back Mastodon is the lack of quote retweet functionality. Without it, Mastodon is useless for the journalism and activism that made Twitter popular. Unfortunately, there is little hope this will change as Mastodon’s developers stubbornly and arrogantly refuse to implement it.

Frankly, I don’t think it would make a difference at this point. Mastodon has had a year to prove it can be a replacement for Twitter and it has failed terribly. I don’t think it can overcome the negative first impressions left by it’s obnoxious user experience. Like who’s bright idea was it to purposefully leave the official Mastodon app feature incomplete?

rchaud3• 3 years ago

Mastodon is the lack of quote retweet functionality. Without it, Mastodon is useless for the journalism and activism that made Twitter popular.

There is a Boost function that is identical to a reblog/retweet. Quote tweets were easily gamed, politicians simply said the most outrageous things imaginable knowing that it would get them attention and quotes from both friends and foes.

iguana_lawyer2• 3 years ago

Quoting someone while providing commentary/context is literally what journalists does. Mastodon is hostile to journalism.

111111IIIIIII6• 3 years ago

It would take shutting down Twitter.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

I'm interested in not having Mastodon turn into a broadcast network for the toxic swamp of celebrities, athleties and politicians.

Let them stay on Social Media Classic.

muzani2• 3 years ago

I think there's a middle ground, where it's hype but not gamed, like pre-unicorn Clubhouse, and IRC during its peak.

intended• 3 years ago

Yeah that isnt possible.

If Mastodon picks up steam, it’s going to end up with regular folk. They will want a single client / interface to simplify things.

At which point it will become a toxic swamp of celebs/etc.

haunter• 3 years ago

Funny reading the discussion about this topic because a lot of times it feels like people intentionally sabotaging the growth of Fediverse/the features of Mastodon the software.

add-sub-mul-div• 3 years ago

Is it really a bad thing to be able to enjoy Mastodon and Lemmy among just the early adopters, trend setters, and minority of people who make deliberate choices of what platform to use rather than the followers?

We already know what happens to networks when they get bigger. Should we really be encouraging the eternal September to happen so early?

halfbrite2• 3 years ago

Some things I don't understand about Mastodon:

1. Why the obsession with 'move' instead of 'use'? Since when did people become forced to use only one website or one platform or one product?

2. Why the constant arguments over the pros and cons of federation? The ends users stance: 'Who cares!' All the want is a platform that works for them and gives them the content they seek, and doesn't break every 5 minutes. They care little for the technical merits.

3. Federation sounds great, but ultimately the majority of users, if say a migration from Twitter was to occur, will likely flock to one instance, and that's likely to be mastodon.social as it's the most obvious and prominent instance shown to new users. So uhh, then who cares about federation?

A technical solution looking for a problem ... and it may have found a problem - which is kind of refreshing.

diffeomorphism• 3 years ago

Give people a good interface that hides complicated things like federation, is very low barrier and looks nice.

As similar example consider lemmy. Here https://wefwef.app/ is a much, much better starting point for new users than the official page. Immediately shows you stuff, nice interface, no "what do I even click" problem.

Contrast that with https://joinmastodon.org/

- Need to click to another page first.

- Giant list of whatever, what am I supposed to pick, how am I supposed to judge any of ...

- Nope, not going to bother. The end.

Instead give me a page that immediately shows me interesting posts (browsing as guest) and where sign up only requires a username (just pick a server for me; curated, random, I don't care).

Shawnj2• 3 years ago

I honestly think that Lemmy and mastodon both have the new user signup process completely wrong. I think what makes most sense is for it to ask you for your interests and then redirect you to a randomly selected appropriate instance in that category. Otherwise everyone just joins the default instance and gets confused

solardev• 3 years ago

It's too much unnecessary complexity. What is a mastadon? Some kind of elephant? What is federation? What do you mean I have to choose? How do I know which one to go on? What happens when they shut down? Do I need more than one account? Where are my friends? Where are the celebs? Oh man, I dunno. I think I'll just give up.

Twitter was annoying enough just to see the slow loading embedded tweets on other websites, not to mention their confusing threading and weird multi part messages. Why would anyone want to use something even more complicated...

3000• 3 years ago

a name change. yes im serious.

Ask HN: What will it take to get more people using Mastodon more?

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